Decision Making with Excel for Managers (Udemy.com)

What is the aim of this course?

As a manager, you will be tempted to trust your gut and use your experience to decide what and how to do it. Quite often, this approach may be misleading. It is much better to use a data-driven approach, and before you make the decisio,n look at the potential consequences. In this course, I will show you how to make more rational choices as a manager using Excel. We will go through a lot of case studies that will help you master this skill.

In the course, you will learn the following things:

1. How to be data-driven in solving problems

2. How to make better decisions using Excel

3. How to handle uncertainty when you are making decisions

4. Which method, or framework, should you use in a specific situation

This course is based on my 15 years of experience as a consultant in top consulting firms and as a Board Member responsible for strategy, performance improvement, and turn-arounds in the biggest firms from the Retail, FMCG, SMG, B2B, and services sectors that I worked for. I have carried out or supervised over 90 different performance improvement projects in different industries that generated a total of 2 billion in additional EBITDA. On the basis of what you will find in this course, I have trained in person over 100 consultants, business analysts, and managers who are now Partners in PE and VC funds, Investment Directors and Business Analysts in PE and VC, Operational Directors, COO, CRO, CEO, Directors in Consulting Companies, Board Members, etc. On top of that, my courses on Udemy were already taken by more than 315 000 students, including people working in EY, Walmart, Booz Allen Hamilton, Adidas, Naspers, Alvarez & Marsal, PwC, Dell, Walgreens, Orange, and many others.

I teach through case studies, so you will have a lot of lectures showing examples of analyses and tools that we use. To every lecture, you will find attached (in additional resources) the Excel files, as well as additional presentations, and materials shown in the lectures, so as a part of this course, you will also get a library of ready-made analyses that can, with certain modifications, be applied by you or your team in your work.

Why have I decided to create this course?

I had the pleasure to support numerous Managers, Directors, COOs, and CEOs, and I have noticed that making decisions is a complicated process that requires a lot of data and the right approach to balancing the pros and cons. You also have to take into account the uncertainty that managers have to deal with on a daily basis. When you transition from a specialist to a manager or a director, usually nobody shows you how to make decisions using a data-driven approach. We will try to fix this gap. This course will help you master numerous techniques that will make your life easier and help you make the right decisions.

To sum it up, I believe that if you want to be a successful manager and CEO, you should master techniques and frameworks that will help you make better decisions. I will show in this course numerous useful methods and will teach how to use them in practice. That is why. I highly recommend this course not only to young managers and entrepreneurs but also to senior managers who want to learn a data-driven approach to decision-making.

In what way will you benefit from this course?

The course is a practical, step-by-step guide loaded with tons of analyses, tricks, and hints that will significantly improve the speed of analyzing and making decisions. There is little theory – mainly examples, a lot of tips from my own experience, as well as other notable examples worth mentioning. Our intention is that, thanks to the course, you will learn:

1. How to be data-driven in solving problems

2. How to make better decisions using Excel

3. How to handle uncertainty when you are making decisions

4. Which method, or framework, should you use in a specific situation

You can also ask me any questions either through the discussion field or by messaging me directly.

How is the course organized?

The course is currently divided into  the following sections:

• Introduction. We begin with a little intro to the course, as well as some general info on how the course is organized

• Basic tools to make decisions. In the second section, I will show you the essential tools that we will use to make decisions. I will show you what NPV, IRR, and time value of money are. Later on, we will go through 5 cases where we will apply this framework to make specific decisions on whether the investment makes sense or not

• Option comparison. In this section, I will show you how to compare different options. We will go through 3 cases: how to shorten the lifespan of a product, whether it makes sense to transition from selling a product to selling a service (SMCG), and what is a better choice, to rent or to buy an apartment.

• Rankings. In this section, I will show you how to use rankings in practice. In one case, we will analyze entering foreign markets. In the second example, we will use the framework to pick the perfect boyfriend for a friend

• Make-or-buy Analysis. As a manager, you will quite often have to decide whether to do something internally or buy it from a 3rd-party supplier. In these cases, you have to perform a make-or-buy analysis. We will discuss this in detail in this section

• What to do when there is a lot of uncertainty. As a manager, quite often you will have to somehow take into account the uncertainty. In this section, we will see how we can take it into account to make better decisions. We will discuss here: voting models, backward logic, strategic alignment framework, value proposition framework, portfolio decision framework

You will also be able to download many additional resources

1. Ready-made analyses that you can use for your firm

2. Tools that you can use for your firm

3. List of useful resources

4. Links to additional presentations, articles, and movies

5. Links to books worth reading

At the end of my course, students will be able to…

• Make much better decisions as a Manager

• Master a data-driven approach to decision making

• Analyze any decision in Excel using a data-driven approach

• Carry out a make-or-buy analysis