Business modelling and Excel automation

Starting with the business

I taught myself Excel and VBA while working as a freelance business consultant. I needed to model how a business would work: its assumptions, funding, options and the consequences of different decisions. Learning the technology grew out of that need.

Working with start-ups, SMEs and social enterprises meant connecting an idea to practical questions about customers, resources and viability. A useful model made those relationships visible and let a client explore what would happen if an assumption changed.

From models to reusable tools

That approach developed into work on workbook efficiency, automation and analytical reporting. The question expanded from how to perform a calculation to how someone else could repeat a process reliably.

Examples from my later analytical work include a reporting workbook with separate data, sorting and overview sheets, and a statistical reporting template combining time-series and funnel-chart views. Supporting VBA modules manage workbook actions such as saving and the visibility of the Excel interface.

These historical examples show the structure of the work. I do not have a verified before-and-after measure of time saved to publish here.

What carried forward

The lasting skill was learning to move between the business picture and the detail that makes a tool work: assumptions, data, calculations and the steps a user follows.

Power Platform brought deployment and permissions into that picture. AI introduces questions about evidence, judgement and authority. In each setting, I begin with the process the technology is supposed to support.