Tomasz Oczoś, Finance Business Consultant at DXC, presents trends in the visualization and presentation of financial data.
How to effectively visualize financial data?
Financial data and analysis are most often intended to support business decisions. Here are examples of situations in which we will present financial data:
- presentation of budgets and forecasts;
- presentation of results and analysis of deviations;
- decision to undertake an investment (investment projects);
- preparing for mergers and acquisitions;
- presentation of recommendations.
When preparing data for a presentation qatar telephone number data you should consider what the most important element of the presentation is, so that you can later emphasize those elements that you want the recipient to remember. Often, the results of financial analysis can be complicated and difficult to understand. Here are a few steps to creating an effective financial presentation.
#1. Break down complex issues into prime factors
Some tips:
- answer the questions: why are you preparing a presentation, what is the main idea you want to convey;
- select key data that will help explain the most important issues in your presentation;
- find the golden mean between the quantity and detail of data;
- remember that most audiences will focus on a maximum of 2-3 topics.
Exercise → Read the presentations of results of various companies that report their results on the stock exchange, and watch recordings of such quarterly or annual presentations (e.g. interesting and professional presentations prepared by CCC Group ).
#2. Tailor the message to the recipient
Some tips:
- When preparing a presentation of financial data sms marketing for the insurance sector: an effective guide adapt its content to the recipient;
- take into account the scope of the recipient’s financial knowledge (a presentation for a financial director will be tailored differently than a presentation for a marketing manager);
- take into account the level of formality and context (a formal presentation to a client will be tailored differently than a quick response to a boss, and a live presentation will be tailored differently than information sent via email).
Exercise → Check the materials you have prepared in terms of: level of formality, level of detail, use of technical jargon and abbreviations, ratio of quantitative to qualitative data, purpose of the presentation (informational, persuasive to make a decision or take action).
#3. Present your analysis results in a clear and understandable way
Some tips:
- think through all the elements of your presentation and create a coherent visual whole;
- use visual tools such as charts, diagrams and graphs;
- avoid flashy elements, colors, fonts, and unreadable charts.
Exercise → When visualizing data phone database make sure that you have properly formatted data (shorten long numbers and leave no more than 2 numbers after the decimal point), remove grid lines in Excel, use few colors and try to keep the color palette subdued, make sure the charts are legible (in some cases, less is more, so don’t be afraid to leave out some data that does not contribute anything to the analysis in a given case).
Example of how not to visualize data:
Useful chart types
At the very beginning, it is worth establishing a so-called standard view with the decision-makers you work with, i.e. what data they want to see. Once you have set up the Management Panel in Excel, you will be able to generate updates by changing the numbers.