MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
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Righty,
Have gathered data using excel but TBH struggling to automate output - graphs, charts, etc without slow response times.
Any product out there that folks could recommend which is:
Easy to capture/input data?
Easy to extract reports with ability to focus on a number of variables?
User friendly
Does not cost the earth
Looking at volume and cycle time analysis primarily
Once you get the hang of Visual Basic for Applications, you can do pretty much everything / anything. E.g. my current application parses about 600 Mb of data from our Network Management System and distils it down to a few pretty graphs / tables in a matter of minutes.
Only slight snag is there is a learning curve to get up, but once you've got the hang of it, it's very quick to do custom analyses.
Data Base and internet
what version of excel you running?
> 2010 and you can download the microsoft powerpivot add in
this adds another tab which allows you to manage a set of tables for reporting. They are loaded into memory and reports run very quickly and the data can be sourced from a 'linked table' where you have entered your data.
couple of links
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/jj192782.aspx
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/bi/powerpivot.aspx
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/bi/Products/PowerView.aspx
from the keyboard? from files? from multiple users?Easy to capture/input data?
usually this has a lot more to do with the smartness of the person developing the 'report' than the tool itself.Easy to extract reports with ability to focus on a number of variables?
that is all relative; e.g. Excel is very user friendly for most stuff, but that can also make it a PITA for repetitive stuff. Its also surprisingly powerful, but most people stop learning at about 20% of it.User friendly
thats all relative. Your not cost the earth is my friggin expensive or someone elses insignificant cost.Does not cost the earth
Looking at volume and cycle time analysis primarily
you'll need to tell us more. How much data, how much 'drilling' to find the right bits.
You can probably do whatever you want within VBA, but if you have no VBA experience there is a learning curve. I do have VBA experience and would prefer never to use it again! In fact if I was looking to do that sort of thing I would be investigating: https://datanitro.com and doing it in Python; or I might just write the whole app in Python depending what you are doing!
Excel is a spreadsheet, it sounds like you are trying to use it as a database, which it can be shoehorned to do but its not quite the right tool for the job. The downside is databases are usually more complex to set up...
If my customers can't actually define the problem / steps then thats when I know a problem is going to be expensive! If its something you can train someone to do but just very very dull then its easy to do.
but most people stop learning at about 20% of it.
Once you include VBA, it's more like 0.1%!