Company partners with US university

UCLA MBA student Stuart Moncada (left) with Stellar Library's Dave Andrew and fellow student Josh Kahn. Photo / Supplied

Tauranga's Stellar Library, a cloud-based document management system for iPads, has partnered with MBA students from the University of California Los Angeles Anderson School of Management to fast-track its international expansion.

The company was established in 2014 and now has close to 2000 users in Australia and New Zealand.

Dave Andrew, Stellar Library's general manager, acquisitions, said the Global Access Program (GAP), offered by the UCLA school, provided the perfect platform to research, develop and implement a strategic international growth plan and US market entry strategy.

"Quantitative research focuses on gathering numerical data and generalising it across groups of people, but I am more interested in qualitative research, which looks at how Americans behave towards our product."

Mr Andrew said gathering research and real-time data was key to determining the viability of promoting Stellar Library to a particular segment.

More than 100 New Zealand technology companies have participated in GAP since 2002.

This year, Stellar Library is one of eight technology companies participating in the programme nationally.

After a screening process, each approved company is assigned five MBA students who invest more than 2000 hours over six months to perform primary market research worldwide, and develop an investment-quality strategic business plan as part of their MBA degree thesis.

Participating companies must average two hours of executive time with students per week and also host two MBA students for a two-to-three day visit. UCLA MBA students Josh Kahn and Stuart Moncada recently completed a week-long induction in Tauranga.

Mr Kahn had extensive experience in media, business strategy and financial planning, having worked for HBO since 2009. Mr Kahn said a major benefit of working with the US university students was that "we are an active part of the industry we are examining locally".

Mr Moncada worked in software development, engineering and business management for major corporations including Hewlett-Packard, PwC, Motorola and Safran.