Published on the 23/09/2014 | Written by Beverley Head
New Zealand-based Unleashed Software is planning a push into the northern hemisphere as it seeks more sales and skills to fuel its growth strategy…
Auckland-based Unleashed Software has always had an international focus. Its first customer was overseas – albeit in Australia – and local demand has persisted, leading to the company opening offices in Melbourne and Sydney. But it is now looking to spread its wings further with offices planned for London and San Francisco later this year.
Established in 2009, with its first product released in mid-2010, Unleashed provides cloud-based inventory management and stock control software that can be integrated with accounting and point of sales systems to provide streamlining and greater transparency across supply chains.
According to Gareth Berry, chief executive officer of Unleashed Software, besides opening the doors to more international sales, the international expansion will also broaden the company’s access to skills. The company currently employs 55 people, but is looking for 35 more developers at the moment; “Hence having to go to a larger market,” said Berry. “We would happily get to 100 if we could find the right people.”
A privately held company, Berry said that Unleashed was currently focused on a growth strategy rather than on generating profits.
It has already racked up sales to users in 88 countries, leveraging a 480-strong partner network – although Berry said that a quarter of the company’s customers got up and running on their own direct from the company’s website.
Berry said that the target market for the product was companies with revenues between $1 million and $20 million.
The company initially partnered with Xero as its accounting software partner “because it was local, online and had an API” but Berry said that users had since linked to a range of other platforms including SAP. The Unleashed system is currently hosted on a range of infrastructure clouds, although Berry said that it was now standardising on the Microsoft Azure cloud, adding that it would most likely remain on the US instance of Azure rather than the local Azure cloud which is scheduled to start operations in Australia before Christmas.
