Excel is the most often used first-choice tool of every business analyst and consultant. Maybe it is not the most fancy or sophisticated one, yet it is universally understood by everybody especially your boss and your customers. Excel is still pretty advanced tool with countless number of features and functions. I have mastered quite a lot of them during my studies and while working. After some time in consulting I discovered that most of them are not that useful; some of them bring more problems than solutions. On top of that there are features that we are taught at university that are not flexible and pretty time consuming. While working as a business analyst I developed my own set of tricks to deal with Excel I learned how to make my analyses idiot-proven and extremely universal. I will NOT teach you the entire Excel as it is simply not efficient (and frankly you don’t need it). This course is organized around 80/20 rule and I want to teach you the most useful (from business analyst / consultant perspective) formulas as fast as possible. I want you also to acquire thanks to the course good habits in Excel that will save you loads of time. If done properly, this course will transform you in 1 day into pretty good business analyst that knows how to use Excel in the smart way. It is based on my 12 years of experience as a consultant in top consulting companies and as a Board Member responsible for strategy, improvement and turn-arounds in biggest companies from FMCG, SMG, B2B sector that I worked for. On the basis of what you will find in this course I have trained over 100 business analysts who now are Investment Directors, Senior Analyst, Directors in Consulting Companies, Board Members etc. I teach step by step on the basis of Excel files that will be attached to the course. To make the best out of the course you should follow my steps and repeat what I do with the data after every lecture. Don’t move to the next lecture if you have not done what I show in the lecture that you have gone through. I assume that you know basic Excel so the basic features (i.e. how to write formula in Excel) are not explained in this course. I concentrate on intermediate and advanced solutions and purposefully get rid of some things that are advanced yet later become very inflexible and useless (i.e. naming the variables). At the end, I will show 4 full blown analyses in Excel that use the tricks that I show in the lectures. To every lecture you will find attached (in additional resources) the Excel shown in the Lecture so as a part of this course you will also get a library of ready-made analyses that can, with certain modification, be applied by you in your work.

1. 1
Essential Excel for Business
Analysts and Consultants?
Practical guide

2. 2
Excel is a powerful yet a bit overwhelming tool that every
business analyst and consultant will use extensively
>300 built-in
functions
Pivot Tables Visual Basic
Analytical Tool
Pack
Built-in
functionalities

3. 3
I will show you want you should know to be effective using
80/20 rule. You will learn also how to use them effectively
~ 30 built-in
functions
Essential Pivot
Tables
Essential
Visual Basics
Essential
Analytical Tool
Pack
Essential built-
in
functionalities

4. 4
If you follow my suggestion you will significantly improve
your speed of work in analyzing data with Excel
10 x Improved speed of working
 You will manage to reuse
significate share of your Excel
for new purposes
40%
 You can master or need things
in short time 1 week

5. 5
This presentation will show you the most useful
side of Excel that you need to be a great and
efficient Business Analyst or Consultant. I will try
to achieve it in shortest possible time

6. 6
What I will show in this presentation is a part of extensive on-line
course where I show you in details how to do it in Excel
Click to check my course
Essential Excel for Business Analysts
and Consultants?
$45
$15

7. 7
I will talk about 8 different things in this presentation
Merging data from
different sources
Cleaning and unifying
data
IF and their
alternatives
Other useful
functions and
functionalities
Elements of Visual
Basic
Example of analysis
Being faster with
Excel
Pivot Tables

8. 8
Below you can find the list of functions and functionalities that you
should master
Basic functions Financial / Mathematical Others
 SUMIF / SUMIFS
 COUNTIF / COUNTIFS
 HLOOKUP
 VLOOKUP
 MATCH
 SUMPRODUCT
 IF
 AND / OR
 IFERROR
 AVERAGEIF
 LEFT / RIGHT / MID
 FIND
 CONCATENATE
 YEAR / MONTH / DAY
 ROUND / ROUNDUP /
ROUNDDOWN
 TODAY
 VALUE
 WEEKDAY
 RAND / RANDBETWEEN
 MOD
 NPV
 IRR
 ABS
 MAX / MIN
 CORREL
 Pivot
 Slicer
 Relative addresses
 Formats
 Hyperlink
 Remove Duplicates
 Filters
 Sorting
 Data Validation
 Trace Dependents / Precedent
 Analysis Tool Pack

9. 9
Agenda
Merging data from
different sources
Cleaning and unifying
data
IF and their
alternatives
Other useful
functions and
functionalities
Elements of Visual
Basic
Example of analysis
Being faster with
Excel
Pivot Tables

10. 10
How to merge data from
different sources

11. 11
You quite often have want to merge 2 data set or on the basis
of one data set assign categories to a second one
Merging data1
Assigning categories2

12. 12
In most cases you can merge data from 2 different data sets
(sheets) using VLOOKUP in combination with other function
VLOOKUP
Exact match
 Assigning 1-1. For example using this you can assign to
specific car his brand (from other table) on the basis of the
registration number as ID)
VLOOKUP
Approximate match
 Assigning on the basis of interval condition. For example
using this you can assign to all shops between 0 and 500 sq
m of space the category small
VLOOKUP
+ MATCH
 Assigning categories to data set on the bases of 2 criteria.
For example you can use it to show the probability of
startup failing depending on money invested and the
business model they are using
VLOOKUP
+ HLOOKUP
VLOOKUP
+ a list of all options

13. 13
Which country your startup is based in?
How much money you have?
What business model you are after?
?
Marketplace
<300
Poland USA
>300
Poland USA
SaaS
<300
Poland USA
>300
Poland USA
For more criteria than 2 you have to create first a list of all possible
options and then assign to them the values. Below example for estimating
the probability of success for a startup
7% 16% 11% 20% 9% 12% 14% 15%
12
100
20
200
10
100 200 100 200 100 200
2010
112 212 122 222 111 211 121 221
What is the probability of success of
your startup?
Option number

14. 14
What we will talk about in this course
Merging data from
different sources
Cleaning and unifying
data
IF and their
alternatives
Other useful
functions and
functionalities
Elements of Visual
Basic
Example of analysis
Being faster with
Excel
Pivot Tables

15. 15
How to clean and unify data?

16. 16
As a business analyst or consultant you will quite often get data that lack
consistency. There are number of problems you can face with cleaning
data. Below the most often occurring examples
Lack of assigned categories
Different Units
Joining 2 data points into 1
Dividing 1 data points into 2
 Warsaw Shopping Mall  Warsaw
Different Names  Warsaw Shopping Mall  Warsaw Shop Mall
 100 000 USD  100[‘000 USD]
 Asen  Gyczew  Asen Gyczew
&
&
 Asen Gyczew  Asen  Gyczew

17. 17
To tackle low quality an lack of consistency of data you have to use a
bunch of functions that operate on text as well as some built-in
functionalities of Excel that will make the cleaning process easier
SEARCH
LEFT
RIGHT
MID
CONCATENATE
LEN Filters
Ctrl + H
Remove
duplicates
IFERROR
VLOOKUP Pivot Table

18. 18
You should first make sure that the data you are working on are
consistent. This will help you speed up analyzes and make sure that you
are recommending the right actions
Get data
Clean and unify
data
Check and provide
data consistency
Analyze data Draw conclusions
Form
recommendations
 80% of the workload

19. 19
What we will talk about in this course
Merging data from
different sources
Cleaning and unifying
data
IF and their
alternatives
Other useful
functions and
functionalities
Elements of Visual
Basic
Example of analysis
Being faster with
Excel
Pivot Tables

20. 20
How NOT to use IF function

21. 21
IF function is universal yet it is too complicated and time
consuming to be used in many situations
=IF(G6<=Target!D7;Target!E7;IF(AND(G6>Target
!C8;G6<=Target!D8);Target!E8;IF(AND(G6>Targ
et!C9;G6<=Target!D9);Target!E9;Target!E10)))
=VLOOKUP(G6;Target!C:E;3;1)
Example with IF function Example without IF function

22. 22
Luckily in most cases you can use shorter options to replace
the IF function
IF
Transform one category
into another one
VLOOKUP
Choice between
options
VLOOKUP / MIN / MAX
Avoid errors:
IFERROR
Check to which interval
certain KPI belongs
VLOOKUP
Numerous IF conditions
VLOOKUP + tricks

23. 23
I will show you how to replace it with other simpler functions
on using the motivation system of sales rep as an example
Bonus Target / Plan
Trainings
Activation of new
customers

24. 24
What we will talk about in this course
Merging data from
different sources
Cleaning and unifying
data
IF and their
alternatives
Other useful
functions and
functionalities
Elements of Visual
Basic
Example of analysis
Being faster with
Excel
Pivot Tables

25. 25
Other useful funtion

26. 26
There is bunch of useful functions and functionalities that you have to
master to speed up
INDIRECT
NPV, IRR
MOD
R1C1 reference
style
Grouping /
Ungrouping
Conditional
formatting
Regression
Histogram
Data Validation

27. 27
For more you can go to my extensive on-line course where I show you in
details how to do it in Excel
Click to check my course
Essential Excel for Business Analysts and
Consultants?
$45
$15

28. 28
Conditional Formatting

29. 29
Sometimes you want to see in more graphical way the data or
build a dashboard.

30. 30
There is built-in module in Excel that you can use to achieve this. Go to
Home > Conditional Formatting and pick one of the available templates

31. 31
Regression

32. 32
Sometimes you want to predict certain things using the
available data

33. 33
I nice way to find relation and create prediction is to use the
linear regression
𝑌𝑡 = 𝛼 + 𝛼1 𝑋𝑡 + 𝜀𝑡

34. 34
There may be situation that the thing we want to predict
depend on more than one variable
𝑌𝑡 = 𝛼0 + 𝛼1 𝑋1𝑡 + 𝛼2 𝑋2𝑡 + 𝛼3 𝑋3𝑡 + 𝜀𝑡
𝑋1
𝑋2
𝑋3
𝛼0
𝛼1
𝛼2
𝛼3
𝑌

35. 35
I nice way to create prediction is to use the linear regression
Sales in the store
Size of the store
Located in
suburbs?
Located in towns
street?
Basic level of sales
Located in
shopping mall?
Is it a big city?

36. 36
There is built-in module in Excel that you can use to do linear
regression. Go to Data > Data Analytics > Regression

37. 37
Histogram

38. 38
A good way to look at data on a general level is to create a histogram that
shows you the distribution of certain characteristics
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
2 000 3 000 4 000 5 000 More
Frequency
Bin
Histogram
Frequency

39. 39
There is built-in module in Excel that you can use to do
Histogram. Go to Data > Data Analytics > Histogram

40. 40
What we will talk about in this course
Merging data from
different sources
Cleaning and unifying
data
IF and their
alternatives
Other useful
functions and
functionalities
Elements of Visual
Basic
Example of analysis
Being faster with
Excel
Pivot Tables

41. 41
Pivot Tables and their
alternatives

42. 42
Pivot Tables enable you do to a lot of things
Pivot Tables
Fast analytics Filter things
Group big tables into
categories
Dashboards of KPIs
From general to specific
analyses

43. 43
For some purposes can be replaced with other functions
Pivot Tables
COUNTIFS
SUMIFS
AVERAGEIFS

44. 44
For more you can go to my extensive on-line course where I show you in
details how to do it in Excel
Click to check my course
Essential Excel for Business Analysts
and Consultants?
$45
$15

45. 45
What we will talk about in this course
Merging data from
different sources
Cleaning and unifying
data
IF and their
alternatives
Other useful
functions and
functionalities
Elements of Visual
Basic
Example of analysis
Being faster with
Excel
Pivot Tables

46. 46
Rules for Excel

47. 47
What rules should be used when building analysis in Excel
Usage of colors
Consistency between
sheets
Pyramid principle
1-source rule
Repetition of variables
Shortcuts
No mouse
Description
Data source
Master sheet

48. 48
Ctrl + 1
 opens the table with formatting the cells
Ctrl + s
 saves the file
Ctrl + c
 uploads the cell for copying
Ctrl + v
 copies the value of the cell
Ctrl + z
 undoes a command
Ctrl + y
 Go forward with the command previously undone
Ctrl + b
 makes the text bold
Ctrl + u
 underlines the text
Below the most important shortcut that you should use on PC (1/3)

49. 49
Ctrl + i
 makes the text italic
F2
 edits the given cell
F4
 enables to freeze the formula in the addresses
F9
 changes the cell formula into value
Ctrl + a
 select everything
Ctrl + f
 turns on the search box - you can look for a string
Ctrl + h
 replaces 1 string with another one
Ctrl + k
 inserts hyperlink
Below the most important shortcut that you should use on PC (2/3)

50. 50
Below the most important shortcut that you should use on PC (3/3)
Shift + space and afterwards Ctrl + Shift + "+"  adds a new row
Shift + space and afterwards Ctrl + "-"  removes the row
Ctrl + space and afterwards Ctrl + Shift + "+"  adds a new column
Shift + space and afterwards Ctrl + "-"  removes the column
Ctrl + Shift + "+“  lets you add new columns or rows
You select the rows (i.e. Shift + Space and arrow down or up
to select the specific rows) and then Shift + Аlt + arrow Right
 group a bunch of rows
You select the rows (i.e. Shift + Space and arrow down or up
to select the specific rows and then Shift + Аlt + arrow Left
 ungroup a bunch of rows
You select the Columns (i.e. Ctrl + Space and arrow left or
right to select the specific columns) and then Shift + Аlt +
arrow Right
 group a bunch of columns
You select the Columns (i.e. Ctrl + Space and arrow left or
right to select the specific columns) and then Shift + Аlt +
arrow Left
 ungroup a bunch of columns

51. 51
The most useful functions
Basic functions
Financial /
Mathematical
Others
 SUMIF / SUMIFS
 COUNTIF / COUNTIFS
 HLOOKUP
 VLOOKUP
 MATCH
 SUMPRODUCT
 IF
 AND / OR
 IFERROR
 AVERAGEIF
 LEFT / RIGHT / MID
 FIND
 CONCATENATE
 YEAR / MONTH / DAY
 ROUND / ROUNDUP /
ROUNDDOWN
 TODAY
 VALUE
 WEEKDAY
 RAND / RANDBETWEEN
 MOD
 NPV
 IRR
 ABS
 MAX / MIN
 CORREL
 Pivot
 Slicer
 Relative addresses
 Formats
 Hyperlink
 Remove Duplicates
 Filters
 Sorting
 Data Validation
 Trace Dependents / Precedent
 Analysis Tool Pack

52. 52
What we will talk about in this course
Merging data from
different sources
Cleaning and unifying
data
IF and their
alternatives
Other useful
functions and
functionalities
Elements of Visual
Basic
Example of analysis
Being faster with
Excel
Pivot Tables

53. 53
What kind of analysis you can
make using Excel?

54. 54
You will find this section well developed in another
presentation suggested below. Click on the cover below to go
to the presentation
How to become world class
analyst
A practical guide
presentation

55. 55
For more check our on-line course on how to use the Excel as a Business
Analyst and Consultant
Click to check my course
Essential Excel for Business Analysts and
Consultants?
$45
$15

56. 56
Check also business modeling in Excel
Business models
Practical guide for startups and entrepreneurs
presentation

57. 57
….and how to perform market research
Market research
Practical guide for startups and entrepreneurs
presentation

58. 58
Subscribe to our channels:
www

59. 59
Check my extensive presentation on productivity hacks to see
how you can me 10x more productive
Management consultant
productivity hacks
How to be lazy and still get things done
presentation

60. 60
If you need more detailed version on productivity hacks you
can check our course on productivity hacks
Click to check my course
Management Consulting Productivity hacks

61. 61
Check my presentation on on-line models to understand
them properly
How to open a successful
restaurant
A practical guide
presentation

62. 62
For more check also my on-line course
Click to check my course

63. 63
Check my presentation on on-line models to understand
them properly
Start and run consulting
company
A practical guide
presentation

64. 64
Check my presentation on on-line models to understand
them properly
How to start and run a
consulting firm
A practical guide
presentation