Business infographics — the quarterly update people actually open
Turn the figures you already have into a report that plays in a browser. Send it as a link, and watch it get read instead of downloaded and forgotten.
What people make here
Three business infographics people make here
Quarterly reports
The numbers, the trend and the one line of commentary — in a piece that reads in fifteen seconds.
Board and investor updates
Growth that draws itself while you talk, on a projector, with no slides to click through.
Budgets and roadmaps
Where the money went and what ships next, in a shape the whole company can follow.
The format
What is a business infographic?
A business infographic turns company data — revenue, headcount, spend, milestones — into one sheet somebody can read in fifteen seconds instead of a report they will open once. It is the format for quarterly updates, board and investor decks, budget breakdowns and roadmaps: anywhere the numbers already exist and the problem is that nobody is reading them. The useful ones are ruthless about it. One argument per sheet, the figure that matters set large, the source and the period on the sheet rather than in a covering email.
The four types business data usually wants
Most company reporting resolves into one of these four. Pick by what the data is doing, not by which layout looks best.
This quarter against last, plan against actual, us against the incumbent. Same rows for every column, and the row where you lose left in.
Examples
Six of them, playing right now
Not screenshots. Each of these is a real piece, drawn in your browser by the same thing that will draw yours.
NNorthfield
Q4 · Company update
The best quarter we have had
Every region finished ahead of plan, and December carried it.
£4.2m
Revenue this quarter
Up from £3.6m in Q3
Revenue by quarter
2.6Q1
3.1Q2
3.6Q3
4.2Q4
And underneath it
312
New customers
18%
Growth on last quarter
94%
Renewed their contract
11
People hired
How the quarter went
A board update that reads in fifteen seconds
NNorthfield
Budget · This year
Where every pound went
Half the year’s spend went on the people who make the thing.
Spend by area
£4.8m
People52%
Infrastructure19%
Marketing14%
Office9%
Everything else6%
£1.9m
Left at year end
Held back for the new site
Where the money went
A budget split anyone can argue with
NNorthfield
Roadmap · Next four quarters
The next four things we ship
One release a quarter, and nothing else on the list.
The year ahead
Q1
Faster imports
Spreadsheets that used to take a night now take a minute.
Q2
Shared workspaces
A team can work on one thing without emailing files about.
Q3
The mobile app
Everything you can do at a desk, on a phone.
Q4
Open the API
So the tools you already pay for can talk to this one.
How far along we are
Faster imports82%
Shared workspaces41%
The mobile app12%
What we ship next
A roadmap that fits on one screen
NNorthfield
Year on year
We did more of it, with fewer of us
Orders shipped
Last year
18,400
With 46 people
This year
27,900
With 41 people
Orders, month by month
JanJulDec
The dip in April was the warehouse move.
This year against last
Two numbers, honestly scaled
NNorthfield
Teams · This month
Two teams are full. One is not.
Where the next piece of work should probably go.
Committed capacity
Delivery96%
Support91%
Data74%
Research48%
3.2hrs
Meeting time per person, per day
Down from 4.1 after we cut the Monday call
Who has room to take work
A capacity read that avoids a meeting
NNorthfield
Pipeline · Live
Most of it is sitting in one place
Deals by stage
Enquiry
148
Demo
96
Proposal
74
Legal
21
Signed
17
74
Waiting on a proposal
Worth about £1.4m between them
Where the deals are
A pipeline without a spreadsheet
Figures are illustrative and the organisations are invented. The pieces are not.
Common questions
What is a business infographic?
A single sheet that turns company data into something readable at a glance — revenue and margin, headcount, spend, milestones or a process. It exists because the underlying report is not being read. The test of a good one is that a person who was not in the meeting can take the point from across a desk.
How can I create my own business infographic?
Start from the figures you already have rather than from a layout. Paste the numbers or upload the report — a PDF, a Word file, a spreadsheet, up to 25MB — and a first draft comes back with the figures already in it and a chart chosen from the shape of the data. Then do the part no tool does for you: cut it to one argument and check every number against the source.
What are the 7 types of infographics?
The list usually given is statistical, informational, timeline, process, comparison, hierarchical and geographic. For business data the four that earn their keep are statistical, process, timeline and comparison — each has its own page here. Hierarchical org charts want a diagramming tool and geographic data wants a mapping tool.
Where can I find free business infographic templates?
There are eight editable templates here — statistics, timeline, process, comparison, report, list, breakdown and social — rather than a library of hundreds. If browsing a big catalogue is how you like to start, Canva and Venngage are genuinely better at that and it is worth saying so. If you already have the quarterly figures, skipping the template entirely is faster: describe what you have and the structure is chosen from it.
Can I make a business infographic in PowerPoint?
You can, and for a simple two-column table it is a reasonable choice. What costs you time is alignment — the moment a label wraps, the layout stops lining up and you are nudging text boxes. There is no .pptx export here, so a sheet made on this site arrives on your slide as a PNG. That is usually what you want anyway: it stays exactly as it was composed instead of being reflowed by the slide editor. Pick the wide shape first and it lands at 16:9.
Can I use our brand colours and logo?
Yes — save a brand kit with your colours, typeface and logo and every piece afterwards is drawn in it, so a year of quarterly updates reads as one series rather than twelve unrelated documents. Paid plans hold several kits for teams working across brands.
Is it free to try?
Yes. The free plan needs no card and is exactly one infographic to try — enough to run last quarter’s figures through it and decide. The download is standard quality and a small badge sits in the footer. Paid plans go from about 80 pieces a month upward and add brand kits, editing by asking, best-quality downloads and removal of the badge.
Write one sentence. Get one of these.
Free to start, no card needed, and nothing to install at either end.
£1.9m
3.2hrs