Flying High

Bright ideas: Glen Makin, founder, Skybridge and Skygreen

Company: Skybridge (AUSTRALIA)

Rank: 9

Chief executive: Glen Makin

Founded: 2002

Revenue 2008-09: $33.32 million

Growth: 132.56 per cent

Secrets of success: Noticed lack of service for regional satellite broadband and television customers. Developed proprietary online job-management system. Manages large network of tradesmen remotely using software, and keeps them happy and loyal. Most installations sell for a single fixed price.

Most tradesmen hate paperwork, never get paid on time and feel like no one appreciates them. Knowing this, and offering them an alternative, has made former electrician Glen Makin a rich man. His company Skybridge (Australia) installs satellite broadband and television, primarily in regional Australia, and has achieved average annual revenue growth of 132 per cent for the three years to June 2009 to rank ninth on the BRW Fast 100 list.

In July this year, Makin also started a new business, Skygreen, taking advantage of the federal government's $2.9 billion roofing insulation program.

The company's 400-strong network of loyal technical contractors, and the proprietary software system that it developed, saved it from near-disaster in 2005.

It began with an adventure. Makin and his wife Leisa moved from Brisbane to Yulara, the tourist village near Ayers Rock, in the early 1990s, for fun and the good money. Whenever Yalara's satellite television system went down, Makin was the go-to man. There was no one else to fix it, and he learned on the job.

When the pair returned to Brisbane, Makin found a job in the satellite division of Hills Industries. In 1999, he left to start contracting, working from a bedroom office and his ute. As broadband became popular, regional areas typically had no option but to install satellite systems because cable was unavailable. Leisa joined the business in 2000 and the company grew strongly, expanding into Sydney in 2002 and Melbourne in 2003.

In 2005, its fortunes changed. The company lost two important customers, inventory went missing and staff left. "That was a tough year," Makin says. "We had little or no systems, and a very rudimentary database. We hired and lost staff because of our lack of systems." He closed the Brisbane office and moved to Melbourne.

A new system, Skybridge Information Management Online Network, has become the backbone of Skybridge's success, and now, that of its new company, Skygreen.

The software manages every job against a range of key performance indicators, tracks jobs and hours worked, traces inventory and automatically re-orders stock, and records the company's occupational health and safety program and any accidents (there have been none). Jobs completed, documented and signed off by contractors are automatically paid every 14 days. The system is paperless. Technicians can ring in-house experts for extra help.

Makin also made a critical strategic decision - to fix a price for all installations (bar the most far flung). His regional customers are small internet service providers that cannot afford satellite dishes and other equipment up front.

With Makin holding the inventory, these small businesses concentrate on selling, and outsource the installation to Skybridge. The business-to-business model transformed Skybridge - for two years, sales grew more than 150 per cent. The downturn did not dent sales, and it recently won a contract to install and maintain satellites for Optus.

When the federal government announced its $2.9 billion roofing insulation program, Makin's thoughts turned to his technicians: could they be recruited to sell insulation, solar power and solar hot water? He knew they would hate clambering through ceilings with itchy, awkward insulation panels, so he sourced an alternative - fire retardant-treated recycled waste paper (cellulose) that could be piped in to ceilings with little mess. Contractors rent the piping machine from Skygreen, which bulk orders the cellulose, keeping materials costs low. Forty technicians have signed up and been trained as insulators. It cost $800,000 to establish the new business, which Makin says will break even this year.

The challenge ahead for Skygreen is to win corporate customers, the business model that made Skybridge successful. So far, the hardware retailer Bunnings Warehouse has signed up Skygreen to install the hot water systems sold from nine of its stores in Sydney.

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