Sawadee Krup folks. Today, we begin a new series on Chandoo.org – Making a Customer Service Dashboard using Excel. This 4 part tutorial teaches you,

Designing Customer Service Dashboard
Data and Calculations for the Dashboard
Creating the dashboard in Excel
Adding Macros & Final touches

Customer service is one area where a lot of data is collected regularly. Understanding all this and making business decisions is quite complex task. This is where dashboards shine.

Read on to learn how to design customer service dashboards.

Formula Forensics is on Vacation.

Formula Forensics is actually on a working Holiday and has visited the Excel Hero Academy this week.
So today in Formula Forensics we will showcase some of the work that have been derived from the learning’s at the Excel Hero Academy.

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Today we look at a very neat way of doing a complex Nested If or Vlookup style problem with a simple but beautiful Sumproduct based formula.

Here is a quick tip to add awesome to your Wednesday.

If you want to enter numbers like 00023 or 023.340 or 23.34500 in your Excel sheet, you would notice that Excel magically removes leading zeros and trailing zeros (after decimal point) as the number 23 is same as 00023. But sometime, we want 00023, not 23. Then what?!?

Very simple, we use TEXT format instead of number format. Just select the cells where you are going to enter these numbers, and from Home ribbon > Number area, select “Text” as cell type. This tells Excel to treat any value you enter as Text, not as number. So when you type 00023, it will appear as 00023.

Project Managers often report financial numbers to the management. In a dynamic world, these numbers are usually based on a lot of factors that may or may not be under your control. So the top management demands that the numbers be reported as per different economic scenarios – Optimistic, Normal or Pessimistic. It is important […]

One of the most dreaded courses during my under-graduation is Probability, Statistics & Queuing Theory. We called it PSQT. I struggled to understand the significance and concept of this course as I could barely concentrate in the class. We had a professor, who is probably a genius, but the moment he started the class, I would magically fall in to one of my after-noon naps. When I woke up, we are either in the middle of an elaborate t-test or going thru intricacies of a Markovian queue.

This was all 11 years ago. Later in life, I have embraced the world of probability & statistics. I still fear queues. May be I will get there one day. 😉

A good understanding of statistics & probability theory is necessary if you want to model complex real-life problems using Excel or similar tools. Naturally, Excel has several functions, features & supported add-ins to help you in this area.

Today, I want to share some of this with you. This article is broken down in to 3 parts.

1. Learning Statistics & Probability using Excel
2. Downloadable Excel Workbooks to understand
3. Full blown models & simulations in Excel

Recently, I bought a new laptop, because my old Toshiba died down. After installing the OS and other necessary tools (like browser, skype etc.), I have installed Office 2010. Since Excel is my bread and butter, I like to customize it so that I can get more work done. So today,let me share how I […]