Overview

Why is it that ten years after the first e-commerce technology boom most small businesses are still using phone, fax and email to determine price and availability and execute transactions with other businesses?  Quite simply, it is because an e-commerce alternative needs to be easier to use and more cost effective than existing methods before a user will adopt it.  Prior to Netfira, no software company has genuinely understood the behavior of small businesses that buy and sell products, or how to solve the inefficiencies in their inventory operations.  

George Ruul, Netfira’s Founder and CEO, has over 20 years experience building financial systems for small to medium businesses.  Over this time he has developed a deep understanding of the issues and requirements of SMB’s and the shortcomings of existing e-commerce systems.  Traditional B-to-B hubs and e-commerce websites have not proved efficient for buyers or sellers as they continue to use email, phone and fax to exchange information on product pricing and availability and to process orders.

Recognizing this massive market opportunity, George assembled a team of industry leading software engineers in Australia in 2006 and established Netfira to develop an electronic trading system using new generation technologies and an innovative architecture. The resulting platform and applications represent over two million lines of code and have been developed using IBM’s Rational Rose environment.

The initial Netfira platform attracted interest from Electorulx Australia. Electrolux immediately recognized the efficiencies that could be realized with Netfira given the volumes of transactions that it processes annually with its distributors.  Electrolux became Netfira’s key pilot customer with the purchase of an Enterprise wide license for Electrolux Australia in 2007. This Enterprise implementation has provided meaningful market validation of Netfira’ software solution while seeding the market for small businesses to adopt Netfira on a transaction fee basis.  

In 2008 Jay Hennock, who co-founded www.rsvp.com.au - Australia’s largest dating site, joined Netfira to drive the commercialisation of the technology.

According to the US Census and the European Commission, there are approximately 28 million businesses in the USA and Europe with less than 500 people.  Prior to Netfira, there has been no easy to use and cost effective end-to-end solution for enabling these businesses to electronically trade securely and in real time.