Local data firm sees a big world

• Magazine: Czech Business Weekly, 4/2005
• Autor: Petra Pasternak, Czech Business Weekly  
• Key Words: Data Warehouse, Business Intelligence

Jan �ervinka was afraid of computers in college.

But the 36-year-old’s thirst for knowledge and drive to build something now has him leading a trans-Atlantic company that has become one of the country’s most successful data warehousing services firms.

Most of what he knows about business comes from the titles that line his office shelves, among them Jim Collins and Steven Sample books on business management and growth. “Learning is maybe the best part of the creative process,” �ervinka says.

Adastra’s results speak for themselves.

Founded in 1994, the company finished last year with almost K� 390 million (€ 13 million) in revenue, 40 percent higher than the year before. A third of that turnover came from the company’s Ontario office. This year, estimated revenue is K� 550 million and by the end of 2007, �ervinka expects the company to hit the K� 1 billion mark.

Driving Adastra’s growth is ambitious management, a quality technical team, a hungry market and a little luck, not to mention a big world that Adastra’s three owners aren’t afraid to explore.

Specializing in data warehousing and business intelligence, Adastra was among the first to find a niche where demand was growing quickly. According to Petr Koubský, editor of Inside e-magazine, that market will continue to grow. “Companies are starting to realize that the data in their databases represents unused riches. Business intelligence and data warehousing is a way to tap them,” Koubský said.

What makes Adastra interesting, he added, is that it is a Czech-based company with far-flung international operations. “No doubt it gives them a financial boost and the opportunity to gather experience they wouldn’t find here,” Koubský said.

Adastra started as a joint venture between �ervinka and Petr Jech, who met in preschool when the two were just 3 years old. They would go through elementary and high school together, study at universities across the street from each other and eventually start a business together. The duo didn’t have the cash to start their own company, so they teamed up with a small global software company called Speedware and offered to create a branch office here. “We were successful selling their product, but globally the company wasn’t doing well, plus it had been dripping red ink for several years,” �ervinka said. “We didn’t need to be present at the death of the company, so we offered to buy them out.”

After two years of negotiations with Speedware lawyers and a K� 20 million loan, the two found themselves in charge. They changed the name and expanded the product line, and within a year, �ervinka said, the loan was paid off.

International flavor

The year 2000 was pivotal. That’s when Czech-Canadian Jan Mrázek, a senior manager of business intelligence solutions at the Bank of Montreal and an avid keynote speaker, arrived in Prague for a tech conference. �ervinka and Jech knew they had found their man. “We wanted to do international business,” �ervinka said. “We met Mrázek and found out that he was a very dynamic personality, full of energy and ideas.” The three agreed on a joint venture. That year, Adastra opened a branch office in Ontario.

The Adastra philosophy is built on the Roman tenet of achieving glory through hard work. Ad Astra in Latin means “to the stars.” But perhaps their least-stellar activity was trying to open an office in Germany, where Adastra lost “loads of money.”

�ervinka said it was very expensive to do business in Germany, the language barrier was a problem, and, equally important, Adastra wasn’t able to inject the office with the same company culture that animates its more-successful operations in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Canada.

�ervinka said he has no intention of abandoning the wealthy German market. He said it’s simply on the back burner for now. In the meantime, the focus is on the Czech and Slovak republics, where he said customers are still underserved.

Although price can sometimes be an issue for customers, clients say Adastra delivers quality. Ond�ej Hercog, director of IT at Allianz, said the company understands client needs. With Adastra’s help, the insurer has created a data warehousing strategy and more joint projects are in the pipeline.

Among Adastra’s strengths, Hercog said, are an aggressive approach, an ability to offer solutions quickly, and the ability to meet many technological standards based on client needs and quality. “The company’s success isn’t accidental,” he said.

�ervinka knows that if Adastra is to keep up its pace, the company must move away from its narrow specialization and expand its core business. The goal, he said, is to become a general software services company offering, among other things, application development.

That would be a good move, according to the competition. Pavel Š�oví�ek, director of the tech firm Logos, which has seen rapid growth on its own turf, said clients don’t want just data warehousing but “complex systems solutions,” meaning organized information in customer relationship management systems, incoming orders, stock and other areas.

“We think it’s best to have a wider take so that we can offer the client more,” he said.