Overview

Different proficiency levels with Excel have very different next steps for different productivity gains. Following is a summary of where people are often stalled and how I can help.

However each group has its particular needs. We do a two hour assesment, interviewing both supervisors/managers and participants and find what the desired objectives are.

• Novice and Beginner

  "Novices" have never touched an Excel spreadsheet; "beginners" have used Excel but want to be properly trained.

  Clerical level novices and beginners give a major productivity boost to an office by taking on much more of a report load, relieving higher paid personnel of such tasks. Management level beginners and novices...well...shouldn't be! The modern manager should be at least an intermediate Excel user. And that doesn't need to take months.

  Get all of your beginners and novices using Excel to manage lists, to improve the appearance of existing reports and even become resident experts in formatting.

• Intermediates

  may use Excel extensively and are capable of teaching themselves everything they need. The problem is that most can't afford the time to explore Excels's apparently endless functions for what they really need.

  I'll look at what your office does and set your intermediate users on a productive path through Excel's wilderness. Expect a major boost in the speed and capability of your users.

• Advanced users

  Advanced users have learned everything they need to know about Excel's functions but stand at the edge of a misty technological realm, that has the allure of vast benefits...but dangers too. Most businesses can often—but not always—leave large productivity gains untouched; other offices can suffer a different problem: a plague of poorly designed, cumbersome and overly complex solutions.

Novices

Learn how to do basic exercises in Excel:

• Open a workbook, create a nicely formatted table and then print and save the workbook
• Basic to intermediate formatting, working on speed and fluency
• Use these methods to create simple lists and tables
• This course will provide some calculations, but calculation methods will be kept to simple addition mathematics, with no percentages.

Beginners

Beginners are using Excel but doing so inefficiently and with no great confidence. Our goal is to increase speed for simple operations by a factor of 2 or perhaps 3, and to make users a great deal more capable and confident.

• This class covers all the "novice" material but takes each component a little further
• Conditional formattting
• Date formatting and some calculation
• Printing

Intermediates

Intermediates usually include trainee accountants, analysts and other junior staff who assist with the preparation and presentation of data. It is essential that these people execute their regular tasks with high efficiency and know how to solve more advanced problems of presentation and organization.

There is a variety of options for courses and a free consultation will help assess where to start. Usually 3 of the following topics will be covered and will produce significant gains.

• Basic Skills check: increase speed and scope of data formatting and presentation
• Intermediate skills 1. Check good practise skills, such as naming conventions, range name usage
• Intermediate skills 2: conditional statements (IF). Handling complex conditions and columns sums.
Intermediate skills 3: Table reference and lookups
• Intermediate skills 4: Beyond Beginner Charting
• Intermediate skills 5: Date manipulation and calculation
• Intermediate/Advanced: Using controls
• Intermediate/Advanced: How and when to use arrays
• Intermediate/Advanced: Simple automatiion with macros
• Referencing data

Advanced

There's not much to teach advanced users that they can't teach themselves but there are areas where a professional, familiar with database and web technologies can help even the most advanced user.

Generally this assistance falls under the heading of consulting rather than "training" and consulting rates apply. However the initial assessment of whether I can be any help (the first hour of discussion) is free.

Consulting and Private Tutoring

Consulting

Consulting is available if you're wondering whether your whole reporting system efficiency can be improved. Improved can be a matter of reducing the person-hours to do reports—perhaps reducing days to hours; it can be a matter of significantly sharpening the big picture view of your company's operating strengths and weaknesses.

You should be aware that Excel has exceptional power that small companies are seldom aware of. Excel can read information from databases, including those on websites—keeping website product information up-to-date, for example.

But the cost of these gains can vary. Sometimes big gains don't require much; at other times big gains must be more cautiously weighed against what might be considerable expense. A preliminary (free) consultation will help you assess whether improvements can be made and at what cost.

Tutoring

I provide an at-your-desk-tutoring service that can't be beat. For as little as $25 an hour, staff can phone me and I can resolve the problem over the phone by using desk-to-desk software that enables me to see your employee's computer screen.

Sample Projects I've completed with Excel

• Billing System

Creates invoices from time charges; emails invoices; tracks payments; reconciles with bank deposits; analyzes revenue streams

Techniques:intermediate level calculations, using different worksheets and some database functions. Advanced use of automation (macros) to create output spreadsheets.

• TOWES

Data collection and analysis system. Written primarily in Access but uses Excel spreadsheets to imported data and output statistical analysis (Pearson and other) of data.

Techniques:Advanced statistical functions and operations in Excel; import to Access from Excel and Export from Access to Excel using Visual Basic (macros).

Later, used Excel for stripping data from complex statistical package output and analyzing the results

• Treeplanting Project Financial Analysis

Timesheet field data collected as Excel worksheets and massaged for input into AccPac

Data exported directly from AccPac into project analysis spreadsheets

• Owner's Financial Reporting

  Replaced an unreadable (inch thick) quarterly financial report with a printout from a 2 page spreadsheet that immediately highlighted (using key financial ratios) strong and weak areas of company performance

  Techniques: Intermediate level formatting and reporting; Intermediate charting methods; Advanced layout and data organization; Advanced use of macros to automate consolidation of related spreadsheets; Advanced use of controls (form) to guide process

Biography

John:

• Graduated with a degree in Chemical Engineering;
• spent early years designing a variety of computer financial reporting systems, from complex (large company) payrolls to a national accounting system
• was the Information Technology Manager for the Financial Institutions Commission (FICOM) for some time
• taught computer courses (Capilano College, Kwantlen, Douglas)
• started my own business: facilitating management groups in Strategic and other Planning
• I moved into management consulting where I found that my first tasks was to vastly improve the reports that management was getting from its accounting and other data.

• In summary, my background provides with ease with mathematics, statistics, financial analysis, programming and management information systems

Services and Rates

Each module provides 2-3 class sessions of 2 hours each (4-6 hours total class time) and is conducted at your site. I take a maximum of 4 people to a module. Also included in the cost is 2 hours of interviews with staff; 4 hours for developing class exercises and up to 2 hours of between-session tutorials.

4 Hour Excel Sessions for up to 4 people $500

6 hour Excel Sessions for up to 4 people $600

Your company must be willing to supply current spreadsheets that can be used as examples. Absolute confidentiality is guaranteed and no such materials methods or even general information will be revealed to others. I am willing to sign any confidentiality agreements you want me to.

I provide a money-back guarantee of satisfaction under these conditions.

There is flexibility in these arrangements but the guarantee is not offered with these changes because each reduces the advances that I like to see.

• Sessions can be held off-site but the rental of an alternate site will be added to the price. It also adds considerably to the time that staff are away from their desks;
• If you have major concerns about confidentiality and are unwilling to use your own spreadsheets in class examples, I will work from from standard exercises.
• I will take up to 6 people in a class but the class will be much slower

Consulting: Free preliminary asssessment (about 1 hour) $50/hr for hourly consultation; $120/half day; $1,000 per week

Tutoring:

Frequently Asked Questions

• Why are your rates so low?

I'm almost retired and do this for fun. I don't need the money but I do like work that I enjoy and is satisfying

• This all seems kind of laid-back. Is this a good product?

If it's not, your manager isn't going to be happy and I'm not going get paid (see "Guarantee").

• The sessions sound kind of scary. Can I keep up?

If anyone feels left behind they're not going to be happy and the billpayer is not going to be happy, and I'm not going to get paid! But I do rely on people to tell me if they'd like me to slow down. The ideal pace is a little uncomfortable for everybody but not too uncomfortable for anybody.