About me

I am a long time spreadsheet enthusiast passionate about implementing Excel Solutions or spreadsheet based solutions even before there was an Excel!  Lotus 123 was amazing enough in those early days and if you were an Accountant as I was then, the advent of Lotus 123 plus WYSIWYG and Sideways just revolutionised your job adding creativity, better analysis and even programming to an otherwise pretty dull work life.  Then along came Excel and it was immediately obvious how good this product was which has gotten better and better with each release and 2010 onwards  truly delivers incredible computer power to everyday users.

So I have been working with spreadsheets and Excel solutions for a long time now.  I loved Excel 2003 and Excel 2010 and currently loving Office 365 Excel and it’s incredible built in features like Power Query & PowerPivot and Power BI.

I can  help  large, medium or small businesses build capability quickly using advanced Excel & VBA programming skills.  I enjoy writing Excel based applications or Excel solutions and financial modelling for any area of business or industry drawing on my long finance /marketing career experience in Resources.  I am very interested in the exciting new field of Business Intelligence & Power Query and Power Pivot projects.

I have a special interest in assisting Dental, Medical and Veterinary Practices having had direct experience over the last 5 years on many projects that facilitated management of practices effectively and more profitably by cutting costs on automating repetitive tasks and producing the right reports at the right time.   Since 2005 I have been a co-owner of a dental practice and have been busy with automating time consuming tasks and implementing tailored solutions to help our practices run more efficiently and profitably. See more detail on this below.

From 2001-2004, I was Credit Controller in BHP’s Singapore marketing hub (one of two Global hubs).  I was responsible for coal, iron ore and manganese payment risk and was exposed to the myriad of different contract, risk and trade arrangements.  On returning to Australia in 2004, I joined Anglo American and became their Business Planning & Support Leader for Marketing, responsible for Business Planning (sales planning, contract performance, business plans and short term forecasts for global Australian exports), Credit Risk and Risk Management.

The last few years (since mid 2008), I have been involved part time in my own business, a very busy dental practice, as my wife is a dentist which we sold in Jan 2016.  Being my own boss, I have had a lot of flexibility to take on part time or project related roles.  I worked at PWC as a consultant and worked on credit policy and assessment and marketing re-structure projects.   I also worked on projects as an independent consultant such as being part of a due diligence team for Arcelor Mittal looking at a mine investment, doing credit assessments on steel and power generation customers.  My first freelance Excel financial modelling assignment was in devising a global mine database for Anglo American using advanced Excel and  VBA skills.  Also being in my own business I developed a myriad of Excel based solutions to the practical business needs of business owners.

Over the years I have developed my Excel Specialist & Financial Modelling skills to a very high level and include VBA programming, Power Query, Power Pivot, Power Pivot, Pivot Tables, interactive models, charting and dashboard as skills.  I now concentrate on doing financial modelling & Excel solutions under my ABN and business name called The Excel Factor.

I think I might be unusual amongst Consultants in that my philosophy is to do the job at hand as well as I possibly can, never compromise the client relationship and let the future take care of itself.  It has to be said many consultants do part of the job at hand, leaving another part for future fees.  I think if I do a fantastic job for the client there will be even more future work as they have greater confidence that I can solve their next problem on time and within estimate.

My observation is most medical or veterinary practices are small businesses with a high volume of patient numbers and high end transactions to work with.  They have to  manage, analyse and control their practices effectively without access to full time IT support or programming capability.   Yes, many have specialist software to help them but even the best has limitations.  Some are strong on the patient relationship but weak on the business (transactions) side or have gaps in capability or content of the reports.  Some are strong on the clinical side but weak in the patient relationship side.

The same happens in big business with multi million dollar systems.  This is where Excel and someone like myself comes in.  If the information is exportable,  Excel can be used to take this data and create the report you want.  It can be used to fill these capability gaps and tailor a solution to what you need right now, today as it is used  all throughout the business world.

Coming from a big business background with very advanced Excel skills and being a dental practice owner, I am uniquely placed within the dental  industry to devise sound appropriate solutions and processes in all sorts of areas including reporting, budgeting, cash control, debtors control and implementing many Excel based tools (see below) for greater efficiency, control and effectiveness within a dental practice.

In fact, much of this is just as applicable in any medical practices as well as veterinary practices and can be tailored to exactly what you need to save staff time or provide computing capability or control over areas you just don’t currently have.

We used Exact practice management software and also have a familiarity with Dental4Windows and very adept at taking exported raw data or reports from your main system like Exact and using it or manipulating it within Excel for other purposes or reports.