Some of us use PowerPoint as a tool from time to time for business presentations. But for some of us, PowerPoint is more than that. Some of us use PowerPoint for a living…

What kind of people use PowerPoint for a living? Here are a few examples:

• Professional speakers
• Presentation consultants
• PowerPoint MVPs
• Digital signage owners
• Digital signage consultants
• Report and dashboard creators

What do people who use PowerPoint for a living need to know that casual PowerPoint users don’t?

PowerPoint for Reporting & Dashboards

People in the know have learned that you can use PowerPoint to create stunning documents for reporting and statistics in real time.

While Excel is great for calculations and raw data collecting, it is not presentation software. By connecting the number crunching and raw data power of Excel with the multimedia presentation power of PowerPoint, you can create animated live reports and dashboards that make reports come alive.

Using a PowerPoint slide for each of the conclusions of the raw data lets you zero in on different departments, compare changes over time and see real-time updates.

Similarly Microsoft Word is commonly used for documents, but it lacks slides, transitions and animations and real time data connections. Working with PowerPoint and multimedia makes your documents and reports come alive.

Adding data connections to PowerPoint has a huge impact on timely data and automation. Simple create one time data connections between your data source (Excel, RSS, XML, or any of our over 25 data sources) and a text or image box on your PowerPoint slide. Now the numbers or images will update as the data changes.

• Imagine a report where your sales figures change in real-time
• Imagine the production manager opening the PowerPoint report on Monday and seeing up to the minute production numbers
• Imagine a speaker opening a presentation and the latest information is automatically updated so they aren’t sharing outdated info
• Imagine a dashboard  with meters and gauges that show the health or your organization or the organization’s output and activities in real-time

This type of capability is used in:

• ERP systems (Enterprise Resource Planning)
• Sales departments
• Operations centers
• Manufacturing floors
• Accounting departments
• Airports for flight information

PowerPoint for News & Weather

In addition to real time sales and output information, you can also connect PowerPoint to outside resources such as live news and weather feeds. This lets you provide useful, real time information to your staff, customers and waiting room guests.

This can be used to:

• Create news and weather digital signage in your facility.
• Incorporate the latest news and weather into your presentations. A Professor teaching politics could include the latest political news and open their talk by discussing political news of the day. A speaker at a tech conference could include trending tech news.

PowerPoint for Digital Signage

Presentations aren’t just for conference halls anymore. When coupled with our iPoint digital signage software, PowerPoint can be used to create digital signage that can be shown remotely anywhere in your facility or around the world.

PowerPoint can be used for

• Creating digital signage
• Creating and updating digital menu boards
• Wayfinding screens
• Event listings

PowerPoint for Social Media

Social media is a fast paced environment with ever-changing conversations about every topic known to humankind – including talk about your brand and products PowerPoint can be connected with live Twitter streams as well as your Facebook Likes to connect your staff and visitors to the real-time conversations happening about your organization.

Imagine showing all the Twitter tweets from people attending your conference (by related hashtag) in real time throughout the conference facility. This provides a greater level of engagement as it encourages people to tweet about the event and their experience.

PowerPoint for Real-Time Data

In addition to reporting, dashboards, news, weather and social media, you can also connect PowerPoint to many other sources of real-time data. Here are just a few examples.

• Airline flight information in airports
• Live infographics that update as data changes
• Event updates and ticket availability

SnapShot Presentations

You can also use PowerPoint to create snapshot presentations These can be used for such things as:

• Generating On-The-Fly Product Catalogs –  Just bind the first slide of your presentation to the first row of your data set and then you activate data scrolling and you can automatically generate a new presentation with even 250 slides covering every product or
• Automatically Updating Portfolios – Great for designers, photographers, home builders, landscapers or anyone who can benefit from showing a visual portfolio of the products and services and how they are being used.

One Button Automation

In all these cases, you can automate your reports, dashboards, digital signage, catalogs and portfolios so they are always showing the latest data. You can have them automatically refresh at a certain time or at the click of a button.

PowerPoint for a Living

If you use PowerPoint for a living, contact us and we would be happy to discuss how our products and services can help.