Excel career advice

[excelgeek]

I would like some career advice from anyone who's making his earning from Excel.

I am currently strategy consultant, and, as an ex computer-geek (+Ph.D in maths), I quickly became the Excel guru in the office (where the average level is already above the rest of the industry). I do not use macros or VBA, but just knowing all the subtleties of pivottables (calculated fields, grouping items, drilling down, and above all: knowing how to put data I receive/download from the web into a format that makes it possible to analyze with a pivottable! and gives me the analysis power of pivottables) already gives me an edge when asked for analysis. My job however requires other skills than crunching databases, which reduces this edge, but justifies a nice salary.

Running around clients in various industries, I realize how an insufficient knowledge of Excel of employees (including among accounting or sales people) can reduce productivity, and sometimes just eliminate possibilities for them! Therefore my question is: what are my career opportunities in the future, in terms of:

- having a (well paid?) job involving a lot of data analysis / business modeling, where my Excel skills could allow me to do certain analysis my boss would never have dreamt of before
- running around companies to give Excel crash courses to certain employees (teaching them to use pivottables, vlookup and text manipulation functions could probably improve their productivity)
- a mix of those 2 functions?

The main obstacle to those options would be the existence of integrated data analysis systems in companies (such as data warehouses), but my impression is that there will always be needs to perform analysis that those system are not programmed to do, and that can be done very quickly with Excel.

Any experiences/opinions?

Thanks
This message was edited by excelgeek on 2002-09-08 08:32

 

[DonkeyOte]

In all fairness you will really need to learn how to code...you will find that a lot of the stuff you are talking about could be done much quicker (and without the need for intervention by the user) - and most people involved in DataAnalysis - or Management Information etc will be able to do that.

Else - why not think about becoming a trainer - there's good money in that (so I am told)

 

[Ekim]

If you stick to just Excel you will probably starve.

Try adding a number of strings to your bow.

You say that you are a "strategy consultant" - this sounds like a wonderful marketing tool, and perhaps should be the focus of your business model (a business model is how you propose to make money). If you marry this with your Ph.D. in maths, together with expertise in Excel, you may have a winning formula.

The main obstacle to your options is not the existence of integrated data analysis systems in companies. The major problem is convincing senior management that you have a solution(s) to their business problems (assuming that they recognize they have a problem). Most senior management believe that Excel is some spreadsheet thing that accounting/IT types play around with - these types usually won't admit that they need outside help.

Therefore, you need some way of kicking down the corporate door. I have sent you a Private Message with a reference to my web site. You will see what I mean when I talk about having a number of strings to your bow. I won't publish my web site here because, in my opinion, that would constitute Spam.

Good luck,


Mike