US, Philippines on the Redmap

Aussie ISV Redmap has opened an office in the US and a joint venture scanning bureau in the Philippines as it presses ahead with sales of its homegrown compliance and archiving software.

Ben Woolley, vice-president of sales and marketing for Redmap’s US operations, said the developer’s work internationally via Austrade missions and similar over the last four years was bearing fruit.

“Our US office opened in September,” he said. “And we’ve formed a joint venture in the Philippines with a contract for moving permanent records from microfiche to scanned images.”

Compliance and regulatory issues internationally -- such as the US’ Sarbanes-Oxley Act around corporate governance -- were spurring demand for compliance and archiving software development, Woolley said.

A deal to ship OEM product via Toshiba internationally over the last 10 to 12 months had also fuelled Redmap’s fires. “We just signed an agreement last week and that’s going strongly,” he said.

Redmap had been active in the US market for about 18 months, helped along by a couple of dealerships signed up in Australia that added support in sales and marketing, Woolley said.

Meanwhile, the Philippines scanning bureau operation -- which currently has 65 staff -- had room and option to eventually grow to a 300-person venture over there, he added.

“We have offices Brisbane, North Sydney and Atlanta, with a total 35 employees at the moment. We keep that pretty lean, because a lot of our work is done through the channel,” Woolley said.

Redmap in-house was heavily weighted towards R&D and technical staff, letting the developer stick to its knitting, he said.

“This last year, we’ve become more and more successful, selling to larger international companies. It’s an interesting time for us. We’re making that jump from being a 10 or 20 person business to working with the likes of [clothing company] Billabong,” Woolley said.

Redmap developed Windows-based software for storing, managing and protecting electronic documents. Many of its clients were in document-rich sectors such as financial services and accounting, Woolley said.