Excel! It may be Outdated, but I still love it!

If you have read the blogs myself and Pritam have put out so far, you'll get the general theme we have of trying to explain why we champion moving out of excel and into BI tools for reporting. And before I go any further, I'm still saying BI tools are the way forward, we need to aid our companies into getting those dashboards and visualisations in place to help strategic growth!

However, I don’t want to completely say ditch Excel, its old, it’s not fit for purpose. There’s been a lot of times in my career where my good old friend Excel was exactly what I needed.

For the love of Excel

As an accountant by trade my first ever 'how to' taught to me was the basic formulas in Excel. The standard Sums, lookups, and pivots were my world. When it came to doing a quick bit of math, who best to turn to then an Excel tab with a bit of formulas attached. I needed to send an auditor a sample of data, what better way than an Excel file with the exact selection of data I wanted them to see. Many a time in my life have I found myself putting together a massive nested IF statement in Excel to get exactly what i needed in a relatively painless way.

My main point being Excel has helped me along my way so much and it still does that I would be ungrateful to not sing its praises while I'm pushing for Business Intelligence. Excel has always been in my eyes the first step in business intelligence.

Incorporating Excel to the new world

Now myself and Pritam absolutely believe that the world of reporting needs BI tools such as power BI and Tableau and that 100% a properly presented dashboard in those tools leads to better insights into strategic decision making.

Those tools however need data to be properly input for them to deliver any meaningful information in there dashboards. As the old saying goes 'crap in crap out' . If that data is not built in a way which lets power BI build its dashboard, you might as well have not bothered in the first place.

Excel is still one of the easiest ways to build a dataset. A lot of my own power BI dashboards for our clients are built off datasets held in excel. I still remember building a power BI for a real estate client who needed to analyse tenancy data help in multiple files and formats. What i managed to do in excel is transform the data that was set in a messy way into a singular dataset which was much easier to plug into Power BI, giving myself a much easier job in Power BI when it came to creating a stunning dashboard which that client still uses to this date.

I am a firm believer of keeping it simple. What we always try to keep in mind at Zerang, is Excel is a tool most people as used to using. When we build our datasets in Excel, maintaining that data for our clients is much easier to learn then if the data was held in another format.

The Future of Excel

I’ve said this before, I’ll say this again, the future of reporting to help aid in strategic business decisions is through BI tools such as Power BI. However, Excel is still universally used and is easy to understand. When it comes to giving someone who’s not an admin access to manipulate basic data, why not let them have an easy to use Pivot table in Excel over granting them access to potentially break the dataset in Power BI which they may not be used to.

A perfect example would be my own current client, naturally when building a Power BI dashboard, ideas on what we would want to see change as time grows on. We are creating a dashboard for the next year’s budget comparing several facts and KPIs. What is great is we have a mass database built in Power BI allowing us to get the dashboard built in a way which can be reportable to the C-suite. However, in a fluid environment like budget setting we need to make sure everyone has access to be able to compare all sorts of variables. With the use of Power Query, we were able to link the dataset to Excel and provided a pivot which lets my client quickly analyse the data in a way they are used to doing it.

Zerang - Where Do We Come In

At Zerang, myself and Pritam as professional accountants have great expertise in Excel, we’ve used it in our daily lives, we know its benefits just as much as we know its shortcomings. What we offer to our clients is a synergy in what BI can offer in data analysis and dashboard creation to aid in strategic decisions, and the ease of use in Excel.

We are well-equipped to handle any complexities that may arise during the build process, ensuring a smooth experience for you. Plus, our build price includes comprehensive training, so you won't be left with a solution you're unsure how to use.

Let Zerang be your partner in unlocking the full potential of your data. Contact us today to get started!