GFC a godsend for GeekIT

Businesses are favouring made-to-order software solutions as pressure from the global financial crisis hits home, according to local ISV, GeekIT Group.

Established in Melbourne, the company specialises in Web-based software and has spurned off-the-shelf solutions in favour of tailor-made products. GeekIT CEO, Mary Henderson, claimed the dour economic climate, downsizing of IT departments and skills shortage particularly in software development, have bolstered demand for custom-made online software.

“The GFC has established a lot of opportunities for us and other organisations,” she said. “There is a new trend of customers coming to us specifically looking for big and small applications that needs to be custom-built from the ground up.

“A lot of corporations are looking at online solutions customised to their businesses and we are getting phone calls from a significant number of clients based on recommendations.”

Macquarie University, the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) and Herron Pharmaceuticals are some organisations that have employed GeekIT’s software. With a growing client portfolio, Henderson said the company is looking to add more staff to its brood of eight in early 2010.

While GeekIT has predominantly dealt directly with users for the past three years, it is gearing up to take a channel-friendly approach. The ISV recently teamed up with SMB integrator, Anittel, and expects to grow its number of reseller affiliates.

“We have been working with Anittel for the last 4-6 months and that came about through conversation with a few of its key stakeholders,” Henderson said. “It is a project-based partnership where we deliver Web-based components, which is not part of Anittel’s core business.”

Resellers retain full control of end-user clients and essentially become a direct customer of GeekIT, which will mainly be a third-party participant.

“The issue is, with a direct sales approach, we can’t get to every customer. The channel is a much better way for us to delivery our specialty to clients,” Henderson said. “We get clarity on the brief since we are dealing with an IT reseller company that has IT specialists talking to IT managers or CIOs, so it makes our jobs much easier and I see a huge opportunity in the marketplace for channel partners to embrace these types of services.”

GeekIT also deals in laptop accessories and with yearly revenue of around $2 million.

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