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$10B Annual Tab for Spreadsheet Errors?

Posted by Zonk on from the thats-a-lot-of-pennies dept.

theodp writes "According to PWC and KPMG, more than 90% of corporate spreadsheets have material errors in them. With each error costing between $10K and 100K per month, one expert estimates corporate America loses in excess of $10B annually through the misuse and abuse of spreadsheets." From the article: "The key point about spreadsheets is that you need to know which ones are critical to your business, which ones are merely important and which ones you do not have to bother too much about. Once you know that, you can start to apply appropriate policies depending on the criticality of the spreadsheet involved."

10 of 305 comments (clear)

  1. Oh wait by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    That's a $10 Annual Tab for Spreadsheet Errors. Misplaced a decimal!

  2. How did they work this out? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    Did they run the numbers through a spreadsheet?

  3. Re:Other Losses? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Oh this makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. Lets build a bureaucracy around spreadsheets.

    Spreadsheet requirements gathering - 2 weeks
    Spreadsheet Use Cases - 1 week...

    Sorry sir you can't use a spreadsheet to organize your pencil collection until next month because IT needs to make quarter numbers and cut expenses.

  4. Re:Does anyone understand this? by Creepy+Crawler · · Score: 4, Funny

    So what you imply is we should overcharge on EVERYTHING and hope the people we're selling XYZ to catches it.

    As long as we make mistakes, in OUR BENEFIT, we're ok, right?

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  5. Re:Ummm by sphealey · · Score: 4, Funny
    This is probably just another case where some statistician takes a common problem, makes a few guesses, and comes up with some exorbenant figure to scare people into paying attention. You can support any point with statistics.
    Not to mention that he probably used a spreadsheet to calculate those statistics...

    sPh

  6. Re:spreadsheets are insanely useful by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 3, Funny

    In other words, the major factor in your switch is your laziness to google for perl+windows?

  7. Article Has Spreadsheet Error by rewinn · · Score: 4, Funny

    >... $165,000 times 9 times 500. That amounts to just shy of three quarters of a billion dollars. And is that anywhere near realistic? No. It is probably safe to say that corporate America, for example, loses in excess of $10bn annually ...

    Can You Spot The Spreadsheet Error?

    Cell B1 = $165,000
    Cell B2 = 9
    Cell B3 = 500
    Cell B4 = B1*B2*B3
    Cell B5 = $10 BILLION

    --
    --- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
  8. Re:Does anyone understand this? by ExileOnHoth · · Score: 2, Funny

    Yes, this makes complete sense, because, you see, 87% of all statistics are made up.

  9. Re:Ummm by Moofie · · Score: 3, Funny

    Except in this case, they're trying to scare people into paying KPMG to make them more spreadsheets.

    And I guarantee that getting KPMG to make errors for you is going to cost you more than $10 grand.

    --
    Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
  10. Re:Does anyone understand this? by aichpvee · · Score: 2, Funny

    You must be new to corporate america.

    --
    The Farewell Tour II