I have found that a lot of businesses waste a significant amount of time tediously re-creating Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations for updated data every day/week/month. This is completely unnecessary since these tools have built in features designed to import data and link together.
I primarily use MS Office but similar methods should work for any other tools. The key is to use Excel to import data directly from a database and then link the charts and data from the spreadsheet to PowerPoint or other presentation tools. The advantage of linking data over downloading a report is that it retains saved features such as formulas, conditional formatting, and pivot tables/charts. There is also no real need to learn to use add-ins like PowerQuery or PowerPivot and usually very little or no need to write VBA code. You mostly just need a basic understanding of databases and SQL.
The reason why these features are overlooked is because most people do not have the skills to automate these processes. The BI analysts or programmers who do have the right skills are usually told to focus on building web dashboards or other programming tasks that often are utilized far less than basic MS Office documents. This is why I have found that building simple solutions into MS Office files can be a lot more efficient than building a dashboard with something like Tableau/Power BI.
Excel does not have as many visualization options as tools like Tableau but it is more flexible and everyone is familiar with it. It is also a lot easier for managers to communicate what is needed to a developer since the manager will have already made a semi-functional spreadsheet.
I have spent more than 5 years creating spreadsheets that automatically refresh from a database and then handing the recurring task off to non-programmers. I rarely receive follow-up requests for help and continually see that the tools are still in use years later. Building these automations is not much more work than manually creating the spreadsheet once so there is a ROI within the first few refreshes.
I'll share some of the methods that have worked well for me and the lessons learned from inefficient methods that I had to follow-up on to improve.