I've spent the past few years teaching business analysts at large financial institutions how to automate their Excel workflows with Python. My main takeaway are:
1. Business analysts can spend up to weeks per month updating existing month-end Excel reports with new data.
2. Python automations can reduce the updating process to a matter of minutes.
3. BUT actually understanding the Excel file & writing the Python automation code can take several months.
4. Tools like ChatGPT are hugely useful when given a specific translation task — eg: convert the formula =SUM(A1, B1) to Python — but get completely lost on more complicated translations.
So I'm trying to build an AI-powered tool that can automatically convert Excel workbooks to Python. The key to doing so is 1) using plain old programming to parse the Excel file and build a translation plan (finding all of the unique tables in the Excel file, identifying repeated logic, determining the correct order to output the code), and 2) to prompt an LLM to execute each piece of that translation plan one at a time.
If you spend hours per month automating Excel files and want to be an early adopter, sign up here https://naterush1997.typeform.com/to/SIKccZHc
