How 5 Extra Minutes Formatting Each PowerPoint Slide May Cost Your Company Thousands of Dollars

It’s inevitable that in the corporate world there will be presentations to be made and therefore it’s likely that you or your team have been saddled with managing the development of a PowerPoint presentation. If your presentations are few and far between, the impact of improperly using PowerPoint templates is not likely as significant, but you may still find this information useful. However, if your company conducts presentations on a larger scale, read on because companies that produce a large volume of PowerPoint slides are, more often than not, bleeding out money unnecessarily year after year due to incompetent presentation production practices.

The Problem

Since the date of this article, I have been a graphic design and PowerPoint specialist working with some of the world’s leading pharmaceutical, biotechnology, science communications, and financial companies for nearly 22 years. In that time, I have learned quite a bit about how to properly use PowerPoint to maximize productivity. All too often, I have stumbled upon a recurring problem that is a costly mistake on the part of those footing the bill for the production of their presentation slides. What I have noticed is that those who are entrusted with development and production of the PowerPoint slide decks do not start with what I like to call a “proper” PowerPoint template. The reason for this is simply because they do not know what a “proper” PowerPoint template actually is and, therefore, do not know how to effectively utilize a PowerPoint template to efficiently design, develop, and format a large volume of PowerPoint slides. Hence, their lack of knowledge ultimately ends up adding an exorbitant amount of production time to project timelines and, as the old adage says, “time is money!” In the end, the additional time inevitably drives up the cost of their presentation projects which, in turn, decrease their profit margins.

How Does Using a PowerPoint Template Save Production Time?

1. Eliminates the Need to Repeatedly Reinvent the Wheel 

PowerPoint provides us with the ability to use master layouts with content placeholders for multiple slides that will follow the same layout structure. An experienced presentation specialist will be able to build a PowerPoint template that has various master layouts for slides that use similarly recurring layouts throughout the presentation. All too often inexperienced presentation designers will create each slide as a one off and reinvent the wheel each and every time that same layout is needed.

Well you’re probably saying, “that’s not a problem, I can simply copy and paste the slide in slide sorter and then change out the copy or data…easy peezy!” Sure, sounds like that would be a logical solution, right? What happens in the event that post slide-review meeting it is determined that all of the header rows of those similar table slides are too small and need to bumped up 2 font points? No big deal if it’s just a few slides, right? But in the case where you have 100 of that same slide type, that change needs to be formatted manually 100 times. How much production time is needed to make those changes? Had those particular slides been tied to a slide master, that change would be implemented once and take affect across all 100 slides in mere seconds.

2. Allows For Instantaneous Layout Changes by “Snapping to Template”

So you may be wondering what “snapping to template” is. As I mentioned previously, PowerPoint allows us to create custom master slide layouts with content placeholders. When I use the term “snapping to template,” I’m specifically referring to the practice of taking content (be it a graph, table, text box, etc.) and “snapping” or anchoring it to the content placeholder of the applied slide layout. If the content contained within slides are simply floating around on the slide and are not anchored to a content placeholder (which is unfortunately all too often the case), the ability to quickly apply a different slide master layout without a need for major resizing and reformatting is not an option. Again, many may argue that it is not a big deal to reapply formatting and reposition content. However, these bad practices can add a heap of production time when there are a multitude of similar slides with complicated graphs that, for example, need to go from a 1/2 page layout to a 1/3 page layout.

Is It a PowerPoint Template or a PowerPoint Deck Masquerading as a PowerPoint Template? What’s the Difference?

There is a HUGE difference between the two and an experienced presentation production specialist knows what the differences are and is willing to educate their project manager(s) as to the reasons why it is imperative to start with a valid PowerPoint template from the project’s onset.

Companies can sometimes be their own worst enemy by employing or contracting presentation designers who are not aware of the differences between an actual PowerPoint template and a PowerPoint deck masquerading as a PowerPoint template. I’ve been down this road so many times with clients who truly believe they have a “proper” PowerPoint template that they’d like me to use for their slide deck.

The conversation typically goes something like this:

I’ve outlined a few key points below that will help distinguish an actual PowerPoint template from a PowerPoint deck that is mistakenly used as a template.

These are just a few of the key template characteristics that a properly formatted PowerPoint template should have addressed. Additionally, it is often helpful if the PowerPoint template designer also provide a style guide, especially for projects where there will be multiple people formatting slides for the same presentation. A style guide will provide approved guidelines for color choices for comparators, line weights, font sizes for the various components such as headers, subtitles, chart titles, x- and y- axis labels, etc., arrow types, global conventions, gap width for bar charts, and so on.

So Let’s Analyze How Misusing a Powerpoint Template Can Translate To Dollars and Cents

I’ve worked on some large-scale projects for pharmaceutical companies preparing for both FDA Advisory Committee and Regulatory meetings. Typically, there may be anywhere from 5 to 8 presenters, each with their own slide decks all tied to the same PowerPoint template theme. The decks are content-heavy with lots of scientific graphs, tables, and detailed information. There is usually a core presentation that may have roughly 100 slides, plus a library of back-up slides. As a part of the presentation support team, we normally format thousands of back-up slides. Depending on the meeting, the back-up slides typically number anywhere from 2,000 to 10,000 slides. Of those, only 100 or so slides will be shown, but every slide has the potential of being shown. Which means that every slide must be formatted per the slide template. Whoa! That’s a whole lot of slides to work on! But, granted, the project timeline for these engagements usually runs anywhere from 4 to 6 months with 2 to 6 presentation production staff…sometimes more.

In these type of projects, having slides that are not properly tied to slide masters with content that is not properly anchored to content placeholders can be quite costly in terms of additional formatting time if the production team must format individual components on each individual slide rather than simply applying a slide master layout to multiple slides in one fell swoop.

So How Much Can “Lack of PowerPoint Knowledge” Cost?

Using the above example, let’s do the math using the worst-case scenario…

A back-up library of 10,000 slides. Let us also assume that the “lack of knowledge” cost factor adds a mere 5 minutes per slide. It can add more time but, for argument’s sake…we’ll say 5 additional production minutes per slide. As of 2019, the average standard rate agencies charge for presentation production support is $150.00 per hour.

10,000 slides x 5 minutes = 50,000 minutes

50,000 minutes / 60 minutes = 833.33 hours

833.33 hours x $150.00 = $125,000.00

Yes…you read that right! 5 additional minutes spent formatting 10,000 slides can add $125,000.00 in unnecessary production costs!

Ok…you’re thinking “ we typically only have 5,000 slides in our back-up library.” That’s still a whopping $62,500.00 in additional and unnecessary production costs! 

2,000 slides? $25,000.00 in additional and unnecessary production costs.

100 slides? $1,250.00 in additional and unnecessary production costs.

Are you starting to get the picture as to just how much money your company can be losing due to mere incompetence?

The Key Takeaway

When tasking an employee or contracting an agency with your presentation endeavors, it is absolutely worth the effort to ensure that you are involving presentation experts who work in a highly efficient manner by properly utilizing PowerPoint templates to develop presentation slides, meet deadline expectations, minimize production costs, and ultimately improve your bottom line rather than eating up your profit margins. 

For more information about how iSpeak CREATIVE can assist you with preparation for an upcoming meeting, please click here.