2020 Fast50 No.10 - Eaglecrest Technologies

Launceston-based Eaglecrest Technologies ranked tenth in the 2020 CRN Fast50 with $3.5 million in revenue and 120 percent growth. The company operates three offices across Tasmania, servicing businesses of all sizes across the state.

Tasmania’s business landscape is as diverse as the rest of the state’s economy and as a result Eaglecrest services businesses from multiple industries.

Founder David Pretorious said the company sees many different types of customer engagements, from the traditional Office 365 and other Microsoft products from small and medium businesses, to mid-market and government customers with more complex technology requirements.

As in other parts of the country, Tasmanian businesses have an increasing demand for product compliance, business intelligence tools and change management in demand, which Eaglecrest is helping many of its government and enterprise customers realise.

“That's starting to become top of mind alongside the security side, those services are definitely starting to make their way into conversations," Pretorious said.

But the need to be across a number of industries is still prominent in a state the size of Tasmania where specialisation (with the exception of those companies focussing on government) is not widespread.

As a former teacher, Pretorious is no stranger to fostering young minds and said encouraging young people to “stretch, learn and grow”, had been one of the most rewarding parts of his role.

It is this commitment to fostering young talent and encouraging diversity that Pretorious said set the company apart from its competition.

“Part of that diversity is obviously women in IT, but also young people who are the future owners of businesses down the track. If we're not listening to them, we're going to be dead in the water in 10 years,” he said.

Customer success manager Rebecca Perkins is leading this charge and has been a major driver for the company’s success.

For Perkins, it was her personal experience in IT that drove her to think differently about working in the sector.

“Being younger in the industry, and female, [technology] should just be a given,” she explained.

“I've grown up with technology and technology has always been part of my life.”

As a result, Perkins and her team focus primarily on customer outcomes and see the technology as a given, only as good as the customer problem it needs to solve.

“That allows a lot of new opportunities with our client base outside the tech by providing more value to their business,” Perkins said.

“The relationships with the people we're working with is critical to our success and relationships aren't built on technology.

“They're built on how we can support each other and how we can help each other through an achiever and business objectives together and that through a partnership, not just through supplying technology.”

Pretorious said that Tasmania was still a parochial state in many respects and as such relationships with customers was still the most important factor in doing business.

However, using the not for profit sector as an example, he echoed Perkins' comments that conversations with customers were increasingly focused on project management and change management, rather than on the technology itself.

“We've had some really good success starting to build out non-technical consulting pieces around change management and helping those customers to achieve their goals and be compliant in an ever harder world for not-for-profits," Pretorious said.

“It's not built around the technology, it's built around the people and our ability to listen.”

“The best tourism experiences are all about service, the best restaurants offer fantastic service. Why can’t we measure ourselves against those types of world-class offerings?”

The company’s biggest vendors this year were HPE, HP Inc and Datto. Its standout distributors were Bluechip Infotech and Dicker Data.