Staff cut in search for quick profits

By ADAM GIFFORD it writer

Legal-practice software company Keystone Solutions Group is shedding up to 10 staff here as it restructures after raising £11 million ($37 million) on the London Stock Exchange.

International marketing director Kaye Sycamore said the new capital strengthened the balance sheet and the business plan forecast profitability in the year starting April 1.

"There have been changes in the market for technology stocks over the past year. We can't go to shareholders and talk of profits in the long term or even the medium term - we have to make profits in the next 12 months."



Ms Sycamore said some jobs would go in Auckland because the two service teams, consulting and software, had been merged.



Keystone, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange but has its roots and half its staff in Auckland, is in the process of consolidating BISPoint, the United States company it bought last year for £5 million.

BISPoint had two products: a business intelligence tool called Net Results, and Javelin, a legal-practice software product running on the Microsoft SQL Server database, which has 200 US customers.

"As a result of that acquisition we had three development teams - the Oracle team in New Zealand developing Keystone Professional, a team in San Rafael developing Net Results and a team in Buffalo, New York, developing the Javelin legacy product," Ms Sycamore said.

Customers were told at the time of the acquisition that Javelin would no longer be supported and they could upgrade to Keystone Professional, once it was modified for the US market.

Ms Sycamore said the 12 developers in Buffalo had been set to work on Keystone Professional. The San Rafael group had been wound down, and responsibility for developing Net Results moved to Auckland. An increase in development staff here was likely in about six months, with a possibility that some San Rafael staff could move down.

She said Keystone already had six pre-orders for the upgrade from Javelin customers in the US.

Keystone is working on increasing its share of the British legal market. It would expand its marketing of Keystone Professional into other types of professional services firms in Australia and New Zealand.

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