• Book Name: Excel Best Practices For Business by Loren Abdulezer
• Author: Loren Abdulezer
• Pages: 541
• Size: 10 MB

Excel Best Practices For Business PDF Download

There’s a very large community of business professionals who regularly work with spreadsheets. They are not spreadsheet experts and don’t claim to be. They don’t have enough time; they’re too busy meeting deadlines. The budget implications take precedence over the details of preparing a well-designed budget spreadsheet. However, this “business before technology” attitude comes at a price. All too often, business professionals are caught short of time and find themselves designing spreadsheets inefficiently.

Many business people have told me that they know they are not preparing spreadsheets as well as they could and should be doing. They work hard (perhaps too hard) to meet deadlines. The process feels like, and often is, an exercise in “electronic pencil pushing.” Once done, they move on to the next task at hand and promptly forget their work until exactly one month rolls by. Then they repeat the whole process, inefficiently resorting to “one-offs.” This state of affairs would not be so bad were it not for the fact that the current business and economic climate demands greater efficiency. Furthermore, business decisions must now be performed according to “Internet time.” Crucial decisionmaking in a shortened time frame, coupled with the critical consequences of those decisions, increases risk exposure to businesses and thereby the likelihood of fallout for individual business managers. No one can afford to be wrong in today’s warpspeed and closely watched business environment.

How do we meet these challenges? Corporate practices relating to spreadsheets often amount to leaving people to their own devices to work their way through the task, picking up what they can from books and colleagues, repeating what worked the last time, and if necessary, force parts of their spreadsheet to work in order to complete their spreadsheet. My starting point for addressing spreadsheet practices and features consists of what you need to be able to do in the day-to-day business setting. In the process of explaining techniques and practices, I introduce spreadsheet features where they are needed and have a clear purpose. I point out the “gotchas” and stubbornly refuse to sweep details under the rug. Providing techniques and guidance for real business situations is what this book is all about.

Excel Best Practices For Business PDF Download

Because this is a book about techniques, you’ll find plenty of “Take-Aways” on the accompanying CD that you can immediately put to use. The examples illustrated throughout Excel Best Practices for Business all incorporate Excel 2003. Fortunately, best practices are largely independent of which version of Excel you happen to be using. You need to be aware that Excel 2003 introduces many new XML-related features not found in the earlier versions of Excel. These XML- and Web-related features play an important role in Chapter 12, “Spreadsheet Portals, XML, and Web Services.” To gain full benefit of these capabilities, you need to work with Excel 2003. From a stylistic standpoint, I favor providing industrial-strength spreadsheet examples and try to present concepts from a mature business perspective.

I want you to be able to pinpoint where and when specific techniques and practices come into play. An added benefit of these full-featured spreadsheets is that they are rich in “mini-techniques” that often are unrelated to the main theme or purpose of the spreadsheet. My hope is that you can harvest these components and use them within your spreadsheets. Finally, these full-featured spreadsheets can be turned into production-quality spreadsheets. Whenever possible, I outline features that you may want to incorporate to ready them for a production environment. Now, you’d better hold on to your hat, because Excel is getting a second wind.

Fanning the sails is XML. Microsoft has decided to embrace XML and integrate it heavily with Excel 2003 and Office 2003. This is a smart move on Microsoft’s part. In the coming years, XML will be the ubiquitous medium for virtually all electronic data exchange for business. This development will catapult Excel to center stage, and Excel Best Practices for Business readies you for this by introducing the topic of Spreadsheet Portals, among other things

Excel best practices for business pdf free download.