Excel

Advanced formulas (vlookup, sumif, dsum, iferror, match, choose, search, nested if’s), statistical analysis, solver, pivot tables, macro’s, vba programming, external data/ODBC, automation, linking spreadsheets together, multiple tabs, financial modeling, automation

Access

ODBC connections to ERP/CRM/GL, data warehouse projects, data manipulation, field creation, make table, update fields, append tables, parsing fields, data integrity and quality checks, auditing, advanced formulas, macros, VBA, forms, cross tab reports, normalizing or denormalizing data, translation tables, integration and automation with Excel

Financial and other analysis

Budget variance analysis, cash flow analysis and forecasting, pro forma income statement or balance sheet, forecasting, pricing analysis, sales incentive plan modeling, commission tracking, productivity analysis, six sigma analysis, Google paid search data analysis, profitability analysis, Marketing competitive analysis, McKinsey consulting price studies, M&A due diligence, manufacturing cost analysis, on time delivery, insurance IBNR level analysis and other actuarial type analysis, health care data analysis: physician profiling, provider contract analysis, Medicare reimbursement.

Segment Profitability

This is a high demand area that most business managers want but give up on because they’re told it’s impossible. I will take a company’s financial statement, and break it down using transaction detail from ERP/CRM/GL systems, and using direct or indirect allocations, I will create a pro-forma income statement by whatever sort you wish: by customer, by SBU, by geographic region, by sales channel, by product or product grouping. You may be surprised to see that your top customer is not as profitable as you thought, or what you thought was an unimportant product is a cash cow.

Data groupings,reporting fields

Your system provides a product report for your 300 products, but it’s nearly useless because it prints on 12 pages and the way your look at your products are grouped into 10 product families. You want to group products together into product families for a nice, clean one page report. Your IT group tells you it’s impossible because it’s a pain and they’re not sure how to do it. I do this all the time. I set up translation tables that are easy to maintain and provide automated reports for you in Excel.

Advanced Excel modeling

Most companies of certain size have a senior financial analyst who models out next year’s budget, five year strategic plan, or ad hoc strategic decisions. You don’t need one; I do this for you at fraction of the cost. I can help you create and maintain a highly specialized, advanced Excel model to forecast your business or create an operation plan. A tab that includes all the assumptions for growth and trends: pricing, market share penetration, product mix change, cost reduction, etc. Multiple tabs that link together, tied together with vlookup and sumif formulas. Financial statements projected out to future periods based on those assumptions. Scenarios for M&A activity or other large initiatives. Scenarios for best case, typical case, worst case.

Process and report automation

This is a very common area I’ve helped companies with, automating reporting processes, compressing the accounting close cycle, turning a three day process into ten minutes, or even eliminating an FTE position.

System Integration

You have data from different sources (ERP, CRM, GL, budget, etc). You pull reports from different sources and manually combine them for reporting. Or worse, you have no way to combine data sources and you wish you could. I combine them for you and automate reports and analysis.

Format report for a form

Your customer requires specifications or other data in a form. You can have someone spend three days a month copy/pasting or inputting data, or I can build a report using macros and VBA to automate the process.