Essential Power Query for Management Consultants (Udemy.com)

This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.

What is the aim of this course?

During many consulting projects, you will have to improve the quality of data before you start analyzing it. This process can be immensely improved by Power Query. Power Query also enables you to automate certain repetitive tasks without resorting to Programming in Excel VBA. In this course, I will teach you how to use Power Query during consulting projects.

In the course, you will learn the following things:

1. What are queries, and what is Power Query?

2. How to perform an essential transformation with Power Query

3. How to add columns in Power Query using conditions, rules, and AI

4. How to use Power Query to clean the data

5. How to merge data with Power Query

6. How to add/append data with Power Query

7. When to use and when NOT to use Power Query

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 in Retail, FMCG, SMG, and 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, McKinsey, 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?

Consulting projects are quite often fast-paced and require a lot of hard work.

Since you will always have less time than you need, it’s a good idea to increase your efficiency, especially when it comes to preparing data and analyzing it. Power Query is one of the main tools that will help you 10x the speed of your work. It will also help you automate a lot of work. Most firms don’t give you the full toolbox that you need in this area. This may lead to huge frustration during consulting projects and a lot of inefficiencies.

Therefore, I have decided to create this course that will help students understand and use Power Query in practice during consulting projects. The course will give you the knowledge of essential features of Power Query and insight into real-life case studies that will make your life during a consulting project much easier. Thanks to this course, you will know how and when to use Power Query during consulting projects. You will master essential features of Power Query that will make your life much easier.

To sum it up, I believe that if you want to become a world-class Management Consultant or Business Analyst, you have to have a pretty decent understanding of essential Power Query. That is why I highly recommend this course to Management Consultants or Business Analysts, especially those who do a lot of data analysis. The course will help you become an expert in Power Query at the level of McKinsey, BCG, Bain, and other top consulting firms.

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 with which you understand and analyze businesses. There is little theory – mainly examples, a lot of tips from my own experience, as well as other notable examples worth mentioning. We intend that, thanks to the course, you will learn:

1. What are queries, and what is Power Query?

2. How to perform an essential transformation with Power Query

3. How to add columns in Power Query using conditions, rules, and AI

4. How to use Power Query to clean the data

5. How to merge data with Power Query

6. How to add/append data with Power Query

7. When to use and when NOT to use Power Query

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 introduction to the course, as well as some general info on how the course is organized

• Essential Excel Tables. We will start by talking about Excel Tables. Excel Tables will help you save a lot of time in Power Query. Additionally, the output from Power Query will be returned to an Excel file, usually in the form of an Excel Table or a Pivot Table. Therefore, it’s crucial to understand how Excel Tables work and what interesting features you can use to present the data. In this section, we will look at the basic characteristics of Excel Tables.

• Essential Power Query. During most consulting projects, you will be using the essential features of Power Query. Since we believe in the 80/20 rule, we will start by discussing those essential features.

• Case studies devoted to Cleaning Data. As we have mentioned, Power Query will be very useful in improving the quality of data. In this section, we will go through a few case studies devoted to cleaning data.

• Merge Data. In certain situations, to get the report you want, you will have to merge data from different queries. In this section, we will see how this can be done.