Microsoft Excel Training for Individuals and Companies

Excel for Consultants in Business

The spreadsheet is probably the most widely used management consulting tool out there. In the analysis stage of their projects, consultants use spreadsheets on a regular basis, eventually constructing models that draw conclusions from a data set to guide the project’s outcome. Understanding how consultants use Excel for the work will give a better knowledge of its uses.

Here are a few examples of how consultants commonly use spreadsheets.

·      Model Creation

Consultants develop data models using spreadsheets, which are a collection of formulas that modify data to form the project’s principal analysis. Models must produce accurate results while also being simple to comprehend and update. A full model, in theory, can be utilised as a standardised asset that a company can employ to address the same problem again and over again.

·      Pivot Tables

Pivot tables are virtually always one of the most popular Excel features, according to almost every consultant. Pivot tables may slice and dice data by any data set dimension, and they can help consultants draw insights from data sets by comparing different pieces of them. They should, in theory, assist you in determining what you can learn from the data you have and where you need to conduct additional research to fill in the gaps.

·      Cleansing Data

Because data is acquired in a variety of formats, collecting data in a spreadsheet frequently results in a spreadsheet containing a number of different formats. Not only is it necessary to maintain consistent formatting for clarity’s sake, but Excel can only tolerate a certain number of unique formats in a worksheet before crashing if that limit is surpassed. As a result, consultants should be familiar with basic data cleaning functions such as VALUE() for converting text to numbers, TEXT() for converting numbers to text, functions for removing duplicates and achieving uniform capitalization, and so on.

How do Consultants use Excel?

Excel has a plethora of applications in consulting. Excel is still the most common analytical tool we use to evaluate data. Other tools for managing very huge data sets have recently been on the scene. However, the latest version of Excel can manage over a million lines of data (the initial version we used could only handle 50,000), indicating that Excel is still quite useful.

Here are three of Excel’s most typical applications:

·      Valuation Models

Consultants use Excel to determine the financial worth of firms or business possibilities. Building a model in Excel allows you to anticipate cash flows based on assumptions about growth and margins.

Goalseek and if statements are frequently used in the building of value models. Check out the amazing courses at Breaking into Wall Street if you need to construct banker-level valuation models.

·      Profitability Information

Consultants are frequently charged with evaluating data to determine where and how a client makes money. Where and why are profits higher or lower? Profitability analysis employs a wide range of formulas. Sub-totals and the margins associated with sub-segments within the data set are frequently requested by consultants. When building profitability insights on enormous data sets, basic and conditional formatting can be highly useful.

·      Analyzing survey data

To gain insights into a client’s business model, several consulting firms perform surveys of the client’s commercial teams, leadership teams, or customers. One of our team members, for example, was part in a project in which they surveyed a client’s sales staff to see how they approached the process of price fixing. Advanced charting was used extensively in the analysis of this batch of survey data. The survey findings needed to be presented in a way that allowed the insights to “jump” off the page for the team.

Conclusion

Excel is here to stay, and organisations will continue to utilise it as a major tool for a wide range of tasks and applications, from IT projects to workplace picnics.

Most office workers nowadays need to know how to use Excel, and having superior Excel skills can lead to promotions and leadership chances. Excel is a strong tool, but it can’t do everything by itself. To produce the finest outcomes for their company, a wise computer user must take use of everything Excel has to offer.