history

Founded in Western Australia in 2003, Orla is a ground-breaking email and time management program for users of Microsoft Outlook. Founded by a bunch of non techies (our company was started by a lawyer and an actuary), we originally conceived Orla out of frustration with email overload and a belief that there had to be a better way.
 
"Why" we thought, "does Outlook encourage us to think about email in a Send-Receive-File way, when it is what we actually DO as a result of sending or receiving an email that counts?"
 
Soon enough, we realised we needed to move to an action based method of dealing with email. Hence the Orla 4Ds of Ditch-Deal-Delegate-Decide.
 
So far so good. But how to bring this about?
 
Firstly, as Outlook is used by 400 million people worldwide, we decided to change the way that interface is configured. That turned us into a software development firm.
 
Then, understanding that software alone is never enough (what we were really doing is changing people's behavior) we developed a portfolio of training programs to allow people to quickly and effectively be cognitively re-patterned to the 4D way of managing their email. So now we were a training enterprise.
 
Finally, we came to understand that we needed to prove that Orla really does deliver value. This meant we were also in the human capital performance improvement business.
 
So, after a vast amount of research, marketing-testing and business-model development, we bundled all three components into a totally unique service offering - and called it Orla.
 
Watch this 2 minute movie by Stephen Barnes explaining the motivation for developing Orla originally.