Able Home & Office Fiji
Able was started in Perth Western Australia in 1982 by Rick Kyle and Nick Taylor and moved to Papua New Guinea in 1984.
In 1985, Able Computing (PNG) was incorporated by Geoff Lazberger with Rick/Nick and several others became individual shareholders in the company. Geoff Lazberger ran the company as CEO until 1989 when he left to return to Australia. The initial list of clients around the country used either accounting software CBA or Arrow. The company was awarded national distributorship for both CBA and Arrow and I had also built up a dealership with companies having large clients bases who’d be a target for our software (Deloitte, Coopers & Lybrand, Daltron, etc,)
Clients were right throughout PNG including Kieta, North Solomons where Able built a log tracking system to integrate into the accounting software for a client.
Two key events in the life of the company worth noting in the early days -
First - Able won a national tender (beating IBM, NCR and others) to build from scratch a government accounting system for 19 provincial governments. Able partnered with ICL who had a large footprint into government and winning the tender was the impetus for getting Rick into the country as he was a developer as well as bringing on more personnel and scaling up.
Second – Able Computing, for the first time in PNG’s history, was asked to computerise the National Tally Room on election night in 1989 for the national elections (Michael Somare was PM at the time). Able built the system from scratch. On the night our system showed Michael Somare had lost office which conflicted with the tally boards around the room which showed he retained power. A week or so later, following a recount, our system was shown to be 100% correct and Somare lost office and there was a change of government.
Both these events were pivotal to the company
Able was sold in 1990 to Pacific Industries.
The current owners started a computer hardware business in Papua New Gui
