Being an Australian company with a predominantly overseas client base has always been a challenge - Australians don't call it "the tyranny of distance" for nothing. But in the case of Advanced Rapid Robotic Manufacturing, a small Adelaide-based company which derives 95 per cent of its annual revenues from overseas, that distance has prompted an innovative response.

Founded in 1993, ARRM makes robots designed to carry out complex and often labour-intensive tasks in diagnostic laboratories. Used to test samples in a wide variety of industries from life sciences to viticulture, the robots both increase accuracy and precision and save users time and money.

Its robots and their software are therefore highly customised and, as a result, every installation has its own quirks. But what ARRM has done in response is create a new model for dealing with customers that reduces the pain often associated with installing a new piece of hardware.

The idea is simple: e-mail clients software as soon as an order is processed and provide them with a corner of the company website to test it on a virtual robot.

That process, says George Kraguljac, ARRM's chief executive, allows clients to write and troubleshoot their own modifications so that when the machine arrives everything will be ready to go.

What Mr Kraguljac calls "electronic virtual roboting" is exactly the type of innovative and rapid response for which ARRM, which last year was named one of Australia's 50 fastest growing IT companies by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, has become known.

It took just a month for the company to move from an idea hatched during a conversation with its web gurus to its first prototype. Similarly, one of ARRM's core products, a diagnostic robot distributed and marketed since June 2000 through an agreement with Bio-Rad, the US-based life sciences group, went from conception to commercialisation in just 18 months

But it is the kind of innovation that is necessary for many Australian IT companies, which, like ARRM with its 20 employees and less than A$5m (US$2.6m) in annual revenues, are often small and targeting niches in the sprawling global market.

According to Sally-Ann Watts, national manager for information technology at Austrade, a government agency, the number of Australian IT companies with A$50m (US$25.5m) or more in annual revenues may be small, but "there are a lot in the A$6m to A$20m range that are doing very well overseas".

The key to ARRM's success has been commercial partnerships with companies such as Bio-Rad, Mr Kraguljac says. As a result of those alliances, ARRM has managed to avoid the often costly exercise of opening overseas sales and marketing offices, although it may consider doing so in the future.

For the moment, however, ARRM is concentrating on developing its product line and trying to find new niches for its robots. According to Mr Kraguljac the company's revenues (for commercial reasons he will only say that they were between A$1m and A$5m last year) have doubled each of the last three years. That has meant increased investment in research and development as the company keeps its R&D costs at 30-35 per cent of revenues.

As a result, ARRM now has some two dozen prototypes out in the field as it looks at potential commercialisation.

"There's at least two or three other models that we're going to commercialise this year," says Mr Kraguljac.