We're a small business, with huge networks, that works with other consultants & businesses to deliver the best solutions possible. Take a moment to read about some of our experiences and then click on the links below for more detailed information:
Debra Chantry is our Principal Consultant. She has 21 years experience within Sales, Marketing & Operations, with a strong passion for Online & Customer Experience. Her experience is built up from over 18 years of working within Corporates across a variety of sectors, working with a number of businesses as a Mentor, plus 3 years of running her own companies.
Her experience spans across Travel & Tourism, Engineering, Finance & Insurance, Pharmaceuticals and Software / Technology development. Debra had a stint within Local Government & sits on a couple of Charity Boards, so also understands not-for-profit.
Debra both lectures & tutors at the Marketing Association in Marketing & Digital Marketing, works as a Business Mentor with Business Mentors NZ and sits on a number of Advisory Boards & Boards.
With this broad range of experience, she has the capacity to quickly understand a business and recognise the opportunities. That said, she's not afraid to get her hands dirty and has a reputation for making things happen. She can work with you at a strategic level but also translate this into something meaningful for the business.
Susan Aldridge is a seasoned end-to-end marketer with an excellent record of successful revenue growth for a variety of organisations including; General Motors Holden, The National Bank, Telecom, Tatler Magazine, New Zealand Steel, Rothmans International, ANZ, Saatchi and Saatchi, Ariba Singapore and Westpac/Life flight Trust.
With 20 years experience across a spectrum of industry sectors in the UK, New Zealand, Australia and Asia, Susan brings a strong international marketing perspective to our consultancy.
Recently, Susan spent four years living and working in Asia. She concurrently developed a network of business contacts across the ASEAN region specifically to assist New Zealand and Australian businesses to export into these lucrative, complex markets.
She has a solid understanding of market and product management principles:- research, segmentation, consumer insight, product development, life cycle management, pricing, forecasting, channel planning and management, trade marketing, brand and retail promotion.
Susan is great at both a strategic and tactical level and she doesn’t mind rolling up her sleeves to get whatever needs to be done, done.
Belinda Simcox (Sim) is an accomplished mobile technologist with a 25 year career in disruptive internet technologies in the United States and NZ and was one of the early pioneers of mobile marketing in NZ.
Belinda is an independent advisor who helps companies expand their business into the brave new world of mobile. Belinda was responsible for the early mobile proposition for Localist (New Zealand Post), and was an advisor to New Zealand Trade and Enterprise on their national Mobile Innovation Project. She has also project managed the planning and design for a number of large Mobile App projects.
One of Belinda’s passions is growing the mobile tech industry in NZ, and to that end she represented NZ at the Korea-Australia-New Zealand Broadband Summit earlier this year, and chaired the recent Mobile Marketing Forum. She has written several local industry guides: “Trends in mCommerce” and a “Business Guide to Building Mobile Apps”, and co-authored a Mobile Accessibility report for American Express
Belinda is also on the Mobile Advertising Council for the Interactive Advertising Bureau New Zealand
Bil Hawley is an experienced Strategic Planner, from a strong Agency background. His experience across a wide range of companies means that Bil enjoys working with all manner of companies to help them recognise & realise their strategic goals.
Bil has worked with clients in the fields of FMCG, motor vehicles, travel, IT electronics and service. His speciality is reviewing product opportunities, bringing products to the market and revitalising existing products
We have a range of other consultants that we call on when needed, as well as some well-priced & respected Executives / Assistants that can help to execute cost-effectively, if you don't have the resources internally.
Creative Design, Branding & Advertising
When it comes to creative design, we have a couple of agencies that we have worked with on a number of projects and can highly recommend:
Rare Design is a boutique creative design agency. Ideal for when you need good quality creative design, that pushes the boundaries to get the results, without the large agency costs.
Central Station are one of the leaders in Business to Business communications and advertising. Combined with their Voltage research on SME businesses in New Zealand, you can't go past them for informed B2B campaigns... and they're full service while being independent!
Soda Communications are another boutique agency that we work with for Business to Consumer and Business to Business campaigns. They're large agency guys that have set up on their own, so you pay for the ads, not for the agency.
PR
There's hundreds of PR companies out there and how do you know which ones will deliver? We've worked with 3 companies that we've got a huge amount of respect for and would highly recommend:
UberPR is a boutique PR agency, specialising in events, entertainment & product launches. If you want to find out how to bring your brand to life through dynamic and strategic public relations, then you need to work with Uber PR.
BlakePR doesn't do boring! They do all the usual PR stuff, but in a different way... considered as thinking outside of the square (or any geometric shape for that matter!). We especially recommend them for writing web copy. Why struggle for hours to write web copy when they can write it in a snap for you?
Accounting
For our own business we use Xero. It's a great accounting package that anyone can easily use to manage thie business in an ifromed way. It's highly visual and easy to use.
But even with the best accounting system in the world, we all need a little help to manage our finances as best we can, taking advantage of tax breaks etc.
Boutique Financial is the switched on Chartered Accountants firm you're looking for.
They're all about nurturing business brilliance. By uniting your spark and ambition with their financial smarts your business can't help but hum ... and a humming business means that endorphin rush when everyone loves doing business with you, offers are heaping up to buy your business and you're becoming a hero not only at home but also by helping our economy grow. They believe their innovative little nation of businesses has what it takes to be world beaters if we nuture our tall poppies right.
Everything they do is targeted at making your accounting easier by condensing staggering amounts of information into simple strategies to get your business ahead. By getting together regularly, with some of New Zealand's best accounting minds, you'll open up opportunities and head off problems in a way that can't be achieved by just doing your tax return and annual accounts once a year.
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) Software
No sales & marketing strategy can be truly complete without a decent CRM system.
Many small businesses think that they can't afford CRM, but with Initiatives and the LeGrand system, you'll be amazed at what you can achieve. Sales teams, customer service, management reporting, marketing - B2B or B2C; they have the resources to accelerate your business’s plans in easy to manage modules. Hands-on, and well researched proposals with follow-through to execution and beyond.
If you're looking for a more complete solution that also incorporates your accounting & ERP then you can't go past CloudTech.They're a New Zealand owned business who have access to some of the top global solutions.
More detailed information on our consultants & suppliers:
