The Excel Pro Brochure

INTRODUCTION
Excel Enthusiasts (www.ashishmathur.com) is a website dedicated to Ashishs work in Microsoft (MS) Excel. Commissioned in July 2006, this website is dedicated to answering questions of users who mail their Excel queries to Ashish Mathur. Ashish has written articles for Microsoft Office Online and the PC Quest magazine. Additionally, Ashish has also conducted Excel webcasts.

The hallmark of a good professional/would be professional is possession of an optimal blend of technical and soft skills. Good software skills can, to a very great extent, assist in speedier execution of projects. Additionally, individuals with a good blend of these skills tend to be more confident in their work.

With this basic tenet, Excel Enthusiasts would like to introduce its Self designed and conceptualised session (Excel Pro) on MS Excel which is geared towards professionals who are regular users of this application

PROFILE
Ashish Mathur, Founder Excel Enthusiasts has been a Finance professional who has worked in the Business Advisory Group of Pulsar Knowledge Centre (PKC) (a Consultancy firm based in Gurgaon, Haryana, India) from March 2004 to August 2008. In addition to the other M&A and advisory assignments which Ashish has worked on, one of the prominent assignments in which he was involved was the sale of Wataniya Telecom (a Mobile Telecom operator with operations in six countries across the MENA region) to Qtel in March 2007 for US$3.7 billion. In April 2007, Ashish was awarded the KIPCO Group Excellence award. He was the only one of the 12,000 employees across the KIPCO Group of Companies to receive this award. Prior to working in PKC, Ashish worked with KPMG India (in the Audit and Assurance practise) for three years. In 2001, Ashish was felicitated, by KPMG, with the title of Exceptional Performance for the year. Ashish is an avid spreadsheet user

To share his knowledge with other Excel

users, Ashish manages his own website

He also written articles for magazines (PC

Quest) and Microsoft Office Online

Microsoft has been conferring the yearly

Most Valuable Professional (MVP) title to Ashish since March 2003. In India, Ashish is the first MS Excel MVP

In 2004, Ashish Post Graduated with an MBA Degree from Management Development Institute (MDI), Gurgaon. Ashish completed his Graduation and Schooling from Shri Ram College of Commerce, New Delhi and Welham Boys School, Dehradun respectively.

Ashishs profile can also be viewed on the

Microsoft website and on LinkedIn

Ashish Mathur Founder - Excel Enthusiasts ask@ashishmathur.com www.ashishmathur.com (91) 98110 41988 LinkedIn profile Follow me on Twitter Blog

Globally, there are less than 200 MS Excel

MVPs

He interacts with the Excel development

team at Microsoft and provides feedback/suggestions to them on current and future versions of Excel

Since April 2003, Ashish has been invited

by Microsoft to Redmond, Washington, (U.S.A.) (Microsofts headquarters) to attend a four day Global MVP Summit. In April 2007 and March 2008 he, along with other MVPs, spent two days with the Microsoft Excel development team discussing product development plans of Excel

He was also a beta tester of Office 2007

and other MS products/services

OBJECTIVE OF THE SESSION

Discuss solutions to MS Excel problems which end users face in their day to day working; The emphasis of the session would be on discussing the most commonly used functions/formulas in a fair bit of detail such that seasoned as well as unseasoned Excel users can derive maximum value; The focus would be on the application rather than theoretical use of functions and formulas. Since the objective of this session is to solve practical problems, I prefer not to categorise this as a Basic/Intermediate/Advanced level session. As mentioned later on, this session is suited for all regular MS Excel users.

We will discuss solutions beyond Excels Help menu.

THE EXCEL ENTHUSIASTS EDGE

Adopt a problem solving, participative style approach Discuss functions and formulas Unanswered questions can be routed to other MS which are well researched Discuss unknown tips and tricks

Excel Consultants

Suitable for

professionals
working across industries/ functional specialisations

The Excel Enthusiasts Edge

Simple to understand, layman solutions approach

Focus on the application of formulas and functions

Discuss solutions to real life MS Excel problems

VALUE ADDITION
- Better return on investment Learn to use MS Excel better and thereby get maximum return on your software investment - Effective time management Learn efficient ways of solving Excel related problems and thereby reduce time spent on project/task execution

- Improve the existing Microsoft Excel skill set

- Gather the confidence to deal with a cross section of Excel related problems

The agenda as outlined in the next two slides has been decided/is regularly updated with reference to: - Questions which Ashish has received (through his website) from end users; - Questions raised during Excel sessions conducted so far - Questions discussed in various online Excel forums

AGENDA (DAY 1)
Basics of referencing (absolute, relative and mixed), IF()/nested IF(), AND(), OR() functions Lookup techniques and nuances such as: Making the column index in a VLOOKUP() function dynamic; Auto expanding the table array in a VLOOKUP() formula when new rows get added; Looking up data within upper and lower limits; Performing a look up operation where the look value is not the first column of the table array; Looking up instances where lookup values appear in multiple columns; Lookup last value (by position) in a horizontal/vertical range Looking up data in large datasets while satisfying one/multiple conditions with and nuances such as: Overcoming Excels (2003 and prior versions) limitations of 7 nested IFs; Filtering databases on multiple AND/OR conditions in/across worksheets/workbooks; Extracting unique values from a range Extracting repeated values based on conditions Nuances of auto filtering such as: Filtering data without manually selecting the data point in the auto filter drop down; Running more than one auto filter on one worksheet; Dealing with date related problems such as: Converting non dates to dates; Displaying non dates as dates; Retaining date/number formatting when concatenating with data in cells Working with data validation and nuances such as: Creating dependent validation lists Validating across worksheets Basics of graphing and nuances such as Dealing with dates in the x-axis; Auto aligning data labels in a pie chart where data labels are lengthy; Customising data labels on charts; Presenting data in Bar of Pie and Doughnut charts; Getting total labels in stacked column charts/hiding zero data labels in stacked column charts Showing breaks in line charts for missing data points Colouring columns/bars based on their values
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AGENDA (DAY 2)
Basics of SUMIF() and COUNTIF() functions and nuances such as: Dealing with one and multiple conditions Summing values in a range which has error values (without sorting/filtering/deleting); Summing values (based on one/multiple conditions) from another workbook even whether the other workbook is closed Count unique values Performing YTD/MTD calculations with year/month as user input Performing a scenario analysis (or What-if analysis/Sensitivity analysis) on key performance indicators by changing: Once variable; Two variables; Multiple variables; and Impact of a change in key assumptions under various scenarios across multiple years Impact of y-o-y change in key assumptions under various scenarios across multiple years Basics of pivot tables and nuances such as: Performing calculations and addressing issues when writing formulas in pivot tables Creating a pivot table from multiple worksheets in same workbook (without copying and pasting) where rows are well in excess of 300,000; Creating a pivot table from multiple worksheets of multiple workbooks (without copying and pasting); Resolving problems when grouping numeric data/dates in a pivot; Retain pivot table formatting after pasting a pivot tables as Paste Special > Values; and Specifying different grouping criteria for different Pivot Tables created on the same database Database approach to solving MS Excel problems (where using native MS Excel functions would cause the workbook to become very slow) Counting unique values where number of records are very large with and without conditions; Summing based on conditions across workbooks where the number of records are very large. Consolidating date from multiple worksheets/workbooks that do not have the same structure Discussion on various Excel short cuts and tips & tricks;
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ASPECTS NOT COVERED IN THE SESSION

We will take a cursory glance (with some example) over VBA* but will not discuss it in depth. Rationale for the same is: Before learning programming in Excel i.e. writing macros and coding in VBA, it is imperative to understand the capabilities of the inbuilt functions and formulas of Excel. This session is designed to give you a fair level of expertise in solving problems using Excels inbuilt functions and formulas VBA is not something which participants (especially non developers) can understand/facilitators can cover in 2 days. To understand and gain significant working knowledge in writing macros and coding in VBA, a fair amount of time

has to be invested by participants.

There are ample online resources available which share free VBA code for solving common problems in Excel. For business/end users, it is more important to know where these sources are than learn programming

Mathematical, Statistical, Financial functions

VBA is the programming language used to customise/automate Excel

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POST SESSION INTERACTION

After the session, i encourage all participants to contact me for seeking assistance on solving their practical MS Excel problems via the MS Excel forums of www.merawindows.com.

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WHO SHOULD ATTEND/TEAM SIZE

The target audience of this session are regular Excel users users who are aware of basic features and functionalities such as Linking cells in and across worksheets; Writing a basic IF() function;

Writing basic AND()/OR() functions;

Preparing a simple pivot table; Creating a simple bar, line, column and pie chart

The maximum number of participants should be 20.

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OTHER ASPECTS
Venue and Duration The entire session (as outlined under Agenda) would be covered in two days The session could be conducted at any venue which suits your organisation

Infrastructure Requirements One projector and white screen display

A flip chart/white board and marker

One laptop/desktop per participant MS Excel 2007/2010/2013 Adequate power points to operate desktops/charge laptops

Each laptop/desktop should have the DVD/CD drive enabled

One writing pad and pen/pencil per participant

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REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL

If you are interested in organising the Excel Pro session in your organisation, please contact Ashish Mathur If you choose to write an e-mail, then please do so from your official e-mail address clearly mentioning your official address and contact details (mobile, landline and extension number)

Ashish Mathur
ask@ashishmathur.com http://www.ashishmathur.com (91) 98110 41988 Blog LinkedIn profile Microsoft profile Follow me on Twitter

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Thank You
Please check http://www.ashishmathur.com/corporate-interventions/ for further updates to this brochure and other products/services

Version: February 12, 2013

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