It's the future, I've tasted it!

[OneFootInTheGravy]

Hi everyone, normally visit this forum when I'm stuck with a formula or alike, but this time my question is a little bit different.

I currently work as Training Systems Administrator in a company with some 7000 staff. I predominantly look after said training system, along with admin access to a couple of other areas of the business, but that is mostly for reporting. The training system has a fairly robust reporting suite within it, and a lot of the senior users can get most of the info they need directly from there, but I have a list of weekly reports that I have to export and manipulate in excel before passing onto the powers at be.

Anyway, my boss had a meeting with me last week and wants me to look into what the future might look like for my role! Basically, we are in the process of moving everyone over to Office 365 and wants to know if there is any training or systems that I could be looking at to better help what I do? I think the main goal would be to try and automate the reporting side of my role to free up more time to managing the training system. I know that 'Python' was mentioned, but I don't know what it does (other than being a programming language) or how I would apply it to what I do.

So really, my question is, given my brief background into what I do, what would you guys suggest the future of my job should look like? Should I look into some programming training (I did learn some C++ bake when I was in college but I've forgotten most of that now), or are there programs within office 365 that I should be learning, or should I go back to my boss with something else altogether?

All ideas and suggestions will be most welcome.

Gravy

 

[RoryA]

What version do you currently have and how do you manipulate the data in Excel currently? From your description, I'd say Python would be overkill and that you'd be better off learning Power Query/M and perhaps PowerBI.

 

[OneFootInTheGravy]

Thanks, I'm currently using the Office 365 version of excel. Most of the manipulation involves exporting data from various systems, importing it into pre-set excel files I have created that clean the data (remove duplicates, apply values, set formats, etc), then I either import that data into a different system or make it all look pretty before sending it out. Nothing too complicated really.