Analytics/Excel educator; shares FP&A forecasting techniques (Python-in-Excel, ARIMA/ML), scenario modeling, and data storytelling for finance.
I've worked as a Sr. Director of BI and Analytics and I had to learn something the hard way. Despite what business stakeholders say, another dashboard is rarely the right answer to their needs. Why? Because what's behind the ask is a misconception about the actual need. They think another dashboard will help them get to the "why." And then they get frustrated because they can't get the answers they need. Stop the insanity. Organizations need more data analysis, not more dashboards.
Each week I send out a free analytics tutorial to 39,009 professionals. This week is Part 3 in a series on mining free-form text data using Python in Excel. Think about this for a second. Production quality, reproducible text mining inside an Excel...
I teach professionals data analysis. Not to be Data Analysts. Why? Because most analyses are conducted by business professionals, not IT. And with Copilot in Excel, that's only going to increase, not decrease.
I've been doing analytics for 14+ years. And I'm a Microsoft Excel MVP. It's 2026 and top Excel users know better than making this mistake: Ignoring Python. Because Copilot in Excel uses Python to work it's magic with your data. Even if it doesn't tell...