Escaping Excel Hell – Cutting Reporting Time

Excel is an excellent presentation tool for reporting. But a key problem is that business analysts spend too much manipulating data, and not enough time analysing. Another issue is the struggle to have a report available by its deadline.

One aspect of this is the time needed to get data accurately from a source system into Excel, which might currently involve re-keying.

There are several solutions to this [...read more...]

Escaping Excel Hell – Tips for Forecasting and Budgeting

When preparing a budget or forecast, especially if extra funds are being sought, the last thing you want is a major error. If it is found by the potential funder it’s one problem. Not spotting it at all is another. Unfortunately it is very easy to make a mistake using Excel, such as missing costs and getting links between sheets incorrect.

Excel is a great tool for one person preparing a budget for a simple business. As things get more complex, other tools are more appropriate to handle aggregation and use by multiple people. Some of these tools use Excel as the user interface, or a grid that looks somewhat like Excel.

Whatever tool is used, it’s important to remember: [...read more...]

Automating Excel Business Processes

Excel is a marvelous software tool. It’s pretty well standard on business PCs, and most people have at least a rudimentary knowledge of how it works.

You can list data in a simple database, and use the range of formulae to add and manipulate data. So Excel (or some other spreadsheet) is often the first tool thought of and used for a business application such as order processing or budgeting.

However it’s worth thinking of Excel as [... read more...]

Escaping Excel Hell - Management Reporting

If you have two choices of how to produce management reports, which would you prefer:

1. Into a web browser direct from the relevant system(s)?
2. [...read more...]

Traffic Light Charts for Excel

We’ve looked before at add-ins for gauges and sparklines, but haven’t looked at “Traffic Light Charts”. These apply colour highlights to trends, as in the example left.

[...read more...]

Escaping Excel Hell – Unlocking Business Processes

You start a new business or activity. This may be within an existing business. The easiest thing to do is to log what happens in a spreadsheet, typically Excel.

The next thing you know is that there are a team of people tripping over each other trying to use the same spreadsheet. Copies are taken and you quickly lose track of  [...read more...]

Escaping Excel Hell - Unlocking Business Growth

Excel's a great way of making simple lists. So if you are trying to track sales orders or purchase orders, it's tempting to do it in Excel if you only have an accounting system.

Then the business grows a little. Two people are now trying to share a spreadsheet. That proves impractical so it is split into two halves. Then they are pulled together to report. Then a third person is needed ....

Before you know it there is a spider's web of spreadsheets, with links that sometimes work, and a whole raft of manual processes to control the business. Sound familiar? [...read more...]