About 10 years ago, Sarah Heal was working for the Dunedin City Council, helping the local authority decide on what would be the best document management system for the city.
A few years later, she had moved to the Christchurch City Council, which had a system completely different from the one used in Dunedin.
"During my time in Christchurch, I was getting phone calls from other organisations asking which of the two systems was better - Dunedin or Christchurch.
"The answer is never as straightforward as that. But what it said to me was there was an opportunity there in information management and technology. I wanted to bring those together for people," she said.
Ms Heal formed Information Leadership with her partner, Grant Margison, in 2004.
The business had "sort of snowballed", she said.
When they started, there were three staff and four clients.
Now, there were 13 staff and more than 120 clients, including 14 tertiary training organisations - including the Otago Polytecnhic, Aoraki Polytechnic and SIT, in Invercargill.
A major client was the Southern District Health Board, where Information Leadership had installed its enterprise retention and disposal manager, making the board compliant with the Public Records Act, making the information and records more efficient and productive.
When setting up the company, Ms Heal realised the organisations she was targeting had limited funds to meet the requirements of the Public Records Act.
She visited a range of polytechnics throughout the country, "selling" them the concept that if one paid for a particular service, the company would be relaxed about that polytech sharing it with another.
All the polytechnics thought it was a good idea but no-one wanted to be first, Ms Heal said.
Eventually, three polytechs, two in the North Island and Aoraki, decided to sign up.
"Once we had the three of them, it became easier to say to the others we wanted them to be part of it."
Thinking big might be in vogue but Ms Heal thought a different approach could be just as effective.
"Instead of trying to tackle everything at once, we developed a 'meccano' approach that would enable polytechs to build their information management systems from the group up."
Asked how that business model worked when Information Leadership was "giving" clients away, Ms Heal said she needed to find a way for public organisations to meet the Public Records Act by not spending too much money, which could go to other projects, such as teaching.
Often, an organisation would have good document-management people but technology was an issue.
Or it could be high-tech, but not be good at storing documents.
Her company brought the two together and she was happy that although the first client bore the full cost of a particular service, that same client could get to share the next service from another polytech for no cost.
"They are not married to us for the rest of their lives.
What we do try to do is make each organisation information leaders as well.
We are very generous in our support, spending time on site."
Because New Zealand was such a small country, Information Leadership worked on the word-of-mouth principle, Ms Heal said.
So far, that was working, with the company gaining three to four new clients each week.
Aoraki Polytechnic IT manager Rob Talbot said that it was essential to have a cost-effective alternative way of meeting the requirements of the Public Records Act.
"Our need to be compliant with the Act was clear.
We also wanted to realise the efficiency gains of managing information as effectively as possible."
But with the funding restrictions faced, wide-scale implementation of an upmarket electronic document and records management system was not an option, he said.
Open Polytechnic client services manager Sam Fitzgerald said dealing with Ms Heal was a significant shift away from standard practice in the IT industry.
With most projects, a supplier came in, did their bit and walked away.
"This was very different - being able to develop the skills of our internal staff was a major advantage."
Asked about expanding the business, Ms Heal said she harboured "delusions of grandeur" but one of the things that made her business work was the relationships she and her staff built up.
"We don't want to move to Australia and while overseas seems attractive, we are having fun at doing what we do here."
She expected staff numbers to stay at 13 for the next three years while the company looked for more sales.
One of the highlights for the company was being invited for the past three years to speak at a major technology conference in the United States.
That sort of recognition meant a lot to a company based in New Zealand, Ms Heal said.
