OUR HISTORY

In the year 2000, ProfiTune was founded by Peter Rowe to meet a growing demand from AutoMate users for structured business skills training.

AutoMate was an Australian DesignMark-awarded whole-of-business computer program with some 3,500 users in the automotive, marine, power equipment and light aircraft service industries throughout Australia, SE Asia and the Pacific.

Many of AutoMate’s users were what Michael Gerber (The E-Myth) described as, “Technicians who had suffered an entrepreneurial seizure!” They were so good at what they did that a business ‘accidentally’ grew around them, and then they struggled to scale up  because of their lack of the ‘business basics’: Leadership skills; sales systems; production processes; team building; cost controls; inventory management; and financial literacy – to name a few.

In 2000 Rowe had sold the AutoMate code and then turned his attention to developing a ‘system’ for coaching business owners to success faster, more safely and more certainly than they were likely to achieve on their own.

With an educational background that included accountancy, law (Sydney University), and Formal Logic (UNE); with 2-years’ intensive leadership experience as a highly-successful (and very young) NSW TAFE Regional Head Teacher responsible for 30 staff and 1,000 Commercial Studies students in 9 regional centres; with business experience as the founder of enterprises in automotive engineering, component remanufacturing, and fitness equipment design and fabrication; and with 10 years in software design, development and support, Rowe says, “It all seemed to come together to make ProfiTune possible.“

“In looking into the workings of many of our 3,500 software licensees I had an understanding of business that had been broadened beyond my direct experience.  I had taught accountancy, studied logic (essentially ‘maths without the numbers’)  and been forced to design one of the first computer-enabled accounting programs which drove me deep into understanding what J D Rockefeller called “the language of business”. 

“At 26 in TAFE, I’d been presented with a pressure-cooker baptism in leadership but blessed with a brilliant and generous mentor who saved my bacon plenty of times while I learned the ropes, and left me with lessons I carry to this day.

“Then came 15 years in engineering and that put a hard core of practicality into a lot of my University theory. In philosophy I was probably good enough to argue that black was white, but in engineering I could not argue an automatic transmission was working if it was wrongly assembled!  It was a great grounding experience which carried through into the way that I thought about and designed software.  I think one of the greatest compliments we ever received for AutoMate was not being awarded a DesignMark, but being told by a very tough client that our software was ‘probably mechanic-proof, which is 3 grades higher than bullet-proof!’  My programmers just loved that compliment!

Back in the day – ProTech ‘Fitness by Design’

“Even the fitness side came into play in ProfiTune.  I’d been powerlifting since I was 15 years old and in 1978 I held all of the NSW Heavyweight records and was State Champion. That led to the fitness equipment design and to my training and coaching younger lifters (one of whom became a Junior World Champion).  That side of things – the insights into developing human performance potential – has definitely worked its way into the training and coaching aspects of our work with Clients.

“So, anyone looking under the bonnet of ProfiTune is likely to see a pragmatic, logical, engineered, process-driven and results-focused approach to a lot of what we do and how we do it.  Given where we’ve come from, it should not be too surprising that our apex Value is ‘Effectiveness’.“

In 2004-5 ProfiTune was selected by the (then) Department of State and Regional Development to launch the Queensland Government’s Small Business Accelerator Program to more than 300 small to medium enterprises throughout that State.  The Company continues to provide pro bono services to the State’s Mentoring for Growth program.

To date, ProfiTune have trained and accredited more than 60 Business Improvement Specialists, and have been engaged by some of the largest private and public companies in the world – and also by some of the smallest (though now, highly-profitable) enterprises.