TechOne boss Ed Chung to take on Accenture, Deloitte, KPMG

Buoyed by strong financials, Ed Chung is calling time on the current way SaaS is implemented, saying his company will soon do it faster and for a single fee.

TechnologyOne chief executive Ed Chung wants to build the next Salesforce. Picture: Mark Cranitch

The nation’s largest enterprise technology company has called time on the likes of Deloitte, KPMG and Accenture’s implementation services as it looks to become the next Salesforce.

Ed Chung, the outspoken chief executive of TechnologyOne, was brimming with confidence on Tuesday as his company’s share price rose 6 per cent on the back of a strong 12-month performance.

TechOne’s answer to US technology conglomerate Salesforce is called “solution-as-a-service”.

“What you do today is you buy software-as-a-service and then there’s still these long, complex implementations,” he said.

“You often hire a system integrator like Accenture, Deloitte or a KPMG or other big firms to implement – that’s a thing of the past now,” Mr Chung said.

“For us the next logical evolution of software-as-a-service (SaaS) – we call it solution-as-a-service – is that we will not only do SaaS but we’ll do the whole implementation for you with no risk and in a faster time with one single fee.

“We’ll take away all that complexity for you just like Salesforce took away the complexity of on-premise.”

Mr Chung, who looks upon Salesforce fondly, said that company taught the world that software didn’t need to be complex.

“They honestly they changed the world. They said you don’t need any of that complexity, we will do it all for you and then they invented and became the pioneers that really grew software-as-a-service big time,” he said.

TechnologyOne chief executive Ed Chung says it will look to hire additional workers laid off in other firms.

TechnologyOne – which employs 1200 staff – is also looking to help pick up the pieces of the recent mass technology lay-offs – which has reported to be well over 1000 roles this year alone.

“Of course we are. We’re always on the lookout for staff of every type, if you like,” Mr Chung vowed when asked if TechOne was looking to hire laid off workers.

But the business would not hire in the hundreds or thousands like some companies had.

“We’ve got 16 products and 400 modules. In contrast to an SAP and Oracle, they probably have a similar number of products and modules,” he said.

“TechOne has 1200 staff and 400 developers so it’s probably one developer on average to each module. In SAP and Oracle, they probably have tens of 1000s or maybe even hundreds of 1000s of developers with the same amount of modules.”

Mr Chung said the TechOne’s point of difference was that it had always balanced growth with profit.

“What’s interesting about TechOne, we’ve always been focused on growth but also focused on profit so we’re a very stable company. We’ve been around a long time and we can give people those careers,” he said.

“Unfortunately, we have seen quite a few lay-offs and I suppose it comes from a whole lot of growth companies that weren’t turning a profit and now need to turn a profit.”

The type of worker TechOne was seeking is “innovative and creative.”

“It’s not about getting more people to deliver more code. In fact, we don’t believe in that,” Mr Chung said.

“We think about finding innovative, creative, talented people that can write beautiful code that you know will sell itself. Yes, we’re hiring. Yes, it’s still competitive. And remuneration is a key part of the way we look after people.”

On opening up the borders to meet talent shortages, Mr Chung echoed the response of many tech leaders.

“There is a war for talent, there is a shortage of tech talent in Australia and to the extent we can open up visas and open up numbers, that would be really helpful for our industry,” he said.