Danielle Stein Fairhurst's Page

The online world is truly an amazing resource - particularly when it comes to finding specialist information on “how to” to do practically anything. This is particularly the case for commonly used software such as Excel, and the closely related specialist area of Financial Modelling. No longer do we need to sit through hours of mostly irrelevant Excel training courses which show us how to use formulas you may never need. Research shows that people learn better by doing, and many of the answers w… Continue

The array formula is probably one of the most powerful tools in Excel - but also the most under-used. For some reason it is a tool that is shunned by many - even advanced users - of Excel. But just because most people don’t know how to use them, does that mean they should be avoided in a financial model?

If you want your model to be user-friendly and able to be used by other people - then, yes. Let’s face it; having a fantastic model no one else can understand is not really a great achievement.… Continue

Scenario analysis, sensitivity analysis and what-if analysis are a very important part of financial modelling but are really only slight variations of the same thing.

A sensitivity analysis, otherwise known as a what-if analysis, in financial modelling refers to the process of tweaking one key input or driver in a financial model, and seeing how sensitive the model is to the change in that variable. Scenarios, on the other hand, involve listing a whole series of inputs and changing the value of… Continue

According to the results of a survey on Financial Modelling I recently published, more modellers are concerned about keeping their skills up to date than are worried about Excel errors!

Key findings were:
1. Excel 2007 is still not widely used by business professionals at work.
Despite the fact that Excel 2007 has now been available for over two years, 71% of professionals are still not using the new programme at work.

2. Many Excel users are self-taught
Despite the fact that 64% of middle man… Continue