Apex Information Services
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After eight years working in the IT industry, Martin Suchta hit a glass ceiling. He was bored and frustrated and looking at a shrinking industry, due to the number of positions that were going off-shore. He wanted more out of life, both for himself and family. |
Martin saw opportunities for areas of growth and had an insatiable desire to "make it happen" - the only way to do that and achieve his personal goals was to run his own business. With the assistance of NEIS and The Chisholm Institute, Martin founded Apex Information Services Pty Ltd, which builds software applications for medium to large businesses.
"NEIS helped me proactively ‘fine tune' my business by first revisiting and researching the IT industry then identifying and further narrowing down my potential target market," said Martin. "Very early in the program, NEIS made me realize that you couldn't be everything to everyone, and that as a business, I was better off doing what I knew I could do well, than trying to do other things, perhaps badly."
"During the course of the program, as I prepared my business plan for submission, my target market changed as I learnt more through market research and applied the other aspects of running a business that were taught during the course."
Limited growth occurred during the first year of business, however the guidance received from both the training and mentoring set Martin up to grow the business successfully in his next few years of trading. When he commenced trading in 2003, the business was operated from a cold garage in Boronia. It has now expanded to include Apex Australasia (established in 2005) which develops and maintains software for medium to large businesses and more recently three other companies under the Apex brand offering software development, recruitment and bookkeeping. Collectively the companies employ more than ten full time staff and five part time and contract staff, with more staff expected to be employed this financial year.
"The single most important lesson I learnt from NEIS, that helped me to grow successfully," said Martin, "was the importance of integrating growth within the constraints of good cash flow management."
Martin's passion provides a fun, supportive and financially rewarding workplace to his talented staff and has also resulted in keeping the IT work in Australia.
NEIS - assisting talented people such as Martin to succeed in adverse economic and industry conditions!