Celebrate Holi with this colorful Excel file
Today is Holi, the festival of colors in India. It is a fun festival where people smear each other with colors, water balloons, tomatoes and sometimes rotten eggs. This year we wanted to play with only water guns, but kids vetoed that idea vehemently. So we ended up driving to my sister-in-law’s place to play with colors (there were no rotten eggs or tomatoes, thankfully).
Let me smear a few colors on you
I would love to splash a jug full of color water on you and say Happy Holi. But the internets have not advanced thus far. So I am going to give you the next best option.
An Excel workbook to play holi
Revenue vs. Commission growth – Getting the message across [BYOD]
Situation: Our commissions are growing way faster than revenues
Let’s say you are looking revenues & sales commissions of your company for last few years. The data looks like this:
And you want to highlight the fact that commissions are growing faster than revenues.
So you plot YoY growth rates for revenues & commissions.
Problem: The chart of YoY growth rates is not convincing
Take a look at the chart. It doesn’t convey the message that we want. At best it says “revenue growth is less than commission growth”
How to convey the message “Commission growth is a problem for us”?
CP029: Impress your boss with Excel charts – 6 step road map for you
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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In the 29th session of Chandoo.org podcast, let’s impress the boss with Excel charts.
What is in this session?
Many Excel charts live a short life. They spawn in an ambitious analyst’s spreadsheet. They go to boss with literally flying colors. The boss frowns, they disappear in to recycle bin.
Don’t curse your Excel charts with short life span.
Here is a 6 step road map to help you create awesome Excel charts, everytime.
That is our topic for this podcast session.
In this podcast, you will learn
- Quick announcements about 50 ways & Einstein
- 6 step road map for charting success
- ONE: Dig your data
- TWO: Validate insights
- THREE: Pick charts that go well
- FOUR: Add title & message
- FIVE: Remove clutter
- SIX: Prompt action
- A real life example with road map in action
- Resources for creating awesome charts
Doing Cost Benefit Analysis in Excel – a case study
Imagine you are the in-charge of finance department at Hogwarts. So one fine day, while you are practicing the spells, Dumbledore walks in to your office and says, “Our electricity bills are way too high. As the muggles don’t accept wizard money, we have to find a way to reduce our power consumption.”
So you summoned the previous 12 month utility bills to examine energy consumption patterns, and pretty soon you realized that most of the electricity consumption is due to the light bulbs. You suddenly have a brilliant idea. Why not replace the light bulbs with a variety that consumes low power? A light bulb moment indeed.
Your next step is to figure out what varieties of light bulbs are out there. Fortunately this is easier than catching a snitch in a game of quidditch. A quick search revealed that there are 3 types of light bulbs:
- Regular incandescent bulbs (the kind Hogwarts currently uses)
- Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs (CFL)
- Light Emitting Diode bulbs (LED)
Now your job is to do a cost benefit analysis of these options and pick one.
Creating In-cell charts with markers for average (or target) values
Today, lets talk about an interesting extension to the idea of in-cell charts. Adding average or target markers to the chart.
Adding a marker (like average or target or last year value) can enhance your charts greatly and provide more context. Lets understand how to add marker symbols to in-cell charts.
Download today – Introducing Excel Dashboard Templates from Chandoo.org
Friends and readers of Chandoo.org, my newest download, Excel Dashboard Templates are available for your consideration. Click here if you are ready to get them. Read on to know more.
What are Excel Dashboard Templates?
As the name suggests, these are ready to use Excel templates for creating awesome, informative, easy to understand & quick dashboards with your data. You just enter your data, set up few calculation options, decide how your dashboard should look & bingo, a beautiful & insightful dashboard will be created for you. These dashboards are optimized to look great, convey key information & prompt correct action.
Who should buy these templates?
Analysts, managers, reporting professionals, business owners & executives. These templates are designed to help anyone preparing Excel based dashboards, scorecards or KPI reports.
Benefits for you
- Design awesome dashboards in minutes, not months: Don’t waste hours trying to figure out formulas, chart settings and layouts. Instead focus on what your users want, how your business works and use those insights to tell the ‘Excel Dashboard Template’ what you want. Save time and look awesome.
- Accommodate change elegantly: People change. Businesses change. What your boss wanted last month is no longer what she wants today. So when someone asks you, “hmm, can you show me YTD data instead of last 13 months”, or “Can I see top 10 KPIs instead of all”, you just smile and tap a few clicks and bingo, the new dashboard will be ready. These templates are designed to handle change (data, requirements, design preferences and insights).
- Beautiful & Informative: These templates are designed with a delicate balance of beauty & insight. Everything is seamlessly designed, perfectly aligned and precisely calculated so that you & your boss can focus on the insights & decisions. Time tested and well honored visualization principles & guidelines are observed thru-out the reports.
- Built for starters, built for pros: Whether you are just starting with Excel or a seasoned pro, you can find the templates right up your alley. For advanced users, we have many customizations to whet your appetite. Want to build a custom calculation or include another type of sorting, you can do it by tinkering with ‘calculations’ sheet.
Ready to use Excel Dashboard Templates – Official Trailer
Hello folks,
Its almost ready. Our ready to use Excel dashboard templates are coming to a spreadsheet near you on November 13th.
Here is a teaser preview of the dashboards. Our own official trailer, rated A for awesome.
Watch it below:
http://youtu.be/2-TvjpEKf-o
(see it on our YouTube Channel, alternative link)
Excel Dashboard Templates – What are they?
As the name suggests, these a set of workbooks where you can key in your data, set up how you want the looks & bam, a beautiful, insightful, fun, easy to use dashboard pops right out. All in few minutes.
Here is how these templates can help you:
- Design awesome dashboards in minutes, not months: Don’t waste hours trying to figure out formulas, chart settings and layouts. Instead focus on what your users want, how your business works and use those insights to tell the ‘Excel Dashboard Template’ what you want. Save time and look awesome.
- Accommodate change elegantly: People change. Businesses change. What your boss wanted last month is no longer what she wants today. So when someone asks you, “hmm, can you show me YTD data instead of last 13 months”, or “Can I see top 10 KPIs instead of all”, you just smile and tap a few clicks and bingo, the new dashboard will be ready. These templates are designed to handle change (data, requirements, design preferences and insights).
- Customize everything: Unlike a template set in stone, these are designed to let you customize almost every little aspect of the output, calculations and behavior.
- Beautiful & Informative: These templates are designed with a delicate balance of beauty & insight. Everything is seamlessly designed, perfectly aligned and precisely calculated so that you & your boss can focus on the insights & decisions. Time tested and well honored visualization principles & guidelines are observed thru-out the reports.
- Built for starters, built for pros: Whether you are just starting with Excel or a seasoned pro, you can find the templates right up your alley. For advanced users, we have many customizations to whet your appetite. Want to build a custom calculation or include another type of sorting, you can do it by tinkering with ‘calculations’ sheet.