A Primer on Spreadsheet Analytics

TL;DR

This paper offers a comprehensive overview of spreadsheet analytics, detailing techniques, automation methods, and future research directions for extracting insights from spreadsheet models.

Contribution

It introduces native Excel approaches and discusses add-ins for enhancing spreadsheet analysis, filling gaps in automation and efficiency.

Findings

Native Excel methods for sensitivity analysis and goal-seeking

Discussion of add-ins for improved efficiency

Call for empirical research and feature development in spreadsheet tools

Abstract

This paper provides guidance to an analyst who wants to extract insight from a spreadsheet model. It discusses the terminology of spreadsheet analytics, how to prepare a spreadsheet model for analysis, and a hierarchy of analytical techniques. These techniques include sensitivity analysis, tornado charts,and backsolving (or goal-seeking). This paper presents native-Excel approaches for automating these techniques, and discusses add-ins that are even more efficient. Spreadsheet optimization and spreadsheet Monte Carlo simulation are briefly discussed. The paper concludes by calling for empirical research, and describing desired features spreadsheet sensitivity analysis and spreadsheet optimization add-ins.