As the four founders of Toustone, we are immensely proud to celebrate a decade of innovation, growth, and impact. What began as a shared vision among ex-colleagues in regional NSW has evolved into a thriving company, dedicated to empowering Australian businesses with transformative data solutions.

Over the past ten years, we’ve weathered challenges and embraced opportunities. It’s been difficult at times, transformative at others… but it has always come back to being driven by our unwavering commitment to excellence. From humble beginnings and literally bootstrapping our way through it, our journey has seen us forge strategic partnerships, expand our service offerings, and extend our reach far beyond our regional roots.

As we reflect on this milestone, we really are filled with gratitude for the dedicated Toustone team, loyal clients, and supportive partners who have contributed to our success. Together, we’ve achieved some remarkable milestones, from pioneering advanced and predictive analytics solutions to earning prestigious certifications like ISO/IEC 27001.

So what does the next 10 years look like? One thing we know for sure it that our passion for innovation burns brighter than ever. And AI is part of that. In fact we started leveraging machine learning within our predictive analytics tools several years ago. And we’ve seen first hand how it has helped our clients adjust their paths to help them reach their business goals.

At our core, we remain committed to our regional roots and the communities we serve. As we embark on the next chapter of our journey, we’re wholly dedicated to fostering economic growth and providing meaningful opportunities through data for businesses in regional Australia and beyond.

Thank you all for joining us on this incredible journey. Together, let’s continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible and shape the future of data analytics.

In regional NSW, four associates who worked together at MARS gathered together for endless hours with the hopes of bringing their idea to life.

The idea?
Business intelligence as a flexible, future-thinking solution for Australian businesses wanting to transform their data into actionable insights.

For the four founders, it wasn’t just a dream to see this through. It was a plan that would be brought into action, thanks to the passion and dedication each of the four founders brought to the table.

said Co-Founder Mal Chambeyron about taking the leap to start the company.

The name of the business? Mac2 (more on that down the track!)

The business began, in all its bootstrapped glory – the co-founders worked part-time on the business, putting in an initial investment each to kickstart the company and buy the starter software and tech equipment needed. It was a promising start, with one of Toustone’s first clients being a government client.

2015 saw the first version of the mac2 Cloud be born, a data centre making different applications and data accessible over the internet. The Cloud was developed in the times of purchasing hardware, where setup could take between 6 – 9 months, so to be able to have business intelligence not only automated, but up and running in 4 minutes was a game-changer.

The company also made a quick jump into the Agricultural industry with great down-the-road connections – being a regional company. Partnering with Rivalea and Ruralco were exciting times for the team.

Co-Founder Adam came on full-time to the business and three additional part-timers joined up, including Simon who is still with us! We also had Charles and Alison supporting as contractors, who also both work with the company today.

Yellowfin became our service partner – a pivotal moment for the company, and a partnership that has lasted to date! This partnership opened up doors, as we were able to go from manual building of each environment to having a fully automated deployment model – saving immensely in time and resources.

Starting out small and strengthening network connections, the company’s reputation quickly grew in the town thanks to word-of-mouth. Reaching further than Albury, businesses in Melbourne and Sydney came knocking, interested in how this data analytics company could help grow their business.

Through the hard work of the small team in identifying a key opportunity for clients, Professional Services became an offering of the business. This service meant our professionals took their expertise into clients’ businesses and would work internally, developing internal team skills, connecting different departments together and bringing fresh eyes to solve the problem at hand.

Contributing to the buzz of Software as a Service at the time, the company executives released their SaaS automation – garnering praise from existing customers and the surrounding community. This was a powerful business intelligence solution that could be up and running for clients in a very short set-up period, an absolute game-changer amongst the days of hardware installation.

One day an interesting call came through from the lawyers at Apple, stating that ‘mac2’ was in conflict with their trademarks and brands.

“It was early days.” recalls Craig Lefoe, “Our lawyer said it would be a winning case because we are about data, however Apple had the time and deep pockets to drag out the case for years. Because we didn’t have much brand equity at the time it was easier to change names.”

The process of finding a new name in a rapidly growing tech sector proved to be a challenge. “Toustone is a made up name!” Craig explains.

Some big names entered the building, with a successful partnership created with Lawson Grain. This partnership – one that still exists today – meant some close collaboration on exciting advancements in the agricultural offering from Toustone. Our cloud-based business intelligence solution was continually being revised to provide the right insights and data to our agribusinesses.

As all small businesses start in growth, enhancing the platform and key offering was the focus – putting effort into sales and marketing, and continually adapting and improving so that clients were receiving the best support with their data analytics needs. With three years under their belt, strategic goals came into play, and the team continually talked about desired achievements and services they eventually wanted to bring out.

With business plodding along, Toustone hit the 4-year mark, in its little office situated on Dean Street in Albury, NSW. 14 individuals made up the team at this point, including the founders.

Toustone had made the leap to expand globally, beginning work with a business located across Ireland, Singapore and the US.

Then, the departure of an original major client turned everything on its head. The four founders – Craig, Chris, Mal and Adam got together with two heavy options weighing on their minds. Walk away, or change the strategy?

Craig recounts the experience,

An exciting new project opportunity appeared for Toustone in 2019, where an international company called Plexure put out a tender for a partner who could assist them in their service delivery reporting solution. This was a mammoth beast of a project, being cloud-based on a global scale. Through a joint partnership with Yellowfin and Toustone – Yellowfin as the solution provider and us as the delivery and hosting partner – we were able to showcase our expertise in data visualisations, data strategy and cloud-based solutions.

Internally, there was lots happening at Toustone, with the launch of a specific reporting software tool in the NDIS space. The tool provided accurate and reliable reporting across finance, HR and more for businesses operating in the NDIS sector. When brought to NDIS service companies, it was met with praise and great interest, with one key NDIS client still working with Toustone today.

Plexure launched their new and improved analytical performance solution in 2020 with Toustone’s hosted and scalable platform. The result was Plexure’s growth in global reach, and ability to support their internal teams with more precise, actionable insights. This was a huge win for Toustone, with a project consisting of over 12 months of work, finally being brought to the public with great success.

The feedback from Plexure on Toustone was a testament to the hard work of the team, with Will Hunt, Plexure’s Product Manager explaining,

On the other side of the Albury office was the Transport specialist team – headed up by Co-Founder Adam Sharp, who were chipping away at a big-scale project that had landed on their desk. A key transport operator in Australia was looking to leverage their data to improve their reporting, and we were able to deliver a powerful cloud-based dashboard reporting solution.

The benefits of remaining regional continued to reveal themselves as we began our move into the food production space. This was solidified by partnerships beginning in 2020 with Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) and Australian Meat Processor Corporation (AMPC). Toustone was able to develop custom reporting solutions that tackled data challenges in the Food industry regarding consumption, waste management and supply chain management.

By the end of 2020, we had collected more talented members in the company, all bringing their individual expertise to the table and contributing to the great work that Toustone was doing in the analytics and BI space.

2021 started with a bang, with 51% growth showcased for Toustone over the previous 12 months. This really cemented the excellent work culture of the business, striving to achieve innovation, and bringing future-thinking approaches to every project and client partnership.

Toustone began working with the New South Wales Government in the health sector, to revolutionise the way reporting was done, making financial, HR and operational data more accessible and easy to understand in this sector.

One client, Bankstown Sports Club, wanted accurate and insightful data integration to improve their strategic operations. Toustone created a reporting and data solution for Bankstown alongside developing an exciting new offering that would be launched just two years later.

Off the back of the success working with our key transport client to advance their operational and predictive reporting, the opportunity to develop further transport data solutions was just too good to pass up. The Real-Time Data Module was born, using the SIRI protocol (Service Interface for Real-Time Information) to improve customer experience when planning public transportation journeys.

The amazing element this solution brought was the ability to process raw data in less than 1.5 seconds, and not just in a hypothetical situation either. Our module was able to be tested with a major Australian rail operator, passing with flying colours. The development of the Real-Time Data Module was a big achievement for 2022, one the Toustone team was and is very proud of.

2022 was the year Toustone began looking at how we could leverage our data expertise to key areas that require precise data on retention. From this, RetainTalent was born, an internal HR and business management tool for companies looking to manage staff turnover and increase staff retention. RetainTalent was launched in the latter half of 2022 to clients.

With ten years under the belt, it’s safe to say the learning has been insurmountable and the experiences unforgettable. From four individuals to over 37 dedicated employees and contractors, Toustone is a bustling and proudly Australian-operated company expanding beyond the Asia-Pacific, despite its regional roots.

It’s with anticipation and excitement that we look to the future, with a move into the AI realm and application of AI to business operations and management.

said Co-Founder and CFO Chris when asked about the future aspirations of Toustone.

Staying true to what is important to us and what started us is also a focus for the future.

“Continuing to grow a regional-based company and provide technical jobs for regional-based people is an aspiration for the company.”

explained Co-Founder and CEO Craig.

Ten years mark the significant milestone in our journey towards becoming industry leaders and bringing data solutions to businesses of all sizes and locations. As we celebrate this achievement all together, we look forward to striving towards even greater advancements, forging new partnerships and taking risks into uncharted territory to discover the rewards that come from being future thinkers.