Why is the Global Excel Summit important for finance professionals?

If you’re like me, you probably learned Excel on the job. At some point, a colleague taught you VLOOKUP (🙌); later, someone introduced you to PivotTables, and eventually, you figured out how to create a tabular form with them. Oh wait, this is my Excel learning path, but I’m sure yours is similar. 😊

You might think your Excel skills are “good enough” or even that you’re “the best at Excel in your workplace.” Trust me, I’ve been there! But when I transitioned to being a full-time Excel creator, I realized there’s so much more to Excel than I ever imagined.

Back then, I was using only a fraction of Excel's capabilities. I thought VLOOKUP was "advanced” until I discovered XLOOKUP and then a whole world of other features.

I left my full-time job as a CPA on August 18, 2023. At the time, I believed my Excel skills were top-notch. But it wasn’t until I attended the Global Excel Summit in February 2024 that I truly understood the depth of what Excel can do. Following Excel influencers and consuming free content online had already taught me a lot, but the Summit took it to the next level.

In the corporate world, I know that training is often not a priority. We’re stuck with month-end closings, special projects, and all of the corporate drama 😂. What I wish I had known earlier is how investing time in learning Excel can save you countless hours down the line. Automating repetitive tasks, merging files seamlessly, and using tools like Power Query to clean data — these aren’t things you learn in school. They’re taught by experts. And now, with AI evolving faster than ever, staying up to date is more important than ever.

Let me share a few highlights from my experience at last year’s Global Excel Summit:

🧑‍💻 Jack Williams and Excel Labs

Last year, Jack Williams introduced me to Excel Labs. What is Excel Labs? It’s essentially AI integrated into Excel, a Microsoft Garage Project add-in that enables new, powerful functions. From summarizing complex topics to writing advanced formulas, this tool can help finance professionals. I was surprised to learn that Microsoft has “Garage” projects. How cool!

🤖 Leila Gharani and ChatGPT

In February 2024, the renowned YouTuber and 7-time Microsoft MVP Leila Gharani gave a fascinating session on using ChatGPT in Excel. She demonstrated how ChatGPT can be used to analyze the sentiment of customers by analyzing their comments in an Excel spreadsheet — I was flabbergasted when I saw that. You know when you receive 1000+ lines of data from customers and have to determine if they are happy or not? Well, it looks like ChatGPT can do that for you in Excel. I see this as very handy for finance professionals out there.

I even had a quick chat with Leila. It was so much fun!

📊 Purna Duggirala and Waffle Charts

Another standout session was by Chandoo (Purna Duggirala) on creating waffle charts. While this is a niche topic, it’s incredibly useful for finance professionals who need to create visually impressive reports for boards or investors. You don’t need to be a Power BI expert or spend thousands on fancy visualization tools. Excel has it all! It’s amazing what you can achieve with the tools already at your fingertips.

These are only a few sessions, but there is much more to it.

Not only does attending the Global Excel Summit give you 40+ hours of CPE credits for your mandatory training, but it’s also an amazing opportunity to network with some of the best in the industry if you attend in person. Prefer online? You’ll still get all the valuable sessions, though you might miss out on those face-to-face connections.

Don’t worry, though, the online chat will have your back! 😂

Hope to see you in London! ✈️

Best regards,
Dave