How businesses ever coped without computers is a mystery. Without computer technology, no modern business, regardless of size, can hope to be efficient and to compete effectively. They are used to create business documents, to pay accounts, to communicate with clients and suppliers and to keep records, to name just a few common uses. But essentially, businesses focus on numerical data. With someone experienced in MS Excel consulting Sacramento business can make maximum use of their data and increase their competitiveness.

Spreadsheets, albeit in a primitive form, have been used for ages to perform various calculations. Of course, these days computers are used to perform calculations, using sophisticated spreadsheet programs. These programs allow users to perform a very wide variety of calculations and to generate business solutions. Sadly, many people and businesses never use spreadsheets because they think that they need advanced mathematical skills in order to do so.

Even people that struggle with very basic mathematical calculations can use spreadsheets productively. They can use templates, which are ready made business forms. All the user has to do is to fill in the relevant information in the spaces provided and all the calculations are performed automatically. In this way it is possible to produce professional invoices, budgets, sales orders and a host of other useful documents.

Spreadsheet programs are much more than just automated business document generators, however. They are extremely powerful programs that allow users to create very complex functions and formulae. Experienced programmers and consultants can create elegant business solutions by manipulating numerical data in many different ways. They can also display or submit their results in many different formats such as tables, projections or even graphs or slides.

These consultants demand very high fees and they can do so because they have to have multiple skills. They need to be programmers, skilled statisticians and mathematicians and they need to understand the business model of their client in order to satisfy their particular demands. Top consultants have years of experience and they inevitably help their clients to make better business decisions, thereby earning their high fees.

Businesses are generally not even aware of the fact that they have vast amounts of valuable data that can be used to help run their businesses more efficiently. Invoices, client records, quotations, balance sheets and many other documents that are kept for years contain valuable data. Spreadsheet consultants can help them to make use of their data by consolidating all the various sources and by manipulating them in different formats and models.

Great care should be taken to appoint a consultant that can be discreet and treat valuable company information as strictly confidential. He will need access to all the data in possession of the company. He should be asked to submit a proposal detailing the exact nature of the work that he will perform and the time line within which he plans to do so. It is always a good idea to ask for references.

When a business is able to use historical data to plan for the future, they often gain an edge over their competition. Spreadsheet consultants can help them gain this edge. They can certainly use and manipulate existing data in order to create new sets of information that can be extremely useful.