A software story about collaboration, creativity and true technical grit
Automaton developed from a partnership between Darin Lloyd and Stefan Wright. Based on mutual respect, it was a fusion of two paradoxical minds. Like Yin and Yang. Darin is a natural thought leader and creative at heart while Stefan is a technical stalwart with seemingly infinite knowledge. It was the perfect union upon which to build a creative software business.
Prior to automaton, Darin and Stefan were both working in tech roles at a time when businesses had no choice but to manage their marketing tasks with spreadsheets and repetition. The days of copy and paste. And paper trails longer than the drive from Melbourne to Sydney. A genuine desire to improve efficiencies – and give back creative time to creative people – planted the seed for automaton’s software RetailPath.
With its online catalogue management and product library, RetailPath was a game-changer for brands ready to embrace the digital age and move on from manual processes. In the first year of using RetailPath, Mitre 10 reduced their production time from 11 to 8 weeks and saved $400,000. With digital expansion and technological advancements, RetailPath kept pace by integrating with e-commerce platforms. This evolution enabled businesses to readily load products online.
Today we continue to deliver a tool that is just as relevant now as it was in 2001, with RetailPath delivering efficiencies and best practice workflows to major retailers across Australia. Retailpath continues to service many long-term clients such as Mitre 10, The Good Guys, IGA/Metcash and JB Hi-Fi who have been with us since the early days. But the automaton story doesn’t end there.
Working alongside retailers and ad agencies, we saw the opportunity to improve other processes that proved challenging for the marketing and advertising industry due to antiquated tools. With this, our admation software was born. Initially, our primary focus was to provide powerful digital tools that eliminated bottlenecks and simplified the approval workflow process. For users, productivity went up as frustrations came down. As time went by, we saw a gap in the marketplace for one fully-integrated tool that enabled users to also manage their project tasks, resources and digital assets. As a testament to our longevity and performance, we still service our first admation clients such as David Jones, CPA, GPYR and MYOB.
Hard-earned experience has brought us to where we are today. We provide digital workflow solutions to the marketing, advertising and retail industry. We’re most proud of the fact that we make software that works. With admation alone, we have enabled 11,853 users across 400+ organisations to complete 284,116 deliverables and store 200,605 digital assets.