2003 ASX Announcements

Objective Corporation grows in Asia Pacific with New Zealand office

Objective Corporation (ASX:OCL) today announced the opening of a new office, in Wellington, New Zealand. The office has been established to provide long-term, local expertise, service and support to Objective's growing New Zealand customer base and to pursue new growth opportunities in the region.

With existing Asia Pacific offices in Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and Brisbane, Objective's expansion into Wellington signifies growing demand from organisations throughout the region seeking solutions to manage enterprise content.

Mr Tony Walls, CEO Asia Pacific, Objective Corporation, said, "While the New Zealand market is smaller in size than many of our targeted geographies, it is an attractive market for Objective. It is comprised of educated buyers seeking world-class solutions to support their best-practice information management projects and recordkeeping compliance.

"New Zealand organisations face increased legislative and governance pressure to improve information and records management. Both public and private sector organisations must comply with the Archives Act 1957, Privacy Act 1993, Official Information Act 1982, and the widely publicised, proposed Public Records Bill.

"Simultaneously, New Zealand organisations face challenges common to organisations worldwide: managing the proliferation of email, increasingly a business critical issue; second generation e-government initiatives that require robust underlying content management as a backbone to streamlining services and processes; and the general need for staff to access complete and accurate information, when they need it, to make effective and accountable decisions," said Mr Walls.

Objective has already made its mark in New Zealand with its solution successfully used by Archives New Zealand. Last week Objective followed this success with a new contract with the Ministry of Social Development to deliver an 850-user electronic document and records management solution. Objective is also currently advising other New Zealand organisations indicating further opportunities in the medium term.

"Our business model is to establish local offices to provide our customers with direct, personalised service over the long term and to develop an acute knowledge of local requirements and issues. The value our customers receive from this direct partnership model is continually reinforced," said Mr Walls.

"Experience working with our customers around the globe has proven that a local presence has many customer benefits including direct input into product development and access to the domain expertise of Objective consultants. Having a local, single point of contact with their solution provider, vastly improves an organisation's ability to achieve optimum business outcomes.

"The opening of our Wellington office will also make Objective the only global supplier of enterprise content management solutions with a direct presence in New Zealand," said Mr Walls.