MS Excel
Microsoft Excel suffers from being too easy to use!
People quickly get comfortable with a small range of Excel’s functionality that they can get up and running in just a couple of hours. Users develop solutions that work for them without necessarily optimising their approach to incorporate the incredible power that Excel offers.
In the context of Excel, our work is usually in one of two areas:
1) Excel as a reporting tool.
Aspects that may be employed include
- External Data Connections
- Charting
- Management Dashboards
- Pivot Tables
Pivot Tables in particular offer incredible out-of-the-box power to provide an amazing range of cut and slice reporting options.
2) Excel as a data manipulation and management tool.
It is very satisfying to take a job that previously occupied a staff member for an hour and show them how to do it in 5 minutes! Areas that are often useful include:
- Conditional Formatting
- Lookups
- Text Functions
- Grouping
