Vox Pop: What was your best quarter of 2014?

Cameron Brookes, managing director, Kiandra IT

Kiandra was proud to deliver earnings growth in 2014, and maintain profitability throughout the year, however, Q3 was a standout quarter. On the back of a national project, Q3 kicked off a multimillion-dollar project for the international arm of that client. 

At the same time, we established ourselves in the enterprise space, predominantly for software development. A recent strategic push into this area yielded results picking up a number of new, well-established clients. It was underpinned by contracted business.

We forecast year-on-year revenue growth for 2015 with margins up compared to this time last year. Local stability – political and financial – will improve business confidence and we expect to see that reflect in sales.

Jeffery Whitton, CEO and chairman, KNet Technology

Overall, 2014 was a great year for KNet, with the fourth quarter being outstanding. We targeted sales and projects aligned to our unique expertise, solutions and market offerings. This year started strong and my sentiment is very positive.

In 20 years, KNet has seen very turbulent events on the global and domestic stages. It is my experience that when there is uncertainty, the market buys technology; customers want it to grow productivity, identify waste and get an edge.

Compliance from financial and government sectors are requiring companies to record fixed, mobile and internet conversations, generating opportunities for KNet’s voice-recording expertise. This complements our solutions in call accounting and billing, which we deploy in a cloud and on-premise.

Sam Bashiry, director, Broadband Solutions

The Oct-Dec quarter was our best last year. Our sales pipeline was full year-round but industry factors caused sales to finalise in the latter half. And the first quarter of 2015 saw some of our biggest growth yet, so our sentiment is very positive for the future.

Much comes down to how we refined our internal team; we hired five junior sales staff, and our new senior salesman has 30 years’ experience and once owned an ISP. Broadly, we see most economic indicators as positive. We think consumers will move to smaller providers like us that offer the levels of care they need.

And if hotel chains move into the region or existing chains expand, we expect significant business to come our way. A strong tourism outlook and thriving education sector are very good for us.