Excel, SmartDraw show why a picture is worth a thousand numbers
by Rick Telberg
Many of today’s reports contain large numbers of business graphics. That’s a good thing; after all, the old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words is especially true when it comes to conveying numbers.
Unfortunately, while finance and accounting professionals are usually quite comfortable with tables of figures, they often aren’t quite as facile when it comes to the pictorial representation of those figures. Creating charts from Microsoft Excel or in PowerPoint is pretty much a matter of highlighting the data and clicking on the chart icon, which launches the Microsoft Chart system. For many users, that’s the beginning and the end of the process. The result is a chart, but not necessarily one that reflects well on you or your firm. Here are a few pointers on how to spice up your business graphics.
What you see is not all you can get: Experiment with chart types. MS Excel has a number of chart types. If you always use a column chart, why not try a line chart or a horizontal or stacked column or bar chart? When you have a range of values for each row or column, try using the “Stock” chart. The “Surface” chart and “Ribbon” line chart are interesting and attractive alternatives.
Experiment with formatting options: Many Excel users don’t realize it, but they can change bar colors, the width of a bar, switch between 2D and 3D graphs, change the colors of the background, and even the shape of the “bars” to a cylinder or pyramid. The shapes are at the bottom of the “Standard Charts” list and are easy to miss unless you use the scroll bar on this list. Don’t forget to use the preview Excel provides in many of the Chart Wizard windows. You can also right mouse-click on many of the components of the actual chart to see what options you have. For example, If you double click on the background of a graph, you will get a color chart where you can select a new background color for the chart area.
Try Something New: You aren’t always limited to using Excel for your business graphics. While there are fewer programs around than in past years (the chart and graphing capabilities of MS Chart, included with MS Office, have taken their toll), there are some good graphics programs that should be part of your business graphics toolkit. Microsoft’s Visio makes it easy to create complex readable diagrams and flow charts. And SmartDraw lets you create “picture” graphs, using images such as clip art to form the bars, and a wide variety of charts, diagrams, and even Gantt Charts and diagrams, which are great for illustrating timelines.
SmartDraw isn’t inexpensive, though it is often on sale for less than its $299 list price. And if it saves you a few hours in creating impressive business graphics that your clients will notice, it’s worth every penny.
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