PPTools is not part of Microsoft as such. the MVP award for PowerPoint though IS given by Microsoft to exceptional leaders in this field. There are less than 40 in the World (including me and Steve from PPTools) so if the question is can PPTools be trusted, they can.
Just so you know we have a more basic (and cheap) version which can merge in data from a CSV file. Has far fewer features but may be all you need.
Simple Merge