Tenderlink cashes in on latest web technology

Stephen Persson says TenderLink's services are underpinned by data security

When Philip Brown set up tendering clearinghouse TenderLink as a part-time business run out of his Wellington garage in 1993, he used snail mail to dispatch information to his corporate client base.

"The impetus to provide the service was born out of the frustration of trying to find out about tenders being published in the marketplace because, in those days, the only reliable way you could do it was to buy every newspaper and check all the tenders columns," says Brown, who was regional manager for a transport company at the time.

"I'd get all the newspapers, get all the tenders and then redistribute them back to subscribers."

As technology evolved, so did the format for delivering TenderLink's bulletins: the fax machine ruled in the early 1990s but began to be replaced by email from 1995. The company launched its first website in 1998 and its web-based electronic tendering system in 2001.

The New Plymouth-based company says it now processes 99 per cent of publicly notified tenders in New Zealand and Australia - and has more than 10,000 users.

TenderLink is now cashing in on the web technology it has spent more than $1 million developing by offering larger clients their own web portal for managing tenders.

"We now make that technology available under an application service provision (ASP) model whereby we customise electronic tendering portals for government departments, universities, councils and corporates," says Brown. Clients using the ASP service include aircraft-maker Boeing in Australia and several New Zealand local authorities.

The move into the ASP market has seen TenderLink follow a growing trend by companies to outsource their IT storage requirements to a data centre operator, in this case to Revera.

TenderLink IT manager Stephen Persson says one advantage of outsourcing is that it has cut internet traffic costs by two-thirds.

The main motivation, however, was that large clients demanded data hosting in a secure, dedicated environment.

"We knew that our value as an application service provider depended on the quality of our underlying computing infrastructure," Persson says.

"Increasingly, the sensitivity of customer data means there is an implicit obligation to underpin application services with appropriate levels of security and performance."

Brown, who was raised in Taranaki, moved the TenderLink business from Wellington back there in the late 1990s for lifestyle reasons.

"I love living here. This is the type of business you can operate from anywhere," he says.

"That's not to say it doesn't provide challenges because it does. Geographically, we're three or four hours from anywhere and our market is pretty much Australasia so we spend a considerable time in Australia."

TenderLink employs about 25 staff in New Plymouth and 10 in Australia. The company has investigated expanding into the Southeast Asian market.

Brown says that while he is excited about the international prospects of the business, particularly on the ASP side, the transtasman business remains the priority.

"You've got to keep focused in the markets that you operate in. Once you've built a base there and you're the best at what you do then you can look to bigger horizons," he says.

"We're at the early stages of what we're doing in terms of our ASP development. The lesson to be learned is to keep focused on what your core activities are and don't depart from that."

Tenderlink

Who: Philip Brown (CEO) and Stephen Persson (IT manager).

What: Providing information on new tenders to more than 10,000 subscribers in New Zealand and Australia.

Where: New Plymouth, Sydney and Melbourne.

Why: "There are other players in the Australasian market but they haven't taken the leap to providing electronic tendering."