Analytics with Excel

Do more with your organization's data, using a program you know

You don't need to have advanced programming skills to learn how to use data for business decision-making. If you are an intermediate Excel user, our short online courses will show you how this workhorse of a program can be used for sophisticated analytics.

Through hands-on examples, you will learn about building dashboards, interactive decision support, data visualization theory and applications, advanced charting, and predictive analytics. 

Master all of your data analytics needs with our four-workshop series, or just take the courses you need.  All classes offered synchronously online using the Zoom platform. (See the technical requirements below.)

 Workshops

• Mastering Formulas

  Formulas are the backbone of working in Excel. Most people, however, don’t know how to use these They may not know exactly what’s available to them.
  In this session, we’ll teach the Excel formulas every Excel user should know so that they feel comfortable working in the Excel environment. We’ll review how they can be prepared quickly to drive key decisions, and we’ll look at Excel’s new functions including IFS, XLOOKUP, TEXTJOIN, and more. We’ll also demonstrate how named ranges and Excel tables can make readable, transparent formulas.

  By the end of the session you will understand:

  • When to use which function in a formula and why
  • How formulas can seamlessly drive how you present data
  • How to use formulas to create quick summaries of your data
  • How to stay organized with lots of formulas

  And you will be able to... 

  • Comfortably use formulas like SUMIFS and XLOOKUP
  • Join text together without using CONCATENATE and clicking on each cell
  • Looking up data in an instant
• Mastering Pivot Table Dashboards + Reports
   

  Pivot Tables are one of the most important features in Excel. They let you create summaries and reports instantly. Excel’s new data model takes this a step further by letting you connect Pivot Tables to create a mini database.
  This course will start with Pivot Table basics. We’ll go through a fool-proof way of thinking about Pivot Tables that will allow you to build summaries across different column fields from any dataset.

  Once we know how to work with Pivot Tables we’ll about how to connect them. Ultimately, we’ll use these connections to create an interactive Dashboard. By the end of the webinar, attendees will walk away with a fully functional dashboard driven by Pivot Tables.

   

  By the end of the session you will understand:

  • Pivot Tables and Pivot Charts
  • Excel’s Data Model
  • Pivot Table Dashboards

  And you will be able to... 

  • Use Pivot Tables to generate summary data, reports, and dashboards in seconds
  • Create connections across data with the Excel Data Model
  • Visualize data across multiple tabs
• Data Wrangling in Excel with Power Query
  Most Excel users still wrangle their data with hard-to-read formulas, copying and pasting, and a myriad of steps they’ve perfected over the years to get the data just right. What many don’t know is that Microsoft has taken a long hard look at this workflow and created a technology to streamline it. Enter Power Query. Despite the name, Power Query is not a very complicated tool. This class will create a sense of familiarity with Power Query, ensuring students feel comfortable retrieving data from any source and using Power Query to slice and dice it. Students will be taken through multiple workflow examples that will bring together various features of Power Query. Rather than a rote explanation of how Power Query works, this class will use demos and case studies so that students learn as they go— like the experience they have every day while sitting at their desks. In a world where we might feel overloaded by data, this class teaches attendees how to properly manage data from many different sources and prepare it for use.  

  By the end of the session you will understand:

  • How to use Power Query to connect to any data set to pull out the most important information
  • How to quickly wrangle a dataset with Power Query— reducing hours of work to a few minutes of planning
  • How to identify bottlenecks where Power Query can save major effort and recover time spent

  And you will be able to... 

  • Connect a data set of your choosing Move columns, adjust data types, and quickly wrangle
  • data Merge and join datasets from different data sources with Excel
• Introduction to Power BI

  Many people think Power BI is for advanced developers. In truth, Power BI was created by combining the best features from Microsoft Excel, Access, SQL, and other related technologies. Moreover, Power BI fills in the capability gaps that exist across these technologies, streamlining the process from data to insights. In this session, we’ll transition from what you know about these technologies and show you how Power BI solves the same problems more efficiently. To give you a true understanding of what Power BI can do, we’ll use Power Query to query data, Power BI’s data model to connect datasets, and Power BI’s report view to create compelling dashboards and data visualizations.  

  By the end of the session you will understand:

   

  • How you can start using Power BI right away to build reports from data in your workplace
  • How Power BI can save you enormous time and effort
  • The importance of data visualization in storytelling – and how Power BI can help you tell the right story

  And you will be able to...

  • Easily connect multiple data sources into a relational data model
  • Identify where and how Power BI can be best used in your organization to solve pressing data issues
  • Create multiple reports in Power BI to tell a story of your company’s performance  

   

  TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS

• Computer running Windows 8 or newer
• Excel 2016/2019 or Excel for Office 365
• Ability to download and save files
• Internet access