Power Excel^®:
Analysing Data to Make Business Decisions

What is this course about?

This course is about harnessing the power of Microsoft Excel to analyse business problems and identify solutions, allowing you to make sound decisions that, in today's fast-paced climate, can lead to a competitive business advantage. You gain the knowledge and hands-on skills required to exploit Excel's intermediate and advanced features, such as PivotTables and PivotCharts.

Who will benefit from this course?

This course is valuable for anyone who uses Excel to make decisions based on data, including those who:

• Analyse and summarise worksheet and database information
• Consolidate data
• Forecast and plan budgets
• Assess risks
• Draw out information from datasets to use in reports or calculations

What background do I need?

Experience with Excel fundamentals at the level of Course 1361, Microsoft Excel^®: A Comprehensive Hands-On Introduction, is assumed. You should be able to:

• Open, save and close workbooks
• Reference cells through absolute and relative addressing
• Create simple formulas
• Access worksheets in a workbook
• Insert and delete worksheets
• Cut, copy and paste information from one cell to another
• Format numbers in a worksheet
• Resize columns and rows

How does this course differ from other vendor's advanced Excel courses?

Learning Tree courses are designed to go beyond the simple demonstration of a product's features and explore that product's practical application in a real-world environment. In this course, through instructor-led lecture, demonstration and hands-on experience, you learn to implement Excel tools that best meet your organisation's immediate and far-reaching needs.

What Excel features are covered in this course that I can use to analyse data?

In this course, you gain experience with the following:

• Financial and statistical functions
• Scenario Manager, Solver and Goal Seek
• 3-D worksheets
• Data consolidation
• Subtotaling
• PivotTables and PivotCharts
• Creating and troubleshooting macros

I use Excel 2003/2007. Will this course still be useful for me?

Yes. While this course uses Excel 2010, many of the underlying features in this version have not changed from previous versions. Furthermore, you can complete the hands-on exercises in either Excel 2010, 2007 or 2003, allowing you to choose the version that better suits your needs.

I understand PivotTables are a powerful tool. Will I learn about them in this course?

Yes! This course fully explores this valuable Excel tool. You learn to edit existing PivotTables, create new PivotTables from scratch to summarise large amounts of data, and build colorful and dynamic graphs.

How will I learn to enhance my Excel environment?

In this course, you learn tips and techniques to easily and effectively optimise your spreadsheets. From highlighting key points, to managing multiple workbooks, to automating tasks with macros, to choosing tools to summarise and analyse your datasets, you will leave this course with the skills to customise Excel in a way that best meets your individual or organisational requirements.

How much risk analysis is covered in this course?

In this course, you learn how to use Excel to perform risk analysis calculations. This course does not cover the concepts of risk analysis in detail. If you are interested in learning more about these concepts, please see Course 286, Project Risk Management.

I want to ensure the manageability and maintainability of the workbooks and worksheets I create. Does this course cover that?

This course provides some coverage of workbook design; however, for more focused coverage of effective workbook/worksheet design practices, you should consider Course 1371, Excel^® Workbooks: Designing for Reliability and Performance

Will this course help me automate my workbook models?

This course provides an introduction to macros. For more complete coverage of macros and automation of workflows, you should consider Course 209, VBA Programming: A Comprehensive Hands-On Introduction, or Course 1372, Excel^® Macros: Increasing Productivity through Automation.

How much time is spent on each topic?

How much time is devoted to the hands-on exercises?

Approximately 50 percent of class time is spent on hands-on exercises. These exercises are designed to provide you with practical, real-world experience using the Excel features in an efficient and effective manner.

Hands-on exercises include:

• Performing statistical and financial calculations
• Reducing speculation with "what-if" analysis
• Summarising data contained in 3-D worksheets
• Defining the best combination of values to solve complex business problems
• Designing formulas that capture errors and require less maintenance
• Creating interactive data reports with PivotTables
• Developing macros to simplify data analysis

Is this course applicable toward a Project Management Institute (PMI) certification?

Yes. Though this course is not designed as preparation for an exam, it is beneficial to anyone working toward, or maintaining, a PMI certification. Most PMI certifications require a specific number of PDUs in order to obtain and maintain the credential. Completion of this course provides 11 professional development units (PDUs).

Learning Tree offers several courses that help you prepare for PMI certifications, including Course 276, Preparing for the Project Management Professional (PMP) Exam, which prepares you for PMI's most popular certification. For more details on these courses and PMI certifications, please see the Learning Tree PMI Registered Education Provider Q&A.

How does this course relate to other Learning Tree Courses?

If you are interested in expanding your management skills, we recommend the following courses:

• 1371, Excel® Workbooks: Designing for Reliability and Performance is a half-day course in which you learn how to build Excel workbooks to reduce calculation errors, maintain consistency and increase reliability, readability and performance
• 1372, Excel® Macros: Increasing Productivity through Automation is a half-day course that provides the skills to create and troubleshoot automated in Excel solutions to save time and be more productive
• 209, VBA Programming: A Comprehensive Hands-On Introduction focuses on the fundamentals of programming and VBA from the ground up. You learn to take full advantage of extensive built-in VBA functionality.
• 280, Finance and Accounting for Nonfinancial Managers transforms financial and accounting language and concepts into decision-making tools the non-financial manager can use successfully every day.
• 286, Project Risk Management teaches you to proactively develop strategies that analyse the risks associated with project development and implementation.
• 290, Management Skills allows you to gain working knowledge of the key aspects of management– leadership, delegation, motivation and communication–and practical techniques for getting the best from people.
• 296, Project Management: Skills for Success provides the knowledge to successfully plan, manage and deliver projects.

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