What is Egeria Spreadsheets?

Egeria Spreadsheets is a collaborative multidimensional web-based spreadsheet service. It is designed to simplify creation and maintenance of large worksheets with complex calculations. Egeria can be used to quickly implement a wide range of planning, budgeting or reporting solutions, create financial models and perform what-if simulations.

Why another spreadsheet application?

I am working as an IT contractor (software development) for almost 10 years now. It mostly involves creating custom applications for non-techies (people from controlling, marketing, finance and so on) who work for large companies. Here are some observations I did so far:

• Spreadsheet is the most used (sometimes overused) tool among the non technical people
• Some of the projects I did were literally: We have a bunch of very complex spreadsheets here and we cannot maintain them any more. Could you please make a web application with the same functionality.
• Spreadsheets are preferred over custom applications when the requirements are changing very quickly: sometimes people from controlling or marketing departments cannot wait the 4-8 weeks till their IT department implements a change request. Copy-pasting spreadsheet formulas is often faster than overcoming bureaucracy in an enterprise environment.

Here are the goals behind the Egeria system:

• allow large and complex spreadsheets to remain maintainable
• the majority of people familiar with a traditional spreadsheet application should ideally be able to use it without special training

Key differences to traditional spreadsheets

• Multidimensional data model: worksheets are organized by business entities (SKUs, departments, years, months, scenarios and so on). The data is stored in a more structured way which has many benefits like simple and robust computations across multiple worksheets.
• Robust formulas: while Egeria's formulas are very similar to the formulas from common spreadsheet applications, there are two major differences:
  • The cell reference syntax is a bit more complex to make computations along multiple dimensions possible
  • Formulas cannot be copied. Instead one defines an 'area of effect' for each formula. With a properly defined area of effect a formula will still function correctly when new dimension elements (or new dimensions) are added.
• A restriction on text cells: Only header cells (light blue cells at the beginning of each row/column) can contain text. All the other cells are numeric by default (but can also be formatted as checkboxes, dates/time values or list of options/dropdowns). This restriction is a certain enforced guideline on how multidimensional spreadsheets should be organized.
• Web application: a single document can be viewed and edited by hundreds of users simultaneously

Key differences to OLAP-based business planning software

There are several products for enterprise planning and budgeting with a multidimensional data model. Egeria is different in the following ways:

• Egeria is not specialized for a certain task (like budgeting). It is more of a spreadsheet with a multidimensional data model.
• Egeria should be easier to use for people familiar with traditional spreadsheet applications.