Halifax-based 2nd Act Innovations , which has developed an advanced document-organization system called 4sightECM, landed its first sale in the U.S. by winning a contract yesterday with North Star Solutions of Media, Pennsylvania.

North Star, which provides technology and services to the mortgage industry, announced that it selected 4sight Enterprise Content Management, or  ECM, platform. Corporations face the perennial nightmare of organizing, protecting and accessing their documents, emails, reports and the like and 4sight is a system that allows companies to quickly and easily store and access all their documents.

The Pennsylvania company said in a statement it will use 4sight to power its Engagement and Project Management protocol, Sextant by providing a secure corporate memory of documents, emails, reports and online news.

“Our business model is based on sales globally, so this foray into the U.S. market is a great first step for us,” said 2^nd Act CEO Andrew Doyle. “Add to that the fact that North Star will be bringing their clients onto the system, and it represents potentially significant growth in our user base.”

Co-founded with President and CIO Peter Hickey, 2^nd Act is a young company with an intriguing history. Doyle and Hickey were leading a team that had a contract to develop document organization for a client in Hong Kong. After an investment $2 million over two years, the client ran into financial problems and the Halifax team was allowed to buy the IP to the software for $1.

Doyle, former President at the Halifax marketing firm Extreme Group, said 2^nd Act is now raising capital, though he declined to give out details of the round.

He added that 2^nd Act is increasing its customer base with more than 25 clients, has trials under way with other potential customers and is adding staff.

 “We are also currently working on some significant relationships with regional and international re-sellers and partners,” he added. “These relationships will expose 4sight to millions of potential customers globally. That's pretty exciting.”