by Thomas Hänig
Using Qlik Sense in Excel for Effective Business Operations
By combining the analytical power of Qlik Sense with the accessibility of Excel, businesses can achieve new levels of productivity and insight. An Excel-Qlik integration enables teams to access near real-time data, perform better and faster analysis more easily, and present results in more accessible, actionable reporting.
As we delve deeper into the practicalities of combining these two powerful BI-tools, we'll uncover the reasons behind Excel's enduring role in business operations and demonstrate how Qlik Sense can be seamlessly integrated to enhance its capabilities.
Thomas Hänig
Head of Development and Data Analyst
Consulting AnalyticsGate
Table of Contents
What are the advantages of integrating Qlik Sense with Excel in your business operations?
Integrating Qlik Sense with Excel is the way forward for any business looking to streamline operations, enhance data manipulation and presentation capabilities, create forecasting models and comply with financial reporting standards. This integration brings several key benefits that empower departments across the organisation, from finance to sales.
Flexible formatting and first-class visualisations
Excel is renowned for its flexible formatting options. When combined with Qlik Sense, businesses can:
- Customise dashboards to show the right metrics and KPIs for your business.
- Enhance engagement by making complex data more accessible and understandable through superior visual presentation.
These capabilities create compelling, informative visualisations for data-driven business decisions and workflows.
Creating forecasting models and predictions
Creating forecasting models and predictions:
- Generate predictions quickly, leveraging near real-time data to forecast trends and prepare strategic responses.
- Use historical data effectively to predict future market behaviors and business outcomes.
This rapid modeling capability is invaluable for departments needing to make informed decisions swiftly and accurately.
Compliance with financial reporting standards
Finance departments need to create compliant financial reports. The integration ensures that financial reporting is both accurate and compliant with national standards. Integrating Qlik Sense with Excel helps them do:
- Create audit-ready reports that adhere to regulatory requirements with a clear trail of data processing.
- Compliance through simplified, error-free report generation.
Near Real-time connectivity of your data from any source
Connectivity is really important to make sure that business insights are as accurate and up-to-date. Qlik Sense enhances Excel's capability by providing:
- Connections to a variety of data sources, whether internal databases, cloud services, or external APIs.
- Near Real-time data updates to ensure that decision-making is based on the latest information.
- Excel as the endpoint and your preferred BI tool for all data work.
General efficiency, workflow, and time saving
Overall, the integration of Qlik Sense with Excel significantly enhances operational efficiency by:
- Overall, the integration of Qlik Sense with Excel significantly enhances operational efficiency by.
- Allowing more time for strategic tasks that add greater value to the business, rather than routine data manipulation.
These improvements not only streamline workflows but also free up valuable resources that can be redirected towards more impactful business activities.
Why has Excel remained so popular in business operations?
Excel is accessible and familiar.
Microsoft Excel is so popular because it has been a cornerstone in business operations across various industries for decades. Its sustained popularity stems from its flexibility, ease of use, and comprehensive features that cater to a wide range of business needs. Here are some key reasons why Excel continues to be a vital tool in business environments:
1. Ubiquitous presence:
Excel is part of the Microsoft Office suite, which is widely used around the world. Its familiarity makes it easy for new employees to adapt and for companies to implement without significant training.
2. Adaptable tool:
Excel's formulas, pivot tables, and charting capabilities make it incredibly versatile. It can be used for everything from simple data entry and bookkeeping to complex predictive analytics and financial modeling.
3. Compatibility with other tools
Excel integrates seamlessly with other business software and applications, including major ERP and CRM platforms. This allows for efficient data import and export, facilitating better data management.
What is Qlik Sense?
Qlik Sense is a modern analytics platform designed to support data visualization, exploration, and insight generation. It's built for businesses looking for a robust yet user-friendly solution that can handle complex data analysis with ease. Here are the key features and benefits of Qlik Sense, explaining what makes it a valuable tool for businesses.
What are the key benefits of Qlik Sense?
- Intuitive data visualisation: Enables easy creation of dynamic dashboards and reports with self-service analytics and smart visualisations that adjust based on data input.
- Powerful data integration: Qlik Sensen seamlessly aggregates data from various sources and updates information in real time for up-to-date analysis.
- Advanced analytics capabilities: Qlik uses an analytics model to find hidden patterns and connections, with artificial intelligence to suggest insights.
- Enhanced collaboration and mobility: Collaborative data exploration is powered by Qlik Sense and optimised for mobile access, ensuring insights are available anytime, anywhere.
How does integrating Qlik Sense with Excel streamline operations in controlling, finance, sales, and purchasing?
Integrating Qlik Sense with Excel is a strategic move that brings significant operational improvements to various business departments. By combining Qlik Sense's analytical prowess with Excel's ubiquitous data handling capabilities, organisations can enhance efficiency and improve workflows.
What are the general benefits across departments?
The integration simplifies the workflow across departments by allowing data to flow seamlessly between Qlik Sense and Excel, reducing the time spent switching between tools and increasing productivity.
Enhanced collaboration using Qlik and Excel
Teams across departments can share insights more effectively, as they can access the enhanced data visualisations from Qlik Sense in the familiar format of Excel and create easy reports.
How does Controlling profit from Qlik and Excel?
Controllers can use Qlik Sense to perform complex data analysis, which is then easily formatted and manipulated in Excel. This integration allows for deeper insights into cost management, profitability, and performance metrics.
The ability to create dynamic, interactive reports in Excel using Qlik Sense data ensures that controlling departments can continuously monitor financial health and operational efficiency with up-to-date information.
How does Finance profit?
Integrating Qlik Sense with Excel automates key financial processes such as budgeting, forecasting, and financial reporting. This reduces manual data entry errors and frees up time for strategic financial planning.
Finance teams can access real-time data feeds from Qlik Sense within Excel, enabling immediate analysis and swift response to financial opportunities or risks.
How does Sales profit?
Sales teams can utilise the integration to track performance against targets and analyse sales trends over time. Qlik Sense enhances Excel spreadsheets with visual analytics that make it easier to identify patterns and make data-driven sales strategies.
By merging customer data from Qlik Sense into Excel, sales teams can better segment markets, personalise sales approaches, and improve customer relationships through detailed analysis.
How does Purchasing profit?
Purchasing departments can leverage Qlik Sense to bring in comprehensive supplier data, which can be analysed in Excel to optimise procurement strategies and negotiate better terms.
What are the steps to successfully integrate Qlik Sense with Excel?
Integrating Qlik Sense with Excel requires a structured approach to ensure smooth functionality and data synergy. Here are three essential steps to achieve a successful integration:
Step 1
Prepare your environment
Ensure you have both Qlik Sense and Microsoft Excel integrated into your business operations. You may need to install specific Qlik Sense extensions or add-ins for Excel to integrate. Everyone needs the skills to use Excel and Qlik. Consider doing workshops if necessary.
Step 2
Establish data connectivity
Use Qlik Sense to establish connections to the data sources that you will be analyzing in Excel. This might involve setting up direct database connections or integrating with cloud storage platforms.
Step 3
Utilize Qlik Sense within Excel
Use the Qlik Sense add-in for Excel to import data directly into your spreadsheets. This can typically be done through a dedicated menu within Excel that the add-in provides.
Create and Customize Reports: Start generating dynamic reports and visualizations right within Excel using the imported data. Take advantage of Excel’s formatting and visualization tools to enhance the presentation of Qlik Sense data.
Using Qlik Sense and Excel with AnalyticsGate
AnalyticsGate is our Qlik Sense Excel add-in that significantly enhances the capabilities of Excel by integrating with the Qlik Sense platform. This add-in transforms Excel into a more powerful tool for business analytics. Here are the main features and benefits of using AnalyticsGate with Qlik Sense and Excel:
Enhanced Data Handling and Visualisation
AnalyticsGate enables users to easily load tables, fields, dimensions, and measures into Excel directly from Qlik Sense apps. This integration allows users to:
- With AnalyticsGate, users can develop complex, visually appealing reports in Excel that comply with legal standards and are suitable for presentation at any business level.
- Users can quickly model data to predict future sales, inventory requirements, or consumer trends directly within Excel, using the powerful analytics capabilities of Qlik Sense.
Real-time Data Connectivity
AnalyticsGate ensures that Excel is connected in real-time to data in Qlik Sense, allowing for up-to-date and accurate business intelligence.
Users can merge data from Qlik Sense with other sources within Excel, providing a comprehensive view that supports better decision-making.
Collaboration and Reporting
The Qlik Excel add-in together with our AnalytigcsGate Reporting Engine supports automated reporting, scheduling, and distribution of reports, which can be executed on-demand or delivered automatically via the Qlik Sense Hub, E-Mail, network, or folder locations. Users can also customize content delivery using looping strategies.
Comprehensive Security and Management
With the AnalyticsGate Management Console, administrators can easily manage reporting efforts, configure settings, and maintain oversight of the reporting environment within the Qlik Sense platform.
Simple Installation and Use
The Excel add-in can be installed on you local computer and does not required any additional hardware. The add-in can be Downloaded from our Website.
AnalyticsGate is compatible with several versions of Microsoft Office Excel (2016, 2019, 365), ensuring broad usability across different enterprise environments.
You can now also benefit from the advantages of AnalyticsGate: