FlexiSchools > About Us

At FlexiSchools, we understand that your canteen, uniform shop, and other facilities are critical school services. Not only are these important school functions that must run day-in-day-out, parents need to be confident that their orders will always be fulfilled and their data will always remain secure. So while our website has been designed to be simple-to-use and convenient, we have gone to even greater lengths to ensure that the system is reliable, accurate and secure.

Brilliant Customer Service – It’s our passion
We are passionate about delivering amazing customer service – it’s innate in everything we do and fundamental to our success. We have high and defined service standards and our interactions are always personal and really satisfying.

Everything’s Easy – We’re “plug and play”
Our products are affordable, simple to understand and use, fast and reliable and we’re a delight to deal with. We are focused on making life easier by transforming time-consuming, troublesome tasks into simple, streamlined, cost-effective solutions which work well each and every time.

Quality – Expect the best from us
Going the extra mile is a matter of course - going that little bit further in everything we do. We are committed to doing things properly and are focused on the details and putting the maximum resources and energy available into the effort.

Trust – We do the right thing
What's right for our customers and our employees is at the heart of what we do. Our underlying platform of trust is critical to our success. You can rely on us to have your best interests at heart.

Help - Is what we provide
It's what we do. We expect to give a helping hand each and every day - we’re here when you need us. We’re problem solvers who provide peace of mind and inspire trust.

Caring – We’re like family
We care about everything we do and understand individual circumstances, and we’re friendly and approachable. We can empathise with and respect our customers and colleagues because working in a positive, caring atmosphere is important to us.

Our servers are located in a data centre in Sydney, not overseas. Our servers are owned by us, and we have exclusive use of them; and this gives us better reliability of service and improved security. Our servers are mirrored, which means that in the event of a fault in one server, we have an immediate switchover to our backup server. The hardware in each of these servers is also mirrored for additional redundancy. Our connection to the internet is guaranteed to have a 99.999% uptime and is plugged directly into into Australia's fastest and most reliable internet backbone network. Sounds expensive? It is. But the rewards of our investment have been returned to us through the high number of referrals from existing happy customers.

However, technology alone doesn't support a system. That is why we run a dedicated help desk, backed by a leading-edge customer service interface, and staffed with operators who have first-hand knowledge of the system. Our command centre provides our customer service team with a real-time view of the entire system, which means that we can ensure all schools receive all orders, on time, every day. Our Customer Service offering was recognised in the 2009 Dell Small Business Award for Customer Service and Technology where we were a Finalist.

So if you are considering putting your school facilities online with FlexiSchools, you can be assured that you are backed by a team that is dedicated to providing a high quality and secure service every day to your school community

We wanted to make sure it wasn't just our logo that was green, so we examined various areas of our business to see where we could do our bit to reduce waste and energy consumption:

Around the Office. We have developed an electronic invoicing and reporting system so that no invoices or statements are printed on paper. Our payroll is also electronic and our payslips are emailed. We also decided to take our own coffee cups to the local cafe each day to avoid disposable cups.

Transport. Our staff ride, walk or scooter to work...as long as it isn't too rainy! We also carbon offset all our interstate flights. We are now making more use of video link-ups and remote desktop support to reduce the need to travel to a minimum.

Energy use. Every night, we reduce our energy consumption by turning off all our lights and air-conditioning. Turning off PCs at night reduces unnecessary enery consumption.

FlexiSchools has an exceptional leadership team, bringing together years of experience from our core operating areas of food, technology, finance and management.

Geoff Austen
Director
B. Comm (UNSW), CPA

Geoff is the major shareholder and Director of FlexiSchools and brings considerable financial and business management expertise to the business. Geoff was an Executive Director with Macquarie Bank in Sydney until 2008.

Stephen Austen
General Manager
B.E (hons) (UNSW)

Prior to co-founding FlexiMeals, Stephen worked as a Logistics Consultant at Siemens, with background in software development and sales support.

As a co-founder of FlexiSchools, Stephen has helped to grow the business from a concept to a fully-fledged national operation. As such, Stephen has assisted in the development of the systems, processes, technology, sales, marketing and strategies, all of which form the core of FlexiSchools today.

Chris Simon
Chief Technical Officer
B.E (hons) (UNSW)

Chris is our Chief Technical Officer. Prior to joining FlexiSchools in 2006, Chris worked for Siemens in the U.S. as a lead R&D engineer, specialising in software and electronics and has over 12 years experience in software development. Chris lends his vast software expertise to the role of CTO, and oversees the development of the technology which forms the basis of the FlexiSchools service.