Take a break from our Pivot Table Tutorial

I was reading an article in a Sinapore newspaper which talks about using business intelligence and using the right tool to yield predictive data. It was a worldwide bank which has successfully cull their databases for information as they assess the likely response for their new credit card.

As I read it, I was thinking that small and medium business owners must be envious of the cash that big corporations have to purchase tools to extract this data (customers' profile) out of their systems. What these small and medium business owners don't know (and I hope that they are reading this), is that their have the tool right in their desktops. Which tool is more suitable and at NO incremental cost to them than using Excel. I expect some of them to be skeptical about what I said but I would challenge them to find out more. One such evidence I have provided is the current subject which I have been sharing with you on this blog, that is, the Excel Pivot table.

It is not only capable of pulling out data from an Excel Spreadsheet. In fact, I have used Excel to pull out data from huge databases and present reports without the need to learn another software tool. Excel is all I need. If you are a small and medium business owner, come back often to this blog and you will know that I am not lying.

It was mentioned that business intelligence requires technologist and business analyst. True and not true. As I was working for some of the mobile companies and even a Fortune 500 company, I was the one (a business analyst) that are pulling out the data from databases and systems. And throughout my job, the IT department did not really intervene. If you are a business analyst, you must also be equipped with the skill of to cull databases or the concept of doing it. This is because data quality is important and half of these technologists do not know which set of data to extract. You have to because it affects your analysis. As the saying goes, garbage in garbage out.

There is so much to share and I can write and write but I wouldn't want to overload you with too much. I am planning to commit some resources to start a page on this. Look out for it. I am still planning the site.

If you want to learn about pivot table hands-on and are in Singapore on 12 and 19 Dec, you may want to consider signing up for my course. It will benefit those who are interested in business intelligence. Click here for more details.