The search for the greatest Excel practitioner in the land is over, as Corne Van Heerden has won the inaugural Office Excel Championship competition.
Van Heerden entered the competition as one of many hopeful spreadsheet wizards from across South Africa in March. Shortly thereafter, a number of rounds and challenges saw the field of possible victors get whittled down to just five contestants, who aimed to claim top honours at the finals at Microsoft’s headquarters in Bryanston.
“I am so overwhelmed , and can’t believe I won. Thank you so much to Microsoft for hosting this competition,” says Van Heerden.
Besides bragging rights and the title of Microsoft Office Excel Champion, Van Heerden also wins the latest Dell Latitude E7470 notebook, a subscription to Office 365, Lumia 1320 smartphone, a Jabra headset, and Microsoft mouse.
“Microsoft Office is used by 1,2-billion people in 140 countries around the globe, with applications like Excel used to convert business data into actionable intelligence to grow the company, drive efficiencies across the organisation and increase market share,” says Mark Dorfling, product marketing manager at Microsoft SA. “Van Heerden proved that he can be counted amongst the best Excel gurus that can help local businesses make the most of their data and resources in order to do more and achieve more.”
The road to the finals were paved with numerous challenges for the competitors as they had to solve a number of challenges based on data provided to be in with a chance for the title. These include a test of their ability to arrange a set of data in the shortest possible time; a challenge of their ability to arrange data into a visual format, as well as a test of their knowledge of Excel formulae.
