Try asking someone from Generation Z how technology looked before they were born, and without a doubt, you will receive answers that will remind you more of the Middle Ages than your youth. IT, for them, as well as the world they know, began to exist around the year 2000. If you mention the eighties, you will surely earn a blank stare. Although from the perspective of today’s youth, that time in the context of information technology seems like the age of dinosaurs, it was precisely then that the roots were laid by the first Croatian IT pioneers.
This is a story about them and the Zagreb company that began its exciting journey at that time when the first private companies were being established in the former state. At the end of the 1980s, everything started with the work of a student, a future programmer, Boris Vuković, who was creating business applications under the auspices of an author’s agency. He then teamed up with a colleague, Borivoj Sirovica, who was responsible for managing the business and sales.
Thus, Infoart was born, a company that from its beginnings was based on creating various software solutions. They worked with some giants of that time. For example, the well-known Agrokomerc from Velika Kladuša commissioned them to create payroll software for its 15,000 workers. At that time, it was a huge job; every day of the month, salaries were processed for a different OUR. A detail that must be mentioned is that they were once registered as IBM’s local partner under serial number 001!
From Student Internship to CEO
Just as they recognized the potential of IT and digitalization at the end of the 1980s, they also expanded and adapted to new trends and technologies in the following years. We talked with the executive director, Mario Hegedüs, who has been employed at Infoart for twenty-one years, about the past and future of the company, which celebrates its 35th anniversary this year.
– As an economics graduate with an IT focus, I came for an internship at Infoart. After two weeks, I was offered a permanent job, and here I am still – begins the board member of a company that currently employs about sixty people and another ten students.
Many other current employees came to the company in the same way because Infoart has a well-developed summer student internship and mentoring system. The good reputation of the company is evidenced by the fact that this year they conducted interviews and selections with as many as a hundred FER students.
In addition to the fact that the student internship most often turns into a permanent job, there is another additional, very attractive motivation for working at Infoart.
– The co-owners and founders of the company, Sirovica and Vuković, at one point decided to transfer part of the company’s ownership into the hands of some employees who have been with it for a long time and who have contributed to Infoart’s development and growth through their work. Thus, about twenty employees became co-owners of the company. The process is not finished; according to internal rules, other employees can also become co-owners. Allocating shares in the company is also one way to retain the most qualified people in the company, who, in addition to having programming skills, possess specific knowledge from the business domain. This is also an additional incentive to achieve the best possible results because, of course, part of the profit is paid out as dividends, and part is reinvested – explained Hegedüs, who during the conversation emphasized several times that people are the greatest strength and resource of the company, as without them there are no products or client jobs.
