A friend from my networking group sent me an interesting article from moneyweek.com, entitled “The hidden evils of spreadsheets”. A financial modelling firm has found that in nearly one in five large businesses, spreadsheet errors led to poor business decisions and huge financial losses, with perhaps only a third of users having had any training in using these powerful programs.
The article looks at big businesses, and presumably the proportion of trained users will be even less among small business users.
Spreadsheets are a very powerful tool, but in order to get the best out of them, you need to set them up properly and understand their operation. Many people make the mistake of thinking that, because the computer will do the maths, they don’t need to! But you still need to know what you are doing: the computer may get the answer right, but you need to get the question right in the first place. For example, if you enter a formula to calculate 2+3*4, you may presume the answer to be 20 – and be surprised when your spreadsheet informs you that the correct answer is, in fact, 14! If you get the question wrong, the answer will not be the one you expect.
I have been working with spreadsheets since they first came into existence – I started with VisiCalc in 1979! I know how to set them up neatly and efficiently, with properly constructed formulae. I can work with powerful features like tables, charts, pivot tables, macros and VBA programming in order to automate complex tasks. I can train clients to have a good understanding of how they work, and design spreadsheets that are easy to use, for a variety of different needs – not all maths based!
Contact me if you would like training, or if you would like me to look at your existing spreadsheets with a view to optimising them and ensuring that your business decisions will be based on the right facts!
