Genie conjures up a Universal solution

By ADAM GIFFORD

Software from Mt Wellington company Genie Systems has been chosen by the Australian subsidiary of multinational music distributor and retailer Universal Music for a business-to-business project.

Genie chief executive Mike Hendry said Universal wanted to automate its release schedule, reducing reliance on label managers and manual work. The project is being watched by parent companies in the United States and France to see if it has wider applications.

"We will look at taking digital content - partial tracks, video clips - and making it available to the various retail channels they support," Mr Hendry said.

"There will be other things like track listings, reviews, whatever is needed by the retail channel or the radio stations to take a release to the market.

"Ultimately we hope to be able to create a system where digital content out of Europe and the US will kick off an automatic procurement process to providers of artwork, merchandising and other consumables."

Genie's OrderWare software could meet Universal's needs, said Mr Hendry.

"It uses our cataloguing technology, supply chain management and also our workflow engine."

Picking up another blue-chip customer in its home region will also help Genie move into North America, where it is trying to build on a sale of OrderWare to the Babies 'R' Us division of retail giant Toys 'R' Us.

Mr Hendry, who is based in San Francisco, said the slowdown in technology spending in the US was helping Genie's prospects.

Though companies such as Ariba and Commerce One had created an appetite for marketplace and electronic procurement software, the seven-figure price of their applications put them out of reach for many companies.

"Because there is a freeze on capital expenditure, larger clients than we expected are looking at our software," he said.

However, because larger companies are looking at OrderWare, the sales cycle takes longer, so the company trimmed back its staff to 35 this year to reduce overheads.

The company had earlier finance from listed venture capital fund Strathmore.

Mr Hendry said Genie was beefing up the web services component of OrderWare, building in compatibility with United Nations' XML standards and the UDDI (universal description, discovery and integration) standard.

UDDI allows for the publication of web-based directories, so companies wanting to interface with an OrderWare system can go online to discover the correct interfaces.