Fast-growing outfit has global reach

By VICKI JAYNE

As chief executive officer of a local company with global reach, Michael Whittaker probably clocks up more flying hours than a commercial pilot.

The 30-year-old head of Atlantis boards 300 flights a year and is out of the country for three weeks of every month.

It's one of the penalties of managing a company that perhaps typifies the zappy information-age organisational model.

Launched less than five years ago, Atlantis Group can boast a growth path climbing steeper than your average airliner. Recent coups include this year's purchase of Kansas-based Graphicard Systems by its subsidiary Visible Results, making it the world's largest provider of read/write loyalty cards.

Centred firmly in Auckland, the company now has a staff of around 250 successfully dispensing its customer relation management (CRM) services to clients in New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Japan and the United States.

"We're a little unique in not having a large venture capital company behind us, nor a significant cornerstone investor that's driven our off-shore growth," says Mr Whittaker.

"So we've effectively grown by centralising the bulk of operations here in New Zealand, which has enabled us to go to multiple countries relatively quickly without having to set up a whole infrastructure there."

Look at the comparative costs, and you can see why that makes sense.

"We reckon that the amount we pay per year for a square foot of space here, we pay per month in Singapore and per week in Japan.

"An office that houses three people in Japan costs us as much as the total floor space of our head office here with its 100-plus staff."

Rapid growth and wide spread create their own management problems. Time zones, for one.

"In New Zealand, we run out of talk time to the US by 10 am. So in terms of communications, there are small windows of opportunity that definitely stretch the norms for getting things done."

For Mr Whittaker, hooking into a business meeting at 1 am is not unusual.

"We see it as a 24-hour-a-day business. That's the way we run it and we're totally committed to that."

Good communications are vital as the cultural fabric of the company stretches ever wider.

With no particular blueprint to follow and unable to afford high-level strategic advice, the approach has been one of replicating elsewhere the model that worked in New Zealand - with flexibility.

"It's a two-way street. In Japan, for instance, it's just a case of spending time up there with people, understanding how they go about things and then taking their system and adopting as much as we can of our own policies and ideas into that. You blend in."

The interesting thing, he says, is that even in different countries, Atlantis has emerged with a distinctive culture of its own.

"It's a fairly free-wheeling culture. It's young and it's pretty dynamic by dint of having a relatively small senior team having to deliver growth and penetration into a number of markets.

"So it's fluid and action-oriented."

Challenges have differed from one market to another. Unique to Singapore is the very high staff turnover. This creates staff training and retention issues that are non-existent in Japan, where employees' agendas are longer term.

Picking which staff will thrive in overseas posts has been a fairly intuitive process.

"You do get a sense of who is capable of managing the shift. Even though we're all part of one company, you can get pretty isolated when pioneering a new set-up."

Staff stay only two years in an overseas post and then have a choice of moving on or back. Meantime, most are in New Zealand every three months or so for meetings.

"It is all in keeping with centralising everything - keeping the knowledge of the brains trust here, making sure we don't spread that too thin."

Mr Whittaker attributes much of the company's success to a well-defined strategy on centralising operations.

"We're not negotiable on that. Clients will try and sway you because there is an element of comfort in having your data in the next office. But in reality, they would seldom visit that office - the computer housing all their data could be anywhere.

"People are becoming more comfortable with that approach."

To add to those comfort levels, Atlantis underwent a privacy audit with PricewaterhouseCoopers which earned it New Zealand's first privacy seal of approval. It's all part of staying at the forefront in technology and customer service - a task eased by having a foot in several countries.

"It's proved a huge advantage," says Mr Whittaker.

"Only last week we signed a big US client to come with us because we have that innovative edge on technology from around the world. We can value-exchange thoughts and practical examples of things that work from one market to another.

"One of the big challenges we have as a management team is to communicate that - to share that knowledge on a regular basis."

He reckons New Zealand is a good base from which to go global - as long as companies can take a truly global perspective and invest time and money overseas.

"The economics stack up, we're efficient, have qualified staff, and a cultural fit that aligns well with major suppliers.

"There's no reason New Zealand is not positioned to take a leading role globally in outsource services."

* vjayne@iconz.co.nz