I’m going to just tell a quick story about
our business. It started in 1981, a couple
of blocks from here in Collins Street……….
Will  be pleased to know…the we started
in…..a small serviced office with a phone
and a phone hook and that was about it.
I located it in the CBD because our main customer
base was largely the offices in the city.
I can remember double parking my car with
the trailer on Collins Street would you believe,
delivering some of our telephones on a Friday
at 4 o’clock…….couldn’t try that these
days but that’s what we were doing and to
give you some idea of how we got our business
going what we were doing on that occasion
was swapping out old…………..telephones
that Telstra used to rent and ……….bright
idea of taking them out and selling out my
phones to customers and these customer would
save on rent and get it that way so a Telecom
Technician came and tapped me on the should
and said “What are you doing?” and I said
“ Well swapping your phones out” I didn’t
know that 20 years later, Telstra would be
my closest partner and biggest customer and
that’s the way it’s gone.
Now after a couple of years I realised that
we needed to move on from selling business
telephones so we moved into the MICRO headset
market and over the next 15 years our business
grew along with the growth of call centres……………..
to the extent that we had our headset products
in virtually 90% of all call centres and in
the country. Our headset products in retail
Telstra shops, Office World, JB-Hi-Fi all
those headsets were put in those retail stores
as well.
Our business hit it big in the late 90s with
the emergence of call centres I noticed that
there was an emerging problem with workplace
safety and that is acoustic shock injury just
quickly what that means is that people on
headsets all day every day in call centres
they’re exposed to potentially loud unsafe
sounds and we decided to see if we could come
up with a solution, small business and major
manufacturers of headset products weren’t
doing anything we collaborated with Telstra,
the Telstra Research Laboratories and The
National Acoustics Laboratories, who in fact
is the same organisation that worked in by
the gear … Jeff will be talking about……………………bit
of a story later and there’s that little
connection as well. As a result of that collaboration
we finalised a product, the first Sound shield
product in 2002 it went to market, we rolled
out thousands in those first couple of years
and Telstra itself installed something like
16,000 of these units across all call centre
workstations over these years we have now
implemented something in excess of 130 thousand
workstations with our technology and it exists
in all the major call centres, all the major
banks, government organisations, the Centrelink’s,
DHS, Australian Taxation Office all here in
Australia and also registers in the UK and
the largest bank in France is running with
our technology now. About 4 years ago decided
to take the world’s best acoustic safety
device and make it better so we reinvented,
reengineered our solution and I’m proud
to say that we utilised some of the best engineering
that was available here in Melbourne we could
have gone anywhere in the world but we found
that the best engineering was available here
in Melbourne mechanic design, industrial design,
electronics, …………..design and development
our imbedded firmware was all developed just
right here in Melbourne those products that
resulted from that design were completed over
the last 12 months and gone to market and
the products are actually located over in
the corner there (WG points) if you’d like
to take a look and get an idea of the sort
of quality that is or can be produced in this
country. First couple of times have been very
successful, we hope to launch these products
into the UK and European market in the next
couple of months so stay tuned. That’s about
all I wanted to say it’s a very quick story
its 33 years or we are in our 33rd year so
it’s quite a long story to fit into a few
minutes now. In conclusion I would just like
to thank Bruce and…. for sponsoring this
programme, to John and the people involved
with the Business 3000 award programme and
I’m glad we became a part of it and I think
we will be involved with it for many years
to come, so thanks john! And that’s all
from me I think at this stage so thank you.
 
 
