Geac cuts Auckland staff

By ADAM GIFFORD

Canadian enterprise software manufacturer Geac is laying off a further 17 Auckland staff as it adjusts to a tough market worldwide.

Two of those to lose their jobs were in sales. The rest were developing StreamLine, a New Zealand-designed business management system which runs on the Microsoft Windows NT computing platform.

New Zealand manager Nigel Birtwell said there are no changes to current staffing levels within the teams responsible for sales and operations for the StreamLine, TIMS, i2, SmartStream products, or in the team managing Geac's local government software business.

A year ago there were 82 developers on the Streamline project, with the company promising to put $50 million and up to 100 more staff into it.

But red ink on the company's books put paid to the plan, and about 40 staff were dumped last June.

Mr Birtwell said rather than try to create different versions of Streamline for different industry verticals, Geac has decided to leave it as generic product.

Resources will be put into making it easier to implement and make simple customisations, as well as reducing the need for technical support.

He said there are still 20 people in Auckland employed just on Streamline support and product development, and the changes should free up more resources for working on customer requests for customisations or modifications.

"Streamline at its current state of maturity has excellent generic capabilities for the local mid-range market - businesses in the $10 million to 200 million turnover range," Mr Birtwell said.

"Since the last software release at the end of 2000, we have got a fantastic fully integrated financials, manufacturing and distribution system which is easy to use, has a nice generic depth of functionality and is not designed for a specific vertical."

"It's ideal for small and medium manufacturers and distributors who acknowledge it's easier for them to change some of their business processes rather than buy and package and modify it, or get a tier one application which involves bringing in one of the big five consulting firms who burn your arms and legs off while they spend three years putting it in."

Mr Birtwell said Geac has sold more than 40 Streamline systems in New Zealand, Australia and Britain.

Last month it successfully deployed Streamline on an ASP (application service provider) basis in a joint venture with network infrastructure company GDC Communications. The customer, North Shore business Hillside Building Supplies, uses Citrix MetaFrame technology to remotely access the financials and distribution applications sitting on servers at GDC's data centre.

Mr Birtwell said Geac worldwide is expecting only limited revenue growth for the year ahead, but its financial position is now more solid than in recent times.