Regional reseller: Broome

We chat to three Kimberley IT leaders.

Nicola Walters, Leading Edge Computers Broome

I’ve had an IT background for 20 years and owned the business for seven. We have a shopfront and sell Apple products, Microsoft’s Surface Pro, Toshiba and HP, plus printers and accessories.

Our line is ‘service what we sell’. We are an Apple, Toshiba and Acer authorised service agent and are moving into servicing phones and tablets. We also do managed services for business and schools.

We stretch from Kununurra down to Port Hedland and Karratha.  The entire Kimberley has 45,000 people – and you’ve got to get to your customers. Remote service is important, as well as going onsite.

I’ve always been in computers and managing networks, but my background is linguistics. Being able to communicate technology to people who struggle with it is important. We do a lot of training with our customers.

It is all about giving them great service that regional areas sometimes lack, rather than confusing them, and helping people succeed with technology.

Fact file

Headcount 8
Established 2009
Director Nicola Walters
Main vendors Apple, HP, Microsoft, Toshiba

Matthew Sear, Best IT and Business Solutions

I took over about 13 years ago from a guy who was a sole trader. I was looking to get into the industry, so I took a leap of faith and took over the premises and the business name and started a little computer shop. Then we got onto changing it into a larger organisation to cover the north-west.

We focus on not-for-profit and government organisations in remote regions. Servers and networks were where we cut our teeth and now we are evolving into copiers, virtual phone systems, cloud migrations and everything that comes along with that.

I moved here in 2001, just travelling, and got caught up in Broome. For lifestyle, Broome is the best, but for business it’s been tricky the past two or three years.

But we can’t keep up with the work, so we focus on managed service agreements with larger organisations and grow off the back of that. We have three offices, in Broome, Kununurra and Karratha, but there can be massive difficulties retaining staff in these remote areas.

Fact file

Headcount 19
Established 2003
Director Matthew Sear
Main vendors Dell, Fuji Xerox, HP

Rudi Oberholzer, Kimberley IT

I moved to Broome to work for a then they closed so I started my own business.
Our main thing is just IT support for Broome – your day-to-day IT and small business support with migrations to Office 365 and that type of thing.

I like regional areas. We had to leave South Africa and I wanted to come to the country. And the lifestyle up here is great.

Broome is doing it tough, but I don’t have huge overheads. I’m a one-man band and I can choose my clients. Clients like it when it is the same person coming out. My clients know me personally, they know I love fishing.

The IT market has changed heaps with the cloud, but I am doing a lot more home-based work and letting Broome people know that I am here for small businesses and everyone else.

Fact file

Headcount 1
Established 2010
Director Rudi Oberholzer
Main vendors Anyone and everyone