We were recently asked to deliver an “Introduction to Excel” half day workshop by the Housing Internal Audit Forum we jumped at the chance and developed a course designed to take the delegates behind the scenes of analysing data in Excel; explaining the the do’s and don’ts, what constitutes good data as well as providing a general picture of the processes of data analytics. Certainly not easy in half a day!
As this was our first attempt at delivering such condensed training, the pressure was on to develop something that was going to be both intuitive and interactive. We decided to kick off the day with a “back to basics” approach, explaining what exactly data analytics is, the benefits, challenges/hurdles and the different levels of technology.
Next steps involved getting the delegates involved in the actual data analytics cycle, explaining the PIPAR (Plan, Import, Prepare, Analyse, Report) model and enabling them to have the opportunity to “have a go” themselves with the support of our expert. They subsequently completed an initial analysis of the data working with filters, calculated columns, combining data and conditional formatting and, in the final module, reporting.
The half day was a huge success and everyone took something away from the workshop, not least DataConsulting and our now belief that it is, indeed, possible to deliver something that can be of great value to people over half a day, so if you have a training in mind that you can’t find elsewhere or are interested in an introduction to Excel…let us help you!
