Embedding Spreadsheets and VBA macros within a powerful evo-insight business web application

evo-insight is Zeniths’ new modelling and analytical platform designed to rapidly deliver governed analytics directly to internal and external users such as actuaries, CFO/CFOs, policyholders and others. It provides both pre-built and custom business applications that are fully configurable.

Importantly it, uniquely offers the capability to embed existing spreadsheets and VBA macros within a powerful evo-insight web application. This runs much faster and provides a controlled environment where users can easily run and rerun the application based on thousands of scenarios and assumptions sets. It’s achieved within a secure, workflow driven environment for automation and control.

The evo-insight web application also enables users to automatically spread calculations across multiple machines to provide speed and scalability. This means that even complex VBA workbooks with embedded macros, what-ifs, and looped calculations can be replicated easily and run rapidly on the platform. Full versioning and change control is embedded for governance and the results can be presented in a graphical format for easy analysis.

A simple example will help to illustrate this.

Zenith took a VBA pricing workbook based on thousands of generated scenarios and differing assumption sets. Processing on a single machine it took some 10 hours to run, and reruns based on a different number of scenarios or assumptions equally took the same time. Replicated in evo-insight the application was spread across 60 machines and run in under 30 minutes – a massive reduction in time. As evo-insight uses scalable compute resource, more machines could be used to further reduce run times or increase the number of scenarios/assumptions sets within the same timescales.

Importantly acceleration was not the only benefit – users are able to see the results in graphical format and via the user interface, rerun the application based on a differing number of scenarios or differing assumptions and rerun quickly. And again, with the graphical output enabling users to quickly compare and contrast results and decide on the optional choice.

We are confident that with evo-insight we can take easily take your spreadsheets and VBA workbooks and demonstrate just how easy it is to embed them within a powerful web application controlled by the users.