The concept was coined in 2002 by Wayne Eckerson at TDWI in his article Taming Spreadsheet Jockeys,[2] and intended pejoratively, as an undesirable system, which should be replaced by a data mart.
However, critics such as Stephen Samild argue that spreadmarts have advantages over data marts and can be a desirable system.
Usually these spreadsheet files are distributed via email to colleagues resulting in even more copies of the data roaming through the enterprise.
The growth of spreadmarts poses tangible risks for companies, since undefined and uncoupled data can be used to draw false conclusions that lead to wrong decisions, which will cost time and money to discover and correct.
Although Business Intelligence 2.0 software vendors claim to have overcome this issue, locally installed spreadsheet and graphing software continues to be easier to access and use, giving the business analyst the freedom to create the needed analysis quickly, and choose to live with the risk of data inconsistency that goes with it.