Analyzing Business Data with Excel
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Overview
As one of the most widely used desktop applications ever created, Excel is familiar to just about everyone with a computer and a keyboard. Yet most of us don't know the full extent of what Excel can do, mostly because of its recent growth in power, versatility, and complexity. The truth is that there are many ways Excel can help make your job easier-beyond calculating sums and averages in a standard spreadsheet.
Analyzing Business Data with Excel shows you how to solve real-world business problems by taking Excel's data analysis features to the max. Rather than focusing on individual Excel functions and features, the book keys directly on the needs of business users. Most of the chapters start with a business problem or question, and then show you how to create pointed spreadsheets that address common data analysis issues.
Aimed primarily at experienced Excel users, the book doesn't spend much time on the basics. After introducing some necessary general tools, it quickly moves into more specific problem areas, such as the following:
- Statistics
- Pivot tables
- Workload forecasting
- Modeling
- Measuring quality
- Monitoring complex systems
- Queuing
- Optimizing
- Importing data
If you feel as though you're getting shortchanged by your overall application of Excel, Analyzing Business Data with Excel is just the antidote. It addresses the growing Excel data analysis market head on. Accountants, managers, analysts, engineers, and supervisors-one and all-will learn how to turn Excel functionality into actual solutions for the business problems that confront them.
Knight shows professional users in an office environment how to solve business problems using Excel, the most commonly available business software out there.
Synopsis
Knight shows professional users in an office environment how to solve business problems using Excel, the most commonly available business software out there.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble ReviewExcel users don’t care about “features”; they care about solving problems. That’s what Analyzing Business Data with Excel is about: solving real business problems, like measuring quality, employee performance, or even complex business processes. You’ll get comfortable with a raft of important Excel features: array formulas, statistical functions, and PivotTables to name a few. But Gerald Knight stays focused on what you can accomplish with these tools.
You’ll learn how to forecast workloads, then learn more complex modeling techniques based on regression. There’s a full chapter on statistical process control, essential for anyone involved in Six Sigma or similar initiatives. Knight walks through capturing individual performance within complex workflows: for instance, the efficiency of customer service reps. Finally, if you’re sharing your work, you’ll appreciate Knight’s concise overview of building workbooks people can actually understand. Bill Camarda, from the April 2006 Read Only