“If you told me this time last year that I would be collaborating with an IT company, I would have had no idea how that could actually work,” Johani Mamid told CRN Australia last month. But that changed, with Mamid providing a Sydney-based MSP and AI business with a new story for conversations with corporate Australia.
Mamid is a Yawuru, Karajarri, Nyul Nyul and Bardi man and the managing director of iSupply Australia, a 51 percent Indigenous-owned procurement brokerage based in Broome. Its online marketplace lists cultural connection experiences, recruitment services, payroll solutions, art, packaging and other products and services.
Last year, the fledgling business added IT to that menu by listing services provided by Sydney MSP TribeTech and automation specialist World of Workflows.
iSupply is one of thousands of businesses listed by Indigenous business database Supply Nation, which lists everything from cultural, health and tourism services to construction personnel services, office services and supplies, and IT.
These businesses include IT specialists such as Baidam Solutions, Willyama Services and Kalinda IT, which provide IT services directly to customers.
From July 2022 to June 2023, contracts with Indigenous suppliers registered with Supply Nation totalled $4.1 billion, an increase of $300 million from the previous financial year. The site has 750 corporate, government and not-for-profit members.
Some organisations might work with Indigenous businesses to help achieve their Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) or Indigenous Procurement Policy goals.
The iSupply marketplace offers another avenue for these organisations and IT businesses to explore.
Mamid said iSupply’s first preference is to work with Indigenous businesses. But that doesn’t rule out working with non-Indigenous businesses that are “equally aligned with our vision and mission”.
TribeTech and World of Workflows fall into the latter category. “To [work with iSupply], we've got to have the same values, we've got to respect diversity, we've got to have a sustainability plan,” said TribeTech chief software architect Nick Beaugeard.
“Once you're there, it's a really different conversation with the customer. When I'm sitting with a customer and [saying] ‘What about your Reconciliation Action Plan?’ That makes them go, ‘Oh, there's more benefits than just selling here.’”
“That's one of the things iSupply offers: the ability for other organisations with opportunities to go register and join through that platform. That's helping out the mob, which is a win, win, win.”
The ideal iSupply IT partner will have "pre-qualified a customer – found an opportunity that’s live with customers that wants to retire a RAP and brings it in a bow,” Beaugeard said.
Prospective iSupply partners should also be willing to have a conversation.
“We’re inviting companies and organisations to have a conversation with us,"Mamid said, "because they might have problems or challenges that we can help them to solve or address, because we are not only an Aboriginal product and services providing ‘broker-style business’, but also a company that explores and offers solutions for anyone who may need it."
“We're finding through friendly conversations with all sorts of companies and organisations that there are all sorts of opportunities to be able to work together.”
Cultural goals
Mamid is passionate about maintaining traditional Indigenous cultural practices. “It costs money to keep our culture alive,” he says in a video on the iSupply site.
He is the founder of the Mabu Buru Foundation, created to address threats to the Aboriginal lore and culture and its practices in the West Kimberley Region of Western Australia. The foundation aims to preserve and promote Indigenous culture, traditions and heritage by supporting cultural practice and knowledge sharing.
His Broome-based cultural tour business, Mabu Buru Tours, aims to provide employment to Indigenous people while contributing profits to fund the practice and sharing of Indigenous culture.
iSupply was established with these issues and goals in mind. The business is owned by Mamid and fellow shareholders, and the CEO is Geoff Rowan, whose background is in logistics and online retail.
A portion of the business’s profits will go to “perpetuation and sharing of culture,” the iSupply site says. The business also aims to provide employment pathways that enable young Indigenous people to practice traditional culture.
“We've created a business that helps to bring together corporate Australia and Indigenous products and services and Indigenous businesses, which of course not just helps the corporate Australia companies, it also helps Indigenous businesses to connect with opportunities we find for them and create for them to see,” Mamid said.
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