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While working as a cost accountant at Hewlett
Packard in the late 1970s, I beta tested VisiCalc. So I've been
using spreadsheets for quite a while.
As the CFO of several manufacturing companies in the 1980s, I used nearly ten different brands
of spreadsheets, including a 3-D spreadsheet created by the Boeing Corporation, the airplane
company. But after
I was introduced to the beta
version of the first
release of Excel for the PC, I've never looked back.
While using VisiCalc, I invented the idea of dashboard reporting with
spreadsheets. The report designs were inspired by two articles printed
in the Harvard Business Review about 1980. In 1984, I devoted a
chapter about reporting with "mini graphs" in my first book,
Financial Modeling Using Lotus 1-2-3. In 1990, during the beta of
Excel 3, I created Excel dashboard reports similar to those you see
today. By 1992, Techtronics, Inc., was using my dashboard reports to
promote their color printers.
In addition to the book about 1-2-3, I've written two similar books about Excel, and one book about
programming Excel. I've published nearly 50 articles and columns in
national magazines, including Inc, Management Accounting,
Lotus, Byte, Business Software, and Business
Performance Management.
I've consulted for both large and small companies in industries as
diverse as high-tech manufacturing, public utilities,
telecommunications, a chain of hardware stores, and a fat rendering
company.
But these days, I seldom have time for consulting.
Charley Kyd
Microsoft MVP - Excel
Ocean Shores, Washington
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