Forum Discussion
Excel Capability Question
We are being asked to build something in Excel that can look at the overall population of a specific store and compare the scores for that store to a goal. If the score is below the goal, the store will be required to view some specific videos.
Caveats: The actual score dictates which videos the store has to take and this is not specific to an individual. Rather, it is for an entire location.
Is Excel even capable of doing something like this? I have some very experienced Excel users on my team, but we are just not sure if this is even possible.
4 Replies
You've given what is still a fairly vague or general description of the business objective here. My fairly vague and general answer to your question, is, Yes, it sounds like something that is very possible, but it will require a clearer definition.
- What do you mean, for example, by "look at the overall population"?
- What are you looking at that will yield a score?
- Are there multiple scores on different dimensions?
- Etc. (meaning, those are just starter questions)
Excel has a lot of power, and it's very likely that what you're wanting to do is indeed do-able, but lets get some good and clear definitions.
- Thanks for the response. I was able to get a bit more information. I hope this helps to determine if it can be done in Excel.
Several thousand locations (each identified by a unique number) will be scored each week for their performance against 11 different areas of focus to determine how they are doing for that specific subject (for example scanning accuracy rate, etc).
Each location has a target score for each Area of Focus that they need to meet for the week. Targets are dependent on the actual Area of Focus and may not be the same for multiple areas.
We are wondering if Excel can look at the 11 Area of Focus scores for a location each week and compare each score to its target. If a location is below target on a specific Area of Focus, Excel would display that information for the location.
The location would then be required to go into further training lasting anywhere from two to six weeks so that they can bring that Area of Focus score up. We would be tracking the further training as well through the weekly scores.
The overall score determines which one of 11 learning paths that store must take to improve a specific Area of Focus score.There is no doubt in my mind that this could be done. I suspect the Excel side of it is the easy part....getting all the data and organizing it will be the challenge. But it sounds like you're a large enough organization that the challenge will be readily met.
The kind of comparison of a score against a standard, comparing two values (to be more generic) is very basic Excel.
You said you've got experienced Excel users, so this should be right up their respective alleys.
