Do you need to quickly summarize market research survey data? If so, you’re not alone. Many businesses rely on top-line summary reports to help them make informed decisions and stay ahead of their competition. But creating a top-line summary report can be time-consuming and tedious — unless you know the right tricks!

In this blog post, we will show you how to create a top-line summary report from your survey data in under 5 minutes. We'll cover the basics of top-line summaries, explain why they are important, and provide step-by-step instructions on how to get started. So if you're ready to save time on summarizing survey data let's dive in!

What is a top-line summary report?

In market research, a top-line summary report is a brief summary of survey data that outlines the key findings and is often accompanied by a chart visualizing an interesting cut of the data for each question. It is typically used by decision-makers to quickly get a big-picture view of the results without having to sift through all the details.

Although they are not particularly technical to produce, generating a top-line report can be a time-consuming task. Especially manually copying and pasting data from Excel to PowerPoint and ensuring the formatting matches your client's branding.

Unfortunately, this means that offering top-line summary reports to customers might lead to fairly small profit margins. In fact, we regularly hear from the market research agencies we speak to that they no longer offer simple reports such as top-line summaries, and they prefer to focus their efforts on selling in more complex, story-led data presentations.

This is all well and good, but sometimes the client doesn't need a consultative approach to their market research study. Perhaps they have a smaller budget, or maybe they have personnel in-house who are capable and want to dig further into the data to draw their own conclusions.

We're here to show you how you can offer both, without compromising on profit margins and draining resources with non-technical tasks. After all, I'm sure you would rather your highly-skilled researchers are focussing their time and energy on delivering impactful insights, rather than copying and pasting data.

And as market research budgets are being squeezed, it makes sense to extract revenue that is on offer, in the most cost-effective way possible.

What you will need

To create a branded, editable top-line summary report from your market research survey data in under 5 minutes, you are going to need 3 things:

1. A set of processed data tables - sometimes referred to as 'banner tables' or 'crosstabs'.
2. A PowerPoint template - this can be your own or your client's. We're going to be generating slides using the branding from the slide master, so you won't need to worry about formatting or color schemes.
3. Access to the Indico Labs report builder. Don't worry if you don't have a log-in - complete the form below and one of the team will be happy to help you get started.

Request access

Create a top-line summary report

Step 1: Upload your data tables

The first step is to upload your banner tables or crosstabs to the Indico Labs platform. The Indico Labs report builder uses smart technology in the background to identify and extract the key information that you will need to produce your top-line summary report.

It will work out where your question text is, where the rows and columns for each question are and even where your sample information is.

You will be given the option to select which questions from your survey you'd like to generate charts for, or you can simply import everything.

At least to begin with, I'd recommend importing everything - you can always get rid of anything you don't need once you've generated your slides.

Step 2: Import your PowerPoint template

Next, we are going to import the PowerPoint template we want to use for our top-line report. The Indico Labs report builder uses the slide master in your PowerPoint template to generate the new slides and charts for your summary report. All you need to do is upload it to the platform and the software will make sure you are using the right fonts, colors, logos etc. for your client.

Step 3: Customize your slides (optional)

At this point, the Indico Labs report builder has basically generated the top-line report for you. If you want to take it a step further you can begin to customize sections of the report within the platform with the easy-to-use, point-and-click interface. You can change color schemes, choose different cuts of the data to visualize, rank the data and much more! You can even apply your changes to groups of slides with a click.

Step 4: Download your report

Hit Download to PowerPoint and Indico Labs will generate and deliver an entirely editable PowerPoint presentation in a matter of seconds.

Because your slides have been generated directly from the tables you uploaded, you don't even need to quality-check the output. Although, if you're a market researcher, I'm almost certain you will at least spot-check the data!

Step 5: Add some key findings

Add some key finds at the start of the presentation, or on each slide.

And that's it! You've created a top-line summary report from your survey data in under 5 minutes.

Happy clients, healthy profit margins and engaged employees. If you'd like to give it a go, request access using the form below and one of the team will be happy to help you get started.

I want to build top-line summary reports from my survey data:

If you're interested in taking your top-line reports and appendix sections a step-further, check out our post on how to turn any survey data into an online, interactive chart book:

Supercharge boring appendix sections in your Market Research reports [Video Tutorial]