Communicating with PowerPoint

You might not think communicating is a finance topic, but it is. We have to communicate what some people would call eye-glazing type of boring information in ways that are easily understood. Not easy to do with a bunch of numbers.

I’ve been reading up on how to do storytelling, but it is not easy to do with FP&A type information. I have tried to deliver forecasts a little differently in the past to provide context to the numbers but typically, financial managers just want the same old same old, so I usually drop my efforts.

But I do seek out how to tell stories or how to develop or create PowerPoint that may engage the readers or listeners and about two or three weeks ago I took a PowerPoint class. While I knew most of the materials, there were some new stuffs that was interesting, one of which I will show here.

That is the automation potential.

Here’s my little slide or presentation of that automation potential.

Not everybody will find this advantageous because this method starts from Word. If you do a lot of writing and communicating via Word and then have been asked to do a presentation, then this method can come into play. Or, you tend to outline your thoughts in Word to first figure out the flow of your communication, then this method could work.

Basically, you start your presentation in Word because you want to focus first on presenting your idea, theory, findings, not on pictures (which would be my first thought – what pictures will I use!). The point is conveying your message and that has to be organized in words first.

Once you have organized how you will present the materials, save the file and then close it. Make sure you are pretty certain that you’ve got it organized the way you want it because updating the Word again does NOT flow back to PowerPoint. It works only one time.

Once you perform the third step, the outline should flow into PowerPoint. The image below depicts the final result of the automation.

The left-hand side shows the new slides with the words pulled from the Word document.

Now, the fun part starts – at least for me.

Microsoft has a feature that makes life so much easier for the non-designers – Designer. In the image above, on the right-hand side of the PowerPoint, you will see a section called Designer. I believe this feature is only available for PowerPoint 2021, Office 365 or the web version of PowerPoint.

You don’t have to worry about trying to design an appealing layout. Microsoft’s Designer does it for you. As a matter of fact, that slide up above was actually designed using Designer once I nailed down the words and used the “Slide from Outline” feature.

All of those pictures throughout this blog post came from that slide and was suggested by Designer, once I uploaded the image of the PowerPoint I wanted to show.

For me, the Designer can really speed up the putting together the layout without agonizing on the imagery. I just let Designer do the work – for the most part.

There are a few things to know about Designer though, especially the fact that PowerPoint will not update once you do the “Slide from Outline” step. If you need to make changes in the outline, you have to do it in PowerPoint.

Once, people start using this Designer feature to dress up their presentation, using eye-catching imagery will become table stakes. You won’t be able to use just words and bullet points if you want to hold people’s attention. Microsoft is making it so easy that there will be no excuse.

Now a graphic designer will probably be able to improve on the design choices Microsoft makes but that most likely will be reserved for high stakes presentations.

Try it out and see if your presentation becomes more engaging. It got to beat seeing a wall of text.