ResMan rises to new heights for Kapiti firm

Kapiti Coast-based human resources software company ResourceWare International is gearing up for the launch of a major update of its ResMan management product.

The seven-year-old software company says it is “refining” the HR software for launch in the new year with an undisclosed government agency, which has for several years performed HR management for a range of recruitment and related businesses on both sides of the Tasman.

Managing director Mike McDermott says the new ResMan system acts as the business “glue” for large commercial and government clients that need an enterprisewide project and task management system. ResMan, he says, combines a client contact system with project, document and activity management in a single system.

McDermott says whereas Oracle and SAP produce HR software as a “clip on” to their financial products, his software is aimed more at the recruiters — it is used by 32 New Zealand recruitment agencies — though the new release is moving towards providing more comprehensive systems for medium-sized organisations. “ResMan tracks business activities. We have derivative versions for recruitment, case management, the Job Network [in Australia], project and task management,” says McDermott.

The product is written mainly in VB and SQL and can be used in Microsoft, IBM, Sybase and Citrix servers.

McDermott has worked in IT for 30 years, including helping to set up the TechTonics networking and consulting group. In the early 1990s he spent two years at the CRS Recruitment Group in Wellington, where he set up its IT contracting division. Coming to the conclusion that there was no “decent” recruitment software in the marketplace in Australasia, McDermott created ResourceWare International in November 1994.

The firm now employs 15 staff in Pukeroa Bay, but will be moving to Paraparaumu in the new year. Turnover was over $2 million last year and is on track to reach $2.5 million this year, McDermott says. Some 75% to 80% of this is exported, primarily to Australia but some to Asia.

But it was the Australian Job Network deal worth $400,000 that McDermott describes as the “defining moment” for his business. The six-month job in 1998 for the semi-privatised employment agency (formerly the Commonwealth Employment Service), beating 10other multinational partnerships, enabled Resourceware to double staff numbers from four to eight and confirmed it as a “serious software provider capable of playing with the major vendors”.

And because ResMan is “so generic it can track any business practice you could think of”, it is leading ResourceWare International into other areas, such as the welfare sector. “Many of our Job Network clients provide a range of community service activities, and a common enterprisewide application system for the case management of people and families will lead to significant improvements in service delivery and simplify accountability and reporting back to government and private-sector funding agencies.”