The Last Mile: Connecting Your Workflow Across Research, PowerPoint, and Excel | AlphaSense

40% of users say they spend more than half of their project or deal hours on deliverables. Mentions of "slides" on AlphaSense sales calls are up over 200% year over year. KC Pietro (Senior Manager, Product Marketing) calls it the last mile tax: the manual, frustrating stretch between the interesting work and the finished output. KC sits down with Daniel Wolf (Product Lead for the AlphaSense add-in suite, and Co-Founder of Carousel, acquired by AlphaSense in 2025) for a working walkthrough of the new suite of work product tools that close that gap without pulling you out of the apps you already use. The framework is 0 to 1, then 1 to done: 0 to 1: Generative Search Slides. Create decks large and small directly inside your research session, from a single-slide company profile to a 40-slide pitch book. Upload your firm's template once for on-brand outputs from the first pass. Set up custom or scheduled agents for recurring deliverables. Everything grounded in AlphaSense content and cited inline. 1 to done: AlphaSense for PowerPoint and AlphaSense for Excel. The full AlphaSense experience embedded natively inside Microsoft, not an API skin. Chat in the side pane while the assistant reads your slides, your slide master, and your model context. What you'll see: - Building an industry overview deck on defense tech from scratch, with peer comps and financials pages generated in minutes - How citations live as shape metadata inside PowerPoint, so every claim on a slide traces back to a specific quote or page in the AlphaSense platform - AlphaSense running as a sub-agent, fanning out 7 or 8 parallel queries to build out a slide's evidence base - A real customer story: how the error-check use case caught a competitor's mine coming back online days before a pitch, saving a client from an avoidable faux pas - Excel backfill using Canalyst models, extending logic without breaking existing formulas - File upload architecture: how PDFs, decks, and models get processed locally on your machine via the App Manager companion app, without ever being uploaded to AlphaSense - Templates and slide master adaptation across decks - 60+ built-in skills, personalized prompt suggestions, and custom instructions (including Daniel's square-bullet rule, built partially out of trauma) Plus Q&A on logo usage, integrating internal and external sources, connectors, and how to get set up as an existing customer or trialer. 00:00 Welcome 01:35 Meet the Panel: KC Pietro and Daniel Wolf 02:47 The Last Mile Tax: A Bad Travel Day Analogy 04:48 The Data: 40% of Project Hours Spent on Deliverables 05:58 Zero-to-One vs One-to-Done: The Framework 07:20 Generative Search Slides 10:16 Template Library and On-Brand Outputs 11:14 The Slide Agent: Purpose-Built for Banking and Strategy 12:29 AlphaSense for PowerPoint 14:05 Error-Check as a Second Set of Eyes 14:38 Respinning a Pitchbook for a New Target 15:12 The Small Wins: Logos, Headshots, and Formatting 15:49 AlphaSense for Excel 17:46 Excel as a Thought Partner 18:32 Built Around Trust and Local Security 20:44 Live Demo Begins 20:57 Building an Industry Overview Deck on Defense Tech 24:10 The 2 Pillars of the Plugins: Execution and Research 26:57 How Citations Live as Shape Metadata 28:20 AlphaSense as a Sub-Agent: Fanning Out Queries 31:53 The Mining Company Story: Catching a Competitor's Restart 34:24 Excel Demo: Backfilling With Canalyst Models 36:18 Uploading Files Directly Into the Plugin 39:12 Templates and Slide Master Adaptation 41:35 Excel Charts as Backup for PowerPoint 43:12 Q&A Begins 43:48 Q&A: Are AlphaSense-Pulled Logos Safe to Use? 45:03 Q&A: Voice-to-Text Input 45:20 Q&A: Integrating Internal and External Sources 49:04 Local Processing and the App Manager 50:50 Q&A: Skills Library and Personalized Prompts 52:08 Custom Instructions: The Square Bullets Story 53:26 Q&A: Availability for Customers and Trialers 55:03 Q&A: Deeper Training and AlphaSense Certified 57:22 Closing For anyone building decks, models, or reports for a living, this is what closing the last mile actually looks like. --- AlphaSense is a market intelligence and search platform used by the world’s leading companies and financial institutions. Learn more at alpha-sense.com.