A great reporting tool from Excel – PowerMap

As you might know from some of my previous posts,  I really like concise presentation of information. The infographic is one of my favourites.  Graphical reporting is always great, and managers tend to really like it – it simple, conveys trends, and it’s not boring accounting numbers.

I read a piece on CIMA Insight  about a new add-in for Excel 2013 called GeoFlow, or more correctly PowerMap. You can read the full article here. The add-in uses Bing Maps (from Microsoft) and you can plot up to a million rows of data against a map. You can also plot date data, so you could for example see how sales have trended over time on a map. The data can be presented in 3D format, as bubbles, or as a heat map. This tool will certainly create really cool business reports.