They wanted to build a different kind of software company - one that listens to client needs, values innovation in development and solves customer problems with brilliant simplicity.
Seven years on, Atlassian remains one of Australia's fastest-growing companies, significantly increasing revenues year on year. With 96 per cent of sales occurring outside Australia, Atlassian is a truly global operation headquartered in Sydney’s CBD with operations in North America, Asia and Europe.
The vast majority of sales are transacted online and the company has over 15,600 customers in 138 countries, serviced globally by 175 partners. Atlassian first purchased NetSuite in early 2006 after identifying the need for a more robust and sophisticated accounting platform.
The company was approaching USD 10 million sales per annum and had far outstripped the capacity of the existing system to support the global business and handle the rapid growth.
"We were rapidly expanding, having achieved 900 per cent growth over the previous three years, and required a financial solution that could take us to the next level," says Atlassian's Chief Financial Officer, John Bruce-Smith.
After exploring the available options on the market, Atlassian chose NetSuite, both for its functionality, usability and its cost-effectiveness as a hosted solution.
"As a company, Atlassian believes in cloud computing and sells hosted solutions. The founders wanted to focus on the core business and not worry about managing or maintaining the accounting and CRM system.
"The choice of NetSuite minimised the resources we had to throw at the system and allowed us to focus on what we do best," Bruce-Smith says. "When it comes to NetSuite, our primary focus has always been on the financials, although we also use the CRM as a knowledge base for customer analysis.
"One of the biggest benefits is the reliability - NetSuite just works. No one at Atlassian has to maintain NetSuite or the server it resides on and it has allowed us to build a stable and reliable financial platform to support the company through its dramatic growth," he explains.
