Use Benford’s Law & Charts in Excel to Improve Business Planning
Unless you're a public accountant, you probably haven't experimented with Benford's Law.
Auditors sometimes use this fascinating statistical insight to uncover fraudulent accounting data. But it might reveal...
Find Leading Indicators Using Automated Cross Correlations in Excel, Part 2
In Part 1 of this discussion about automated cross correlations, I explained how to set up the cross-correlation Data Table shown below, in columns...
Find Leading Indicators Using Automated Cross Correlations in Excel, Part 1
It all seems so simple...
To improve your forecasts of sales or other measures, you simply need to find leading indicators...measures that are highly correlated...
The Most Powerful Ways to Summarize Excel Data for Reporting and Analysis
(Note: I wrote this before Microsoft introduced Excel Tables or SUMIFS. This post is scheduled for an update.)
Excel users often need to summarize data...
The First Spreadsheet Dashboard: Mini-Graph Reports in Lotus 1-2-3
This is the first dashboard report ever created with spreadsheets. I worked on this reporting technique in the early 1980s, then included this report...
Show Useful Year-to-Date Variance Charts in Your Excel Dashboards
Many companies have a difficult time creating charts of spending variances. In fact, many companies rely on charts that are nearly useless for that...
Show Key Stats Automatically in Periodic Excel Reports
Each issue of Business Week magazine used to include several figures titled "The Stat". These figures emphasized key data related to the article on...
Should You Raise Prices? Should You Lower Them? These Excel Charts Can Help You...
In the early 1980s I was the CFO of a company owned by a man whose first instinct was to cut prices.
When business was...
Should You Raise Prices? Should You Lower Them? Derivation of the Formula For Planning...
The article, Should You Raise Prices? Or Should You Lower Them? These Excel Charts Can Help You Answer Those Questions, introduces the Price-Change formula....
Sample Excel Dashboard Reports from Forbes and Business Week
This mock-up is based on a format that Business Week used about thirty years ago. However, their report used a different color scheme. As...
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Getting Radical with Excel
It's time to think about Excel in a radical new way—when we use it to work with business or economic data.
It's time, in fact,...
How Fast Is Too Fast?
(Originally published in Inc Magazine.)
What typically tops the list of worries of the chief executive officers of fast growing companies? Financing that growth, according...
How to Smooth Data by Using the TREND Function
Years ago, I read that Prof. William S. Cleveland had suggested that data could be smoothed by calculating a centered trendline through adjacent data—a...
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