How FAST is your Excel?

Standards - making life easier

Excel is a remarkably versatile program.   It, or one of the alternatives to it, will undoubtedly be found in just about every business which has a computer.  Businesses use it in many different ways, from simple lists, through reporting to simulations and financial modelling.  However, Excel's flexibility means that for any task, the effectiveness, reliability and results produced will be dependent on the skill of the user who develops the workbook.

What this means is that the chances are really high that for any given task, the excel workbook in one business won't be structured, formatted or use the same formulas as a the same task in another business (except when one person moves to another place and takes the workbook with them).

The fundamental result of this is that huge amounts of time are wasted in business, either re-developing a workbook to do the same task, or trying to troubleshoot (and rebuild) existing workbooks.

Wouldn't it be great if there was a Standard governing how to structure excel workbooks?

or the lasagne, whichever.

I was recently pointed to the FAST Standard Organisation.    The objective of this organisation is to promote standardisation in financial modelling (mainly excel it seems!).

FAST stands for:

Flexible 
Models must be able to be easily and quickly adapted when new information becomes available.

Appropriate
Models must reflect key business assumptions directly and faithfully, without being overbuilt or cluttered with unnecessary detail

Structured
Rigorous consistency in layout and organisation is essential to ensure the model's logical integrity over time - particularly as authors may change

Transparent
Simple, clear calculations that can be followed by financial modelers and non modellers alike.

In order to achieve this the FAST organisation has developed a standard document, now at version 2a, which you can find here.  I strongly recommend that you grab a copy and have a look at it - is isn't that hard to read most of it.

The FAST organisation also set up a LinkedIn group, called the FAST Standard group - you can check it out here.

What's the catch?

Actually, there isn't one.

The standard is primarily focussed on financial modelling so there are some sections which may not be relevant.  Also, you'll need a reasonable understanding of some perhaps unfamiliar formulas (at the very least, you'll need the ones here).

But really, most of the principles are pretty straightforward, it is just a case of applying them!

"May the FAST be with you"

So, will you use the standards?  If not, why not?