Another customer management software firm is setting up shop here - but this one intends to establish a development arm employing up to 30 people by the end of the year.
Mathias Technology, which is aiming at the "5% niche" market of large banks and professional services companies, will be headed by Rodney Prescott, who has been technical director at Auckland software development firm Terabyte.
The company will contract development to Mathias Client Management Software, a two-year-old customer relationship management (CRM) organisation based in London and the sister company of consulting company Mathias and Co led by Arizona-based Peter Mathias, whose biography claims 20 years' experience in the financial services industry.
Mathias says the local branch - which has already located 10 staff in Newmarket - is looking for a total of 30 staff within a few months and perhaps 100 in four years' time. About half of the 30 will ideally be what Mathias describes as "black belt" programmers, those with 10 years' experience, and all should be handy in Java technologies such as EJB and object orientation. The company "wants to move its entire production company to New Zealand", says Mathias, with a few developers based in Australia, because programmers downunder "tended to adapt quicker" and have a "pragmatic approach to programming".
Two of the company's team heads are likely to move from London, says London-based MCMS head Paris de l'Etraz, because of its global role in financial services. Project management and marketing will still be handled out of London.
The company's products work on a "CRM overlay" model, connecting rather than displacing existing CRM products using XML-based middleware and a database synchonisation toolkit. They include the ClientFirst suite for investment banking and a CRM portal product.
Mathias Technology intends to offer the product to large regional banks effectively "at cost" to establish a local client base quickly. "Most of the big banks of the world are out customers," says Mathias, though he was specific only about three implementations within Germany's giant Deutsche Bank.
A fortnight ago CRM company Onyx closed its Auckland office.