Running a business, especially one as innovative as Honored Abilities (HA), has brought me the task of constantly learning. The day-to-day of a business owner involves more than just the operational aspects of business; it involves growth and development, both professionally and personally. One thing I’ve come to learn in my years of leading a business is the importance of being able to visualize how the company is doing; Microsoft Excel is a tool that makes this possible! Speaking of learning, I do find Excel to be a fairly challenging program with a steep learning curve, but the capabilities of the program are profound when utilized correctly – if you know what you’re doing, Excel to do amazing things for your business.
What is an interactive dashboard?
An interactive dashboard contains a combination of charts, graphs, tables, and figures to help shed light on your complex data in an easy-to-read format.
Why is this important?
An interactive dashboard offers an interface for quick data interpretation. An interactive dashboard also leaves a good impression in front of your stakeholders, professors, investors, and potential clients. It’s one thing to tell someone how your business is doing, but wouldn’t you rather be able to show them?
Show me how already…geez!
The process begins with generating or otherwise gathering the raw dataset that you plan on using in this interactive dashboard. Use a table format with headers, labeling what each column is for, next we’ll be able to go on to create the pivot tables which will summarize the data based on the categories of your choice.
- Create or open a relevant spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel.
- Select your data, then click Insert > Table to get it all into a nice table format with headers.
- Enable the check mark beside ‘My table has headers’ (and, of course, ensure that it does), then click ‘OK’.
- You can format your table from the top menu to give it a different look (Excel generally uses a blue theme by default).
- Now, it’s time to use your table to generate a pivot table (or several) so that you can analyze and see patterns in your data. To do so, head to Insert > PivotTable and select ‘From Table/Range’.
- Give it a relevant name, pick ‘New Worksheet’ as the location, and click ‘OK’.
** Rather than repeating the same steps above to make three new pivot tables from scratch, you can simply hold the CTRL key (or option on Mac) and drag the new worksheet to the right to copy it. Repeat this in order to create three pivot table sheets. For clarity, rename the sheets by using the right-click menu. **
Charts with pivot tables
Now let’s create the charts on the information they hold…
- When your pivot table is ready, a pivot table field appears on the sidebar. Select the fields you wish to include in the report (which reflect the headers in your original table).
- Select two fields; if it’s a sales chart, it might be months and units sold.
- Head to the Insert > Charts menu and select the chart type you want to insert. (For example, pie chart)
- You can select a chart and click the style icon to change its appearance. You can also click the + icon and tweak the chart elements.