Comments on: Fighting IT? Prototype an Executive Dashboard in Excel

By: John Kyle

John Kyle — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 21:17:35 +0000

There is a solution that both IT and business users can support: Excel Automation. From the IT perspective, Excel Automation is just another server-based software tool that accesses corporate databases – easy to install and manage. From the business user perspective, Excel Automation means a lot less time running and emailing the same old spreadsheet with today’s data. So, you can take advantage of Jorge’s great training and consulting to make amazing spreadsheets – and once you’ve created them, they can be scheduled, run and distributed automatically. The Excel Automation tool doesn’t care if it is a simple table or an advanced executive dashboard with many charts and graphs.

By: Danny

Danny — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 11:18:48 +0000

Actually, IT tends to be mostly useless and seem to forget they are simply overhead, hopefully a necessary overhead like say telephones. However most of the time they are simply wasteful. They want to build systems that are “cool” or look good on their CV and usually can’t be bothered to learn what end-users actually do and need. Every now and then you meet someone from IT who actually contributes in a meaningful way to the company’s P&L and they are like gold-dust.

There should never ever be any “fights” with IT anymore than there should be fights with the chairs. It should simply be a case of this is what we need and how and your sole job is to deliver it.

By: Ulrich Seidl

Ulrich Seidl — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 12:03:19 +0000

our experiences were really good and accepted by IT and management end users when we used excel on top of a multidimensional OLAP database which received its data from an ERP system. Data and structures managed by IT and reports created and used by end user and/or IT analysts.

By: Nilesh

Nilesh — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 14:58:11 +0000

BI tools are all good and capable but they are always wrapped around corporate policy.

If you believe in data governance, then Excel is not the way to present information. There are lot of parameters that go around defining Data governance, data security etc. Excel is good for prototyping and it should be used just for that. The prototype should be passed to the IT team and let them build it using their BI application.

By: Are Excel Charts Hurting Your Business? 10 Mistakes You Should Avoid.

Are Excel Charts Hurting Your Business? 10 Mistakes You Should Avoid. — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 12:11:45 +0000

[...] Most people aren’t aware of how powerful Excel is and use it almost as a pocket calculator. If you routinely have to manage quantitative data, learning a little more Excel always pays off. As an example, you can use it to create complex executive dashboards or, at least, as a dashboard prototyping tool. [...]

By: Finance Gal

Finance Gal — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:28:26 +0000

Ahhahaha… Jorge, I completely agree. I am in the middle of one such.. uh.. ‘collaboration’. IT hasn’t yet given me ODBC access yet, and I just know that I could create some good dashboards for use in specific situations that arise, say, once in a month or once a quarter, for which it is unnecessary to use IT resources or reinvent the wheel but which is completely vital when we need to make a financial decision. Scrambling around last minute to get your BI tools to give you the answers, or in the usual case, exporting from BI into Excel (!) to calculate the answer, can be avoided with dashboards.

My thoughts on it being a fad – not as long as Excel 2007 and VBA are still alive and people with graduate degrees in Finance and Accounting still think of Excel spreadsheets as a chore instead of thinking of ways to make Excel work for them. Pivot tables are a mystery, VBA is another government agency and the extent of formula knowledge is composing a nested-IF statement. How can dashboards be a fad if they haven’t even permeated all the organizations yet?

By: Jorge Camoes

Jorge Camoes — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 22:24:33 +0000

@Tom: I can’t agree with you, for obvious reasons. Data visualization allows you to manage and get insights from large datasets. This is note a fad. Now, you can call that dashboards and some time in the near future you can call it something else, but the basic principles remain. And a business is much more that the IT infrastructure.

By: Tom in IT

Tom in IT — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 16:39:39 +0000

Dashboards are just plain stupid. Like the Corporate Mission Statement before them, and the “quality” and “excellence” programs that Corporate American has wasted their money on in the past, dashboards too will fade away with time. Executives would be better off listening to their IT departments who know far more about the business than their little junior executives. What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.

By: How to create an Excel Dashboard

How to create an Excel Dashboard — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 16:52:12 +0000

[...] executive reporting. It allows for fast, flexible and cost-effective dashboard implementation (or prototyping). Intermediate Excel users should be able to design and implement an executive dashboard in a [...]

By: “Business-IT Chasm”: The Business Perspective. « Roman Stanek’s Push-Button Thinking

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 10:03:45 +0000

[...] is the link to the full post. Posted in Work. Tags: BI, chasm, [...]