Any Office professional will need to keep their IT and tech skills up to date. This means that a full range of Microsoft office skills are vital. However, with the increase in big data and financial information being provided by modern ERP systems, employers are very keen to see that you possess Intermediate Excel Skills, if not Advanced Excel skills.
What is Advanced Excel?
A person who possesses Advanced Excel skills will generally be able to make efficient use of several advanced functions listed below:
- Pivot Tables
- Vlookups
- Sumifs
- PV Functions
- Date Functions
- IF Functions
- Goal Seeker, What If Scenarios
And there are many functions, but these are some of the main functions.
Why does business require Advanced Excel Skills?
Businesses in all sector have big data sets to be analysed and reported on. Advanced Excel provides the ability to manipulate data quickly. Essentially, this is vital and enables employees to add extra value to their roles.
Therefore, anyone who possesses Advanced Excel skills in likely to be of value to their employer. We can see jobs in all sectors requiring this skill. Training courses are available in all forms now and the quality on online excel courses has increased greatly.
Microsoft Office skills post pandemic
The pandemic has made it a business norm to work remotely, which means that we must be more self-sufficient using standard Microsoft office packages. We have already mentioned Excel, but his should generally be completed by good presentation skills in PowerPoint and organisational skills in Outlook.
However, to be able to stay well connected when working from home, you will need skills using Office 365, SharePoint and Teams. These programmes enable you to work all of your office documents at home and work well with your colleagues. This is an area that many people will need to update to feel comfortable working in the new normal of remote working.
Other popular programmes that are growing in popularity include Power BI. This is an analytical programme that connects well with Microsoft Office and enables for Business Intelligence and analytics. This is extremely important for anyone who is looking to develop their skills. The range of skills needed for the average office administrator has become much wider and this is important to understand.
Once a year to every two years, you should update to changing business demands and technology by taking a recognised course. There are many different products now to consider, from PowerPoint, Word, Outlook and Access, through to Power BI, Project and more focus programmes.