Published on the 06/03/2015 | Written by Clare Coulson

The Australian integrator known as Sable Systems is rebranding to Sable37 and already has some big clients and prospects lined up on our shores…

Well-established integrator Sable Systems has officially crossed the ditch to enter the New Zealand market, appointing Elizabeth McCusker as GM for New Zealand at the end of February. The Microsoft Dynamics AX retail specialist has already had a number of local customer wins and has some “big retail clients” who will be using its services.

Its first New Zealand customer was Kathmandu, whose 2013 end-to-end Dynamics AX retail project is currently listed as a finalist in the Microsoft New Zealand’s ERP Partner of the Year category and has previously won Microsoft’s Worldwide Customer Excellence Award for Retail and Microsoft Australia’s ERP Partner of the Year.

Martin Wildsmith, director of Sable Systems/Sable37 says the company is entering the New Zealand market as a niche player with a very different strategy to the local Dynamics integrators.

“We want to be world class in a very specific area of AX,” he says. Sable specialises in the retail, food manufacturing and home-building industries and has small teams around the world that are backed by a greater pool of expertise in Australia because companies are happy to fly in contractors who are true experts in their field. The average amount of experience for a Sable Dynamics AX specialist is nine years.

This depth of knowledge is what won Sable the contract with Kathmandu in the first place, despite not having any people on the ground in New Zealand at the time. Kathmandu CIO Grant Taylor, speaking after the deployment of the first phase in 2013, said that after initially engaging with local Microsoft partner Intergen, he realised that he needed an integrator with a deeper understanding of the retail environment and turned to Sable to complete the NZ$2 million-plus project.

Wildsmith says this move was confirmation that the Sable strategy was valid. “The Kathmandu project was a massive success and we didn’t have anybody on the ground in Christchurch when we started, so I think it really shows that there is another model.”

New Zealand already has a couple of staff in Christchurch and McCusker in Auckland. Wildsmith intends to increase that to a core local team of approximately 10 specialists, operating under the new brand Sable37, which will completely replace the Sable Systems brand both in Australia and around the world in the next few months.

Sable already has three offices in Australia, one in the USA and opened offices in Dubai and India at the end of last year as part of this new “global specialist” expansion model.

The company recorded 75 percent business growth overall last year.