Community Power BI project – rescuing the lost archive – they think it's all over

I have to admit that, for most of that time, I have wondered whether we would have convinced the world at large of the productivity benefits of investing in Excel skills before Excel itself became irrelevant to businesses. During that period, there have been several challenges to the use of spreadsheets – some resulting from high-profile business or governmental disasters in which spreadsheets have been implicated, and others from technological advances.

Examples of the disasters are not hard to find: from Enron and the consequent Sarbanes-Oxley Act, through the West Coast Mainline bidding debacle, and on to much more recent issues such as the Public Health England coronavirus case tracking data loss. On the technological side we now have access to an extensive range of accounting packages that include many of the features that we would previously have needed to use spreadsheets to fulfil. We also have a wealth of apps for recording expenses, carrying out impromptu calculations and maintaining lists – all things that people might have previously used a spreadsheet to achieve.

In spite of all of these issues and developments, the spreadsheet still shows few signs of imminent eradication. In fact, the continued importance of spreadsheets has led to very significant new Excel developments that have the potential to extend spreadsheet use into whole new areas. This might be mainly obvious in the introduction of data analysis and visualisation tools such as Power Query and Power BI but there have been some very significant improvements in Excel's core, cell-based, functionality as well. A long overdue revamp of lookup functions has led to the replacement of LOOKUP(), VLOOKUP(), HLOOKUP() and MATCH() with the far more robust, efficient and capable XLOOKUP() and XMATCH(). The introduction of advanced functions such as LET() and LAMBDA() has made Excel 'code complete' and extended the range of advanced problems that Excel can be used to solve. Dynamic Arrays have removed one of the most significant of Excel's shortcomings by allowing a formula to 'spill' into as many cells as are required. New programming solutions such as Office Scripts provide even more ways to extend Excel's use as an automation tool. A trawl through the updates Series/Topic of the Excel Community article archive portal will reveal many other important changes:

Convinced as I might be of the continued relevance of Excel and the need to understand how to use it properly and to keep up with significant changes, it is always reassuring to find real-world evidence of the demand for Excel skills. The most recent Modeller's Miscellany email (Issue #74) from Full Stack Modeller was headlined: 'Careers // Wall Street paying a premium for Excel skills' and carried a link to a Bloomberg article: 'Wall Street’s Hottest Commodity: College Grads With Excel Skills'.

Although the article itself didn't contain much more information on the Excel skills issue than included in the title, it did make reference to the likes of JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs and overall recruitment issues in the current employment market.

Although the article concentrated on banking rather than accountancy, it does provide evidence that Excel skills continue to be valuable to employers. Of course, the Excel Community provides key resources to help everyone to understand the skills that they already have and might need and to improve those skills. The Spreadsheet Competency Framework lists spreadsheet skills by role to help employees to know what roles their current skills suit them for and what additional skills might be most useful for them to acquire. It also helps employers know what skills to look for in applicants and when reviewing the training requirements of existing employees. Excel Community membership provides access to a range of resources that can help fill any skills gaps: from detailed technical articles of specific relevance to those working with financial information to an extensive range of recorded webinars, with further webinars being added frequently. However, perhaps most relevant to Excel skills in the workplace, is the range of online courses included as part of membership.

Regardless of how you ensure the adequacy of your Excel expertise, it does seem that doing so could play an important role in your future employment prospects.