In corporate practice, Microsoft Excel is an indispensable tool for a great variety of tasks and is also used in preparation of important decision-making. In practice, therefore, models in Excel should be understandable, flexible and error resistant. However, the transfer of the corresponding know-how does not play a role in the syllabus of many universities. To close this gap, the Institute of Management Accounting and Control in cooperation with the Berens Research Team were very pleased to be able to offer the seminar “Excel for Professionals” once again.

Prof. Dr. Rohleder, himself an alumnus of the University of Muenster, looks back at two decades of experience as an Excel user and developer. Before he took over the chair for entrepreneurship and corporate management at the Technical University Bingen, he supported companies in the use of Excel in controlling as well as the optimization of the associated planning and decision-making processes for many years with his management consultancy based in Hamburg.

For years now already, Prof. Dr. Rohleder has trained a lot of students of the Faculty of Business and Economics by offering a free, practice-oriented two-day seminar. In addition to technical skills and teaching good design practices, focus lies on application of the learnings by working on hands-on case studies. His overall goal is to enable participants to implement their tasks in Excel in the most timesaving, consistent, and error-free manner possible. The many starting points for improvements in the daily use of Excel were perceived very positively by the participants and motivated them to critically examine their previous practices in Excel.

Due to COVID, sadly, the seminar could not take place for two years – before a digital format was introduced in the last winter semester. Therefore, everyone involved was pleased that the seminar could finally take place in person again.

Due to the great interest and the positive feedback from the students, the event will be held again in the coming summer semester.