About
Transforming and enabling businesses through better systems.
That's the line the practice was built on, and it's meant literally. The system is only the means; a business that's easier to run is the point.
Kevin Long
I've spent 20 years putting business systems into New Zealand companies. Before Ostendo that meant Greentree, Sybiz, MYOB EXO, Sage and QlikView, alongside the accounting systems most of my clients were already running: Xero, MYOB and MoneyWorks. Different products, different price brackets, and the same pattern underneath all of them.
The businesses that get value out of a system are the ones where somebody took the time to understand how the work really flows before anything got configured, and where the people on the floor were brought along rather than trained at. Buying the most capable software has very little to do with the outcome. I've watched expensive implementations fail that test and modest ones pass it.
I ended up specialising in Ostendo because, having worked with the alternatives, Ostendo is what I'd choose for a New Zealand business of ten to a couple of hundred people that needs to run its operation properly. Ostendo is built in Auckland, has been around since 2006, goes deeper into jobs and manufacturing than anything else at its price, and sits on top of the accounting system a business already runs instead of demanding a replacement. Recommending one product is only honest if you've seen the others working, and I have.
The part I enjoy has very little to do with software: getting alongside people, working out what makes their day frustrating, and taking some of that frustration away. The measure I care about is whether people go home happier at the end of the day. If the reporting is beautiful and the team still dreads Monday, the project didn't work.
How the practice is set up
One consultant, on purpose
Larger Ostendo partners sell a team across two countries and a support desk. That's a reasonable model and it suits plenty of buyers. Javelin offers the alternative: the person who scopes the work configures the system, trains your staff and answers the phone afterwards. Nothing gets handed over, because there's nobody to hand the work to.
Advice before product
There's a page on this site explaining when Ostendo is the wrong choice, which most resellers would never publish. It's there because the projects that go badly are almost always the ones somebody should have talked the client out of at the first meeting, and everybody loses on those.