Empower Suite for Efficient Presentations
- Mar 13
- 3 min read
Introduction: The Hidden Cost of Presentation Work — And Why It Matters
Presentations are the backbone of modern business life. Every day, millions of professionals rely on PowerPoint to pitch ideas, share strategies, and communicate with colleagues across the globe. But beneath the polished slides lies a costly problem that most organisations have simply accepted as normal: an enormous amount of time is being lost — not on crafting compelling content, but on formatting.
In his session at Present to Succeed 2022, Stefan Kühnert, founder of Empower — a business software company built solely for Microsoft Office — reveals the staggering scale of this problem and demonstrates how the right tools can win back hours, protect brand consistency, and transform the way teams work with PowerPoint. Drawing on a major global study conducted with Nielsen, the world's largest market research firm, Stefan shares practical, real-world solutions that any PowerPoint-heavy organisation can start using today.
The Research: Every Second Person, Every Single Week
The numbers are hard to ignore. Empower's study found that in corporations across the world, every second person works intensively with PowerPoint. And of those people, the majority spend more than two and a half hours every week on formatting alone — not content, not strategy, just alignment, charting, and template fixes. That adds up to more than 15 working days every year, per person, lost to formatting. Time that could be spent on the work that actually moves the needle.
The Top Three Time Wasters — and How Empower Fixes Them
Stefan's session centred on the three biggest culprits behind all that lost time, and how Empower tackles each one directly.
Searching for Existing Content — The Biggest Time Waster of All
The number one drain on productivity is searching for slides, templates, images, and icons that have already been created. You leave PowerPoint, dig through SharePoint, scroll through Teams channels, ask colleagues — only to end up with something that might not even be the latest version. Empower solves this with a built-in slide library directly inside PowerPoint. You can search across every slide ever stored in SharePoint, Teams, or your organisation's central library — visually, instantly, without leaving the app. Think Google-style search, but for your corporate content. And if a slide gets updated after you've used it, Empower flags the change and lets you pull in the latest version with one click.
Converting Slides to a New Template — A One-Click Operation
A corporate rebrand. A new master template. A switch from 4:3 to 16:9. These moments cause genuine pain for anyone tasked with migrating existing presentations into a new format. Empower's conversion tool intelligently maps layouts, resizes images proportionally, and cleans up copy-paste formatting chaos — in seconds. Several clients have adopted Empower solely for this feature alone, and it's not hard to see why.
Creating Sophisticated Business Charts — Without the Headache
For finance teams, strategy consultants, and anyone producing regular reports, building and maintaining business charts in PowerPoint is a significant burden. Empower's charting tools let you drag and drop charts directly onto slides, link them live to Excel data, and add elements like delta lines and waterfall charts with just a few clicks. When your Excel data updates, your presentation updates automatically — no manual rework required.
Who Is Empower For?
Empower is built for organisations that rely heavily on PowerPoint — banking, consulting, finance, and any team producing presentations at scale. With over two million users worldwide, it's designed for serious PowerPoint users who want to spend less time on formatting and more time on the thinking that drives real results.
For those who want to try it, Empower offers a free edition — available by invitation — that includes over 50 advanced layout tools, Excel-linked charting, and translation features. No credit card required.
Final Thoughts: Your Time Is Too Valuable for Formatting
Stefan's message is straightforward: the formatting battles we fight in PowerPoint every day aren't inevitable — they're a solved problem. With the right tools, organisations can reclaim thousands of hours, protect brand consistency, and free their people to focus on work that actually matters. Whether you're a power user or simply someone who spends too long wrestling with slides, Empower is worth a look.
Join the Conversation
How much time does your team spend on PowerPoint formatting each week? Share your experiences in the comments below — and let us know whether tools like Empower have made a difference in your organisation.
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