First and foremost, this is not an advert for Microsoft. In their Office Suite, they just happen to have developed the single most powerful computer tool on the planet and jolly well done to them.

improve productivity with Excel

The more we use Excel and Word, the more powerful we learn they can be. Most people barely touch the surface of just how powerful and helpful they are. I regularly see customers who complain that their hours are too long and they spend far too much time doing boring admin. I take a look at their system and it’s astonishing how unintuitive, complicated and unwieldy it is. "I just copy and paste here and make a calculation there and bring this information from here and write this!"

No bloody wonder they’re spending too long on admin.

It’s only a rule of thumb, but if £1000 were spent on Excel in every small business in the land, I’d guess the average time saving, per computer user would be in excess of 5 hours a week.

How many computer users do you have at your company? If it’s just three, say and you save 15 hours. Even if you only pay them £10 per hour, that’s a return on investment inside two months. What else could they be doing in that time? Sales, marketing, warehouse duties or even saving you the cost of professional cleaners coming in. In the early 2000s, I persuaded my then boss to put his hand in the company wallet for a clever Excel design. My reward for the additional time I created, was an afternoon of telesales with commission added to my salary. We both benefited from that.

Now, everything I do is automated and it’s brilliant. Detailed quotes are sent in minutes rather than hours with the opportunity for error considerably reduced. I buy something and tap it into my phone or my PC and it’s perfectly recorded for accounts purposes. I am informed by people far cleverer than me, that Excel is like the human brain. We barely use a tenth of its ability to function.