You’ve just been hired as a Data Analyst for Maven Electronics, a global electronics retailer.

It’s 4:00pm on a Friday when you receive an urgent email from the VP of Sales, asking you to build a brand new Excel report for regional sales managers. To make matters worse, the data is over the place – SQL servers, CSV files, even static PDFs – and she needs it first thing Monday morning. Yikes 😬

In this hands-on demo, Maven Analytics Founder and Lead Instructor Chris Dutton walks through this business case while showcasing the power of modern Excel tools like Power Query, Power Pivot and DAX.

You’ll start by using Power Query to extract, transform, and load data from external sources like SQL databases and CSV files.

Next you’ll build a relational model to join the tables without writing a single formula, conduct some exploratory analysis using Power Pivot, and define calculated measures with Data Analysis Expressions (DAX).

Finally you’ll use Pivot Charts and slicers to design a simple interactive report that the sales managers can use to analyze revenue trends and product performance.

All in a matter of minutes 💪

Microsoft Excel is an incredibly powerful data analytics platform, yet less than 1% of users know how to leverage its most powerful business intelligence tools.

These skills will not only allow you to work smarter and faster in Excel, but also help you build foundational database and ETL skills that can easily be applied to tools like SQL or Power BI.