Indigo buys CRM software system
IT IS not uncommon for New Zealand-developed software to be bought up and marketed by United States companies, but Indigo Software has done the reverse.
The 10-year-old information technology services company and Lotus Notes specialist used to be the New Zealand agent for customer relationship management (CRM) software system Empower, developed by New Jersey company ienterprises.
In September, when ienterprises decided to focus instead on making software applications work better on mobiles, Indigo’s husband and wife owners – managing director Patrick Mckay and sales manager Rachael Staples – decided to take Indigo ‘‘to the next level’’ and buy Empower.
Mckay says they were partly inspired by online accounting software firm Xero, with which cloud-based Empower should soon interoperate.
‘‘We decided we wanted to provide something, based in New Zealand, that we could take to the world. People talk about ‘New Zealand 2.0’ – with the cloud, you don’t have to be based in the US or Britain to provide a world-class service.’’
Empower is used by about 30 clients in the US, Britain, New Zealand and Australia, Staples says.
These include US medical information company Total Therapeutic Management and Gold Coast financial intermediary Bill Buddy.
‘‘We spent the end of last year making sure we had the infrastructure and processes set up and we are now at the point where we are starting to push the marketing,’’ Staples says.
The couple moved to Auckland partly to escape the Wellington weather, but Indigo still has two staff in Wellington as well as two in Sydney and it uses two developers in India for coding.
CRM software is used by businesses to manage contacts with customers, such as sales leads, and it can be daunting for small businesses to think about adopting it, Staples says.
Sometimes a trigger for businesses to use CRM – rather than relying on spreadsheets or a shared email inbox – can be a staff member leaving and taking their knowledge with them, or someone losing a prospect’s contact details. Other times businesses see the need when they hit a certain size.