Flying the flag
By Stuart Finlayson
There are an abundance of Australian companies that have made their presence felt on the global stage. Here, Stuart Finlayson and Austrade's (Australian Trade Commission) Karla Davis profile three local technology developers that have done just that.......
Legal eagles flying high
Melbourne firm's innovative legal software now used by over a third of the world's leading law firms.
Ground breaking software developed by Melbourne-based Ringtail Solutions is giving corporations, law firms and government bodies a technological edge over competitors when it comes to pre-trial litigation support systems and merger and acquisition proceedings.
Ringtail Solutions was founded by Chris Priestley in 1997. Inspired after working on the Estate Mortgage hearings, he realised there was a market for legal software.
Later Eddie O'Brien, a computer scientist, became a joint owner and director and brought with him much of the structured product vision that helped steer the company in the right direction commercially.
Ringtail initially targeted the Australian market.
Now, nine out of 10 of Australia's largest law firms use their software.
A growing number of international corporations, law firms and government bodies have also now adopted Ringtail, including over 35 percent of the worlds top 100 law firms.
Four years after they started out, Priestley and O'Brien sold Ringtail's Australian/Asia Pacific sales and marketing rights to CCH-a worldwide publisher of tax, law and accounting publications.
Ringtail still develops its own products, but now sells predominantly to the U.S. and U.K. markets.
Ringtail remains a tightly run outfit with just 25 staff, but exports now account for approximately 92 percent of business, which illustrates that an organisation does not have to be heavily populated to think global.
"Austrade helped with entering the U.S., Asia and U.K. markets by providing information on who and what to know," reveals Ringtail's administration manager, Michael Blewett.
"The most useful thing of all is the encouragement that Austrade gives to companies thinking about the move into international markets.
It can be very daunting when the scale of the North American and European markets are considered and it's always good to know that you are not the first company to take the road less travelled.
"Funding assistance through Austrade's Export Market Development Grants (EMDG) scheme has also been extremely helpful to Ringtail in its overseas push, particularly stateside, as Blewett explains.
"There's a huge market for our product in the U.S.. We compete against companies many times our size. We're winning tenders for big clients despite the competition from those larger U.S. software firms,"
The company's success is largely attributable to its flagship product, CaseBook, which allows users to organise pre-trial litigation evidence quickly and efficiently.
"CaseBook users can view masses of evidence in a variety of ways, so they can look at court cases from many angles, providing the necessary insight to help win," says Blewett.
"Many large law firms have taken advantage of the product's flexibility and have tailored it for use in due-diligence proceedings."
Important decisions about the architecture of the product were made very early in the piece.
"From the beginning our software was web browser-based.
Companies run it over existing networks and standard Internet software.
Alternatively, clients can access our applications using us as an Applications Solutions (hosted) service on Ringtail's servers," outlines Blewett.
"Many of our competitors took a different route (to the browser-based approach) and are now trying to catch up, technologically-speaking."
Ringtail Solutions was recognised in 2003 as Victoria's winner of the Information & Communications Technology Exporter of the Year Award.
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