I took to the stage at Her+ Data Manchester's first session of 2025. On the eve of valentine's day the theme of evening was Love it or Loath It, visualising data in Excel, Tableau and Power BI. I was there to wax lyrical about Excel.
I tried to to read from my script, but because I had a microphone to hold in one hand and a slide deck to click though in the other, I had to ditch my notes to avoid a genuine mic drop situation. The stage is not my happy place but sometime you just have to speak up. The script was in my head, when it is your story, it is easy to remember. My script:
I'm going to tell you about my relationship with data. It hasn't always been a bed of roses, and I've got some horror stories.
One thing I know for sure is that Excel has been a faithful companion on my career journey.
But it was a real sliding doors moment for my introduction to Excel.
Before I show you what I love and hate about Excel visualisation, I’d like to share how that sliding doors moment has shaped my career journey. And why I left my comfortable and rewarding job to create more opportunities for small business to inject data skills into their workforce.
My parents embraced technology and cultural change. They are liberal Mancunians born in another era, working hard for a peaceful and prosperous, equitable world.
Here they are working with their machines.
Dad sold computers. His productivity was hard to comprehend. Mum made clothes. Her productivity was easy to understand.
I wouldn't say I was an anxious child, but there was one thing that I spent a lot of time worrying about: what I would do, day in, day out, all day long to earn a decent living.
I really considered engineering. Ask me about my work experience in 1996 where I went into an all-male office and made tea for the boys for a week.
Early career software said I'd make a good statistician or a barmaid. Now, I knew what a barmaid was, but I had no idea what a statistician did all day. It felt like a deadly boring job involving tally charts on paper, which I instinctively knew would be eclipsed!
In my generation, we were all encouraged to enjoy and prolong our education, so I leaned towards geography — learning how the world works naturally, politically, and economically — and I studied it at uni.
Finally, I got some career advice that felt well suited.
"Work with people, become a HR adviser." They said.
I joined a care agency and studied Human Resource Management. All the theory was brilliant, especially around employee relations, learning and development, and creating high-performing teams. But in my elevated HR officer role, I did not have the experience or broad enough shoulders to call out that my work was causing me moral injury. For a care organisation, I did not think it cared for its staff on the front line or those in the office.
By the age of 25, I had decided what could motivate me during long office hours. Understanding consumer behaviour and bringing products to consumers. I very nearly got a market research job in Basingstoke, but I wanted something more customer-facing.
So I finally combined what was hard coded into my work DNA: computing and making clothes. I became a merchandiser for older boys clothes at Tesco.
I arrived at Tesco with an appetite to learn, but OMG! Here I was in an open-plan office with hundreds of colleagues. Productive, creative, energetic.
I was part of a six-strong team recruited to bring a new older boys clothing category to 7-15 year-old boys. Sourced from factories in China, India, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and England. This new category was distributed to 400 plus stores via six distribution hubs.
My job was to analyse performance against the plan, analyse sizing and then reinvest that knowledge into re-buys and making sure stock went to the optimum locations.
This was six years after the Agile Manifesto had been written. I joined Tesco while they were migrating from all their legacy software into Oracle during a simpler desktop project with the aim of going paperless.
What I realised was — no matter your geography degree on how the world worked — the world was changing very rapidly, accelerated by computing and tech advances.
No one was really ready for how this information technology was going to change EVERYTHING.
Us newbie trainees were given one day of Excel training that kick-started my ability to handle big data, analyse what was important, influence systems and outcomes, and impact supply and improve operations. I would not have managed all this without knowing how to run with data in Excel. My one day of workplace training has served me well for my entire career.
I went to Pets at Home when they had around 100 stores and one depot and left them when they had 400 stores and two depots. I supported business as usual and better business through the implementation of SAP, SharePoint, and macros. We automating lots of dull and tedious tasks primarily through Excel before software engineers developed them robustly. We bought some shit software, where we made Excel fulfil its shortcoming.
My next stop were Per-Scent, who were grappling with a Navision upgrade. They distributed fragrance and sold to everyone.
After three Christmases of trading perfume, I became way too familiar with Amazon's economic ordering algorithm that would scrape the internet and recalculate whilst we were sleeping. I became fed up of working with great businesses who were struggling with everyday data wrangling and analytics skills, who in my mind were light years behind where they could be with better data skills.
I handed in my notice to go off and develop an learning and development business so that people in businesses had somewhere accessible and affordable for in-person help with their data needs. ivity was born.
For the last few years, I have helped people adopt, configure, and enhance all kinds of tech products. Excel skills are my forte, but there are teams crying out for independent L&D data educators for every system known to man and I stand by my belief that if everyone had better day-to-day Excel skills the work would be more productive, less wasteful and creativity would thrive.
Right so why do I love Excel?
In summary Excel is a gateway drug to better data and more informed decision making.
Excel is for everyone and if there was just a little uptick in people's confidence with data in Excel we would see hours of work-time reduced, huge decreases in physical and mental wastes and better work in the whole end to end supply of everything.
Love it loath scenario one : I've sent you all the data
I shared my rules of engagement for enchanting storytelling that would save everyone's time.
Freeze the panes
Tidy the header row
Auto-fit the columns
Format dates and numbers
Do a little summary table around at least two columns that are of interest. This makes you sense check your data and helps people engage with the data faster.
Lets talk ribbons.
Before you have the confidence to customise your ribbon bar, it is important to take a breath and remember that you are looking at the same bar as an advanced data pro.
Wouldn't it be nice if we had a way of being slowly introduced to the most useful buttons in Excel?
Whilst it is overwhelming at a glance, it is logical. I highly recommend you get a whistle-stop tour from a Excel fan. My services are available.
Charts for charts sake
Listen up, no one wants to see a pie chart for you to express a percentage of number under 10,000! Not even if you are using the most complementary colour schemes!
Other charts do exist, and if you are not sure, let Excel make recommendations for you.
Reason 4
Excel is not a database. But you can connect data from a variety of databases and transform it in Excel. Power Query is ace. IYKYK. If you don't know, you are missing out.
Reason 5
Formatting place names as geographical tags opens up a whole world of map visuals...
And who doesn't love a map?
I planned to say thank you and exit quickly.
That did not happen I got a load of questions. What a lovely group the Her Data Mcr pulls.
Jenny
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