Getting the message on email control

Mark Presnell

Mark Presnell is a busy man. The chief executive of Auckland software company Convergence is trying to recruit staff, open a Wellington office and oversee the start of some "significant" project work in the capital.

All this on top of managing a growing export business which has spread to the US and Europe during the past year.

Convergence, which has a staff of about 20, was founded eight years ago as a developer of software to fit around IBM's Lotus platform.

In 2000 the company realised it was doing a lot of repetitive "information life cycle management" work, so it set out to develop a set of standard software tools to meet clients' needs in this area.

The result was a new sister company, Ability Software, to market a Lotus software range called the AbilitySuite with products covering email, document, project, staff and customer relationship management.

Presnell says Convergence's premier business partner status with IBM - earned through a record of proficiency across various IBM platforms - has helped drive local and international sales of the AbilitySuite.

The company's export drive was kick-started by a Trade and Enterprise-initiated programme where MBA students from the UCLA Anderson School of Management developed New Zealand, Australian and US market entry strategies for the company as part of their studies.

As a result of that analysis, Ability Software opened a sales office in New York late last year.

"The US is clearly not one market. There are a number of different regions which behave very differently and have different demographics, different industries," said Presnell.

"We identified the area around New York and New Jersey particularly as the area where the financial services industry is strongly represented."

This year the company signed up a US reseller and distributor, which has also taken AbilitySuite to Europe through its offices in the UK.

Presnell says a growing international focus on setting up strong corporate governance practices was helping to drive interest in AbilitySuite.

Court cases that involve email evidence were also a reminder to businesses that they needed to effectively archive emails, which could be the repository of 70 to 80 per cent of a company's expertise.

The AbilitySuite's email content management and archiving product allows messages to be stored by subject categories and accessed by other authorised staff who had an interest in, for example, correspondence related to a certain company project.

"That [management and archiving product] is the key product we're focusing on," Presnell said.

"Out of the five AbilitySuite solutions, that has got to be most relevant at the moment.

"Most organisations are recognising what a mess email is. Email content these days is far more sophisticated and far more valuable than it was five or 10 years ago.

"There needs to be more sophisticated management around it because the individual user's inbox was never designed for long-term storage of high-value email messages."

Australia is Ability Software's largest export market at present, although Presnell expects it to be eclipsed by the US over time.

Clinching a Government contract prompted the company to open its Wellington office, but Presnell would not say which department was involved.

*Convergence, Ability Software

Who: Chief executive Mark Presnell.

Where: Offices in Auckland, Wellington and New York.

What: AbilitySuite business software (Ability Software) and software services (Convergence).

Why: "Email content these days is far more sophisticated and far more valuable than it was five or 10 years ago. There needs to be more sophisticated management around it."