Australian IT in box seat for Cambodia

By Beverley Head
Wednesday, 30 March 2011

Australian systems integrator Tripoint Corporation is in the box seat to act as the prime contractor on a $25 million three year project to install a new financial management information system for the Royal Government of Cambodia.

Chief executive officer Vaughan Stibbard said the World Bank funded project was just waiting on final sign off, but that the company was expecting to be appointed as prime contractor for the whole of government project. The Australian company has been pitted against Spanish firm Indra Sistemas, and a decision was originally expected in February, but Mr Stibbard indicated to iTWire this week that all that was missing was a final sign off of the paperwork from the World Bank.

The company currently has a team of three people operating out of its Singapore office to support clients in Asia, but is likely to grow that if the Cambodian project gets the green light.

It also has significant growth ambitions in Australia, and tomorrow completes the acquisition of Melbourne based financial systems specialist Platinum Insight which will contribute additional revenues of $3.2million to the Tripoint coffers. That should take Tripoint back over the $30 million revenue mark, which it has been nudging since the GFC forced it to trim its sails from a 150 strong operation back to 100 people.

From tomorrow the company will have a headcount of 115 according to Mr Stibbard. The newly merged business unit will be renamed as Tripoint Financial Services.

With a heritage in providing ERP systems, the acquisition takes the company into the financial services vertical. Platinum has supported NAB with the rollout of its online UBank computing systems, and also worked with the Commonwealth Bank and ANZ.

Although Tripoint itself had some experience in the merchant or trading end of banking, this acquisition extends its capabilities and experience said Mr Stibbard.

Finance is one of three vertical industry sectors that the company is interested in pursuing – the others being campus solutions for education providers and mining.

Exactly how fast the company hopes to grow is a little unclear. Although a media release issued by the firm says it expects to achieve revenue growth of 20 per cent, in an interview with iTWire Mr Stibbard would only commit to 10-15 per cent growth.

He said that pre GFC the company had installed some more costly operational systems to manage the maturing business. Although it shed a third of its workforce, those operational systems had been retained, impacting the company’s finances somewhat although he predicted that pre-tax earnings would still be in the 8-9 per cent range.

Mr Stibbard, who founded the business in 1998, only returned to a hands-on chief executive role in mid 2010. He had previously been “working on, rather than in” the business.

Mark Jobbins had been managing director of the company for 18 months, but has since left the organisation and has joined EMC.

The privately owned company (Mr Stibbard holds the majority of equity and has four partners) has no ambitions to list at present, and has been funding expansion from cash reserves. It has however itself been courted, most seriously by UXC said Mr Stibbard, who acknowledged the companies had “gone a long way down the track” before deciding against a merger.