23 Jan Massaging the Consulting Pain Points: Excel Aerobics

C’mon consultants, let’s admit it. You are behind.

We have been consultants, and we understand your pain points. In this series we will focus on relieving some pain from your work, freeing you up to have more interaction with clients and increase your value-added.

In this first episode, we will start with exposing the trap of Excel Aerobics.

What are Excel Aerobics?

Consultants, especially those in strategy, have a love-hate relationship with excel. On one hand, it is a powerful tool that helps them crunch numbers and run models. And on the other, data consolidation, collaboration, and project management can be make for a tedious to-do list.

Consider this example. In a post merger integration project, a consultant has to track 150 roadmaps in 5 countries. Data is exchanged through excel and the consultant receives numerous reports. Merging the data in the ‘master’ sheet is frustrating and prone to errors both on the side of the consultant and on the side of the people sending the spreadsheets.

Another problem frequently occurring is that data is not delivered in one format. What may happen is that people will send blank figures to the consultants, leaving it for them to figure out where to put the data into their templates. Although these vast templates seem like a simple solution, inputting data into excel format is not the dummy-proof task for most people. Tasks in consulting projects can be accomplished much easier.

Dodge this non-sense with Treeveo.

Treeveo is designed and developed to have a crisp and clear user interface. Project participants and managers signup with the click of a button – no need to input tons of information or download and configure plugins. This lowers the resistance against supplying you with crucial information.

Treeveo gives you a platform to simply organize your data. Instead of one massive, unreadable excel template that is formatted to account for every possible scenario, Treeveo allows you to incorporate the important stuff up front. This keeps the rest of the reporting and proofs out of sight and mind until they are absolutely necessary. And if you need to do more advanced data crunching, you can export the cell fields of an entire project to several useful file formats.

Also, the data is supplied in a simple “tree-view” format. As the consultant, you are responsible for the top of the tree. As you cascade the strategy down into individual action items, you can assign the cell to a team member with a single click. When assigning responsibility to a person, that person knows directly what is expected of them – where to input information, what progress to show, and how to estimate and track actual results in any required metric. When a deadline approaches people are notified by email.

Stay more organized. Create more connectivity. Spend more time doing the things you like about your job.

Stay tuned to find out how Treeveo can help you with creating dashboard for management presentation!

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