Tauranga's trans-Tasman franchise trader

Paul Andersen of Computer Solutions

By Darren Greenwood, Auckland | Wednesday, 01 June 2011
In the internet age, managing a trans-Tasman business is as easy as heading up one that solely serves New Zealand.

At least that is what Paul Andersen says. Andersen and his company are based at the seaside resort of Papamoa in the Bay of Plenty where he is director and CEO of Computer Solutions, a consulting, sales and repair franchisor with 10 locations in New Zealand and Australia.

Kaitaia born-and-bred, he has been in the IT industry for 20 years, with an extensive background in franchising and joint-ventures. Andersen first came across computers while starting his accountancy qualifications when working for Fletcher Challenge, where he found a PC at his desk.

He wondered how it worked and on opening the boxes, found manuals on the PC and MS-DOS, took them home and read them from cover to cover.

“A bit weird really but I actually enjoyed it,” he recalls.

Work took him from Kaitaia to Whangarei, Auckland, Wellington, Rotorua and then Tauranga, and he was able to apply his knowledge of computers now and then. Over the years, Andersen gained a lot of experience in owning and operating franchises across different kinds of business and in 2008 he bought the fledgeling IT franchise Computer Solutions Sales and Service, and reformatted and “cleaned up” its operation.

The venture has outlets in Auckland, Hamilton North, Tauranga, Kapiti Coast, Porirua. In Australia there are franchises in Sutherland, Tweed Valley and Lismore in New South Wales, Glen Waverley in Victoria and Carrara on the Gold Coast.

Computer Solutions has around 20 staff and franchisees across New Zealand and a similar number in Australia, Andersen says, and the company is always on the hunt for new franchisees. The Tauranga operation employs five people.

The company provides back-up and recovery, security, IT consulting, VoIP and other services to SMBs and end-users, with 70 percent business customers and 30 percent consumer.

“We spend a lot of time to get to understand our customers’ needs, looking at their current IT investment and proposing a solution ... to get them to where they want to be.”

Andersen says his customers in Australia and New Zealand have similar needs, but while the Australians tend to be “more professional in their approach to business”, Kiwis are more innovative and less averse to risk.
Getting to know a customer’s pain points is essential to his business.

“[That] can only come about once you have a foot in the door, so it is key that your marketing is such that it generates foot-in-the-door opportunities,” he says. Computer Solutions does this by leveraging testimonials in marketing material and offering free introductory services, fixed-fees and “Rest Easy” managed services plans that include IT “medical” exams for new prospects and technical training.

Andersen works with best-of-breed solutions such as Microsoft server software and hardware from HP. The company is an authorised reseller for Orcacom, a New Zealand VoIP provider, as well as AVG, Softalk and Avast.

Trade has yet to return to pre-recession levels, Andersen says, though business is “not bad”. Computer Solutions customers are looking for ways to cut costs and improve productivity, increasingly through cloud solutions, he says.

That could mean moving a SMB customer’s Exchange and SharePoint servers, network storage or accounting software off-premise, removing maintenance hassles, keeping productivity up and the cost of doing business predictable, he says.

After the cloud, Andersen believes the next big change to “filter through” will be the utilisation of smart devices in his target market.

“The interest is there, but I don’t think anyone has really thought through how best these can be used in this market,” he says. “They will present a challenge for [Computer Solutions] and a real opportunity as well.”