December 1998 Should MBAs Know VBA? By Cliff T. Ragsdale Recently, I was talking with a colleague from a different institution about teaching the MBA-level OR/MS course using spreadsheets. Our conversation turned to the issue of macros. My colleague's comment on this topic surprised me. He said something like this: "Managers need to know how to build their own spreadsheet models to help them make better decisions. When we start teaching macros, we are training students to be programmers who build models that other people (managers) will use to make decisions. It is our job to train managers, not programmers." I respectfully disagree with my esteemed colleague's opinion on macros. Managers can benefit greatly by knowing something about programming in spreadsheets. In 1987, Byte magazine ran an article in which Bill Gates described a futuristic vision for "application programmability" that would leverage a PC user's knowledge of a common programming language and allow them to automate, extend and integrate spreadsheet, database, word processing and other applications [1]. Ten years later, this vision was finally realized with the release of Office 97 where Visual Basic of Applications (VBA) was incorporated as the macro language in Excel, Word, Access and PowerPoint. To understand the benefits of VBA, let's examine the characteristics of "application programmability" in a bit more detail. Leverage. The ability to use a single programming language within a consistent development environment across multiple applications should help to leverage one's personal productivity by having to maintain and hone a single set of programming skills. As Microsoft's sole macro language, VBA provides this leverage. Microsoft has also licensed VBA to more than 100 independent software vendors who are integrating it as the macro language for their own products. Thus, an understanding of VBA is an important skill for every business person who works with a PC. Automate. Many of the spreadsheet tasks managers perform occur periodically or on a routine basis. VBA's ability to automate routine tasks frees managers from having to repeat the same commands over and over and encourages them to look at "what-if" scenarios that often lead to better decisions. The recent trend toward downsizing in the corporate world has left many managers having to do more with less, and left others in the role of self-employed entrepreneurs. VBA may be the only way for these individuals to gain access to systems that provide information needed for decision-making on a timely basis. Extend. Despite Excel's amazing abilities, it doesn't do everything we might want it to do. However, with VBA it is possible to extend and customize the functionality of applications like Excel. Suppose you have 10 quiz scores stored in separate columns of an Excel workbook for each of 250 students in a class. Now suppose you want to investigate the consequences of dropping the "n" lowest quiz scores for each student (for any possible value of "n"). If you know VBA, it is very easy to write a simple function that returns the desired result for each student. Similarly, managers with an understanding of VBA are better equipped to create more efficient and useful decision models when they encounter problems for which Excel offers no easy built-in solution. Integrate. There are more than 500 programmable component objects in Office 97 we can use to create custom business applications. With VBA, today's managers can use these objects to create true decision support systems (DSS) that were previously either too costly or too technically challenging for most managers to build. Given the prominent role of OR/MS techniques in the model-base component of a DSS, this is a very natural area where OR/MS faculty can add considerable value to students. Getting started with VBA Before teaching students to use VBA to manipulate the "back end" objects in an application like Excel, it is helpful for them to be very proficient with the "front end" of the package. Many have found that a rigorous spreadsheet-based OR/MS course is an excellent way to impart these "front end" spreadsheet skills to students. At Virginia Tech, we have found that a good follow-up to the spreadsheet-based OR/MS course is a spreadsheet-based DSS course. In this class, students learn to use VBA to automate, extend and integrate Office 97 components to create custom business applications to support decision-making. Unfortunately, we have not found a perfect textbook for this course, but Microsoft has two trade titles [2] [3] and a Web site (www.microsoft.com/officedev) that are helpful to those trying to learn or master VBA development and the various object models in Office 97. The analytical modeling capabilities built into today's spreadsheets combined with VBA create a powerful development environment that OR/MS professionals could only dream about a decade ago. Now, millions of business people have these powerful packages sitting on their computers; yet most have no idea of how to use their spreadsheet package to its fullest potential. After years of accusations of being irrelevant and unnecessary, the OR/MS profession could not have hoped for a better opportunity to prove our critics wrong. Should MBAs know VBA? I certainly think so. And I think we are just the people to teach them. References Bill Gates, "Beyond Macro Processing: A Strategy for Customizing Applications Software," Byte, Vol. 12, No. 7, pp 11, 1987. Eric Wells and Steve Harshbarger, Microsoft Excel 97 Developer's Handbook, Microsoft Press, Redmond, Wash., 1997. Christine Solomon, Microsoft Office 97 Developer's Handbook, Microsoft Press, Redmond, Wash., 1997. Cliff Ragsdale is an associate professor at the Department of Management Science at Virginia Tech. He can be reached at crags@vt.edu Table of Contents OR/MS Today Home Page OR/MS Today copyright © 1998 by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. All rights reserved. Lionheart Publishing, Inc. 506 Roswell Street, Suite 220, Marietta, GA 30060, USA Phone: 770-431-0867 | Fax: 770-432-6969 E-mail: lpi@lionhrtpub.com URL: http://www.lionhrtpub.com Web Site © Copyright 1998 by Lionheart Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.