Software to go overseas

LOCAL software systems and services company Empired Limited is poised to export its human resource management tool BigRedSky to overseas tertiary education markets.

The decision comes after the recent successful sale and integration of its software to Edith Cowan University. According to Empired executive director Gavin Burnett the ECU contract has sparked significant interest from local industry players and the company plans to take the product offshore.

“We have modified the BigRedSky technology to be used for ECU’s academic promotions process,” Mr Burnett said. “The current process is quite long and can take up to five or six months. We’ve introduced a system that reduces that by two months.”

Previously academics wishing to apply for promotions would need to provide paper documentation that was assessed by various people.

“What we have eliminated is the double handling,” Mr Burnett said. “We worked very closely with ECU on this and they have benefited from being the first university to take the first bite.”

Empired managing director Justin Miller said the deal with ECU was struck two weeks ago and Empired have received calls from universities.

“We released the news two weeks ago to 40 universities and in the space of a week we have had 10 responses,” he said.

Mr Miller said those universities were some of the country’s biggest and were located in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland.

“We will now actively market the product to universities overseas,” he said.

The expansion into the university market follows its government agencies development where Empired won a contract in 2001 to service 21 Victorian Government agencies with the BigRedSky product.

Earlier this month the Victorian Government announced that its entire 260 agencies could purchase the BigRedSky product without needing to tender for the service. Mr Burnett said the announcement has prompted a further 12 agencies to sign up for a trial and that the company aims to sign up 52 agencies.

Empired ranked fourth in the 2003 Deloitte Technology Fast50 and Mr Burnett said he expects the company to be in the top ten again next year.