Forget About Excel, High Five With SQL

Updated on: May 4, 2024

Find out why you should forget about Excel and start using SQL even if you’re not an IT expert. We’ll show you how easy it is to learn SQL, how it can make you work better, and how LearnSQL.com makes the learning process fun.

“I Don’t Deal With Data”

We frequently hear the sentence above from people outside the IT industry. Well, it’s not entirely true. Data is now almost everywhere. No matter what job you do or what industry you work for, you surely deal with information everyday. Just think about it—information about your customers, suppliers, users, the goods you sell, the services you offer, or the orders you process.

All of the data should be stored somewhere, and modern companies typically store information digitally. They often use what is called a relational database such as Microsoft SQL Server or PostgreSQL.

If you think it’s difficult to work with databases, you’re wrong! It’s actually pretty easy, and you don’t really need to be an IT specialist to get started. You don’t even need a technical educational background! All that you need to start analyzing the data you have more efficiently is a little knowledge of SQL.

SQL is the most common and universal database language in the world. This means that once you learn SQL, you can talk to almost any relational database available on the market.

SQL For Your Job

We already know that data is everywhere. At LearnSQL.com, we believe that most professions can benefit from analyzing datasets using SQL. Below, we present a few examples of how SQL may help you improve your work.

Analytics

It doesn’t really matter what kind of analysis you perform at work, be it financial analysis or market analysis. One thing is certain—you can use SQL to create reports and quickly get valuable information about the business objects you work with. More on that:

• Learn SQL for Data Analysis
• Does Data Analytics Require Coding
• SQL for Data Analysis Cheat Sheet

Marketing

Modern marketing is definitely data-driven. For instance, imagine you’ve got massive amounts of data related to customer behavior. This data can help answer questions such as: how many customers opened an email I sent? Or: how many people ordered a specific product after we ran a promotional campaign? SQL can definitely help you create reports which show conversion rates and customer engagement in no time at all. Read Why You Should Use SQL in Marketing Analytics

Sales

In the sales department, getting to the right people or companies is crucial. If you want to turn them into your customers, you need to collect and analyze a lot of data about them. What do they need? What kinds of companies do they typically do business with? How much revenue can they generate? Yet again, such insights shown in SQL reports can help you unlock your true sales potential.

Tax Consultancy

Working in this industry typically means running a lot of analyses to calculate potential amounts of taxes and benefits. Such calculations can be used, for example, to find out where a multinational company should open their next office to maximize revenue. Because state or country-level calculations usually involve dealing with vast amounts of data, SQL is an excellent choice to run those calculations efficiently.

Logistics

Logistics is a field which uses many reports to monitor stocks, inventories, and supply chains. These reports are frequently created with specialized software that typically only allows generating a limited number of reports. SQL is a natural choice for work improvement here. You’ll be able to model the reports on your own and process larger amounts of data at the same time.

Isn’t Excel Good Enough?

We all know that Microsoft Excel is a great tool which can help analyze data and create various kinds of reports, but it certainly has its limitations. It’s not really designed to process millions or billions of rows.

Have you ever had a problem with Excel crashing because you simply wanted to process too much data? Have you ever seen how the entire operating system slows down while Excel processes data? Take a look at SQL databases, then! They are designed to work efficiently with vast amounts of data. You will never have to worry about running out of memory again.

SQL is Not Difficult!

If you ever tried to learn a programming language like Java or Python and decided you’re not cut out for it, we’ve got good news—SQL is much easier because it’s mostly a query language. What this means is that you don’t need to think about how to retrieve data, you only need to think about what data you need exactly. The database engine will take care of finding the best way to give you the data you want.

SQL uses English words and reads pretty much like English sentences once you get the hang of it. Just take a look at our best-selling SQL Basics course—it only takes ten hours to complete!

Become an Independent Specialist

In a lot of workplaces, folks from various departments often find themselves needing info from the company's databases. Usually, they'd hit up the IT team with a request like, "Hey, can you pull this data for me and save it as a CSV?" It's a pretty common request, but IT's got its hands full with its own projects and might not always get to these requests super quick.

That’s where learning SQL, or Structured Query Language, comes into play. It’s a programming language designed specifically for managing and pulling data from databases. By picking up SQL, you don’t have to wait around for IT anymore.

You can craft your own queries, run them directly on the database, and grab the data you need right when you need it. Not only does this make you more self-sufficient, but it also saves a bunch of time that would otherwise be spent waiting on someone else.

Write Once, Rerun as Needed

When you dive into coding, especially with SQL, you've got a neat trick up your sleeve: you can save your code and use it over and over again. This comes in super handy, especially when you're tackling complex reports.

Imagine you’ve hammered out the SQL for a particular report and saved it. Next time around, even if the data in the database has shifted or changed, you can just run the same report again without having to rebuild everything from the ground up.

Now, think about the times you've used Excel or similar tools for data analysis. Typically, you pull the data into the tool, sort it out, slap on some filters, and maybe chuck out some rows you don't need. That can eat up a lot of your time. SQL lets you sidestep most of that. You write your SQL script just once, save it, and simply rerun it whenever you need to crunch the same data again.

This method isn't just a huge time-saver: it also makes your work smoother and cuts down on the chance of errors.

How Can LearnSQL.com Help?

LearnSQL.com is a thriving e-learning platform which offers many SQL courses both for complete beginners and for more advanced users. You don't need an IT background or any specialized software to get started. All that you need is an Internet connection and a web browser.

We believe in learning by doing—this is why each piece of theory is backed with interactive exercises. The code you write to solve the exercises is verified immediately after you finish, which means you get instant feedback and can improve continuously.

You can start with our most popular SQL Basics course, which has nearly 330,000 satisfied students so far. The course takes approximately 10 hours to complete and teaches you everything you need to know to get started with SQL.

High Five With SQL

If you're really looking to master SQL, our SQL All Forever Package is just what you need. This bundle doesn’t just cover all our existing SQL courses: it also secures your spot for any new ones we roll out. That way, you're always on top of the latest SQL tricks and trends.

The SQL All Forever Package lays out a complete learning journey from the basics right up to advanced topics. You'll start off with the essentials, like selecting data and setting up tables, and gradually move into more intricate stuff like JOINs, window functions, and even recursive queries.

Each course is crafted to build upon the last, deepening your understanding and boosting your confidence with various database tasks.

Plus, this package isn't just about reading and learning—it's about doing. With practical exercises and real-life scenarios included, you'll get to apply what you've learned in a tangible way. The SQL Practice Set that comes with it lets you dig into the data in a hands-on way, which really helps solidify your skills. Whether you're tweaking data or navigating complex database structures, this package equips you to handle any SQL challenge.

For anyone dedicated to becoming a pro at SQL, this package is a smart way to go!