Datamail doubles size and exports

By Graeme Kennedy

Friday 24th September 2004

NZ Post subsidiary Datamail is launching its biggest offshore campaign with new export products and a hugely enlarged operating base following the purchase of Outsource Australia.

The Australian acquisition doubles Datamail's size as both companies have about 1000 staff and turnovers of $80 million.

Datamail general manager for operations David Allen said the 15-year-old document management business had developed many products, mainly in the archival and storage area, and exported to the UK, Malaysia, Australia and several other markets.

Allen said the company was looking for export opportunities for its latest product, a world-first system based on new software and scanning technology to intelligently capture the results of New Zealand local body and district health board single transferable vote (STV) elections on October 9.

Datamail worked for two years with the Ministry of Health and Internal Affairs Department and invested more than $100,000 to develop the system.

"We leveraged off the scanning platform technology we already had and we believe this is the first time in the world an STV poll has been intelligently captured," he said. "Intelligent capture is not used internationally, yet there is a growing trend toward STV and, having proved the system's success, we will be looking to market it overseas."

Allen said councils in the past had handled their own polls with temporary staff counting ticks in boxes but STV involved a complex array of numeric options.

"We had to gain the confidence of Internal Affairs and Health as out-sourcing the capture of votes was foreign to them but makes sense.

"Local bodies are required to go to their constituents for approval to have STV but the public's poor understanding of the issues gave a poor response and only 10 of New Zealand's 76 local authorities gained a mandate to have it.

"However, they all run the health board elections which are all STV and I anticipate that at least 50% of councils will use the system at the next elections in three years."

Comments from our readers

No comments yet