3 Pillars of Excel Proficiency
One of the most important programs for any financial professional is Microsoft Excel. Most would say that its the entire foundation of the entire financial industry because spreadsheets are so ingrained into our daily lives as finance professionals. Many students and professionals will tout a “proficient in Microsoft Excel” line on their resume, but everyone has a different definition of proficient. For some, it means being a certified expert, while for others, it may just mean having used the program before. In reality, proficiency in excel is a combination of fundamental knowledge of a program itself and the user's ability to use it effectively in the workplace. Today, I'm going to share with you my three pillars of proficiency in Excel.
Pillar #1 - Formulas and Functionality
This is what most people come to think of when the phrase proficiency in Excel comes up. Understanding how formulas work and how to use Excel without a mouse is certainly an important part of Excel proficiency. Here's a short list of common Excel features that fit within this category:
Basic formulas like SUM, SUBTOTAL, IF, PRODUCT, DATE, MONTH
Advanced formulas like SUMIFS, XLOOKUP, NPV, PMT
Embedded features like pivot tables and goal seek
Data cleaning and analysis tools like sort, filter, and text to columns
Conditional formatting
Keyboard shortcuts
If you don't consider yourself a capable Excel user yet, you need to start here. Understanding how the program works is going to be the first step in building an expertise, but it's not the only thing! The other two pillars will allow you to really shine to others as an Excel user.
Pillar #2 - Problem Solving
Understanding how the tool works is always going to be step one. Next thing you need to do to be a proficient Excel user is to understand how to use this tool to solve problems. Think of this step as the application of knowledge through multiple steps. There's a difference between someone who knows how to create a pivot table and someone who knows how to use a pivot table. You want to be the person who can say “I used some clever functions to take a client's general ledger, aggregate the data, create a pivot table over it, and identify the top customers for each of the last 12 months.” Because the use cases of excel are so varied, it's important that you understand more than just classroom examples of how each function works. If you want to get better at this step, try to find some real world applications that require multiple steps and multiple different functions to achieve a desired result.
Pillar #3 - Communication
In my classroom, we have a saying “Your knowledge is only as valuable as your ability to communicate it to others,” and that is certainly true when using Excel. Whether you are creating a spreadsheet for a company, a client, or even yourself, it's important to have good notation, formatting, and commentary to make it as user friendly as possible. The people I know that are truly proficient in Excel are the ones who can summarize their complex spreadsheets into easy to understand dashboards with supporting commentary. If you truly want to call yourself proficient in Excel, I challenge you to develop your communication skills through spreadsheets. Learn how to properly utilize borders, formatting, and summarize data so that it can be easily understood by others.
Of the many professionals that I've met who are certainly Excel wizards, I would say that not many of them have consciously developed that third pillar of communication skills. If you're reading this and you think that you're pretty good at Excel, try taking a step back and reviewing your work to see if someone else besides you can understand it. Take the time to develop those communication skills on top of the underline program knowledge and you will see great success.