Ex-PayGlobal staff branch out as rivals

Four former PayGlobal staff have branched out on their own developing software that competes with their old employer.

After three years of development Enfinit Software has just released a commercial version of its timesheet management software.

Pre-release versions of TimeFiler are already being used by Solid Energy, New Zealand's Aviation Security (AvSec) and one of the world's largest market research companies TNS, which has 2300 consultants using the system throughout the Asia-Pacific.

Enfinit was started by Toni Brown in late 2005 after he was approached to build an online timesheet management product for TNS. Three others, Morris Johns, Jo Smith and Ian Johnson, who have all worked at PayGlobal at times in the past 10 years, have since joined him.

All four are shareholders, along with the Canterbury Innovation Incubator, where Enfinit is based.

Enfinit chief executive Ian Johnson said the company was targeting businesses with between 100 and 1000 employees in the health, retail and manufacturing sectors.

It would focus on building its New Zealand customer base before expanding into Australia late next year.

Johnson said there was a lot of competition in the market, but the key difference with Enfinit's product was that it also dealt with leave requests and rostering.

The four shareholders have not sought any outside capital for the business and were probably still three to five years away from seeking venture capital, Johnson said.

Enfinit was breaking even, but the shareholders who were all full-time employees, were not being paid market rates.

- © Fairfax NZ News