Smart50 rank: 47
Revenue: $46 million
Growth: 21.95%
Founders: Dave Stevens, 40
Based: New South Wales
Employees: 180
Industry: Information technology
Website: www.brennanit.com.au
You know cash is tight when you've got to send the rented potplants back. IT company Brennan has been there, and despite a now healthy annual revenue, the rented plants are gone for good.
Chief executive and founder Dave Stevens says the Y2K and dot-com crashes gave the business the wake-up call it needed on cash flow.
"We were not managing our cash appropriately, but we have learnt our lesson! We now manage our cash much more closely and work with clients to educate them on what our trading terms are," he says.
Brennan produces IT products and training for the small and medium sized business market, a niche Stevens says had been neglected by the big corporates and under serviced by the corner store operations that once dominated the IT industry.
The firm's success in servicing that segment is illustrated by its spectacular growth in recent years, with earnings jumping 21.9% over the two years to an impressive $46 million in 2007-08, compared with $36 million in 2006-07.
