Inadequate management software hinders economic growth

The engine-room of the New Zealand economy, small to medium enterprise (SME), is being hindered by inadequate management software according to Greentree International's CEO, Peter Dickinson.

Greentree has received dozens of entries from New Zealand companies for its 'GAME ON' competition that will give up to $250,000 of management software and services to the company that needs it most.

Entrants to the competition were required to describe their business pain points: the day-to-day problems the business puts up with and the bright ideas that are not seeing the light of day.

“We’ve had entries from all around New Zealand,” says Dickinson, “from companies ranging from $1 million to over $100 million. It’s obvious from the entries that many well established companies are not reaching their potential and this will naturally affect the New Zealand economy."

“We know there are many super businesses out there that could perform so much better if they had the right management software.”

Dickinson said the challenge of management system inadequacy was not unique to New Zealand. A paper entitled Building sustainable high growth start-up companies: management systems as an accelerator published in the University of California’s California Management Review in 2010 highlighted the same problem in the United States.

Authors Antonio Davila, George Foster and Ning Jia said many companies founded with enthusiasm and hope for high growth fail to meet their founders’ and investors’ expectations because of the failure to switch to a more structured management approach and adopt management systems and processes in a timely way.

Finalists in the Greentree competition will be published in mid-November and the winner will be decided by a panel of judges and public votes.

“A Greentree implementation partner and our cloud partner CodeBlue will be with the winner all the way ensuring seamless implementation and staff training."

“This prize will transform the winning company,” says Dickinson “just as Greentree has helped many other medium-sized organisations in New Zealand and around the world.”

Greentree is a New Zealand software developer whose business software is used by medium-sized organisations internationally. Users include Griffiths Equipment, Paramount Services and Ryman Healthcare in New Zealand, Southern Cross Healthcare and Incat in Australia and the Publishers Association and UK Highways in the United Kingdom.