“We chose Mitrais because of its reputation and client base. While it was more expensive than some of the other Asian offshoring centres we were more confident about doing business with Mitrais”

James Selleck & Aaron Savory, Directors of ClickHome

ClickHome finds a solid foundation for the future

The Eureka moment for Perth-headquartered software company ClickHome came after it emerged unscathed but wiser from the roller coaster ride brought about by Y2K, the introduction of the GST and the so-called Tech Bubble.

No longer content to live with the boom and bust cycle that had characterised their custom software project development business, directors James Selleck and Aaron Savory looked around for something that offered more financial security and the opportunity to build a client base where their services were an essential requirement, not an option.

“You could say we decided to put the company on a more solid foundation because we saw that the project home building sector was desperately in need of a software application to streamline its performance,” Aaron Savory said.

So was created ClickHome, a product which has underpinned the construction of more than 50,000 homes in Australia, the US and most recently the UK. ClickHome ensures a faster, more accurate and streamlined flow of information between clients, residential builders, suppliers and trades.

The software covers the full range of building company processes, from the first point of contact with the client, the preconstruction process, to managing the work processes with trades, suppliers and subcontractors, right through to ongoing care and maintenance. It enables the choice of different methods of deployment including Windows mobile devices (PDAs), tablet, laptop and netbook computers, desktop computers and the Web.

Drawing on the skills they had developed in financial, job costing and other business systems for a major construction materials company the directors were introduced to the homebuilding market. They quickly saw great potential to systemise processes and to reduce the low value administration work that was a large part of a construction team’s every day workload. While custom consulting continued to generate income, the business burned the midnight oil until it had developed a saleable software product. Having secured its first client, ClickHome started to build a team of developers, sales and implementation staff.

Years later ClickHome has few similar competitors and only one that provides a solution that approaches it in scope. Says James Selleck “we solved the issues of the field users first as they were the ones that were going to drive much of the information that would provide the benefits of the system. This focus has meant that our system has maintained its competitive advantage and superiority. Our competitors try and
drive the construction process from the office processes which usually makes it difficult out in the field where there are different practices.”

Identifying that the Australian market is limited to between 100 and 150 residential builders of sufficient size to warrant the ClickHome system, its developers have successfully entered and are building the profile of the software in the UK and USA markets. In the US and UK they are marketing with a partner. In Australia and in New Zealand they use a direct sales model.

Boasting great flexibility and a single database, ClickHome is able to manage construction of single storey project homes valued at $200,000 up to $1.5 million luxury homes. ClickHome first engaged Mitrais on a captive team arrangement to meet the demands of a large project and a short timeframe, which called for a development team that could be up and running quickly. Since then, it has been the ability to add team members with skills and resources without a significant investment for things such as recruitment cost and office resources.“

It is our experience that quality programmers in Australia are scarce and very costly. We have also embraced captive team because it allows us the flexibility to change our staffing levels as market conditions dictate,” Mr Selleck said.

“We chose Mitrais because of its reputation and client base. While it was more expensive than some of the other Asian offshoring centres we were more confident about doing business with Mitrais.”

“We also took into account that if we need to visit Bali to brief our captive team then it was no different than getting on a plane going to Melbourne and relatively inexpensive,” Mr Selleck said.