Your boss asks you to present your company’s services to a prestigious potential client. You’re speaking at a seminar for professionals in your industry. You’re introducing your project to the board of directors for approval. Whatever the scenario, many of us will have to present our knowledge to others in a business setting at some point.
Whether you’re presenting to a group of colleagues or to clients, you want to deliver your information effectively.
Creating a professional presentation booklet can help you organize your message and keep your audience’s attention. They can peruse a read-along booklet during your presentation, then take the booklet with them to reinforce your message. Or you can add extra information in a presentation booklet so they’ll continue reading after you’ve sparked their interest in the topic.
Here are some suggestions for an effective and professional presentation booklet:
- Make your booklet a hard copy of the PowerPoint you’ll be projecting
- Give them an overview of your company or the background of your presentation
- Leave space in the booklet so your audience can write thoughts or take notes during your presentation, if appropriate
- Focus your booklet on statistics and facts related to your presentation
- Be sure to leave contact information or action you want them to take at the end of the presentation booklet
Now that you have ideas for what to put in your presentation booklet, there are several ways to actually make one:
You can take your information to a local printing company or printing website and have them create the booklet for you. This can quickly become expensive, depending on the size and quality of your presentation booklet. Color print, paper type, and binding type are some of the variables that will affect the price.
If you (or your company) are planning to create a presentation booklet more than once, it may be more economical to get the materials to make it yourself. You may already own or have access to a higher quality printer.
You will need to purchase a binding machine (a largish purchase), and the supplies for the booklet (paper and covers, nominal purchases). After these initial costs, you will enjoy the convenience and relatively low expense of producing your own presentation booklets.
Another benefit to creating your own presentation booklets is quality. Many printing companies allow for defects in your order. And if they don’t get it right the first time, it may be too late by the time you receive the remake. When you create your own presentations, you get to decide what the final product is, and you’ll be able to produce them as quickly as you like.
I’d recommend using the Unibind XU138. The great thing about a Unibind system is that you can quickly and easily create professional looking hard or soft cover books. You can also reuse the binding and add or remove pages from your booklet if you need to change the content.
Warning: a poor quality presentation booklet won’t help your presentation – it will draw attention away from your message! Demand the highest quality from your printer, or do it yourself to ensure that it’s done right.
Introduction
The questions set in accountancy papers, particularly at professional level, will frequently require students to present a report as the format required for dealing with the issues raised in a specific scenario. (Some exams, like those at professional level ACCA exams actually identify the marks available in each question for the professional presentation of answers). The purpose of requiring students to present information in this way is to test the application skills of prospective accountants. In the real world of accountancy, you will never be asked to write an essay on a particular topic! The client (your employer or audit client) needs information. The issue is the extent to which accountants can provide quality information. The better the quality of the information provided, the better will be the decisions based on that information.
What do accountants actually do?
It is worthwhile every now and then to think about what it is that accountants actually do! Accountants provide information to support decisions being made by others. It doesn’t matter whether you are auditing financial statements for the shareholders, producing monthly management accounts for the Financial Controller or writing a memo on the net present value implications of the latest investment proposal from the board of directors. In each and every situation, you are supporting the decision making process by the provision of information. In GCD’s accountancy courses for professional level exams, you will learn how to answer questions that provide good quality information.
Quality (ACCURATE) Information
Once we understand the role of the accountant, then we can appreciate the need to provide quality information, because the better the quality of information provided, the better the decision will be. A useful mnemonic is the ACCURATE model.
Accurate
Good information is accurate information. Accurate means no errors and factually correct. If the decision maker is using inaccurate information, that will corrupt the quality of the output, the actually decision made.
Concise
Good information will be concise and to the point. It will deal with the issues under consideration and nothing more.
Complete
Good quality information will contain all the information that is needed for the decision maker to make their decision. If there are any gaps or omissions, then those gaps must be identified.
User Friendly
Quality information will bear in mind the needs of the recipient and how they will use the information provided. It must address their concerns and their needs. Using GCD’s Moodle resource and E-Learning facility, you will be able to see examples of user friendly exam answers prepared by your tutors.
Relevant
Including irrelevant information is distracting for the reader. They waste their time reading it and you waste your time producing it. If it is not relevant to the decision under consideration, it should be excluded.
Authoritative
Good information will inspire confidence in the reader that they can rely on that information to support them in their decision making role. Authoritative information inspires confidence. We produce authoritative information when we reference our sources and identify where the figures for our analyses are coming from.
Timely
Good information will arrive during the window of opportunity when the decision maker is faced with a decision.
Easy to use
Modern technologies allow us to consider a variety of methods of communicating information. The recipient must be able to find their way around the information easily, interpret it and understand it.