Solution Partners

Cluster Seven

Spreadsheet models are commonly circulated as attachments to emails. Like many unstructured
processes this allows users to rapidly collaborate in pursuit of a business objective.
However, this activity creates challenges:

Tracking the execution of objectives, due to factors including the creation of multiple tasks
among multiple people, long or indeterminate timeframes, combined with both intra- and
inter-organizational communication.

Managing the supporting information, including such factors as scattered documents,
multiple versions of the truth, undetected changes, and email overload.

Applying relevant governance needs, such as visibility and restriction of users,
information retention policies and enterprise reporting.

The combination of ClusterSeven and ActionBase solves these problems. Users continue to
work in their preferred environments of MS Outlook® and Excel, eliminating the need for retraining.
But now, all conversations surrounding the spreadsheet and its changes are tracked and held in
a central process repository. This gives visibility into who is using the spreadsheet,
ensuring that authorized users know its status, the history of changes and their business context.
Users can be certain that they are using the right version.

In addition, the owner of the spreadsheet is now sure that everyone using the spreadsheet
receives notification of critical changes (both structural and business issues) and has
taken appropriate action - or elected not to.

actionbase-integration

Image 1: ActionBase - Cluster7 Integration

"...The challenge for businesses is to learn
how to deal with unstructured processes
... [This] has the potential for a huge cost saving for any business,
as knowledge workers are generally
the most expensive labor organizations
have on the payroll..."

Jim G Sinur,
Research Vice President,
Gartner

"...Spreadsheets are connected with the entire fabric of the business,
from e-mail to
enterprise resource planning (ERP).
Our work with ActionBase extends spreadsheet management and control to
e-mail attachments. Our joint solution gives users an
easy way to manage process risk in their familiar Microsoft
Outlook and Excel environments..."

Ralph Baxter,
CEO,
ClusterSeven