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These five Excel support webinars will help you master the excel building blocks. The beauty of MS Excel is that no matter how complex formulas and functions get, they are all made up of simple pieces. The excel support sessions below will demonstrate various functions of excel that you can use when undertaking steps 4 and 5 of the spending review methodology. Having good excel skills is crucial when undertaking a spending review, this series aims at providing you with the necessary skills required.

EXCEL SUPPORT

During this session, you will be provided with some tips and tricks around the use of the IF and Vlookup for complex data cleaning functions.

During this session, you will be taken through Vlookup and TEXT functions. The functions will be used to FIND and CLEAN data. This means creating uniform names and text, removing unnecessary spaces and symbol, and neatening the text for consistency. A core part of spending reviews is comparing expenditure data with other data and while the structure of the data may generally be aligned, the exact names differ enough to be a problem for Excel. Therefore, its critical make sure the data is uniform. Vlookup will assist in making the datasets uniform.

During this session, you will be taken through various statistical functions to be done within and outside the Pivot table. The functions are used to compare expenditure levels or performance across several locations or expenditure components. When using the functions, we can identify top spenders or top performers, order spenders according to level of spend or performance and assess particular implementation approach (e.g., insourcing vs. outsourcing has better outcomes)

During this session, you will be taken through the MATCH and INDEX functions. You will also learn how to structure and label your spreadsheets and use Excel functions to combine datasets.

During this session, you will be taken though the principles for cleaning and presenting graphs. This is not about making graphs look good but rather making a clear point using data. It adds credibility to your analysis. The session will assist you in asking the relevant questions before presenting charts and tables in order to get a point to the readers.