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Here are some best practices you can adopt while showcasing performance related reports in PowerPoint. Get more value for the time you invest in your data presentations.
A quick word about Performance Reports:
They say, in management “What you measure improves”. The key however is to know what to measure.
We’ve seen countless cases where teams waste hours generating pointless but fancy charts in the name of performance analysis. In this article, we share with you (the business managers) some useful ways to get better value for the time you invest in creating and analyzing performance reports in PowerPoint.
1.Insist on standard formats
When teams present their performance reports, insist that they follow standard formats. You may spend a lot of time brainstorming ideas before you decide on the final set of report formats. But, once you decide on certain formats insist that they use them every time they present numbers to you.
This not only saves time in generating reports but also helps you compare performance across teams and across individuals within the team.
Related: Presenting Survey Reports
2.Keep it visual
Avoid data tables on PowerPoint slides wherever possible. Be relentless in finding ways to visualize data. It is not only easy to absorb information from charts but is also less tiresome on the eyes. Take a look at the following chart template showing performance versus target:
Source : Performance Charts from Visual Graphs Pack
In one quick glance you know the months that have dragged performance and the months that have contributed favorably. If the same information were to be presented in a data table you may miss some key information.
3. Save time by using Pre-formatted chart templates
Once you decide on a particular format for presentation, make them preformatted.
This ensures that you or your team doesn’t spend a lot of time formatting data before each performance report.
Creating insightful charts doesn’t take any more time or effort than creating data tables, provided you use preformatted chart templates.
For example, in the above case, you just need to right click on the chart -> Edit data and enter your data in the embedded worksheet. The chart gets updated automatically.
It makes sense to invest on these preformatted chart templates.
We wish to recommend our ‘Visual PowerPoint Graphs Pack’ for business presenters. The pack has more than 320 business relevant pre-formatted chart templates that are super easy to use.
Every graph in the pack is designed with years of experience in developing custom presentations for multinational companies across industries. You may take a look at this demo page to see how easy it is to edit the chart templates in the pack.
Related:Target Versus Performance Template Ideas
4.Keep records by saving a PDF version
It is always a good practice to save a PDF version of the reports for future use. This has many advantages:
- You can use the same template over and over with fresh data
- Your earlier data remains intact in PDF Format an doesn’t get replaced by mistake.
- PDF reports also help you avoid the risk of sharing sensitive worksheets that form part of your original Excel file.
Action plan for Performance Reports:
Here are a few steps that we suggest you take today to improve Return on your precious management time:
- Spend an hour doing a quick audit of all the performance reports you went through in the last one month and identify the ones that have wasted your time significantly
- Have a quick meeting with your team and finalize a set of standard report formats you would use to track performance
- Insist on using pre-formatted chart templates to save time while retaining design efficiencies
The time you spend on the above will help you save hours of frustration in the long run.
Related: Exciting Line Chart Templates