Victorian Technology Profiles Feb/Mar 08

As an established distributor of international identity management software products, eB2Bcom offered best-of-breed niche products to the Australian marketplace. They found, however, that often the technologies they sold and supported were acquired by new suppliers, leaving eB2Bcom with little control over the products’ future.

In 2004, when local software company Adacel Technologies offered its Australian-developed identity management product View500 for sale, eB2Bcom saw an opportunity to move from distributor to developer.

“eB2Bcom had strong expertise in the directory services area, so taking on View500 Identity Management Technology gave us the opportunity to manage our own intellectual property, to have our destiny in our own hands,” says Manny Anthoulas, eB2Bcom National Business Development and Strategy Manager.

Since then eB2Bcom’s in-house development and support team has added a host of new features to its flagship product. View500 is specially optimised to hold corporate directory information for the use of switchboard operators and online users. It allows high-speed, accurate storage and retrieval of identity information.

“The measure of identity management technology is the ease of finding information accurately first time. Other technologies give many responses and you need to sort through them, but the View500 is optimised to retrieve and search accurately,” says Anthoulas

The technology is scalable and appropriate for organisations such as large corporations, government agencies, educational facilities and telecommunications providers.

“Our clients include Qantas, the NSW Department of Education, the Victorian Government, Bayside Health, Singapore Government and the military. We customise our solution to suit the client’s needs,” says Anthoulas.

eB2Bcom is focusing marketing efforts on the Asia Pacific region, with European agencies such as NATO also evaluating the product. Anthoulas is proud to offer the world market a superior, locally-developed solution.

“We have a global leading-edge technology coming out of Australia. We’ve got an investment in local industry.”

In 2003 Paul Mizzi, part-owner of a manufacturing business, was looking for a better way to manage his sales representatives.

“We lacked processes, had poor reporting systems and sales data was processed two weeks after the event,” says Mizzi.

Wanting to move away from a paper-based system, Mizzi struggled to find an effective, affordable, real-time solution. He engaged Nick Hutchins from software firm Digital Tree and developed a real-time sales application running on a personal digital assistant (PDA).

“I fell in love with the idea,” says Mizzi. So much so he exited the manufacturing firm and, with Hutchins, created a new business, Repsmart, offering the technology to the market.

The Repsmart solution combines sales ordering with customer relationship management in a real-time environment. Using a PDA, orders are placed electronically at the point of sale. Via a mobile phone interface, the sales representative can access the customer’s details and order history. Orders are processed immediately, updating the company’s financial, sales and customer databases.

Small businesses can now implement a sophisticated sales solution for less than the cost of a mobile phone, at the same time improving their sales team culture, according to Mizzi.

“We change the way people think, so we can incorporate different selling methods. For example, a customer orders ice cream, but hasn’t ordered cones. The system will pick that up and send a message to the rep’s PDA,” he says.

“Reps visit more customers, take more orders and the system helps them up-sell. From our feedback, reps that were seeing six or seven customers a day now cover 10-12.”

Focusing on the food distribution industry and offering the service on a subscription basis, the Repsmart solution suits large and small players alike. Repsmart is available across Australia, with Mizzi investigating distribution options with local and overseas telecommunications companies.