Working Holliday with no time off

Phil Holliday came to New Zealand to wind down - but then he embraced a red-hot advance in technology and hasn't stopped since, writes DANIEL RIORDAN.

Phil Holliday jokes that he left Britain for New Zealand 10 years ago looking for three things: barbecues, chardonnay and a change of lifestyle.

He got the first two, but not the third - business at Christchurch-based Holliday Group has been too hectic to allow much time for leisure.

Although the company still makes half its revenue from its original work developing software for electronics manufacturers, in recent years it has surged to the forefront of the red-hot WAP (wireless application protocol) sector.

Holliday's wireless business today represents about half its sales, which last year were worth between $2 million and $3 million, a figure the company expects to double within the next 18 months.

Domestic sales are growing at about 60 per cent a year, with sales to the United States and Australia growing even faster.

The company employs 22 staff but is hiring at the rate of one a month.

WAP may be all the rage today, offering ways to link the internet to devices with small displays, including mobile phones, pagers and hand-held computers, but in 1997 Holliday was the only New Zealand company represented at the inaugural WAP forum in the US.

It developed the first local application, for Telecom, two years ago.

In August, it was a finalist in the Nokia Best of WAP awards, for a consignment-tracking system developed for trucking firm Mainfreight.

Other clients include Vodafone and Merino NZ, which uses WAP to classify and track fleece as it comes off the sheep's backs.

The jury is still out on WAP's significance. Some see it as technology's second coming, others as no more than an expensive toy (the cheapest WAP-enabled mobile phone costs around $1000). The truth is no doubt somewhere in between the two. Mr Holliday, aged 53, regards WAP as just one piece of the jigsaw puzzle for businesses looking for smarter ways to do business.

"There's been a lot of hype, but it's not the be-all and end-all. We have our feet on the ground."

Holliday has developed about 50 Palm applications, and reckons it is the biggest Palm shop in Australasia, with a customer base that includes large US corporations.

Mr Holliday's attraction to New Zealand began with a visit 20 years ago, when he fell in love with Akaroa Harbour.

"I couldn't get it out of my mind, but it took me 10 years to come back." Married to a Kiwi, the electronics and software engineer found getting started here easier than he thought, thanks to one of his toughest competitors from his days in Britain, Christchurch manufacturing icon Tait Electronics.

The day after he set up his new company, orders arrived from Tait and Switchtec, the second-biggest electronics firm in Christchurch, then run by Tait old boy Dennis Chapman.

Christchurch enjoys a well-earned reputation as the country's information technology centre and the city's strong infrastructure helped Holliday's early development.

Today, Mr Holliday is part of a network of IT veterans providing informal mentoring to younger players. He would like to see that kind of relationship reflected in greater links between the education system and high-tech industry, but concedes there is a long way to go.

Ditto for Government's efforts to help industry.

"The Government really doesn't get it. I thought we would get R&D tax breaks. Putting money into grants doesn't work - it's a waste of time. The rate at which we do business, having to prepare grants applications and then waiting two to three months is too long. Time to market is too important.

"Also, if you're a small company, and most of the grants are one-for-one, it's still a lot of money you have to come up with.

"Governments everywhere ask businesses what they can do to help them. I say, 'Leave us alone.' We're going to keep going regardless, but what would help are reductions in compliance costs, cutting the tax rate - $60,000 is not rich - and reducing student loans."

Lobbying Government does not work, says Mr Holliday, a member of the High Tech Council, although he acknowledges the electronics industry has such a diverse range of opinions that it tends to send confused messages to Wellington.

He says it is harder to do business in New Zealand than Europe, if only because mistakes are more obvious.

"European markets are so disparate. Because Germans don't know what is happening in France, you can make mistakes in one market and get away with them. You can't do that here."

Mr Holliday's big mistake 3 1/2 years ago just about killed his company.

A project for a major client got so big, three-quarters of the company's staff were working on it.

The client wanted to reverse manage the project, and take Holliday people on board. Mr Holliday acquiesced, gambling that the project would run its course.

It didn't - the client's board pulled the plug and Holliday lost a huge chunk of its business overnight.

"I lost a lot of sleep. I had to stand up in front of the staff and tell them what I had done, but we didn't lay anyone off, or cut their pay."

Instead, he exhausted every last cent of his cash reserves.

"We decided we would close the business only if it ran out of cash. If you own your business, you're the last person to get paid. My family lived on relatively little for some time after that."

The business halved and a lot of staff moved to other companies.

But gradually Holliday recovered.

Attracting and retaining high-quality staff is never easy. The key, if any exists, has little to do with offering high wages, says Mr Holliday.

"It's more about offering them really interesting work and a path that enables them to move up a ladder. It's about giving them the ability to take as much responsibility as they want."

What has never changed is the company's number one rule: check your egos at the front door.

Another lesson: never underestimate the importance of perception.

When the company changed its name from Holliday Electronics to Holliday Group, people rang up to congratulate it on getting bigger.

Mr Holliday says he has no idea how big the company is going to become.

"The work is out there. We're turning some of it away, cherry picking. But we won't turn any away if it's important from a strategic point of view, and that includes all wireless work.

"I'm not superstitious by nature but I don't like writing down on paper what we're going to grow to.

"But I believe that with luck and good management you can expand a business to any size."