As a management consultant and now as an investment professional, I have been using Microsoft Office every day for the past ~10 years (here is my LinkedIn profile ->).
While it used to be all about PowerPoint and Excel, Outlook now gets more and more of my time as my role changes to include sales/origination work. I noticed a few small things that are unnecessarily time-consuming.
I decided to have them fixed. I created 3 add-ins, one for each major MS Office software.
A PowerPoint add-in that contains:
- Features similar to these that McKinsey and Roland Berger consultants use at work (I worked for both so I know first-hand what tools they have)
- Quite a few other features (e.g., increase/decrease internal margins) that seemed obvious to me (more details here)
- Keyboard shortcuts for PowerPoint (full list here)
An Outlook add-in (currently being finalized) that contains 2 simple and useful features for people who are tasked with sales/origination work (more details here)
An Excel add-in (still under development) that will contain features that most private equity professionals use daily. My draft add-in (it’s already running but needs fine-tuning before I release it) elevates my Excel experience and is inspired:
- By the add-ins used in private equity (it’s a lot about sheet and number formatting)
- By my own modelling experiences in consulting (it’s more about workbook structure, error handling and fuzzy matches)
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This add-ins are battle-tested: I use them daily… and although I know I’m biased, I can’t think of working without them anymore (goddamn it, we’re supposed to do high-value stuff, not push buttons!)
I also settled for a very affordable pricing (€5 excluding VAT for the whole bundle) – that’s about the price of 2 coffees a month (or perhaps even just one if you buy it at the airport with extra cream on top). But I believe that Lightning will give you more energy than 2 coffees ever could