Tuder was made CEO of Micromine in September although she had effectively been acting in that role for some time prior.
The company was founded by her father Graeme about 30 years ago and has built a strong reputation in the mineral exploration software market.
One difficulty facing any new Micromine CEO is that Graeme and Micromine are inextricably linked.
“He was and is Micromine,” Tuder said.
“It was all his relationship development that grew us internationally.”
This was one of the first challenges both Tuder and her father had to overcome when she took on the top job at Micromine.
Various managers in the company had become accustomed to keeping Graeme in the loop on what was going on and that was a habit that had to be broken.
This involved both Tuder and her father getting telling those people that Graeme did not need to be copied in on everything.
“He had to play along,” Tuder said.
“He supported it and we’re in a good place now.”
Tuder’s brother Tim is also involved with the business as head of Micromine’s Europe, Middle East and Africa operations, although she said he had little interest in holding the top job.
Micromine recently played host to its regional managers at its Perth, Western Australia headquarters.
Tuder said it gave them a chance to talk about what was happening in their markets and to see how the Perth operation ran.
The company initially ran one of these two years ago, however, the downturn made them too expensive.
“One of my goals is to create a high performing team where we all know what our roles are and what the game plan is,” Tuder said.
“The team globally works well together.”
While taking control of the business was a challenge, it was nothing compared to the hard times it had to go through during the mining downturn.
“It was pretty much a near death experience at the end of 2014-15,” Tuder said.
“We had to do a major restructure. We had to find 20% cost savings. It was really devastating.
“We had to make people redundant, shut down offices and make some really tough calls.”
Tuder said the decisions taken, while personally tough, had set the business up well for the furture.
“We ended FY16 with a profit,” she said.
“After the mid-year review we’ve just undertaken we’ve determined the business is just ahead of its sales targets.
“The board and management are all positive about this year.”
Prior to the downturn things had been going well, perhaps too well.
The company had grown fast but had lost some discipline along the way.
“People were acting very entrepreneurially,” Tuder said.
To address this Micromine introduced an authority manual and authority matrix to outline what people could spend and who to go to for approvals. It also strengthened its sales and customer relationship management processes.
To set the business up for growth and to make sure its technology is on the right track Micromine has created an advisory board that has former Rio Tinto innovation head John McGagh and former Minerals Council of Australia chief executive Mitch Hooke as members.
Then the company also has a traditional board made up of Alan Broome, Claire and Graeme.
“We’ve been quite tech driven but globalisation and increased competition meant we had to become more market driven,” Tuder said.
She introduced a process where product development was driven by the product strategy manager.
That manager is offset by a technological product manager.
“The strategy manager looks after the big picture and works with the technology manager to create the road map,” Tuder said.
Board approval is still needed to move things forward.
While it has tighted up its systems, Micromine still gives its country managers a fair bit of flexibility.
“They know their market and they are given goals and boundaries from head office,” Tuder said.
“They just know they have to work within that framework to achieve their goals.”
Succession planning is one issue Micromine has not had to deal with just yet, although Tuder realises it will have to be dealt with sooner rather than later.
“The only shareholders are my mum and dad,” she said.
“The shareholders are going to want an exit strategy and that’s something the board faces in terms of business strategy.”
That could mean a potential trade sale down the track and it is not like Micromine has not had offers.
“We’ve had several letters of interest over the years,” Tuder said.
“We’ve had interest from private equity and trade buyers.
“When the time is right we’ll have to look at options.”
That is not the focus at the moment though.
“I want to keep on growing the business,” Tuder said.
“It’s always been important for us and dad that if we did sell or invited investment, the Micromine brand and people would be looked after the way we would want them to be.”
One of the reasons Micromine has been able to stay so agile is that it only has two shareholders and no other investment or debt.
Tuder said the business had been completely self-funded.
“They’ve [shareholders] never taken a dividend,” she said.
“All the money goes back into the business. For years dad didn’t take a salary.”
Product development is another challenge most technologically-driven business face.
Tuder said the company’s original offerings were aimed at geologists and mine estimation.
“I believe we lead the market in exploration tools but I also believe we’ve added a lot of mining functionality,” she said.
However, Tuder admitted Micromine’s core offerings were mature products.
“We want to keep building on its strengths,” she said.
“The product’s beta version is being tested by a group of clients.”
One of the keys to Micromine’s success has been its willingness to enter emerging mining markets.
That led to its successful pushes into Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan and China, among others.
Micromine recently won a contract to install its Pitram product underground at Oyu Tolgoi.
One of Micromine’s selling points was that it would produce versions of its software in the local language.
This approach gave Micromine first mover advantage in some key growing markets.
With the business back on an even keel Tuder has started to reintroduce that approach, although it could pose her some problems down the track.
She jokes that getting into the US might be difficult now, given she has an Iran entry stamp in her passport.
“It was important for me to go there and learn about it and see what the challenges and opportunities we were going to face,” Tuder said.
While she grew up with the Micromine business, that was far from her first choice for a career.
Tuder started out as a classically trained ballerina dancing in Europe and Sydney and also completed a teaching certificate from the Royal Academy of Dance. Sadly, as is often the way with dancers, injury ended that career.
A family friend suggested she look at arts public relations, however, that did not eventuate and Tuder ended up working in fashion and property public relations in Perth.
Moving to Singapore she started at Fulford public relations handling Adidas in South East Asia and Raffles. The lasting impact of that role would be her handling of the Macallan Whiskey account, which gave her a taste for the amber nectar.
After a stint for Western Australian government agency the Metropolitan Redevelopment Authority she was drawn into the family business in a strategic marketing role.
