A Comprehensive Excel Masterclass

Illinois Institute of Technology via Coursera

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Overview

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The Comprehensive Excel Masterclass is an advanced course designed to empower students with the skills and knowledge needed to maximize the potential of Microsoft Excel in a business environment. This course goes beyond the basics and explores advanced functions, and features that will enable students to perform complex calculations, retrieve and manipulate data from multiple sources, and gain valuable insights from data. The course combines theoretical concepts with practical exercises and examples to reinforce learning. A crucial aspect of business decision-making involves understanding the time value of money. In this course, students will be exposed to time value of money principles and learn how to utilize Excel's financial functions to analyze loans, create amortization schedules, and evaluate project valuations. By leveraging functions such as PV, FV, NPV, PMT, IRR and more, students will be able to make informed financial decisions. A significant portion of the course is dedicated to creating Excel dashboards, which are effective tools for visually presenting performance data (such as KPIs). Participants will learn how to leverage Pivot Tables to create dynamic and interactive dashboards utilizing slicers, timelines, and calculated fields to enhance data exploration and create compelling dashboards. Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to: - Utilize complex Excel functions and techniques to extract and manipulate data. - Evaluate the financial viability of loans using Excel's financial functions. - Apply the principles of Capital Budgeting for project selection and investment decisions. - Create advanced Pivot Tables and Pivot Charts for data analysis and visualization. - Develop interactive dashboards with Form Controls to enhance user experience. - Design custom charts for effective data visualization. - Apply Excel's latest features and updates in Office 365/Google Sheets for increased productivity. - Showcase key performance indicators (KPIs) to support data-driven decision-making in business intelligence.

Syllabus

Module 1: Transforming data into meaningful insights with Pivot Tables and Power Query

Welcome to Mastering Excel Essentials to Enhance Business Value! This module introduces Pivot Tables and Power Query as powerful tools for organizing, analyzing, and transforming data. You will learn to build dynamic reports, apply filters, group data, and create interactive dashboards, while also gaining an introduction to preparing and cleaning data with Power Query.

Module 2: Time Value of Money and Loan Modeling in Excel

Welcome to Module 2! This module explores the time value of money and its role in financial decision-making. You will use Excel’s financial functions to model investments, calculate loan payments, build amortization schedules, and analyze the impact of interest rates and repayment strategies on long-term outcomes.

Module 3: Evaluating Investment Projects and Decision Making

Welcome to Module 3! This module focuses on building models to support data-driven decision-making and evaluating business projects. You will apply Excel tools like Goal Seek, data tables, and scenario analysis, while also mastering capital budgeting techniques such as NPV, IRR, and incremental analysis to select the most profitable investments.

Module 4: Driving Business Intelligence with Excel Dashboards

Welcome to Module 4! In today's data-driven world, the ability to create dashboards that are both interactive and informative is absolutely crucial for effective data analysis and decision-making. In this module, we'll dive deep into the art of dashboard design, focusing on the practical application of our lessons. You'll learn how to leverage Excel's Form Controls to build dynamic and user-friendly dashboards without the need for VBA programming. But this module is about much more than Excel functions. It's about mastering the design principles that make dashboards meaningful and effective. You'll discover how to craft displays of quantitative data that facilitate managerial decision-making. We'll explore essential theories, concepts, and methodologies to visualize and analyze real-world data. From mastering data retrieval techniques with INDEX to exploring ways to create dynamic charts, this module is designed to transform you into an adept dashboard designer, capable of synthesizing and visualizing complex data in an easily digestible format.

Summative Course Assessment

This module contains the summative course assessment that has been designed to evaluate your understanding of the course material and assess your ability to apply the knowledge you have acquired throughout the course. Be sure to review the course material thoroughly before taking the assessment.