It's taken as a matter of fact that business decisions should be driven by data, but there's not a straight line between increased reporting and increased profit. In fact, 8 out of 10 companies say they have no idea how to turn their data into valuable insights.
What if you could bring together financial planning, real-time reporting, and simple but effective tools to lead better decision making from the role you're in? Learn how to move from data to profitable insights and take your career higher. Rachel Guthrie teaches essential data and presentation techniques for results-driven professionals in this powerful live course.
Organizing data and creating reports used to make you feel accomplished. Now, it just feels like a non-achievement. You want to be able to share insights that shape a path forward, but instead, you're stuck looking backward at stubbornly unrevealing data. In this class, you'll learn the same workflows that Microsoft champions to ensure their talent can focus on the work that counts the most.
There are a lot of unknowns in any project, but one thing is for sure — you can't improve what you can't see. Without having real-time visibility over changing metrics, project ROI is a game of chance. In this course, Rachel teaches you how to avoid unpleasant budget surprises with data-based financial planning and real-time, dynamic data dashboards.
There's only one thing that matters in the career jungle: getting your ideas heard. And that doesn't mean being the loudest person in the room. In this course, you'll build your own stakeholder-friendly budget models, investment analysis, data models, and dashboards. Rachel will teach you how to create clear stories and takeaways from complex data and get noticed by the people who matter most.
This is the only course that moves you through project planning to dynamic reporting with one-on-one coaching from an expert.
Discover time-saving tricks for cutting out repetitive tasks and start turning static reports into clear paths forward.
Remove uncertainty from your bottom line. You'll learn how to create spot-on financial plans and budget models to measure and control real-time financial returns.
Transform complex data into easy-to-understand models and dashboards in Excel and Power BI. Get one-on-one guidance from a Microsoft business leader as you practice creating data resources that you can template for future projects.
Learn how to make your recommendations land, every time. Rachel will teach you her visualization and storytelling tricks for making data-based business decisions easy for owners and stakeholders, regardless of their level of data fluency.
Replace the weak spots in your resumé with sought-after skills. Rachel will teach you how to pitch your experience on your resumé and in-person, plus you'll hear from a special guest speaker on how to stand out.
Learn the main principles of financial data analysis and how to ready data for analysis in Excel.
Assignment #01: Import the provided data set into your workbook and clean / manipulate it using the TRIM and SUBSTITUTE functions. Remove any duplicates.
Resource: Rachel Guthrie's Personal Excel Cheat Sheet.
Dive into financial planning using Excel functions. Forecast a project’s final cost and completion times and calculate amounts, rates, and time to achieve financial goals.
Assignment #02: Using the functions learned in class, complete a financial plan from a sample data set, showing project status and projections of cost and completion times.
Take your financial analysis to the next level using advanced Excel tools like Goal Seek, Scenario Manager, Solver Tool, and Forecast Sheet.
Assignment #03: Build a budget model by following a set of instructions and requirements to practice tools used in class.
Discover the power of Excel functions for investment analysis.
Assignment #04: Apply the methodologies and functions learned in class to a provided data set to determine if a proposal meets the established criteria for investment.
Learn when and how to use pivot tables and how to create charts to visualize your data.
Assignment #05: Using a provided dataset, follow instructions to produce a defined set of charts / graphs and determine which chart gives the most insight to the data.
Explore Power add-ins with Rachel. Walk through how to use them step-by-step in a real-world situation.
Assignment #06: Create a data model by importing a provided dataset to Power Query. Use Power Pivot to get insights from the data.
Learn how to use the intuitive data manipulation and rich visualizations of Power BI.
Assignment #07: Begin building a data model by loading tables to Power BI from a variety of provided sources, as demonstrated in class.
Learn how to build a data model with table relationships and defined measures in Power BI.
Assignment #08: Using the Power BI tables you created in the previous assignment, define table relationships and optimize the dataset for reporting.
Learn advanced financial data analysis techniques using the DAX programming language.
Assignment #09: Build on the model you've already developed: follow instructions to create new measures and columns using DAX syntax learned in class.
Resource: Supercharge Power BI: Power BI Is Better When You Learn How to Write DAX by Matt Allington
Use Power BI to publish dashboards and reports in a business context.
Assignment #10: Publish a Power BI dashboard with supplementary reports using the data model from previous lessons.
Uplevel your storytelling and messaging skills to drive meaningful impact from your data analysis and reporting.
Assignment #11: Learn how to “start with 'Why'” in your personal pitch: Watch Simon Sinek’s TED talk, “How Great Leaders Inspire Action”, (20 min) and create a slide pitching “Why” a company would want to hire you. Record your elevator pitch for Rachel in a 45-second video.
Hear from a special guest speaker on how she climbed from accounting to a supervisory role at Microsoft, including her tips to enhance your resumé for the job you want.
Assignment #12: Update your resumé to include the skills you’ve acquired in this course.