In Part 1, we looked at the similarities between Investment Banking and Consulting: high expectations for formatting, meticulous detail, and the idea of “money slides.” But when it comes to the way each industry creates these slides, there are meaningful differences. These reflect the distinct goals and workflows of each role and, ultimately, how the slides are used in their client interactions.

Core Differences in Slide Creation

1. Structure and Templates: Standardized vs. Storytelling

Investment banking presentations are often highly templated, while consulting slides demand more storytelling and creative freedom.

In Investment Banking, Analysts and Associates rely heavily on reusable slides and templates. A pitch book for a client might involve simply refreshing data in a layout that’s been used hundreds of times before. This consistency keeps the slides clean and on-brand, and it allows junior staff to efficiently deliver standardized information. These templates include:

• Company profiles: Repetitive but essential; each profile slide highlights key stats, updated with new data.

• Pitch book layouts: The layouts are often minimalistic and grid-like, with a heavy focus on numbers, financials, and strategic insights.

For Consulting, however, each client presentation is built around a specific question or problem, requiring more freedom to tell a unique story. Consulting presentations frequently start from scratch, evolving through storyboarding and visualization. This requires flexibility in how information is organized and presented to fit the specific client needs. Consultants also create Framework slides—a format not often seen in Investment Banking—designed to visualize concepts like value chains, market analysis, or competitive landscapes. These slides help tell a story, guiding clients through complex solutions.

2. Slide Layout and Design: Simple Grids vs. Complex Visuals

Investment Banking slides are often organized into simple layouts, such as two-by-two grids or basic table structures. These clean, structured formats allow viewers to quickly grasp the essentials: revenue, EBITDA, or growth rates.

Consulting slides, on the other hand, tend to incorporate more varied and complex visuals. This is partly because consultants need to present multi-dimensional solutions and concepts that don’t fit neatly into tables. The visual variety—charts, diagrams, frameworks—helps bring complicated ideas to life. This freedom allows consultants to get creative with data, ensuring it not only looks good but supports their storytelling.

3. Iteration and Revision: Iterative Feedback vs. Templated Updates

For both industries, creating a deck is an iterative process involving feedback and multiple revisions. However, the types of revisions vary significantly.

In Consulting, much of the process involves constant iteration. As consultants refine their understanding of a problem, the slides are reworked to reflect new insights. Consultants action comments, refine layouts, and test different visual representations. For a senior consultant, the iteration process can mean several rounds of feedback with junior analysts and partners, resulting in fine-tuned slides that highlight the solution in the clearest way possible.

In contrast, Investment Banking slides are often less about evolving insights and more about updating existing templates with the latest data. Once a pitch book is set up, the main revisions come from adding current information, such as a recent quarter’s financials or new peer data. This templated format reduces the need for creative revision, but it still requires detail-oriented updates to ensure accuracy.

4. Analytical Focus: The High-Level vs. The Granular

In Investment Banking, the focus is often on high-level financial metrics. Bankers need to quickly show a company’s strategic fit, growth potential, or market value. The slide process is more about validating the opportunity through numbers and positioning the company as an attractive investment.

Consultants, on the other hand, work in the details of processes and solutions. Each slide often requires consultants to answer questions like:

• “What’s the key insight here?”

• “How does this data support our recommendation?”

• “What can we simplify or emphasize?”

This means Consulting slides are geared more toward granular analysis and recommendations. Each element is considered to ensure it contributes directly to the story being told to the client.

Key Challenges and Unique Requirements

In Investment Banking: Time Constraints and Formatting

Bankers face strict deadlines, and formatting can be a significant time sink. While templates simplify the process, Bankers still spend countless hours ensuring numbers are accurate, formats are precise, and everything is visually consistent. Additionally, dealing with non-editable formats like PDFs or recreating slides from other sources are common pain points. A tool to convert PDFs directly into editable PowerPoint slides would be a major time-saver, as would better options for quick formatting adjustments.

In Consulting: Elevating Content and Consistency Across Teams

In Consulting, the challenge is less about templates and more about elevating content and achieving a cohesive style across slides built by different team members. When consultants work in large teams, everyone may have their own visual style, leading to inconsistencies in titles, colors, and layout. A tool that enforces a consistent style guide across slides and supports brainstorming or rough outlines would be invaluable.

Role of Design Teams and Offshore Support

For large banks, having an internal design team can be helpful, but demand often outstrips supply. At a major bank like JP Morgan, associates might need to enter a queue to get design support, leading them to sometimes format slides themselves to meet tight deadlines.

Consulting firms commonly use offshore design support. This allows consultants to send rough drafts to a team that returns multiple options for color schemes and layout styles, letting the consultant choose the best version. This offshore support enables consultants to work on high-value tasks while delegating the bulk of design work, making the process more efficient.

Conclusion

While Investment Banking and Consulting both demand strong attention to detail and deliverables in PowerPoint, the way each industry creates slides couldn’t be more different. Banking relies on templated, data-focused presentations that emphasize consistency and speed, while Consulting takes a more creative, iterative approach that allows for storytelling and client-specific customization.

In Part 3, we’ll dive into specific solutions and tools that could speed up slide creation for both fields, exploring how automation and AI could address the unique challenges each industry faces.