Hello Reader,

It's late Friday afternoon, and your boss just informed you that the quarterly sales review, originally scheduled for next month, has been moved to Monday morning.

You need to present the team's performance, new client acquisitions, and forecast for the next quarter.

The sales data is spread across multiple spreadsheets, and the marketing team hasn't finalized their contributions for the new product launch section of the presentation.

To top it off, your laptop charger broke, and you're running on a limited battery.

What if I told you AI can do this in 15-30 minutes?

Generate a clear outline, craft a compelling narrative, and even create the initial slide deck automatically. So when schedule is suddenly changed, you do not panic.

Here's how...

The Power of Financial Storytelling

Okay, so you've got the numbers, the charts, the spreadsheets...but does your audience truly get it?

In my experience, many finance professionals are brilliant with data, but sometimes that brilliance gets lost in translation. We present facts, figures, and analyses, but we often miss the crucial step of turning those into a story that resonates and drives action.

Think about it: you're in a critical meeting, presenting your findings. You've spent hours meticulously preparing. But if your presentation is just a "data dump," what happens? Eyes glaze over. Questions arise that you thought you'd already answered. Decisions are delayed because the "so what?" isn't clear.

This is where the power of financial storytelling comes in. It's about transforming raw data into a clear, compelling narrative that connects the numbers to the business context, stakeholder priorities, and, most importantly, a call to action. It's about helping leaders understand not just what happened, but why it happened, and what they should do next.

We're talking about a three-part flow:

1. The Problem: Clearly articulate the issue or challenge the data is addressing.
2. The Implication: Explain the consequences or significance of that problem.
3. The Decision/Next Step: Provide a clear, actionable path forward based on your analysis.

When you master this, your presentations move beyond merely informing; they influence. They become a tool for strategic decision-making, ensuring that your hard work translates into tangible impact.

In the sample below, you can see how you can do this with AI.

AI for Content Generation and Ideation

Ever stared at a blank screen, knowing you need to build a presentation but having no idea where to start? Or maybe you have tons of data, but the story just isn't coming together? That's where AI truly shines. It's not just about making pretty slides; it's about tackling those fundamental structure challenges right from the get-go.

Phase 1: Prepare the outline of your presentation with your preferred LLM tool

The goal here is to first generate your content and finalize the slide deck details, especially if you currently lack structure.

Copy & paste the prompt below and try it in ChatGPT/Copilot/Gemini.

The key is to be specific with your prompts. Want to learn from a competitor's quarterly results?

Ask the AI to help you create an outline focusing on their KPIs, risks, and opportunities.

This way, you're not just generating content; you're generating purposeful content that directly addresses your goals and helps you build a solid foundation for your presentation.

Generating Slides with AI

So, you’ve got your brilliant outline and compelling content thanks to AI’s help in the ideation phase. Now what?

The next hurdle is often the actual creation of the slides themselves, moving from a well-structured narrative to a visually engaging presentation. This is where AI continues to be your invaluable co-pilot, transforming your text into slides with remarkable efficiency.

Think about the time you've spent wrestling with slide layouts, formatting, and trying to make everything visually appealing. AI tools like ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini Canvas, and even Gemini within Google Slides can take the heavy lifting out of this process.

Phase 2: Generating Slides with AI

This phase focuses on transforming your generated content into a slide deck using various AI tools. Remember to review and reiterate to ensure the output meets your expectations.

Using ChatGPT to Generate Slides:

Copy & paste the prompt below and try it in the same chat space as the first prompt. You can use ChatGPT for generating and doing the layout of the content. With the plain PowerPoint you can upload your company’s design and it will match up with it.

Prompt used:

Using ChatGPT Canvas to Generate Slides:

You can use HTML to do the layout of the slide deck. Make sure to activate Canvas.

Prompt below:

Customize Design (for those who have to follow company brand)

Option 1: Apply your custom design to an existing deck

This is if you have a .thmx file of your company's brand. To see how to do it, you can check it here How to Create Design File.

1. Open the deck → Design → Themes → Browse for Themes… → select your .thmx.
2. If slide content looks off, re-map layouts: select slides → Home → Layout → pick your custom layout.

Option 2: Activate the Canvas function in ChatGPT (clicking the + button in your chat) and use the template prompt below for HTML slide generation (customize values in bracket):

Using Copilot to Generate Slides on Web:

Copy & paste the prompt below and try it in the same chat space as the first prompt. This is ideal for users who mainly use Copilot or Microsoft Applications.

Prompt used:

Using Copilot to Generate Slides on Desktop PowerPoint:

Here are the steps to help you generate presentations on desktop PowerPoint.

Step 1: Copy & paste the prompt below and try it in the same chat space as the first prompt.

Prompt used:

Step 2: Paste the generated prompt into Microsoft PowerPoint’s Copilot (click Create New Presentation) and let it generate.

Customize Design (for those who have to follow company brand)

Since we're having a .pptx file here. To apply your custom design. You can try uploading your company's brand. To see how to do it, you can check it here How to Create Design File.

1. Open the deck → Design → Themes → Browse for Themes… → select your .thmx.
2. If slide content looks off, re-map layouts: select slides → Home → Layout → pick your custom layout.

Using Gemini Canvas to Generate Slides:

Copy & paste the prompt below and try it in the same chat space as the first prompt.

Prompt used:

Gemini cannot generate PowerPoint slides at the moment. You can get HTML generated slide deck and get the preview by using Canvas (click + in the chat). Then save the HTML in a file as .html.
If you need to export, you screenshot each slide if you want.

Using Gemini in Google Slides to Generate Slides:

After generating the outline content, copy the content generated from Gemini and open an empty Google Slides.

Prompt used:

For now, Gemini in Google Slides can only generate one slide at a time. So it would take a lot of time and patience to finalize everything when using Google Slides.

Optional: Copy & paste slide deck content (if you want to use an external tool)

Copy the generated content (slide deck) and paste it into your chosen slide generator. You can try external tools like genspark.ai or beautiful.ai

There are more of these in our community's resources related to presentation and storytelling.

The Bottom Line

Whether you need an editable PowerPoint, an interactive HTML deck, or just a kickstart for individual slides, these tools can generate the initial framework, allowing you to focus on refining the message and adding your unique touch.

While now it's not yet perfect, you need to build the muscles that allow you to be ready when AI will be able to perfectly create the content and the design you want... and we might be closer than what you think based on what Microsoft revealed a few weeks ago for Powerpoint (watch here).

Remember, your role as a finance leader is to drive strategic decisions, not to spend hours agonizing over presentation layouts. AI offers you the chance to reclaim that time and build faster, more impactful presentations that truly move the needle.

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Best,

Your AI Finance Expert,

Nicolas

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