Presentation management

Clients want an easy way to control the corporate PowerPoint slides so that the message remains consistent across users and the slides have a consistent look and feel in line with the corporate brand values.

In response we have developed an addin for PowerPoint allowing for the  standard slides in the master template (for example company description or biographies) to be managed centrally and be available to users throughout the organisation. In that way it is possible to ensure that all the core, or standard slides, are up to date and consistent throughout the company.

Created for both PowerPoint 2003 and 2007, two macro buttons - 'New presentation' and 'New slide(s)' - allow users to access the master corporate presentation and create a new presentation or add slides to an existing presentation.

Corporate PowerPoint template

The master template contains two types of slides

1. Blank slides - in the corporate style ready for the user to add content for the individual presentation
   eg title page, contents page, single column text, two column text, table slides plus various pre-formatted graph slides (pie, bar, line)
2. Standard corporate slides - these are partially or completely pre-filled slides that contain real up-to-date company information
   eg managers profile slides, company history slides, client list, case studies etc.

These are accessed by a series of buttons on the dedicated tool bar we add to PowerPoint

'New presentation' button
Clicking the button opens a dialog box  allowing users to select from the range of centrally held slides and order them to create the basis for a new presentation. Clicking on a slide in the list displays a thumbnail of the prepared corporate slide.
 

Having selected the slides they want users click Create Presentation to create a PowerPoint presentation that they can then use, edit or add to in the normal way.

New slide button
This allows the user to insert selected slides from the master corporate template into an existing presentation.

Clicking the Insert slide button opens the dialog box  below allowing the user to select the required slide or slides.

Managing the system

Marketing departments always immediately see the value when we demonstrate this system. They realise the Presentation Manager gives them the capability to control master presentation safe in the knowledge that and users will be able also quickly insert the latest slides into their existing presentation.

Examples of centrally managed slides are:

• Company overview
• Latest corporate figures
• Case studies
• Managers profile / CVs
• Client lists