John Hunter, left, and Graham Henley ... two ex-coppers
who have commercialised their forensic computing skills. Photo: Domino
Postiglione
The answer is Recover My Files, a ground-breaking computer program developed by two ex-policemen and a physicist.
And although they've received plenty of attention for their role in high profile criminal cases like HIH and One.Tel, they would now prefer to get on with the business of running their business, GetData.
|
John Hunter, left, and Graham Henley ... two ex-coppers
who have commercialised their forensic computing skills. Photo: Domino
Postiglione |
Like many successful software start-ups, their challenge is the transformation from a hobby business begun in their basement two years ago to the booming international sales they enjoy today.
John Hunter worked in the forensic computer department of the NSW Police for 10 years, where he met Graham Henley, who did similar recovery work for the Australian Federal Police. After a stint at PricewaterhouseCoopers, the pair teamed up with John's brother, physicist Brett Hunter, a talented programmer.
"We'd been doing data recovery for so long for police investigations we thought what about letting the normal person recover their data too," John Hunter plains.
"No one was doing what we wanted so we came at it from a very different approach. We recovered the data based not on what window you had left behind but the contact point of the file that had been deleted. So we were doing file identification really."
They launched the original program under the name "Crocadoc", a marketing mistake about which they still cringe with embarrassment. Selling over the internet through a website, the product sold about 30 copies a month.
But they recognised they were just "stumbling along" and needed to get serious. That began by changing the product name to Recover My Files and the three leaving their jobs to take on the new company, GetData, full-time.
Two years later, and with the help of an Austrade export grant, the product is selling 1500 a month online and thousands more at retail level around the world. They have updated the original product and expanded into a suite which includes Recover My Photos for digital camera shots and Recover My Emails.
Many of the new products are aimed at their target market of small business and the general public rather than the criminal investigations for which they have been in demand.
"We're not looking for that kind of business as it means you keep getting called up to go to court each week," Hunter says.
"Our goal from the start was to create something that anybody can use and this is still our No.1 goal."
However, their success as software developers might have been at the expense of the overall business as they now concede they are going through "a period of consolidation".
After two years of whopping 100 per cent growth, this year Get Data is aiming at a still impressive 50 per cent rate.
"We've been developing product rather than the brand," Hunter explains.
"There is a need for us to slow down the versioning and updating of the software and consolidate all the product so it becomes mature. We do that by slowing the pace on Recover My Files."
So far, "Files" has accounted for 80 per cent of the development time and about 70 per cent of revenue. Increasing sales of "Emails" has revenue potential but they believe it is "Photos" which can get the volume as it retails at only $US27.
Another major challenge is the strong Australian currency. Their record sales coincided with a record low Aussie dollar which was boon for a product priced in US dollars and with 95 per cent of its sales offshore.
While the subsequent rise in the $A to near US80c slashed profits initially, the damage has been offset by increasing sales.
Graham Henley points out another downside of developing products so fast was that it was hard for the distributors to keep the localised versions up to date.
Branding has become even more crucial as the company ratchets up its retail sales. They already sell in many countries including Germany, France and Japan and have just begun selling in the huge US stores like CompUSA.
Finding the right distributor is always important, especially as they handle the retail marketing. Online marketing is another issue all together.
"The big challenge is getting the internet marketing correct," Henley says.
"Search engines are big for us - we spend a lot of time optimising search engines. Google is No.1 and maintaining your position on Google is a huge challenge.
"How do you keep up to date with a search engine as Google do not tell you what they're going to do next week. They keep it all very secret."
The Get Data partners have outsourced search engine optimisation after what they call "a couple of false starts".
Now the partners are debating other methods of promotion.
"A couple of years ago you could do an email campaign but you can't do it now as it's spam," Hunter says.
"We do press releases globally on the internet, we buy advertising space on some larger download websites and we try to get ourselves on magazines associated with the net."
They gave away an earlier version of the product on the cover of one magazine and found traffic and sales soared. However, when they took out an advertisement in the same magazine offering a discount of 20 per cent on the product, they "didn't sell a cracker".
Whatever concerns they have on previous marketing for Recover My Files is nothing compared with the obstacles in selling their new product, Explorer View.
Henley describes it as a one-button media window which allows you to preview a document, photo or video without opening the file. He is keen to promote it to local government.
"Explorer view is a pro-active product and Files is reactive. People actually come to us to buy Files because something has gone wrong and they've got a problem but with Explorer View we have to go out and sell it," Henley says."