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A spreadsheet story without any horror

Last week’s post focussed on the horror stories of what goes wrong when spreadsheets get out of control. This week’s post is about the other side of that coin; the good news that there are tools available to help you control the spreadsheet jungle. A recent article in Forbes covered this topic. (See: Forbes, Feb […]

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3 Spreadsheet Horror Stories from Banking

To misquote a phrase once used about advertising: “Spreadsheets are not necessarily a good or bad thing, it depends on the use to which they are put.” They are certainly a prominent feature of everyday life in banking. They do though need to be used carefully. This week’s post has a sample of the typical […]

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3 Design Essentials for Exception Processing

Uncluttered: When there are exceptions, make it nigh on impossible to overlook them. The picture below illustrates my own personal view of how to do this. If you are showing what needs attention, suppress, shade out or put elsewhere all the information about things that do not need attention. The picture on the left is […]

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What do you think? Who should deal with standing instructions?

Slightly different format this week. What do you think? Last week, I was asked about SSI’s in the FX business. Who should do what? Understandable issue as an account may not initially trade FX or might do certain currencies later. I tried to make a general theory for this. Feedback on the following is very […]

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Bureaucrats vs. Entrepreneurs

This week’s post is inspired by a feedback on last week’s post, as well as some recent  conversations with industry contacts. In response to last week’s post on why good decisions are not made, I was offered some further and very useful theory: in large Banking organisations, there is often a strange culture mix to […]

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3 Reasons Why Good Decisions Are Not Made

This week’s post is inspired by a couple of recent events. A discussion last week with a group of banks about operational improvements and the challenge that Operations has of getting funds to invest in change that will reduce costs, as well as reports in today’s Times, of London, not New York that is, about […]

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3 Unacceptable Excuses for Not Getting the Job Done.

Being good at something means getting the job done right and getting it done on time.  In my first interview with an Investment Bank, I was asked about working long hours and weekends. “Look, I don’t know anything about this business and I am sure there might be reasons why sometimes, long hours and weekends […]

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External Impact. The Benchmark for Operations professionals.

Welcome back. Happy New Year and here’s to a really upbeat 2013. For the banks, 2012 was perhaps best captured by the word of the year “omnishambles”, which our American cousins would translate to FUBAR. Bankers slipped on every available banana skin. In 2013, things have got to get better One of those leading the […]

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