Shifting Control
The most impactful of these considerations is the shift of data control. As long as data is in a spreadsheet, the data is under the direct control of the end user. IT has no say or no consideration of the data found in a spreadsheet. After all, one of the primary reasons why the spreadsheet rose in popularity was the end user’s desire to have control.
But as the data moves through the transformation process that has been described, there is a shift in the control of the data. When the data arrives in the corporate world, the data is firmly in the control of the organization’s IT department.
There are many implications of this change in control. When data was in the control of the end user, data was:
- • Managed directly by the end user
- • Easily changed whenever the owner desired
- • Fairly private, as only a few people had access to (or even knew about) the spreadsheet
But as the data moved to the control...
