TACTICAL EXPANSION FOR BRISBANE TECH COMPANY

BRISBANE software developer Tactiv will create a system to manage the New Zealand Government's $600 million aid budget.

It is the largest contract the West-End based business has signed, and will serve as a launchpad for the business' international expansion.

"It is a little known fact that a significant proportion of government money goes out through grants, but there aren't systems in place to automatically manage it," says Managing Director Simon Warner (pictured).

"In the UK, for example, 41 per cent of government spending goes out in grants and it is a big part of the software market."

Tactiv has put a proposal forward to the United Nations and another with a group of EU countries looking for a product to assist with their environmental work.

Tactiv's enQuire system has been developed over the past 10 years and today it manages more than $18 billion worth of grants.

The business, which turned over around $5.5 million last year, is looking to raise finance to restructure its current operations as it seeks growth over the next 3-5 years.

"We are in the final stages of developing a brand new version of our product, which will be much better placed to underpin our growth," says Warner.

The business has doubled its staff to 30 over the past year and Warner says there is a lot of competition for the available talent, an indicator of the strength of the IT industry not only in Brisbane, but Australia wide.

"We have employed some pretty incredible graduates in that period of time. The universities and technical groups in South East Queensland make this area blessed in terms of talent," he says.

"That talent pool we are drawing from is pretty tight, there must be quite a bit of activity going on and it is not easy to get the class of people you want; it is very competitive for the good ones. This all indicates a build-up of activity."

Tactiv was formed around 2011 after being spun out from the natural resources management section of the Queensland Government, where the enQuire system was created to work with the national heritage trust that was set up with the sale of Telstra.

It currently works with the Queensland and New South Wales governments and a number of regional organisations.