Most businesses create their financial reports using Excel. The widespread belief is that anything involving numbers is best managed and presented in Excel.

Many people use this software because the data used for business reports is usually already documented or collected in Excel. Often, Excel is then automatically used to create charts and reports for both investors and management. And this is despite the fact that Excel isn't actually a presentation program – Microsoft developed PowerPoint for that.

And that's exactly what we want to address in this article: Below, we have listed important reasons that speak in favor of using PowerPoint to create business reports and question the widespread use of Excel.

1. PowerPoint is designed for business reports.
A quick look at how PowerPoint and Excel are structured reveals significant differences. Excel's primary function is to collect data and figures and perform calculations. While Excel does create charts and diagrams, these cannot be arranged into a presentation-ready report.

In contrast, PowerPoint was specifically designed for this purpose – from the entire program setup to the available editing tools. Using PowerPoint ensures an easy-to-read report, especially when you take advantage of the selection of editing tools such as animations and many others. Simply put: calculations are done in Excel, presentations in PowerPoint.

2. PowerPoint is easier to navigate.

PowerPoint uses a simple slideshow design, allowing users to navigate seamlessly. This ease of use extends throughout the entire presentation, including creation time, arranging information on individual slides, and jumping back and forth between slides.

Excel is not as user-friendly as PowerPoint when it comes to report creation. Since Excel typically deals only with raw data, navigating between worksheets can be cumbersome. Unlike PowerPoint, it doesn't offer the option of running a presentation. This cumbersome navigation will make it extremely difficult for your colleagues and other attendees to follow your presentation.

3. Arranging the slides in the company presentation
A key reason why PowerPoint is recommended over Excel for business reports is the effortless arrangement of presentation content. For example, if you want to highlight a specific chart or slide in your report, in PowerPoint you simply switch to the slide overview and can easily move a selected (chart) slide to the beginning of the presentation.

The same cannot be said about Excel. As mentioned above, it can be very cumbersome to jump back and forth between worksheets – quite apart from the difficulty of putting them in the correct order.

4. Improved multimedia features
A business report or company presentation should not only be clear and concise, but also engaging and leave a lasting impression on the audience, whether they are management or investors. The best way to create an effective presentation is by incorporating various media – including photos and videos. Compared to Excel, PowerPoint makes it very easy to enhance presentations with multimedia elements.

From YouTube videos to stock photos – you can make your presentation much more engaging by inserting different media. You won't find the same level of user-friendliness in Excel, whether it's about multimedia use, navigation, or viewing the presentation.

5. Uniform presentation layout

A good presentation theme not only makes it easier for your audience to follow your presentation, but also gives your report greater consistency. With PowerPoint, you can create a professional-looking master layout by defining backgrounds, graphics, colors, font, and font size that will then be used consistently throughout the entire presentation.

If you make any changes to these settings, they will be applied immediately to the entire presentation. Best of all, you can reuse the same layout for a variety of presentations.

6. Better chart options
While Excel is well-equipped with standard pie, bar, and line charts, PowerPoint allows users to work with a wider variety of chart types. Here are two examples of how and why this works best in PowerPoint:

• Speedometer – While speedometer displays are also available in Excel, PowerPoint has a much wider selection.
• Infographics – In PowerPoint, users have the option of presenting data in the form of infographics. The use of infographics is generally recommended, as they can convey information more effectively than plain text. PowerPoint has all the tools you need to enhance your presentation with engaging and informative infographics.

7. Tools for automatic reporting
PowerPoint allows users to connect their presentations to various data sources, such as Excel, databases, and even RSS feeds, using helpful plug-ins like DataPoint. By using this special tool, your data is automatically updated with the latest figures – hourly or daily.

You know that you have the latest sales or profitability figures in your presentation and are therefore always ready to give your presentation on them.

8. Only present the final result
Logically, a report is based on its preceding calculations. However, your target audience is probably not very interested in raw data that essentially consists only of formulas and numbers. Instead, it's much more visually appealing to present only the results of the calculations in your presentation. PowerPoint offers precisely this capability.

You can simply skip your raw footage and focus exclusively on presenting your audience with what they actually want to see – and what you want to convey to them.

9. Easy viewing and distribution
When it comes to viewing and distributing your report, PowerPoint offers the simplest solution from both perspectives. You can send your report as a finished presentation in a single file. With Excel, you would likely have to distribute several different files as part of a single presentation, which makes sharing difficult.

Therefore, PowerPoint is the most sensible option if you want to provide your end customers with an easy-to-navigate and clearly structured report. Furthermore, a cohesive presentation is much easier to handle than a printed file or upload to platforms like SlideShare, thus facilitating better information exchange.

10. Influence of visual elements
It's very easy to enhance your PowerPoint presentation by using multimedia elements, thereby improving your audience's focus. These audiovisual components encourage the presenter to interact more with the audience and improvise during their presentation. Nevertheless, it's important to use these techniques sparingly. Your core message shouldn't get lost in an overload of media.

11. Enabling collaboration

Unlike Excel, PowerPoint enables productive, collaborative work. This is particularly important in companies where teamwork is essential. Multiple employees can work on a presentation simultaneously. Comments can be easily added or edited, allowing other team members to see and work with them. The comment function is especially helpful for clarity in internal communication.

12. Create videos based on the business report
PowerPoint offers the option to save presentations in video format. Your business report – or any other presentation – can be made accessible with this feature to those who missed the presentation. You can then direct the relevant people to a video platform like YouTube via a link.

The video is freely available there and can be viewed anytime, anywhere. All you have to do is click "Save and Send" to create the video. Within a very short time, the video will be saved on your computer in WMV format and ready to upload to almost all video platforms.

13. Flexibility in the display options
PowerPoint also offers excellent communication features for your target audience. From individual slides to animations, everything is fully customizable, allowing you to tailor the presentation perfectly to your listeners. Depending on the intended use or content, you can choose between a presentation that is primarily image-based, text-based, or a combination of both. Text-based presentations are best suited for lectures where the audience is expected to take notes.

If your presentation is rich in visuals, it's your responsibility to guide your audience through the presentation and provide explanations. By combining text and images equally in the layout, you give your audience the benefits of both – being able to take notes based on your slides and absorbing the information visually.

14. Interactive Clicking
Besides simply listening, your audience can also participate interactively in your presentation. They have the option to control the presentation pace, as well as access website links and other settings. Even going back to previous slides is possible. This allows you to clarify certain statements or key points or revisit them if they weren't understood.

15. Easy to create

Finally, one of the main reasons for preferring PowerPoint over Excel is that presentations are very easy to create in PowerPoint. Even with only basic knowledge, you can design a compelling presentation with interesting slides and animations.

conclusion
Transferring the results and analyses from Excel into a PowerPoint file and summarizing them for your business report ensures the optimal use of both applications: The processing of raw data and the calculation power of Excel combined with the media presentation variety and presentation power of PowerPoint.

For a convincing presentation of your business report, you cannot avoid using presentation software.
(This blog post was written by Kurt Dupont, PowerPoint add-in specialist and CEO of PresentationPoint)