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Oil and gas · AccessEXL + Claude

Turn Excel expertise into subscription revenue

Sell access to your proprietary Excel model as a subscription web app, without handing over the workbook or rebuilding its calculations.

The challenge

You're an independent financial modeller with a sophisticated Excel model for the oil and gas industry, full of industry knowledge and intellectual property built up over your career. Clients regularly ask to use it themselves.

But distributing the workbook would expose your formulas and methodology, clients could copy or share it, and every client would end up on a different version. You have something clients want to pay for, but no secure, scalable way to sell it.

The solution

1

Protect your model

Keep the master workbook in a controlled SharePoint environment, never distributed to clients.

2

Expose selected functionality

AccessEXL makes only approved inputs and outputs available through a secure API.

3

Build a web application

Use Claude to build a simple, branded app where clients enter assumptions, run scenarios and see results through the AccessEXL REST API.

4

Introduce subscriptions

Add client logins, subscription management and payments so you can charge a monthly fee.

5

Maintain and improve

Update the Excel model centrally; every client gets the improvement with no new files or version worries.

The results

BeforeWith AccessEXL
Revenue mainly from modelling services
Recurring subscription revenue
Risk of exposing valuable Excel IP
Clients reach approved functionality only
Separate spreadsheet copies
One centrally maintained model
Difficult to commercialise and scale
Subscription-based web application
Updates mean distributing new files
Improvements delivered centrally

The key takeaway

You don't need a software team to recreate years of Excel calculations that you then can't maintain without them. AccessEXL turns your proprietary models into secure, API-powered products, and Claude makes it easier to build the customer-facing app around them.

Download the PDF Connect your first workbook

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