With daylight savings providing an extra boost of sunshine, the October NZSA networking evening was off to a bright start. The evening kicked off on a high, with the sharing of fantastic news from many members. Its great to hear about all the new and exciting activity and achievements.

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​​Regan, Glengarry's resident wine expert, prepared us for the upcoming barbecue season by educating and entertaining us with his wine tasting session. We were treated to a Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio 2014 (Italian Pinot Gris) and a Church Road MacDonald Series Cabernet Sauvignon 2013 – perfect accompaniments to sip on a warm summer’s evening, or to enjoy alongside a delicious steak.

With the audience wined and dined, it was time for Daniel Batten, our guest speaker, to take to the stage. Daniel drew everyone in with an entertaining recap of the experiences which lead to him developing his Founder2.0 concept. One of the attendees, Ollie Mikosza of Metrino PRT, had worked with Daniel and was able to share experiences as well. The underlying theme for the evening was: If you want to grow your business to the next level, invest in growing yourself. Nobody knows your business better than you and that equips you to be the best person to sell it! A simple message which was greeted by accepting nods from around the room. It was an enjoyable evening with delicious food & wine, excellent networking, and an inspiring guest speaker.

Alan Brannigan – CEO, Vigil Monitoring

“For me a business has no reason to exist if it is not providing value to everyone in its community. That means staff, customers, suppliers, shareholders and the markets that the company is active in. I start companies with a view to achieve that. Vigil aims to achieve that by providing tools for others to care for each other which I think is very powerful."

With over 10 years experience in the design and manufacture of consumer electronics, Alan has considerable experience in the product development process, project management, manufacturing in New Zealand and China and global supply chain management.

Owen Scott – Managing Director, Concentrate

​Owen Scott, Managing Director at Concentrate (marketing consultancy for the technology sector), will speak about the recently released Market Measures report for 2015. The main focus this year is comparing Kiwi sales and marketing activity to that of USA based companies. Owen will present the main points of the survey and implications for Kiwi tech businesses.

Owen has extensive experience in the New Zealand technology industry, in technical, sales and marketing roles. His career has focussed on helping businesses successfully develop, use or commercialise technology-based products and services. This includes periods working in the United Kingdom and the USA.

​New Zealand firm Augen Software has just been recognised as one of the top performers in south east Asia by winning the Emerging Enterprise category at Vietnam’s prestigious IT Excellence Awards.

Auckland-based Augen has a fully integrated engagement model between its Vietnam and New Zealand staff and customers, working together as one virtual team.

Director Mitchell Pham, from Auckland, says all of their Vietnam staff have direct involvement with New Zealand staff and customers. All Vietnam staff and New Zealand staff are required to contribute equally together with their customers to the direction, requirements, designs and outcomes of software for their customers’ businesses.

Read the full story here

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The NZSA are proud to be supporting the 2016 Girlsinnov8 camp, run by St Cuthberts College.

#GirlsInnov8 initiatives allow involvement for girls of all ages to interact with and explore technology. There are different activities, competition, clubs and camps offered to the College community and the wider community at different times of the year.

See what we have on offer to encourage girls to explore their potential with coding and creating with technology.

Find out more here

Improving the sales efficiency of New Zealand Technology companies.

New Zealand’s technology landscape is a remarkable picture of innovation and entrepreneurial courage, producing world leading technology solutions across a range of industries and applications. To maximise this we need to arm ourselves more effectively in the digital battle for leads, where we lag best practice.

​The latest edition of the annual national study that benchmarks the sales and marketing activity of New Zealand's technology companies and contains important insights about our passive approach to digital marketing and why it needs to change.

Download this report to learn:

• What Kiwi tech companies are doing to generate leads and grow leads
• How our approach compares to US tech companies
• Four key recommendations for getting more out of your digital marketing

Find out more and download the report here

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Business Intelligence is rapidly accelerating the New Zealand business landscape into a data driven future. With experts forecasting double digit growth in BI investment by 2018 in New Zealand and Australian markets, it is time to start planning now. Taking a business focused approach, this event is designed to focus on increasing ROI and delivering added value to the customer. This summit looks into how BI impacts the wider organisational strategies and structure, and the power of using BI in decision making. Working in collaboration with industry leaders, we recognize the challenges BI programmes bring to leadership, legacy systems, company culture and the difficulties in communicating meaningful stories from the analytics at hand. Now is the time be inspired by how companies are taking the leap into BI and revolutionising their business for the future.

Register here