Aksakal's CEO details the company's accomplishments for the FY 2009-10 and what is expected for 2010-11.

Year in Review

2009-2010 was both a good and a bad year for Aksakal Australia. The bad was that with the difficulty in finding skilled and commission willing Sales people in Kyrgyzstan to sound out prospects for of the PCAM and Know Where suite despite some phone interviews, or even to get a prospect to commit to a free trial version, along with that country’s continued instability (including a second revolution and further sponsored ethnic violence), the Kyrgyz subsidiary Progressive Technology Solutions was closed down incurring a $500USD cost.

For the good, new products have been developed and launched to the world wide public (English capable at least). All the products have taken the engine behind Know Where and been altered as publicly accessible websites rather than as internal applications, and with a change in audience to match. Whilst there are many established competitors in some of the spaces the websites are targeting, none have the holistic single-sign-on/registration approach that the suite has taken.

The first website launched into Beta was Golf>Assist. Initially expected to be used through browser-aware mobile devices such as the iPhone and Blackberry, limitations in the User Experience and more regrettably the quality of the GPS signal and satellite maps (all the websites use Google Maps for their data) has caused the halt to further development.

The framework behind Golf>Assist allowed for the rapid development of Grand Tours Atlas, a travel blog and mapping website that has gone public with its own domain name, and Know When, a calendar and history tracking website, which had its first alpha release and the end of June. As each of these websites are further developed the user benefits of each will be shared with the other websites.

Goals for next Year

Development and releases will continue for Grand Tours Atlas and releasing Know When to public and improve the feature integration with the two websites. Already locations added to one system are available to the other.

To develop revenue streams two approaches will be followed: firstly through advertising streams on the public websites, which are free to use. Currently Google Ads have been embedded into the websites as a proof of concept measure. Viral marketing of the websites is required to drive traffic to the websites and increase registered users. Grand Tours Atlas has a Facebook profile for this purpose. As traffic increases direct advertising will be implemented instead of through Google.

The second stream will be via the productisation of the framework that the websites run on as a lighter-weight and cheaper alternative to Know Where (which is expensive to host for its technical requirements). Know When will be the first alteration as spatial based calendaring can easily be integrated with business systems such as to show customer locations, where sales took place and when etc.