Advanced LOOKUP in Excel

INDEX and MATCH are two very powerful functions for performing advanced lookups in Excel. Using VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP or LOOKUP, you are restricted to performing lookups on either a column range or row range and NOT BOTH in the same formula. This can be quite restrictive especially when the value to be looked up is dependant on using both column range and row range simultaneously.

INDEX and MATCH can perform lookups where the other lookup functions either cannot work or can work by creating a very complex formula. For example if your data layout is in the form of a matrix (x cols by y rows) and you need to extract certain selected values based on their col position and row position, then the above two functions will perform this process in one straight forward formula.

Dashboard Tools

Any organization that has an MIS would most probably want to make it easy for the top management to get reports structured so as to show performance trends based on their KPIs. There are many tools that help produce such reports using various illustrations, the oldest and most broadly used being MS Excel. For organizations with large information systems producing 100,000+ transactions, using Excel as their core dashboard would be pushing it too far. "Dundas Dashboards" is a tool that makes it quite a breeze to meet the dashboard needs for such an organization.

Dundas is a server based dashboard tool that integrates well with most large databases (Oracle, SQL, MY SQL) and also allows for integration with smaller datasources like MS Access, Excel, Text files ect. This implies that with this tool you will not only have a dashboard system that links to your monstrous databases, but you will have the flexibility of integrating your transactional data from the large systems with other metrics that you have collected using the good old Excel spreadsheet.

For example to create a dashboard that shows trends in your sales and expenses and relating this to trends in macro economic parameters like GDP and inflation is not only possible but will always be upto date through connections to your data sources. Dundas also gives you lots of different illustration objects that make the dashboard not only look appealing but also easy to inteprete for top management team that is always short of time.

Check this tool out in their website - http://www.dundas.com/dashboard/

The dashboard tool for Excel lovers

Xcelsius is a very powerful tool for developing dashboards using an embeded Excel spreadsheet. You can also link it directly to other external data sources from databases or other spreadsheets.
This tool enables the user to export their dashboard to pdf, flash, powerpoint etc.

The feature that I believe makes this dashboard tool a great one is that the final product in flash uses the power of flash files quite well. That is the dashboard graphics are very high quality and also incorporates the movie style available in flash files. You can actually create a movie showing the trend movements that loops continually over a period you have specified.

This tool is a must have for dashboard ethusiasts that love Excel.