Escaping Excel Hell – Using Graphical Add-Ins

If you’re familiar with my articles on "Escaping Excel Hell", then I’m often suggesting you replace Excel with a proper database-backed system.

This can be for planning/budgeting or a host of other business applications.

But one area where Excel remains extremely useful is for management reporting. Whilst there’s a key role for structured dashboards, Excel also has an important role to play.

One way or another information from a database system can be placed into Excel, where you can format it and present it in a variety of ways.

However there are two useful formats that are not available in standard Excel:

1. SFE Sparklines (see comparison with new standard features in Excel 2010)
2. Gauges for management dashboards (see one example in the screen shot above, which is just one of several formats)

Used selectively and carefully, these graphics can add great value to management reporting.

The gauges are available under a free 30-day trial from the Camwells website.

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