NXPowerLite for PowerPoint (Mac): Conversation with Michael Barber

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Michael Barber is Marketing Manager for Neuxpower Solutions Ltd. in London. He is originally from the Newcastle upon Tyne, in the NE of England. Before joining Neuxpower, Michael worked for the UK’s largest software company, Sage UK. He spent 8 happy years at Sage, working in a variety of roles across its many marketing departments. His career highlight (other than joining Neuxpower) was bringing to market Sage’s flagship software-as-a-service, Sage One. Outside of work, Michael spends most of his time going to music gigs/festivals and following his football team, Newcastle United as they take the EPL by storm.

In this conversation, Michael discusses the new NXPowerLite file optimization product for PowerPoint users on the Mac.

Geetesh: Why did you create a Mac version of your popular file optimization software, and why did you choose PowerPoint as the first file format to launch NXPowerLite for the Mac?

Michael: Neuxpower has been delivering great file reducing software for around 10 years now. Some of the world’s leading brands are our customers. Over the last few years a growing number of our customers have been asking us to deliver software that can reduce MS Office, PDF and JPEG files on a Mac OS. We noticed that as the growth in Mac use across the world increased, so did the number of requests from our customers. As a software company we pride ourselves on putting our customers first. All of our development is led by our customers. This has never been demonstrated more so than by the release of NXPowerLite for PowerPoint® on Mac.

The most popular request for a file type to reduce our software with has always been Microsoft PowerPoint, so it was kind of an obvious choice to start with. Especially given the great links we have with the PowerPoint and presentation community.

Geetesh: How has the feedback been from Mac users, and do you plan to add optimization options for Word and Excel files in the future?

Michael: The feedback so far has been great from our customers. We sent out a pre-release email to those customers who requested the software over the years. The idea was just to say thanks for pushing us to do this. Within minutes of sending that email a customer in Switzerland bought a licence online. A few hours later, a few customers who follow us @nxpowerlite on Twitter were sharing the link to the free 14 day download.

Christy Buechler of DHL, one of the first customers to use this new software, said “We knew all about NXPowerLite working on PC’s, so we asked them to create a version to work on Macs. Many people in the proposal/defence industry use PowerPoint’s full of images. NXPowerLite can shrink those files so we can easily email them to customers, suppliers or colleagues.” Christy’s comments have been followed by others who have said things like: “Wow,” “this is amazing,” “I love it,” “best software utility ever,” and suchlike. I don’t say this to appear arrogant, in fact far from it. It’s just that once someone starts using our software, they often can’t remember how they ever did without it. To that end we have some very loyal customers. As for our next version, and whether we will optimise other file types; well its simple, it’s up to our customers. I will be asking those who buy and trial our new product what they want to see next. Once again it will be a customer driven development.

Categories: add-in, interviews, nxpowerlite, office_mac, powerpoint