Bring data to life using Executive Summary and Auto-Text

The data has spoken. Now it’s your turn to do the talking and show clients and stakeholders the power of your insightful commentary.

Whether you’re presenting online or in the board-room, creating those “aha” moments is easy when you combine an insight-driven Executive Summary with the visualisations of a Spotlight report or forecast. A Spotlight report (or any report for that matter) without an Executive Summary of highlights and recommendations is like a meal without seasoning—good, but not as great as it could be.

Here are our top three tips to help you bring data to life when preparing your next Spotlight report with an Executive Summary:

1. From insights to execution

Reports and forecasts aren’t just about informing. Your audience wants you to tell them what’s important, why they should care, and what they need to do. Use the Executive Summary page to bring your hard-earned insights to centre stage so they’re primed to drive value for the business.

You’ll notice the Recommendations for action column comes pre-populated with headings including Revenue, Profit, and Margins; use these headings or customise them to suit, and help your audience connect the dots between insights and business growth.

2. Save time with Auto-Text and Tags

For the financially focused sections of your Executive Summary (like Revenue and Bank) use the Auto-Text and Tags features. You can use these to quickly reference financial data from your reports, and each time you run a new report they’ll automatically update to reference the latest data. No more manual updates 🙌

We recently added several new snippets of Auto-Text as well, so jump into Spotlight Reporting and take a look.

‍3. Tell the story with visual aids

Getting to the point is key—but often a challenge. Your reader wants to quickly understand your highlights and recommendations, and sometimes having walls of text can make that difficult. If you have an image or other graphic that helps demonstrate one of the highlights or recommendations, you can upload this right into the Executive Summary. Adding images or graphics into your Executive Summary will attract the attention of your readers, and highlight valuable insights in the most succinct way possible.

Getting started

If you need help getting started with the Executive Summary, watch this quick walk-through video from our Product Manager, Matt Kekena: