Businesses, large or small, have to deal with a large amount of information from their various departments. All of this information needs to process and organised in a way that it can be easily understood and put to use. To make this possible, spreadsheets have become an indispensable tool for the operations of any business as it provides the capability of organising and categorising data logically. This data can then be used to solve problems and make decisions for the growth of the business. Microsoft Excel is very popular, but what you may not know is that C# can create Excel file as well. A business excel spreadsheet can be used in many ways to creatively and effectively accomplish specific tasks in the workplace. Companies like Simple Sheets even provide templates for automating these tasks.Let’s have a look at the use of Excel in business.
Data Entry and Storage
At the most basic of levels, you can create an Excel file for the purpose of entering and storing data. There are also features that you can use to input and view data easily plus customisable data entry forms that can be tweaked for the specific needs of your business.
Creating Questionnaires
Before you have some data to enter and store in Excel, it needs to be collected in a logical and systematic manner. One of the tools you can use is a questionnaire that is easy to create using Excel. These questionnaires can be manually filled in and the answers later entered into Excel, or they can be electronically filled such that the answers also get stored in a separate Excel worksheet.
Accounts and Calculations
In the past businesses got their accounting done manually but now, complex accounting can be done in a matter of minutes using Excel spreadsheets. You don’t even need accounting software. You can easily make forecasts, create budgets and plan ahead using Excel spreadsheets.
Scheduling
An Excel spreadsheet is a valuable tool for a business in creating schedules for employees and for the usage of resources. Employee schedules can have worksheets where employee names, hours worked and tasks accomplished are filled. Resource schedules can detail the type of resource, to whom, for how long and for what purpose it is assigned.
Administrative and Managerial Tasks
Business processes need to be thoroughly outlined so that employees can produce optimum results for business growth. You can create charts in Excel that smoothen workflows. A waterfall chart is a great tool for tracking team progress, for example. The versatility of Excel helps you to tailor everything to your business needs.
Data Analysis
Employees often need to derive meaning from large amounts of data in order to make decisions beneficial for the business. They can use a business Excel spreadsheet to organise, manage and analyse data and come up with a meaningful report. No matter how large a data set is, you can break it down into smaller subsets and conduct your analysis in detail and then make associations on how the subsets relate to the whole.
Marketing Tasks
Employees in the marketing team can create Excel files and list their sales and customer targets. This is important in managing the sales force and come up with marketing strategies that follow from results already seen in the past.
Reports and Visualisations
Raw and processed data can both be displayed in the form of graphs or charts and used to analyse data, to create reports and make presentations. These graphs and charts can be manipulated to look at data sets from different angles and provide a wide array of perspectives that can help a business make decisions.
Payroll
Creating an Excel file makes payroll much easier to manage. The total pay of individual employees, the length of time they’ve worked, their pay for each period and many other considerations can accurately be tracked with using an Excel spreadsheet.
Any planned changes can also be automated to reflect on the payroll when the set date arrives. An example of this is something like a scheduled pay increase for an employee.
Final Words
The above list highlights 9 common uses of Excel spreadsheets but there are many more uses than you can explore and use to improve productivity in your organisation; streamline workflow; enter, store and analyse data; and also to plan for the future.
About the Author
Maryn is a tech enthusiast and creative content writer. She is interested in all tech-related stuff, digital marketing, travel, fitness and personal improvement. Find Maryn on Twitter @MarynMcdonnell
