photo credit: fotographix.ca

Have you seen some of what is soon to be available in the upcoming release of Excel 2010? Microsoft has produced some videos to demonstrate the new abilities of the software.

But before I share those with you, I thought that I’d include their “History of Business Intelligence”. While a little lengthy, it’s cute, entertaining and informative, and is a pretty good recap of what’s happened with this topic to date. Watch the video to see how the Terminator, Donkey Kong and gophers played a role in getting us to where we’re at today.

History of Business Intelligence

Sparklines

Sparklines are small charts that help convey trends. Many Excel users have been taking advantage of sparklines by using tools such as BonaVista System’s excellent Microcharts, but Microsoft has addressed this need and deficiency in their software by incorporating this visual analysis tool into Excel 2010.

Slicers

Other products such as Tableau have been making it easy to dynamically filter the data included in tables and charts for a while, and slicers are Microsoft’s version of more interactive filtering. Up until now we’ve been able to filter content with Autofilters and pivot table page fields, but the major improvement offered by the new slicers is in how the secondary filter levels change dynamically based on the initial selection. Have a look:

The Impact of Excel 2010 on Monarch Modelers

Monarch v10’s ability to export summaries, especially when using key values to create individuals worksheets, in conjunction with sparklines will make quick work of producing really useful trend charts in small spaces, maximizing the impact of your dashboard reports.

As Monarch modelers and solution builders, depending upon the requirements of the audience, we might be able to spend less time modeling – building fewer filters up front (in the model) – and instead take advantage of the large storage capacity of Excel (and Access) and have the end users filter their data on their own. Using slicers seems to be pretty straightforward, though your Excel users, at least initially, might appreciate your setting up the worksheet so that they can just click.

Based on how Monarch works with Excel 2007, I’ll assume (I know, I know… yes, I am speculating here) that being able to export data from Monarch to Excel 2010 files will be just as straightforward as it is with Excel 2007 and that we’ll be able to export pivot tables and take full advantage of slicers and sparklines, and the other new features that await us in Excel 2010.

Monarch and Excel Continue Working Together

As long as Excel needs structured data to analyze, then Monarch will always be the tool of choice to:

• organize unstructured data,
• consolidate data from multiple sources, and
• make that data accessible to Excel, either directly or indirectly.

Have you used the Excel 2010 beta software? If so, what were your impressions? I’m interested, clearly, but decided to focus on other tasks rather than test beta software. Nonetheless, by the looks of it, Excel 2010 will open up even more ways for us to excel with Monarch.

This past weekend, it’s possible that a number of Excel users were introduced to Monarch for the first time. As they may not have even heard of the product before, I thought that this might be an opportune time to demonstrate how one can work with both Excel and Monarch simultaneously.Today’s video shows how to add to values from Excel to report data that you’ve extracted with Monarch. We’ll use Monarch’s external lookup feature to add some values (which we’ll use in new calculations) to the model we created in a previous video post.

While the data set in the video is small, you can see how you can have Monarch effectively use Excel files for both inputs and outputs.

Without custom programming or complex formulas in Excel, you can very quickly add new data elements to the report files generated by your existing systems.

If you haven’t seen the first video, in which the process of essentially teaching Monarch how to extract data from a specific report is demonstrated, view it now.

Today’s video extends the initial model by adding the external lookups and a calculated field. (View the external lookup demo video now.)

Monarch’s engine imports data from Excel workbooks far more quickly that even Excel does with its VLOOKUP function. Even if you’re accustomed to using Excel’s lookup functions, you’ll gain considerable performance advantages by having Monarch connect your data if you’re working with any nontrivial amounts of data.

Becoming adept at developing new decision support tools which easily connect related data is a great way to excel with Monarch.

Do Monarch’s Summaries Leave You Wanting More?

You’ve learned how to use Monarch’s Summary feature (there’s a primer in this video), and you’re now comfortable with building summaries. They’re great tools in and of themselves.

But now that you have a general understanding of the concept, you may find that as useful as they are, the process of creating a summary is a bit cumbersome. The end result is a little static too. Sure, you can drill up and down, but if you want to change the basic structure, well, that takes a little more effort.

Wouldn’t it be great if your summary was a bit more interactive? What if you could reposition your fields just by dragging them around with your mouse? What if you could filter the data displayed in the summary on the fly, based on the live content?

These are the types of things that you can do with Excel’s pivot table feature.

Building a Pivot Table is Simple

It’s interesting. I’ve demonstrated the benefits of using pivot tables to literally hundreds of people, and what I usually hear is “I need to learn how to do that”. But when I follow up with them later, they’ve made no progress. Why is that?

People are somewhat intimidated by pivot tables. To some, it seems so difficult that they don’t believe that they can create pivot tables themselves, so they don’t even try.

That’s a real shame, because creating and using them can be very simple.

Start with the Basics

Pivot tables are a bit like Excel and Monarch in general: they’re packed with features, but you don’t need to use every feature all the time.

Let’s look at using a pivot table to perform a little monthly sales analysis. Let’s say that you’re reporting for a retail chain, and you want to prepare an overview of both the location unit counts and total revenues for multiple product categories and sub-categories. For instance, you might sell music CD’s and DVD (your product categories) and Classical, Rock, Pop, Action and Soundtracks might be your sub-categories.

Pivot Tables are Reusable Structures

It might take you few minutes to initially build the structure for your table, to get just the right layout. But when done right, it’s a one-time investment of your time. That’s because pivot tables are like Monarch summaries – once they’re built, they can be reused over and over again with new data.

This is a huge time saver. Think about it. Every time you want to update that fancy, complicated report all you need to do is make a couple of mouse clicks (once you have the data of course!). And if your computer is up to the task, you’ll have an up to date report in seconds.

Automate the Data Range for the Table

If you’re already a little familiar with pivot tables, you know that when you create a table based on an Excel list, the data is read into the table from a specific range which includes fixed columns and rows, such as $A$1:$Z:100. The next time you update your data, you may have more or fewer rows of data. So to get the table to point to the right data, you must edit the data range manually.

There’s a better way. You can create a named range that will always adjust itself to your current data set automatically – you won’t need to adjust it anymore.

Create a range named PivotData, or even better SalesData, as being clear lets you manage your data better.

Now for the “Refers to:” area, where you normally supply a range, type the following formula instead:

=OFFSET('Sheet1'!$A$1,0,0,COUNTA('Sheet1'!$A:$A),COUNTA('Sheet1'!$1:$1))

• The Offset function returns a range.
• ‘Sheet1′!$A$1 tells the function that cell A1 is the top-left corner of the area.
• Then go over zero rows, and
• zero columns from there.
• COUNTA(‘Shee1′!$A:$A) tells the function the number of rows that have data, including the heading, and finally
• COUNTA(‘Sheet1′!$1:$1) tells the function the number of columns that have data

As a test, hit the F5 key, type the range name you created (SalesData in our example), and hit Enter. You should see the data range highlighted.

Here is a short video of the process of creating a dynamic range name, and a little demonstration of its functionality.

Once the data is ready (best prepared with Monarch, then exported to Excel), you’re ready to build a pivot table. The second video today shows you how to create a pivot table and an overview of how you can manipulate the content.

Using pivot tables to summarize your data is an absolute necessity for great reporting that needs to be updated regularly. Building the right content in a manner that your audience will understand should make you very popular.

Pivot tables allow you to summarize and analyze a great deal of data, and there’s no better way to supply that data to the pivot table than to start the process with Monarch.

How would you describe a painting by Da Vinci, Renoir or Monet? A picture truly is worth a thousand words.

Similarly, I could go on and on describing the benefits of Monarch to someone who has never seen it action, but it’s just not the same as seeing for yourself.

So, to that end, I’m pleased to present what I believe to be is the first freely available web video for building a Monarch model (6MB). It runs almost exactly four minutes long. There’s no audio. I need to shop for a decent mic. Any excuse to shop for gadgets!

The video shows how to extract data from a typical list style report, and how you can quickly add summary information that doesn’t appear in the report.

Producing videos such as this is a bit of undertaking, so before I go off the deep end preparing material in which I think you might be interested, it would be really helpful if you just told me. I’m open to suggestions!

Post a comment below, or drop me a note at sandy DOT cavalaris AT excelwithmonarch DOT com (sorry for the lack of a link – trying to avoid the spam bots as much as possible as they seem to have found the site already).

And if you’ve never seen Monarch software in action before this, what do you think? Did you immediately think of a few ways to put it to good use?

Personally, I think the idea of one day being able to work faster and smarter probably put the smile on Mona Lisa’s face. Are you ready to excel with Monarch?