Posts Tagged ‘New Zealand’

Wellington leads NZ Growth Surge for Enprise

February 11, 2014

It was only May last year when Wellington’s economy looked so bleak that even our prime minister John Key referred to it as a “dying city”. “All you have there is government, Victoria University and Weta Workshop” he said.

From my perspective today at Enprise Solutions and the business of selling MYOB EXO business management software to a wide cross-section of medium-sized NZ businesses; Wellington’s small to medium business owners have switched on to investing for growth and I would say that they are more optimistic about the general business climate than we’ve ever seen before. The last quarter of 2013 saw Enprise sell more than three times as many MYOB EXO systems in Wellington as the same quarter the previous year. December and January were record months for new Wellington-based MYOB EXO ERP software sales, with February shaping up to look even better.

Enprise’s other New Zealand branches in Auckland and Hamilton are also experiencing an upsurge in demand now that confidence is returning to the New Zealand business climate. Businesses owners are realizing that they need to invest in putting strong operational and financial systems in place to compete and capitalize on the opportunities of a more buoyant market. There is also a strong shift towards Cloud Computing and almost half of all the MYOB EXO systems we sell are hosted in the Cloud by our associate company 2Cloud.biz.

In Australia, Enprise has offices in Sydney and Melbourne which also focus on selling MYOB EXO software to the larger local SME businesses. Australian business confidence took a hit last year before the election and we noticed a drop-off in business software investment. Following the election, we are seeing a recovery in business sentiment and we’re now very optimistic about Australian sales in 2014.

Posted in ERP, MYOB EXO, New Zealand IT Industry | Leave a Comment »
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PC Direct Reunion 2012

May 15, 2012

The original PC Direct neon sign

I’ve been going to a few reunions lately – maybe it’s my age. First came the school reunions, which were notable for their lack of participants; then came a couple of business reunions which were a totally different story and a lot more fun.

Last Saturday night I dropped in to La Zeppa in Auckland to catch up with about 50 of my former colleagues from PC Direct. The reunion was instigated and organised by a number of the former staff, including Jennifer Stott, Eduard Johansen, Trevor Fowler and Cheryl Tinholt.

PC Direct is a New Zealand success story that started with its founders Maurice Bryham and Sharon Hunter in 1989 and grew to dominate the local personal computer market for most of the 1990’s, with a team of up to 120 staff. At times its share of the New Zealand PC market was larger than the global players such as IBM, Compaq and HP. Over 100,000 PC Direct computers were built and sold in to a market population of only 4 million people. Not bad market penetration!

Accordingly, PC Direct was known as the “Mouse that Roared”.

A well attended company reunion is the reflection of a great company and a great culture. Everyone was proud of being a part of it. PC Direct’s culture was electric. Its staff were young, motivated, enthusiastic and talented. We all worked hard and had fun. The business was winning on all fronts, including the marketplace, the industry awards and the minds of the computer-buying New Zealand public.

The people of PC Direct are now spread throughout the New Zealand IT industry and beyond (around the world in fact). I think many of us learnt a lot from that very positive experience. I certainly did.

I’m now looking forward to the 25th PC Direct anniversary reunion in a couple of years time (2014). I expect even more of the old team will attend that.

Posted in New Zealand IT Industry | 4 Comments »
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Datasquirt AGM 2011 – Chairman’s Address

October 2, 2011

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Chairman’s Address to Shareholders
Datasquirt Limited
Annual General Meeting
30 September 2011

FY11 has been a hard-working and productive year for Datasquirt, which has seen us increasingly selected as a best-of-breed provider by clients and channel partners internationally. We were delighted to achieve a profitable result for the last quarter of the year, and take the loss from ordinary activities for the year down to $NZ 599,000; a 51% improvement on the previous year’s loss of $NZ 1,233,000.

Our Cloud-based solution “CONTACT” is giving Corporate Contact Centres around the world the ability to communicate easily in real-time with their customers through increasingly popular channels, such as SMS, Web Chat, Email, Twitter and Fax.

Datasquirt is well positioned from a technology standpoint and is capitalizing on some major growth drivers in the marketplace, including;
• The growing preference for Cloud Computing and Software as a Service
• Rapid Smart Phone adoption
• The increasing use of Social Media by businesses
• The growing demand for faster, more immediate business communication.

This year saw continued growth in sales through reseller partners internationally, culminating in Q4 with an agreement to supply a leading North American call centre provider with CONTACT under their own branding; a deal worth over US $1M, which will see Datasquirt’s software deployed across the United States and Canada. The global technology search that preceded this organization selecting CONTACT illustrates the quality and differentiation of the Datasquirt product offering.

In October 2010 Datasquirt became one of the first software providers in the world to offer a call centre specific platform for managing Twitter interactions with customers. Datasquirt clients such as Royal Mail Group and Wokingham Borough Council in the UK are now using CONTACT to manage Twitter-based service delivery in their call centres.

Only this month (September 2011), we were delighted to be voted first in the “Top 25 Contact Centre Technologies” by readers of a leading UK Contact Centre Magazine called “Call Centre Helper”. This affirms that our product offering is in tune with the needs of our target market.

The company expects sales from both current and new clients to continue to increase and we anticipate on-going growth in the strength of our reseller channel. We will maintain a continued programme of product enhancement to deliver further social media and reporting functionality in line with client demand.

The directors remain confident in the success of Datasquirt and wish to thank our customers, staff, shareholders, suppliers and partners for their on-going support.

Mark Loveys
Chairman, Datasquirt Limited

Posted in Cloud, Communication, Datasquirt, Multi-tenant, Social Media | Leave a Comment »
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NZ’s GST change only looks simple

June 25, 2010

I’ve recently been thinking through the forthcoming New Zealand GST changes with our consulting team at Enprise New Zealand.

New Zealand businesses will incur unexpected costs as a result of the 1 October GST increase from 12.5 percent to 15 percent, unless they take steps now to prepare for the transition.

From an IT perspective there is a general perception that the rate change is a simple issue – that businesses will change the GST rate to 15 percent in the setup options of their accounting software and carry on. Unfortunately it is not always that simple.

Many businesses – do not appear to have realised all the implications of the change.

Changing the GST rate in your accounting system is one thing, but it’s the issues around the changeover, such as customisations to documents & reports and the timing of particular transaction types and situations that are going to catch people out.

Examples include the handling of transactions such as lay-bys, credit notes, orders, back-orders and quotations that are processed within timeframes that span the GST changeover date.

Someone will have to pay the increased GST – and it will be up to the business to make up the shortfall if it does not charge the customer the correct amount. Companies dealing in large volumes of goods, or companies that order goods in advance are more vulnerable in this situation.

With only two and a half months to go, the IRD is yet to release final official guidelines for businesses. A GST Advisory Panel has been set up to consider the transitional issues businesses are facing and will provide regular comment on its website. See: www.gstadvisory.govt.nz

The flexibility of modern accounting software packages, and the ease with which businesses can customise them, is sometimes a double-edged sword. GST has not changed for over 20 years. Since then a huge number of customized reports and forms have been created by many people for individual business requirements that may involve GST calculations. Without thorough testing, businesses won’t know for sure whether their invoices and credit notes will apply the correct amount of GST or whether GST will be reported correctly.

Enprise New Zealand has committed to run automated tests on its customers’ systems before 1 October 2010. We have developed a software application that can be run – remotely in most cases – through system files and databases to check all customisations and identify instances of hard-coded GST rates in the customer’s environment. Enprise can then advise and or help customers make their system compliant.

The application we’ve developed is automated, but beyond that, business processes need to be checked for each customer to understand whether they are processing types of transactions that require further GST consideration.

The sheer number of companies that need to have their systems and processes checked is a big issue. Enprise will check at least ten customers a day, every day until 1 October. It’s unusual to have to check so many systems in such a short time frame.

It’s going to be a busy time for the local accounting software industry.

The GST change is not likely to kill anyone – but it could result in cost, inconvenience and bother if not properly prepared for.

Posted in ERP, MYOB EXO, SAP Business One | 2 Comments »
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Introducing Enprise New Zealand

March 22, 2010

Enprise New Zealand was originally the direct-sales division of Exonet International Ltd, which was the developer of the Exonet SME ERP Package, now owned by MYOB and renamed as “MYOB EXO”. Exonet was founded by myself, along with Maurice Bryham and David McKee Wright. For a more complete story of Exonet/MYOB EXO, refer to the Exonet Story web site.

Enprise separated from Exonet (who at the time were owned by Solution6) in late 2002, following a management buy-out of the division by Elliot Cooper, Leanne Graham and myself. Included in the Enprise buy-out transaction were all the largest and most complex Exonet customer relationships, which gave us an excellent foundation to build our new business on.

Since establishing Enprise New Zealand as a stand-alone business in 2002, we have built up a customer base of over 420 SME business customers, hired over 50 staff, developed many add-on solutions for Exonet and opened branches in Auckland, Waikato, Wellington and Christchurch.

In addition to this Enprise New Zealand has been the foundation business for the “Enprise Group”, which has in turn started up and acquired Enprise Software and EMS-Cortex respectively.

Enprise New Zealand is today the largest MYOB EXO reseller in New Zealand (and possibly Australia) and is in the process of building up a complete nationwide network, with localized sales & on-site services backed up by a centralized phone & web support service. This concept of a local presence connected to nationwide infrastructure, combined with the deep product knowledge inherent in Enprise’s role in the development of MYOB EXO, gives our customers a level of service that is second to none.

Watch out for my future posts on Enprise New Zealand as this business continues to expand…

Posted in ERP, MYOB EXO | Leave a Comment »
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