How FAST is your Excel?

Standards - making life easier

Excel is a remarkably versatile program.   It, or one of the alternatives to it, will undoubtedly be found in just about every business which has a computer.  Businesses use it in many different ways, from simple lists, through reporting to simulations and financial modelling.  However, Excel's flexibility means that for any task, the effectiveness, reliability and results produced will be dependent on the skill of the user who develops the workbook.

What this means is that the chances are really high that for any given task, the excel workbook in one business won't be structured, formatted or use the same formulas as a the same task in another business (except when one person moves to another place and takes the workbook with them).

The fundamental result of this is that huge amounts of time are wasted in business, either re-developing a workbook to do the same task, or trying to troubleshoot (and rebuild) existing workbooks.

Wouldn't it be great if there was a Standard governing how to structure excel workbooks?

Creating Practical Excel Reports Part 3 : Data Flows in the Excel Report Process

Not your data flows.....hopefully!

In Part 2 we looked in more detail at the three parts of the report process.  If you haven't read Part 2, then it is worthwhile doing that now, because otherwise a lot of what follows here won't make sense.

To recap VERY briefly, one of the keys to creating a practical excel report is to separate the parts of the process.  So, you separate the DATA from the ADJUSTMENTS from the REPORT.  Each of these sections has a specific purpose.  The key question now is "How do you connect these sections?".