Things You Can Make in Excel

Excel. Chances are, that word alone inspires visions of lengthy

spreadsheets, complicated macros, and the occasional pivot table or
bar graph.
It’s true—with more than one billion Microsoft Office users globally,
Excel has become the professional standard in offices across the
globe for pretty much anything that requires management of large
amounts of data.
But, if you think Excel is only good for making you cross-eyed while
looking at a bunch of numbers and financial reports, think again. As
Tomasz Tunguz points out, there are tons of uses of Excel in business
(and beyond) outside of simple spreadsheets. In fact, the potential
uses are seemingly endless.
There’s no way for us to compile a list that captures every one of
Excel’s possible applications (even if you were up for reading a War
and Peace-sized listicle).
However, in an effort to demonstrate the power and flexibility of
everybody’s favorite spreadsheet tool, we’ve pulled together
different ways that you could use Excel—both professionally,
personally, and just for the fun of it.

All about numbers

Of course, the core purpose of Excel all boils down to numbers. If
you need to sort, retrieve, and analyze a large (or even small!)
amount of data, Excel makes it a breeze.
Here are a few broad categories to keep in mind when it comes to
implementing Excel for anything numbers-related.

The Importance of Excel in

Business
Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Excel was released in 1985 and has grown to
become arguably the most important computer program in workplaces
around the world. , you generally would use Excel. In business,
literally, any function in any industry can benefit from those with
strong Excel knowledge. Excel is a powerful tool that has become
entrenched in business processes worldwide--whether for analyzing
stocks or issuers, budgeting, or organizing client sales lists.
Finance and Accounting
Financial services and financial accounting are the areas of finance
that rely on and benefit from Excel spreadsheets the most. In the
1970s and early 1980s, financial analysts would spend weeks running
advanced formulas either manually or in programs like IBM's (NYSE:
IBM) Lotus 1-2-3. Now, you can perform complex modeling in minutes
with Excel.

Walk through the finance or accounting department of any major

corporate office, and you will see computer screens filled with Excel
spreadsheets crunching numbers, outlining financial results, and
creating budgets, forecasts, and plans used to make major business
decisions.

Marketing and Product Management

While marketing and product professionals look to their finance teams
to do the heavy lifting for financial analysis, using spreadsheets to
list customer and sales targets can help you manage your salesforce
and plan future marketing strategies based on past results.
Using a pivot table, users can quickly and easily summarize customer
and sales data by category with a quick drag-and-drop.
Human Resources Planning
While database systems like Oracle (ORCL), SAP (SAP), and
Quickbooks (INTU) can be used to manage payroll and employee
information, exporting that data into Excel allows users to discover
trends, summarize expenses and hours by pay period, month, or year,
and better understand how your workforce is spread out by function or
pay level.
HR professionals can use Excel to take a giant spreadsheet full of
employee data and understand exactly where the costs are coming from
and how to best plan and control them for the future.
You Can Do Anything With a Spreadsheet
Using Excel for business has almost no limits for applications. Here
are some examples:
  When planning a team outing to a baseball game, you can use
Excel to track the RSVP list and costs.
 Excel creates revenue growth models for new products based on
new customer forecasts.
 When planning an editorial calendar for a website, you can list
out dates and topics in a spreadsheet.
 When creating a budget for a small product, you can list expense
categories in a spreadsheet, update it monthly and create a
chart to show how close the product is to budget across each
category.
 You can calculate customer discounts based on monthly purchase
volume by product.
 Users can summarize customer revenue by product to find areas
where to build a stronger customer relationships.
 Use complex calculation methods, like Sharpe ratios.

Excel is not going anywhere

Excel is not going anywhere, and businesses will continue to use
Excel as a primary tool for diverse functions and applications
ranging from IT projects to company picnics.

A working knowledge of Excel is vital for most office based

professionals today, and stronger Excel skills can open the door to
promotion and leadership opportunities. Excel is a powerful tool but
cannot function alone. It takes a savvy computer user to take
advantage of everything Excel has to offer to provide the best
results for their company.
Microsoft Excel is nothing new in the business world. It has been a
staple piece of software for a long time, although it does stay up to
date. While most people have used Excel in some capacity, you might
be unsure about its relevance and importance in relation to your
business. Excel and employees with Excel skills could be very
important to your company so don’t ignore the reasons to use it.

Use Excel in Different Departments

Excel is useful across a range of departments, from accounting to
marketing and human resources. Whereas some pieces of software are
only good for one particular area of your business, almost everyone
in your office could end up using Excel at some point.
Excel Is Still Highly Relevant
Some companies are turning away from Excel and using other programs
for certain things. However, Excel is still one of the big players
and sets the standard for spreadsheet applications. Even if some
companies are using other software, they can end up dealing with
those who still use Excel.

Keep Everything More Organized

An organized business is vital, and Excel is one of the key tools you
can use to keep everything on track. If you want to make sure you can
always find information easily, Excel will help you do that.

Everyone Can Benefit from Knowing Excel

Pretty much everyone in your office can benefit from having some
basic Excel skills under their belt. It can be used for so many
useful things and learning the essentials doesn’t take long.

Source: Rosenberg, E. (Jun 25, 2019) The Importance of Excel in

Business.https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-
finance/032415/importance-excel-business.asp