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- So you may be wondering,

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"Why even use Excel for project management?"

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Well, let's consider a few scenarios.

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Let's say you're a consultant,

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and you were hired by a small business.

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You're talking to the CMO and you find out

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they have dozens of projects going on,

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and you're wondering to yourself,

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"How do we know that these projects are successful?"

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The CEO points to the top-line revenue as justification,

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and he says, "Look how effective these campaigns have been."

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But you look at it and you think,

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"Hmm, I don't know,

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but they're a small business

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and they're not very organized."

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Let's consider another example.

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You're a government employee.

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This used to be me.

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I was an auditor for the Air Force,

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and when I was an auditor,

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there was an enterprise resource planner,

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so we call it an ERP system, that we all used.

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The thing is, that was implemented for us to avoid Excel.

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Now, the thing about this ERP system,

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it was great for pulling the data out,

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but if we had to generate a monthly report,

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it always ended up in Excel.

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So there was always a final last mile spreadsheet

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that we needed to organize projects.

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And what we found out was, we needed this spreadsheet

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because the ERP system couldn't really do what we wanted.

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Now, let's consider another example.

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You work at a Fortune 500 company.

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You're an analyst.

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Your team is disorganized.

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You guys do great work.

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Your manager doesn't care that you're disorganized,

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but her manager cares.

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So how are you going to keep everyone happy?

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What's a great way to stay organized

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without implementing a massive system?

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So what do all of these scenarios have in common?

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The answer is that Excel is a great place

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to solve the problem.

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Excel gives you immediate results.

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And what we're trying to do in terms of project management

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is not a good fit for the tools

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that our company has in place already.

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The ERP system might be too big,

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or the problem we're trying to solve

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might be too complicated for another tool.

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We might have to call up a developer and ask them for help

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to implement it.

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So Excel, because of its flexibility,

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is the perfect fit for the job.

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And finally, visuals are important for decision-making.

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Again, when you use an ERP system,

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you are stuck using the visuals

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that they have designed for you.

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But in Excel, you have a lot of variety and ability

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to visualize a lot of different data

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across different projects.

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Now that we know Excel is the perfect tool

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for project management, in the next video,

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let's talk about how to keep our data organized.