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A question that is frequently raised as I talk with prospective customers is the viability of Distributed Spreadsheet as strictly a “push” tool. The answer is absolutely. As there are a number of large accounting applications that are able to output reports in Excel format with breakpoints at worksheets rather than the traditional printed page, the opportunity is very clear. Installing a license of Distributed Spreadsheet on each machine where 1 of more of the worksheets will be destined allows for a secure way to send out individual pages of the report without having to cut out the individual pages.
Thus a large, international company could perhaps produce a quarterly financial report with a single worksheet for each agent’s territory with a summary page for each region and possibly other levels of roll-up.
The territory manager is assigned as a Contributor for their respective worksheet. The area manager is assigned as a Contributor for all the territory manager’s worksheets. The regional manager is assigned as a Contributor for all the summary pages assigned to each area manager in the region. This continues on up through the management hierarchy.
As there is no need for updates to be coming back via the worksheets, the v1.0 limit of 12 Contributors per worksheet is not applicable. The limit of 12 applies only to cases where merging of Contributions is needed. Thus Distributed Spreadsheet provides an easy and secure way to sending out individual worksheets containing the very data upon which financial models are built. Once received, the recipient is able to save the file and then proceed to do any modeling they desire.
If you have questions about this application of Distributed Spreadsheet, please drop a note to info@distributedspreadsheet.com.