Many Excel users are still unaware of pivot tables, perhaps Excel's most powerful feature, but yet its most under-utilized.  For those who are intimidated by them the best part is that once the pivot table is established (which itself is simple but can be set up for you) then using the pivot table  becomes intuitive and really requires very minimal Excel knowledge.  But the power and flexibility they give you will pay you back a thousand times over.  Pivot table charts have also been significantly enhanced with Excel 2007.  Check them out!  You won't be disappointed.

   Consultants abound for almost any business situation in any industry -- whether manufacturing, education, healthcare, telecommunications, entertainment, or virtually any other slice of the economy -- bringing expertise in finance, accounting, IT, marketing, operations, strategy, or nearly any other functional discipline. Consulting firms, ranging in size from one consultant to thousands of employees, cater to clients both small and large, domestic and multi-national, with the goal of addressing single issue business challenges or providing support on an ongoing basis.

With all of the consulting services available in the marketplace today, one would expect that numerous firms would be devoted to consulting around one of the most ubiquitous -- and often sub-optimally utilized -- business tools in use today: Microsoft Excel. In reality, though, MS Excel consulting services are typically provided by small firms, with one or a handful of consultants -- often addressing niche needs for their clients -- with little standardization in approach or consistency of skill levels.

Perhaps the primary reason for the lack of standardization in MS Excel consulting services is the sheer breadth of approaches available to solve any problem using MS Excel. If one were to launch a blank Excel file with the intention of solving a particular problem, he or she could take, literally, dozens of viable approaches to the file's development.

In addition to the the variety of approaches which could be employed, there is also the issue of specialization. If you were to draw a parallel to the medical profession, you might consider how specialized doctors are -- cardiology, rheumatology, urology, geriatrics, obstetrics, etc. -- no doctor can be an expert in all facets of medicine. Similarly, even the most advanced Excel guru can't be an expert in all of the functionality that the software offers. Some might specialize in data manipulation, while others are experts at financial modeling. When choosing an Excel consultant, you should evaluate how well his or her capabilities fit your specific needs.
(from excelconsulting.com )