Four years later, Nigel's passion for software engineering solutions saw him join a company specialising in solutions for the mining and mineral processing sector in southern
Africa, these too being mission critical applications. Hewlett Packard South Africa then approached Nigel and he joined them as a technical sales representative. It was during this time that Nigel completed his MBA
in Johannesburg. He then went on to become the sales and marketing director of a solely owned subsidiary of Hewlett Packard providing large scale software engineering solutions to the manufacturing sector.
It was his
success in running projects of this magnitude whilst at HP that saw Nigel, together with a business partner, start his own company in South Africa designing and delivering multi-million dollar process management and
control solutions to South Africa's blue chip manufactures. These included South African Breweries, De Beers Diamonds, Hulett Aluminium, Toyota and Umgeni Water. His company quickly became HP's largest value-added
reseller in the province of Natal in South Africa. In 1997 Nigel sold his business to a St. Louis, MO, based company who wished to be directly involved in the South African manufacturing sector. Nigel then migrated to
Australia.
As a result of a three-year global
restraint of trade agreement Nigel (unwittingly) signed with the St. Louis based company, Nigel could not continue providing software solutions to the manufacturing sector. He thus acquired an Internet Services Provider in Sydney. He soon learnt that the success or failure of any high volume, low unit value based business lies in having extremely reliable, easy to use billing and customer management systems, regardless of the nature of service being provided. He thus commenced the development of CentreBill in 1998.
His Internet company, AlchemyIT received an Australian R&D Tax Concession to assist in the funding of the development of CentreBill. This enabled the company to employ highly skilled software developers. Nigel's
objective was to develop a world-class billing solution for commercial purposes, not simply a custom made solution for AlchemyIT. He achieved this goal in 2007.
Primarily due to the extreme efficiency of CentreBill,
and against all odds in the industry, Nigel successfully grew his company and in March 2008 Nigel sold AllchemyIT to a Brisbane based publicly listed ISP. The intellectual property of CentreBill did not form part of the
sale agreement and Nigel continues to own the IP. The timing of the sale of AlchemyIT was not planned as it was Nigel's intention to sell the IP of CentreBill before selling his ISP. However, the new company continued
to use CentreBill for over a year without a single technical problem until they managed to integrate AlchemyIT's customer base into their own billing system.
In the past year, Nigel's life and business circumstances
have significantly changed and he now wishes to sell the intellectual property, together with all source code, documentation and manuals. Nigel and his primary developer remain available to assist the acquirer with a
smooth transition process.
Please contact Nigel Patterson at
