For Bernie Malinoff, the story begins with a challenge many research businesses know well: how to scale intelligently as demand grows. Following Element54’s integration into Leger, a 320-plus-person organisation with eight offices across North America, the team was operating within a much larger business while still facing the realities of a lean specialist group. Like many insights teams, they were balancing growing client expectations with the need to work efficiently, deliver at pace and make the most of limited resources.
That environment sharpened a question Bernie and his team were already asking: how can smaller, highly skilled teams do more without asking people to do more manual work?
“Our challenge was how how do you do more when you’re a small team?”
Bernie Malinoff
Executive Vice President, Leger – Element54
Solving for efficiency uncovered something much bigger
When Bernie and his team first introduced E-Tabs’ SlideCraft Report Automtion, the initial objective was clear: eliminate the burden of manual chart production. Like many research teams, they were producing vast numbers of charts, many of which would never make it into the final story, simply because teams needed optionality during the reporting process. Analysts could spend two days or more manually creating slides that were often only partially used.
SlideCraft immediately transformed that workflow. What once took days could be done in under an hour, often much less, with charts generated in bulk directly from structured data. From a productivity standpoint, the value was obvious. But what surprised Bernie was that the operational win was not the biggest breakthrough.
“We went in trying to solve was that core challenge of bulk charting. And the problem that we ended up solving was the more interesting one.”
Bernie Malinoff
Executive Vice President, Leger – Element54
Unleashing Talent In Young Researchers
As repetitive production work was reduced, another problem surfaced, one the team had not fully recognised before. Highly capable junior researchers, hired for their curiosity and analytical thinking, had been spending enormous amounts of time on work that did not use those strengths. Bernie stressed, “They got into this industry because they said we’re curious people. There’s nothing curious about creating a hundred slides.” For Leger – Element54, Automation exposed how much intellectual capacity had been tied up in low-value tasks.
Bernie explained, There is a contradiction in telling talented young researchers they were hired for their intellect, only to ask them to spend days manually building charts. He emphasised, “It was frustrating because as a remote team, you’re doing this all virtually, people are sitting in their living rooms and they’re complaining about how many charts they have to go create and say, well, what did you hire me for?”
To deepen the frustration, Bernie reflected that, “analysts could spend three days creating countless charts, only for senior stakeholders to use perhaps fifteen of them in the final report.” For him, that underscored that the real problem was never simply the volume of charting, but how valuable talent was being spent. As he put it, “the problem we solved was the more interesting one. It was all around human capital.”
“Our juniors, the people who were hiring to eventually replace us, what we want to tap into is the power of their brain. We don’t do that when we give them tasks that are repetitive and uninteresting.”
Bernie Malinoff
Executive Vice President, Leger – Element54
Automate to Connect
Automation helped remove that disconnect. With the mechanics of chart creation dramatically accelerated, analysts were no longer spending the bulk of their time producing outputs. They could spend that time interrogating data, exploring patterns and working alongside senior teams to shape the narrative emerging from the research.
Instead of assigning junior researchers repetitive execution, Bernie could place a different challenge in front of them: let’s find the story together. That was where engagement changed and motivation changed. Importantly, the value junior team members could contribute changed as well.
“An analyst on my team that would normally spend the two days creating all these charts, instead in under an hour created everything by anything that they could possibly need.”
Bernie Malinoff
Executive Vice President, Leger – Element54
The deep lesson learnt: Building the future of leaders
As Bernie reflected, beyond the obvious benefits of report automation such as operational efficiency, doing more with less and everything else, he encouraged leaders to “think about the most junior people on your teams, those who came into the industry because they are curious and talented people, and ask what you can take from automation that will help them succeed in their jobs.”
“Tap into their passion, their talents” is how Bernie summarised the broader opportunity automation created. For him, those were the kinds of benefits he got to experience first-hand with E-Tabs. He reflected he has, “less runway ahead than behind,” which is exactly why this matters so much to him now. Supporting the next generation, and helping unlock the talent and curiosity they bring, has become one of the most meaningful outcomes of all.
“This is important to me now. I really care about this next generation.”
Bernie Malinoff
Executive Vice President, Leger – Element54
Start your own SlideCraft Story
E-Tabs SlideCraft is designed to turn structured data into fully populated, editable PowerPoint decks in seconds. With a simple upload of your banner tables, you can choose your PowerPoint theme and preferred slide types and then select the questions and variables you want to visualise. SlideCraft then generates scalable, repeatable reporting complete with intelligent sorting, stat testing and configurable templates. As Bernie’s story shows, the real opportunity is not only saving hours of manual chart production, but freeing your team to focus on insight, curiosity and impact. If you are ready to reduce repetitive work, empower your researchers and transform the way you report, start your own SlideCraft story today and get in touch with us to see how SlideCraft can streamline your workflow.
