Top n Lists with Excel

I love data! I love collecting it, analyzing it, finding answers inside it, and ultimately presenting it. But even I find it hard at times to sort through and make sense of it all. That’s why I love dashboards and really encourage all business owners, managers, and employees to incorporate them into their daily work lives. Whether it’s having a clear look into the health of the company, figuring out which expenses are out of hand, or understanding how fast (or slow) customers are paying their bills; well prepared and presented dashboards can save decision makers a lot of time and money.

One of the most fundamental things you can achieve with dashboards is the filtering of data, narrowing information into the most pertinent, important, or actionable. Commonly in the form of top n lists, where n is any number of items you care to look at, using MS Excel to organize this type of information is actually fairly simple. Even if you are allergic to dashboards or any structured system for understanding information, there are certainly other applications for it. Maybe you’re keeping a running total of the minutes your basketball players are logging, trying to avoid fatigue. Or you want to continually look at which products are your best sellers. Or maybe you just want to keep track of and reward your top sales people. Again, all of this is easy and made possible with Excel. Read more of this post