If your job is anything like mine, you use Microsoft Excel and/or PowerPoint on a regular (if not daily) basis. If you use either of these applications in conjunction with each other (which I know all of us have in our prior MP presentations), I have a very helpful resource to share with you.
One of the biggest challenges that I have faced is effectively incorporating data (particularly from Excel) into a concise PowerPoint presentation. Given that Excel and PowerPoint are both made by Microsoft, you would think that using these two applications in conjunction with one another would be fairly seamless and potentially even synergistic (1 + 1 = 3, right?). However, integrating Excel and PowerPoint is not always straight forward, and conveying key takeaways rather than “data dumping” an entire financial model into your presentation can be a challenge. Additionally, I think that most of us are typically better at one than the other which doesn’t make things any easier. I certainly have found this to be the case for myself, and while I have a strong background in using Excel, I have a lot of “room to grow” in terms of incorporating financial data from huge bulky models into a clean and concise presentation that conveys the underlying data effectively.
As I have searched for tools, resources, and articles giving guidance on this very topic, I have come across a particularly helpful website that I wanted to share with our class and hope that you will find it to be as useful as I have. This website is called ‘Think Outside the Slide’ and is as close to a “one stop shop” as I have found for guidance on just about everything relating to creating powerful presentations, with literally thousands of articles neatly organized by topic, as well as video tutorials if you’re more of a visual person. If you use Excel or PowerPoint at all, there is likely a specific article with tips and guidance on how to more effectively use the applications in a context relevant to you.
These are just a few that I have begun to frequently reference to give you a snapshot:
- Using Excel Data in Powerpoint Presentations
- Slide Design, Creation, and Editing
- Linking Excel Data (and other content) to PowerPoint so that data in slides automatically updates
- Tips on effectively cleaning up and animating graphs
- Creating powerful visuals using Excel Data (waterfall graphs, diverging stacked bar charts, treemap diagrams, proportional shape comparisons, etc…)
For many business professionals, myself included, Excel and PowerPoint are critical tools, and learning to use data effectively in PowerPoint presentations can take time but is versatile skill with application to countless professions that can help to distinguish yourself from your peers/co-workers, and add value to your clients. I hope you find this to be a helpful resource, please feel free to share any other resources that you frequently use and have found helpful in your career. Thanks!
Helpful links referenced in this post:
http://www.thinkoutsidetheslide.com/free-resources/
http://www.thinkoutsidetheslide.com/using-excel-data-in-a-powerpoint-presentation/
Really a great resource. There is a very good article about reusing slides..the benefits and drawbacks. It’s a topic worth exploring. I know at my work we often use the same canned deck with a quick ctrl, find, replace to update with the new client. It’s quick, easy, but not the customized touch that will close. Thanks for the resource.
Thanks Nick, great feedback. We do the same thing at my office and re-use slides that are tweaked for the client/audience. As you alluded, this is certainly efficient but not overly customized and there are benefits and drawbacks. I appreciate you pointing that out.
Great resource Ash – would have been helpful for our MP presentations over the last 2 semesters, also! I will definitely flag this for future use. I haven’t much used slides for presentations but it is a skills I plan to refine throughout the MBA.
Thank you Jens, I appreciate the feedback, and I’m glad you found this to be helpful. I think we were able to implement some of these methods in our MP presentation during the first semester, and hopefully it’s an area that we’ll both continue to develop over the course of our MBA.