EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
Putting iWork to Work in a Small Biz

Intezyne, a biotech firm that started in 2004 and now counts 11 employees, has chosen a different route. After some bad experiences with PC hardware and software, it's put Macs into its offices and now uses the iWork software suite for jobs ranging from administrative tasks to investor presentations.

"There's only 11 of us, but we want to always have a very professional appearance, and we've always gotten phenomenal responses from everything that comes out of iWork," said Rebecca Breitenkamp, scientist and CFO at Intezyne. "So we've been very happy users."

At Macworld, Breitenkamp spoke at an iWork informational session. MacNewsWorld caught up with her to talk about using the software in a small business .

MacNewsWorld: What's the extent to which you use iWork at Intezyne?

Rebecca Breitenkamp: We use iWork quite diversely here at Intezyne. We use all three pieces of software -- Keynote, Pages and Numbers. For example, with keynote, we use it internally. Today we just had our weekly company meeting, where we talk about general business, what's going on, who's traveling where, as well as give a science update. We use it internally just for things like our agenda -- instead of wasting paper, we just put it on a Keynote slide. Then all of these sub-research groups will give an update on their research and they'll use Keynote. So we use it internally like that.

When we go externally we give scientific presentations. We have presentations at [University of Connecticut], we have collaborators in Chicago at [Rush University Medical Center], I'm actually going to be at [University of California in Santa Barbara] in March giving a presentation. So we use it externally when we go to present to other people. Next week we're actually presenting at the Florida Venture Capital Conference. And even though they require -- because they're a little behind the times -- us using PowerPoint, we did everything in Keynote and then just exported it to PowerPoint. We've done everything from internal documents, external, board meetings, prospective investors -- you name it, we've done it. And that's just Keynote. Same thing with Pages and Numbers. We've done the whole gamut -- internal documents, external documents -- things of that nature.

MNW: Have you used iWork from the day the company was founded, or did you have to make a transition?

Breitenkamp: No, we weren't that enlightened when we started. We were actually PC people when we started for the first year or so. Then we had an incident -- you get what you pay for. We've tried all the major brands; we won't call people out individually, but they all have failed us. So we finally threw our hands up and said whatever, we're going to buy a Mac. We started doing point-by-point comparisons of a Mac versus a comparable PC and we saw that they were the same price -- we'd always heard Macs were expensive.

We first transitioned our hardware. For our business plans and all our documents, we had used Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) InDesign and the Adobe Creative Suite, which is great if you're a professional layout person and designer. But folks like us, we're scientists, we can't figure this out. So there were all these features that are available in that software, but we just didn't have the time to get trained on it to use it. I had been talking with someone at Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) and they asked if we'd tried iWork before.

We started using it just a little over a year ago -- the first time we used it was our first annual report to our external investors. Started with Pages, then we started introducing Keynote, then when Numbers came out in August we immediately started using that. It was a transition for us. But the fact that it's so easy for everyone to use when they come in here is a huge selling point. First we tell people, hey, you're getting a Mac and you don't have a choice. At first they're like "OK ...," and then they love it and end up buying one for home. The second thing is, we introduce the software suite because we're weening ourself off of Microsoft Office. For $79 you get all of this. It's a third or a fourth of the price of Office, and you get so many more features.

MNW: Do you see a whole lot of resistance when you take in new hires who may be used to a more Microsoft world? How long does it take them to come around and be enthusiastic about iWork? Or are there people who would rather be in Microsoft?

Breitenkamp: It usually takes them about a week or so. They have the advantages that there are people around they can just ask. But they start to find these little features. I actually came back from Macworld, and even as [Apple's] Jim [Heiser] was giving the presentation that I was a part of, I actually learned some new things. You're constantly learning little tricks. I came out showing people different things and they said, 'That's just so cool.' Everyone has a few of those moments, and then they're pretty much sold.

MNW: How do outsiders like investors or potential investors see the presentations and documents you create through iWork?

Breitenkamp: They're very impressed. It was funny -- as I mentioned, our first foray into iWork was with our annual report. We had to send it to attorneys first, because we can't do anything without talking to attorneys. They were going through it and they said, "Wow, this makes me want to convert to Mac, just seeing how nice this looks." Then our investors asked us, "Who did you outsource this to? Who did this for you? It looks really nice." And I just said, "Thanks, for $79 I bought iWork and did it myself." That was really our first attempt at it, but we were able to use some of the templates that they had in there and just modify it for our purposes. Even having never used it before, we were able to work through it and it turned out really well.

MNW: Most of the world is Microsoft Office. Do you see a lot of challenges in making your presentations compatible with other software?

Breitenkamp: There are a couple options when you use Keynote to export. A lot of times what we do is we'll just export to a PDF -- simple as can be. We just run our presentation off a PDF if they insist.

But another feature which we didn't even realize is there is you can export as a JPEG and just paste into PowerPoint, so it preserves all the fonts, all the pictures exactly as it's supposed to be. So it doesn't matter which version of Microsoft Office they're running; it looks exactly like you want it to. We experimented with a couple of ways -- there are so many options with how to export it. Actually, our slides look phenomenal.

We really just went through this in the last week where we really had to have it in a PowerPoint presentation, and it looks excellent. We tried to go directly to PowerPoint, but it just doesn't have the features that Keynote has. So a lot of really good-looking things weren't coming over, and it wasn't Keynote's fault, it was just that PowerPoint was not able to handle it. That's why we actually went to exporting as JPEGs, because you can preserve all of the features of keynote. ... We put the two side-by-side -- the version using PowerPoint's capabilities and then our Keynote ones that we just exported as pictures, and there was a huge difference.

MNW: You mentioned Keynote and Pages -- how do you put Numbers to work around the office ?

Breitenkamp: Numbers covers a good spectrum of what we do. In doing the financial work, I found numerous ways to use Numbers for calculations, and just the fact that it uses a canvas -- I can have multiple tables moving around, put charts in there, put text boxes, pictures, you name it. Right now I'm in the process of updating our business plan, and I live in Numbers, just creating these sheets, all these tables, linking them and so forth.

Aside from the financial work, even with internal documentation -- simple things like tracking vacation days for employees. We created a template in Numbers using some features that you can't get anywhere else, using checkboxes and pop-up menus, things that aren't available in other software systems. Using that to do administrative things makes our life a little easier.

On the science side of things ... I do some work where we're trying to deliver DNA into cells. I get data out of this -- it comes on 96 little plates, so we have 96 different pieces of data. I was trying to find a way to limit the mistakes that can happen when you do calculations -- and also to save me time, because we've got a lot going on. We try to automate as much as possible. So I actually made a Numbers template; I started from one of their templates. They have a science template. Basically, I can cut and paste my data in there, which then directly feeds into another table that averages all my data, then directly feeds into another table which then plots the data. That's really cool because all I have to do is paste it in. ...

I take microscope pictures of all the cells because we're trying to transfect DNA which makes this flourescent green protein, so the cells light up green. I have the data at the top -- the quantitative analysis of it -- and at the bottom I can actually paste in all the pictures from the microscope. It's nice because you can define something as media placeholder. So I made a template where I sized all the microscope images, so every time I do a new experiment I can just drag the new pictures in with no resizing. I can save the whole thing as a template, and we're constantly updating the templates, finding new ways to save ourselves time. But it's just not something that you see anywhere else: having that capability over such a broad spectrum of things.