While productivity improvement may cover a whole gamut of human activities, this site restricts itself to the use of spreadsheets in a business environment. One cannot deny the power of spreadsheets in improving office productivity – be it presenting relevant information ( from a huge of pile of data ) in an easy-to-understand format or making an in-depth analysis of this information to come to meaningful conclusions in a much shorter time or playing out what-if scenarios in a decision making process. It is expected that such conclusions would help one to reach appropriate decisions sooner, to deal with the opportunity / problem at hand.
There are quite a few spreadsheet programs available in the market ranging in price from a few hundred dollars to those that are practically free. They vary in terms of the features they offer and their hardware / software requirement. To keep my promise, I chose the one that is free and yet easy to use ( you guessed it right, Google Spreadsheets ). The power of Google Spreadsheets lies in its ability to make life easier for the average soul in the office, while a professional can make some pretty cool things with it.
There is nothing to install, no CD/DVD disks to keep safe, no need to make backup copies (just in case). No need to keep track of software versions, no worry about compatibility and finally free of software licensing issues. Even your documents are safe, backed up every minute and are accessible from anywhere in the world.
Google Spreadsheets is easy to use, but it needs some dedication (see, there is the catch) to learn it first.
When I was learning the other popular spreadsheet program often I had to balance a bulky book on my lap, remembering the instructions, tapping on the keyboard or reaching for the mouse (to follow the instructions of course) while making sense of what I am doing, all at the same time. It was very tiresome, but I persevered.
To save myself this trouble in the future, I turned to free on-line resources for training. But I found that either they gave instructions in a piece-meal fashion or they gave an animated video where the mouse pointer moves far too quick for me to replicate what it is doing. While with the former, I couldn’t get the whole picture, with the latter I had to run the video over and over again at each step.
I think this site may overcome some of these difficulties, for it tries to teach visually every step involved in learning a lesson. You need only to scroll up, if you need to clarify some point previously discussed. And one can go at one’s own pace and yet have complete picture of what to expect next.
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