Datamark aims at South

Press, 8 October 1987, Page 36

Datamark aims at South

Datamark’s Christchurch office will be officially opened today by the Minister of Trade and Industry, Mr Caygill. Datamark hope that the Minister’s connections with South Island industry will become their connections, too.

The Christchurch office is Datamark’s first In the South Island. They are a privately owned New Zealand company with established offices in Auckland, Wellington and Sydney.

Datamark was formed in 1983 to market and provide user support for T.I.M.S. (The Integrated Manufacturing System), a soft-ware package for business management They are also agents for Altos hard-ware on which the package runs. Datamark consultants, Mr Noel Noonan, and Mr Jim Brown, don’t like to think of themselves as salesmen. They believe T.I.M.S. will sell itself — their role is a hand-hold-ing one, teaching people

how to get the most from the package, helping to decide what hard-ware is needed and setting the package up within a business.

"We work very closely with people before we get to a selling or implementation stage,” says Mr Noonan. “They don’t know everything that’s in the package — we don’t know everything that’s in their business.” The consultants’ belief in their product seems to be paying off. Datamark currently have about 15 T.I.M.S. users in the South Island, ranging from the University of Canterbury Students Association to Alliance Foods and Rayner Steel.

Both Jim Brown and Noel Noonan come from practical management backgrounds, as do most Datamark staff. Mr Brown formerly worked as a private consultant, and was involved in developing a system for

Elders International. Mr Noonan, a lecturer In production and inventory management on behalf of the N.Z. Production and Inventory Control Society and the N.Z. Institute of Management, worked as manufacturing manager for Canterbury Apparel. He became involved with computers while searching for better ways to control business.

Few Datamark consultants have data-processing backgrounds. “We see ourselves at the front of the screen — others can be behind it,” says Mr Noonan.

Datamark began their Christchurch operations in July. Mr Noonan had been providing user support throughout the South Island for a year beforehand.

The office will cover all of the South Island except Nelson, with Messrs Noonan and Brown providing an educational and back-up service for all southern T.I M.S. users.