Microsoft Excel Training for Individuals and Companies

Why is Excel popular among Consultants?

Anyone interested in learning how consultants utilise Excel should read this post. A deeper grasp of how consultants utilise Excel is one of the keys to substantially enhancing your productivity, whether you’re an aspiring consultant or already working as one. It’s true that you can never have too much Excel skills!

Trading time now for time later is a common dilemma that all consulting analysts encounter early in their careers. Early on, you’ll probably have a range of analytical jobs to complete that you can complete manually in a reasonable amount of time. Alternatively, you can take the time to learn the right Excel formula, which will take some time. However, once you’ve learned it, you’ll be able to complete the activity in seconds rather than minutes in the future. We advocate putting a lot of effort into improving your Excel skills early on in your career.

Let’s take a look at some of the most frequent Excel abilities used in consulting.

• Pivot Tables

Large data sets can be analysed fast and easily with pivot tables. Assume you have a massive data set of consumer purchase listings. A pivot table allows an analyst to “pivot” on specific dimensions, such as a customer or a product, to provide summary metrics such as total count, sum, or average.

• Index/Match, Vlookups, Hlookups

Assume you have a single data set containing client profitability data. However, you have another data collection with descriptive information for each customer, such as size and industry. The Excel analyst might use a vlookup, hlookup, or index/match function to connect the two data sets and pull information from one into the other.

• Arrays

One of the more difficult Excel formula possibilities is an array formula. You can use an array formula to conduct several calculations on the objects in an array. An array can be defined as a row of values, a column of values, or a combination of the two. Array formulae essentially allow you to execute calculations on only those components of the array that fulfil specified criteria, allowing you to produce subtotals or averages for specific sub-categories of data.

• Macros

Another advanced Excel technique is macros. They essentially let you to “record” a set of steps and then repeat them on different inputs. When the “formula” required to execute an analytical operation would be too difficult to write, they are frequently utilised. It’s fine if many extremely successful consultants never learn to utilise macros. This is one form of Excel consulting talent that is a plus. They’re useful to know, but they’re not absolutely necessary.

• Formatting Keyboard Shortcuts

Management consultants frequently wish to style their data in order to make the analysis and identification of insights easier. It can be difficult to read information if there are too many decimal points or no bolding. Holding “ctrl + B” applies bold font to anything you’re highlighting, for example. This is a straightforward yet frequently used formatting shortcut. Other useful Excel formatting shortcuts include adding borders, decimal points, and cell colours.

• Text to Columns

You can come into a big list of text-based data that needs to be broken up in some way. Consider the following scenario: you have a column with each cell containing a customer’s full name. However, you only want to know their first name. By highlighting the data column and selecting “text to column,” the consultant will be able to divide the data into two columns, one for first name and the other for last name. This is accomplished using Excel’s method, which allows you to segregate data in a cell based on the presence of a space in the data. Because Excel detects a gap between Harry and Potter, “Harry Potter” is split into two columns: one for “Harry” and the other for “Potter.”

• Conditional Formatting

Without developing additional algorithms or adding columns or rows of data, conditional formatting can be utilised to extract insights from data. When looking at a matrix of data, you may highlight a column and use the conditional formatting functionality in Excel to render any cell that is over a given level “green.”

• If Statement

If statements are a common Excel formula with a lot of power. Only if a data point fits certain conditions can the Excel analyst apply a different formula (or no formula at all) to it. Consider the following scenario: you’re evaluating survey data in which customers have indicated whether they plan to spend less, the same, more, or a lot more in the coming year. Based on how the consumer answers the question about their future spend plans, you might construct an If formula that forecasts their future expenditure using a different percentage of growth.

• Min/Max Functions

Excel’s min and max functions are rather straightforward. They allow you to acquire the lowest or maximum value in a set of data, as their name implies. You can find the smallest number in the data range by typing =”min (INSERT COLUMN OR ROW OF DATA)” and clicking enter.

• Sum Product/SUMIF

Total Product / Total If “Sum product” is used, it returns the sum of the products of relevant data ranges. Consider that you have a “price” column and a “minimum quantity” column for distinct goods. By automatically estimating the revenue for each product (price x minimum quantity) and then adding it all up, a “Sum product” formula might be used to estimate the minimum amount of revenue.

SUMIF functions enable consultants to determine the sum of a data range if particular conditions are met. =sumif(range, criterion, sum range) is used to combine three columns of data. The range is the set of data against which the criteria will be tested. Assume you’re calculating the population of Midwest states. The sum range would be the range of data in the column for “population,” the range would be the column that specifies if a state is in the Midwest, the criteria would be “Midwest,” and the range would be the range of data in the column for “population.”

• Truncate

This is a simple formula for truncating a number rather than rounding it. It enables you to return “4.0” whenever the data indicates “4.7.” It comes in handy when you don’t want to round data and only need to know the correct number. It’s a simple Excel consulting talent, but it’ll save you time in the long run!

• Proper, Lower, Upper

Excel formulas can be used to convert data to upper or lower case. Proper, lower, and upper formulas accomplish this.

• Goalseek

When you build an Excel model, you may know the outcome you want but not the assumptions that will be required to get there. Consider the following scenario: you’ve created a valuation model. To get your model to claim the stock worth, you need to know what rate of profit growth to expect. The goal seek method can be used to calculate the rate of growth.

It’s difficult to envisage a successful consulting career without at least average Excel abilities. The majority of consultants learn these abilities through trial and error. However, spending a few hundred bucks to have the most important strategies taught to you could be a very profitable investment. As we stated at the outset of this post, it is wise to invest the effort up front to learn how to use Excel efficiently. This method frees up time in the future to focus on other important parts of advising that do not involve Excel.