SE2 Super Excel Data Processing & Analysis Course

This course helps you to gain the real power of Excel, which lies in functions and formulas.

What is this course about?

Formula is the reason Excel was invented in the first place. It creates a mechanism for Excel to calculate input range data based on certain procedures and return an output. When you have large amount of data, you do not need to write formulas for every single record. You just write a formula for the first record, and copy that one formula to all other records in one second, then all those records are being calculated. 

Formulas are not just for mathematical calculations. There are 500+ predefined formulas (functions) to perform various calculations. There are functions to help you connecting data between different data sets to perform lookup. There are functions to help you make decisions based on logical judgements.

Functions make processing and analyzing data so much easier within Excel. Those functions do not have to be used individually. They can be nested together logically, and creatively, to boost the power exponentially. That's what you will learn in this course.

What sizes of business need to use Excel to process and analyze data?

Many small businesses run their entire operations off Excel. Medium and large corporations have their enterprise systems as the backbone to support the operations, and Excel is the small software to help feeding data into the enterprise system, and export data out to for further processing and analysis. For any non-routine projects, data wise, one will have to completely rely on Excel to support the execution.

For any business, any organization, there are always data. Customer data, product data, supplier data, material data, transportation data, inventory data, production data, engineering data, testing data, quality assurance data, purchase order data, employee data, salary data, sales data, accounting data, marketing data... Data is everywhere, at every corner of every organization.

Especially with the technology development, we have more granular level of data than ever in the human history.

With marketing data, you can analyze how many people opened your marketing emails, how many clicked on the link provided in the email, how many followed that link and spent time viewing your message on the webpage, and how many minutes they watched the promotion video on that page.

With transportation data, you can analyze how fast a driver accelerate before a traffic light, how often the driver does it, how many aggressive maneuvers the drive had and where.

Data alone has no value. Only when the data is processed and analyzed, it could provide us with insights and meanings. Some of them are done within statistical software, and a lot more are being done within Excel.

Analysis is more of after the fact task, but many of the business execution tasks in large and small organizations are happening within Excel too. Without the functions and formulas skills, those execution tasks could not be carried out. No organizations, large or small, can avoid the need to process and analyze data with spreadsheet software like Excel.

What types of profession need to use Excel to process and analyze data?

Data processing and analysis used to be performed by someone has the word "analyst" in the job title, and mainly in the sales, operations, and finance/accounting departments. That's not the case anymore. As businesses and organizations in this era are all data driven, this happens in every functional department, and every level of the organizational hierarchy. 

I was delivering on-site Excel training few years ago to a small group of Registered Dietitians at a small health centre at downtown Toronto that caters to a specific demographic. You would think what does a dietitian has to do with Excel functions and formulas.

As part of their services to the clients, they collect lots of data about the clients and their health concerns through surveys. They process and analyze the client survey results in a very manual way, not using formulas at all. Since they did not have the ability to use functions and formulas in the first place, the survey was designed in a way that the collected data structure hinders the effective  processing and analysis of the data with formulas.

As a result, they spent lot of time on the survey data, which take valuable time away from providing diet expertise and advices to clients. If they had the knowledge and skills from this course, it would have saved them tons of time.

What levels of position need to use Excel to process and analyze data?

Ten or twenty years ago, less middle and upper management positions possessed the Excel analytical skills. Now more of them do. As a matter of fact, I know personally quite many people who took this course at the time as coordinators, analysts, managers, directors and within three to five years, they rose to managers, senior managers, directors, and VPs.

Few years ago, when a lady took this course and connected with me on LinkedIn, she asked me if I knew the CEO of the company she was working for, since I was connected with the CEO on LinkedIn. To my surprise, I did know the CEO, though he was a director at that company when he took the Super Excel Data Processing & Analysis course in 2012. At that time he was so impressed with my course design and teaching method, and he got interested in the idea of investing into my Excel training company if I was willing to accept it.

I can see more of the new generation leaders possessing the Excel analytical skills as they grew up with computers. Excel has been part of their lives since they entered the workforce. The middle and upper management for sure have no need to perform extensive data processing & analysis work. But having this skill, they do not need to wait for an analyst to come up with the results in hours when they can get that in few minutes with own Excel analytical skills. In this fast paced time, our tolerance to waiting is considerably reduced.

Many of the processes seem to be long to an average person, when you have the strong Excel function/formula skills, it will take only few minutes. When the management possess the Excel analytical skills, and know its power, naturally they will expect their staff the same abilities.

When I was working as a senior analyst, there was an analyst position reporting to me. One time we hired a fresh MBA graduate, even though he did not have strong Excel function/formula skills, I really liked him for his methodical approach, and I knew I could teach him the functions/formulas, and he would get it quickly. I assigned him a task of analysis at the start of one morning. When I checked back with him at 4:30 PM, he was still deep in the numbers, and not sure when he would finish the analysis. So I sat at his desk, had him watching me performing and finishing the analysis within 30 minutes in front of his eyes. I was not trying to show off, or belittle him by any means. After he spent the whole day thinking and trying to solve the problem, now, when I walked him through my thought process, and using the various functions/formulas combination along with my no-mouse-touching keyboard skills, he would be intrigued and learned much more than if I told him the specific steps to perform that piece of analysis in the morning.

In the summer of year 2020 during the COVID pandemic I taught many high school students and university students this course live online via zoom. I found every single one of them understanding the functions/formulas much faster than the average adults I have taught in all the past years. Only time will tell, how much more important Excel analytical skills will become in the future corporate jobs. 

Is this course geared towards a specific profession?

I also got questions like "I work in Human Resources (or whatever profession), does this course help me?". This is a wrong question as it is based on wrong assumption. They may think only finance/accounting professionals need to process and analyze data. 

In a corporate environment, only the top tier and bottom tier do not need the Excel analytical skills. All other levels of position will need or benefit from the Excel function/formula skills, as they all deal with data, regardless their functional departments. The only exception I can think of is art based positions. But if they are in management, they still deal with data.

The functions/formulas covered within this course are for processing and analyzing data. Regardless what department you work in, they are important and essential. Of course there are other specific functions for finance or engineering or statistics. But those are more of mathematical calculation for a specific field rather than processing and analyzing data.

A person working in finance may ask: "does this course teach any financial function?" No. Actually, this course does not teach a single financial function. Then how does this course help a person working in finance?

Most people working in finance or accounting do not need to use financial functions like NPV (Net Present Value) or PPMT (Principle portion of a Periodic Payment of an investment). What they need are VLOOKUP/XLOOKUP, SUMIFS, COUNTIFS, INDEX, MATCH, IF, IFERROR..., etc to conduct financial planning or reporting on sales and expenses. 

For few of them who do need to use financial functions, if they mastered the functions covered in this course, they can easily understand and use financial functions. Those are just like calculators, as long as you understand the specific financial concept, you just enter the input parameters into the function, it will calculate and return the appropriate output numbers.

This is the case for finance, so it is for engineering, and other professions.

As a matter of fact, in all the years I taught this course since 2009, 50% of the attendees worked in finance and accounting, 25% of them worked in supply chain and operations, the rest worked in various fields like, sales, marketing, HR, engineering, ...etc. Undoubtfully, finance and accounting professionals are the ones dealing with data the most. I also teach this course at CPA Ontario. In those classes, all attendees are CPAs.

You may wonder, maybe your industry is unique. Would this course be relevant? Here is a list of types of organizations where I have taught this course as on-site corporate training: manufacturers, distributors, retailers, pharmaceuticals, food companies, cosmetic companies, financial services, logistics services, marketing firms, architecture firms, law firms, engineering firms, consulting firms, governments, NGOs, Non-Profits, universities, museum, hospitals…etc.

I hope you get the point. No organizations can operate without the need to deal with data. No management can manage without data.

Data is just data. Whatever data you have, it's the same set of Excel functions to process and analyze them.

Who is this course for?

As long as you deal with data, and want to be effective and efficient in processing and analyzing them, regardless of your industry, profession, level of position, this course is right for you.

For people who have "analyst" in their job titles, the skills from this course is a must for them. However, even if you do not have analyst job titles, if your everyday work involves data processing and analysis, this course is essential for you.

If your career involves a corporate environment, and your goal is not to stay in the bottom tier, or if you are not already in the upper management, the skills you gain from this course will benefit you for your entire career.

If you are running your own business, it is even more important to master these skills, so you can run your business more efficiently.

If you have taken Excel courses somewhere else, but did not learn much, and wish to have a breakthrough in mastering functions/formulas, this is for you.

In many of the conventional Excel formula courses, they may "teach" you five or more Excel functions within 30 minutes. In this course, I spend 30 minutes to teach you only one single function. I will make sure you really get the why, what, when, where, and how to use that function. You are not learning what the software has. Instead, you are learning the practical formula skills that are required at the real workplace to grow your career.

I do suggest most striving professionals master Excel skills up to the SE2 course level. If you do, I'd suggest you to take my Super Excel Data Processing & Analysis course.

Lanet L. really made a good point about this course. "I have attended few other Excel training courses elsewhere. The fundamental difference is: most other courses teach you WHAT is Excel; the Super Excel course teaches you HOW TO USE Excel. I was especially impressed with the thought process the instructor demonstrated in class. He made those formulas alive."