US move amplifies sales for Aussie software business
Technology
A small Australian business software company is accelerating its growth in North America and beyond after establishing an office in Los Angeles.
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Headquartered in Adelaide, South Australia, Amplify-Now has signed deals with a host of high profile companies and had its Amplify software translated into Japanese since opening its El Segundo office in July.
While sales of its strategy execution management platform have continued to be strong in Australia and around the world, new customers in the United States including Pfizer and Parexel and an imminent deal with a Canadian oil and gas company are helping to drive growth.
“Certainly the investment in the US has paid off,” said Amplify-Now CEO Matt Williams.
“We closed the first deal and that paid for the whole adventure and everything after that has been icing on the cake.
“From a business standpoint it’s been very exciting and better than I could possibly have imagined.”
The company changed its name from Connexion Systems to Amplify-Now in July to coincide with its American launch and align it more closely with its flagship product.
Amplify launched as a project management platform in 2013 and pivoted from a value management tool into a strategic execution management tool in 2016.
The software has since been used by a range of Australian and international clients including Coca-Cola Amatil, Accident Compensation Corporation of New Zealand, South African energy utility Eskom, Public Health England and oil and gas company SANTOS.
Sales of Amplify doubled in the Australian financial year to June 30 2018 and again in 2019. The figures for the first quarter of 2020 have already equalled 2019 full-year revenues with North American sales accounting for half of global sales and the remainder being driven from Adelaide.
“While some of that was pull through and we’re not expecting to quadruple this year, we’re certainly on track to double again and at the rate we’re going we might end up tripling,” Williams said.
“In our space that’s what you want to do – doubling is good but tripling is what investors in particular want to see because it shows there’s a lot of demand.”
But the expansion hasn’t been all about the United States. Connexion Systems’ recent growth includes sales in Europe, the United Kingdom, the Middle East and Japan.
“We’ve also just sold our software in Abu Dhabi to Emirates Global Aluminium, and to a Japanese retailer so we’re now in the throes of writing a Japanese version of Amplify to support them,” Williams said.
“I’ll certainly be taking that and promoting it to all of our consulting partners so they know they can then go and start selling a Japanese language version of our software – that’s been a barrier to date.
“The work we’ve done to the product means that we are now able to translate Amplify really quickly, it just requires a language pack and we can translate into a number of languages such as French, German, Dutch, Spanish.”
Amplify-Now became the first South Australian business to win a place in AusTrade’s Landing pad program for tech exporters in January, which led Williams to San Francisco for an intense 90-day residency to help him establish an American office.
Williams said the West Coast time zone gave the company the ability to tag team with its Australian office to “follow the sun” around the globe and was a key reason for choosing to establish in California.
“The team here (in LA) deal with the UK at the start of our day, which is the end of the day in the UK, then they can work with the East Coast of the US, Central US, West Coast US and Canada.
“At the end of our day the Adelaide team comes on line and we hand over to them.”
Amplify-Now also recently moved into new offices in Adelaide to accommodate its expansion and is looking to hire more staff – software developers and business intelligence analysts.
Williams said he would also hire two more sales staff in the United States in the new year.
He said the company was transitioning from a startup to a scale-up with a focus on managing growth.
“The US office is really a sales and marketing arm but the Adelaide office is still the hub,” he said.
“All the software is produced there and we’re trying to centralise things as much as possible in Adelaide because it is a more cost effective place to do business than Los Angeles and definitely Silicon Valley.
“Right now my challenge here in the US is about growing sustainably and making sure we can grow into new markets.
“We’ve already got customers around the USA but now we’re looking to get our first big customer in Canada and we’ll look at Mexico.
“It’s really just making sure that we establish ourselves through better partnerships here in the US and making sure we can drive more revenue growth.”
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