IXTENT has always set store by excellent relationships between people, on a welcoming and friendly environment, a place you are not afraid to come to, or rather which you like coming to. Starting from the company management, to the people from the sales or administrative department, the managers, consultants and developers.
How long have you been working for IXT? What brought you to the company?
This year, our cooperation entered into its second decade, which means that this is my eleventh year with IXTENT. In 2010, following my studies and first work experience, I wanted to move from Ostrava to Prague. At the time, IXTENT was seeking an SAP consultant for a junior position. I had experience in automated testing in the SAP environment, and I’d say this had a fundamental impact on the start of our collaboration.
Your job position (consultant / team leader) requires a broad range of skills of both a technical and humanist character, which you manage very well 🙂 Did you imagine during your studies (computer mathematics) that your profile would take this direction?
Not in the least. To be honest, I had no precise idea about what my job someday would be like and what its content would be. Everything kind of happened on the go. I lived in the present and very near future. Of course, as my studies progressed, I knew more and more where my steps would lead me if I followed the path of mathematics, but I only made the decision to follow the path of IT instead at the very end of my studies. The mere fact that half of my education was dedicated to mathematics and I use almost none of it now in my profession suggests that even if I had had some idea at the time, it probably would have been quite wrong.
I see you as one of the founding stones / pillars of the company, a torchbearer of the team spirit :-). How would you describe the team spirit at IXTENT?
IXTENT has always set store by excellent relationships between people, on a welcoming and friendly environment, a place you are not afraid to come to, or rather which you like coming to. Starting from the company management, to the people from the sales or administrative department, the managers, consultants and developers. Altogether, this is an incredible mix of characters, interests and opinions. You always have something to say to others, there is no problem undertaking an activity and having fun with somebody else. What’s more, everything is solved openly, everything is transparent, everybody can express their opinion and has the opportunity to influence the way the company is run. Nobody has to hide in the corner of their workplace – on the contrary they are invited to express their opinion. Each person can determine the direction of their growth and development in practice. All summed up, this creates a pleasant atmosphere at the company and anybody who has tried it, even briefly, must admit that working at IXTENT is great.
Why should customers choose IXTENT as their supplier? What makes us different, what is our added value?
Definitely the fact that we specialize in one specific area – work with documents. We do not strive for an overly wide portfolio and we focus on going deeper in this segment, on being experts in the field. If we add our references, then every customer must at least consider IXTENT :-).
Why should they put their stakes on a solution from OpenText, Kofax, SAP…?
These are all producers of systems that have developed over the long-term and have a big reputation on the market. There are countless customers that use their products around the world, which I believe speaks for itself. Over the years, they have built up leading positions, quite deservedly, I think. They strive to keep up with the times and react to the world around us with their products. This satisfies most of the needs of end customers and makes it easier for us to react practically and effectively to business cases.
You are very busy, and deal with work challenges far beyond your duties… Where do you get the energy?
I think the answer is simple – family, nature and running. Whenever possible, my wife and son and I take outings in nature. And when I really need to switch off, there is nothing better than running somewhere beyond civilization, ideally with forests and hills.
I admire the fact that you like participating in charitable sporting events. There is no denying an athlete in body and soul. You always give an astonishing performance… You’ve even done a mountain ultra-marathon – the Beskydy Seven. How did you reach such achievements?
I could brush it off by saying it’s a long story, but a very short version could fit into a few sentences. My foundations lie in football, which I played from childhood. When the motivation to partake in collective sports waned even before I turned thirty, I got drawn into running, which is a strictly individual affair. I don’t even recall the first real impulse, but at some point I started running around outdoors in my free time. Then a challenge was added to my inconsistent running about, that being to run my first half-marathon, and then one thing followed another. The motivation to take a few minutes off the next half-marathon. Then even more. Then I started thinking about a full marathon, running in terrain, mountain marathons, mountain ultra-marathons and so on.
What do you consider to be your top sports achievement and why?
It would definitely be a running achievement, but it’s hard to say which one I would rank at the very top. I run in rather diverse ways, short and long routes, mainly in nature but sometimes on the road. So you can imagine that there are a lot of challenges. But for each of them, my main objective was to push the time below a certain limit. If I really had to choose one performance, then it would certainly be running a marathon in less than three hours. When I started running, I dreamed about this limit as something I would like to achieve some day. A sort of mythical boundary. Given that my first marathon was more than an hour slower, it was really only a dream at the start. It took a long time and a lot of hard work. But if you are motivated and capable of sacrificing something to achieve the result, it will happen. I’m glad I finally succeeded.
You are father to a young son, and another child is on the way. How do you feel in your new role?
Well, these are situations that nothing can prepare you for. It is a fast and interesting rollercoaster, but my wife and I enjoy it and I think we are doing very well so far. I am under no illusion, the imaginary rollercoaster is about to get much livelier with the second child. But I think we are doing our best to be prepared. We are looking forward to it.
During the pandemic, we’ve all spent plenty of time in home office and we’ve had rather enough of it. You moved to Moravia some time ago and home office is your daily bread, voluntarily. How do you cope?
It took me some time to adapt. In Prague, I always preferred working from the office, whether because of the conditions or availability of colleagues. In Moravia, I created my own workspace, where I have the peace and space to give 100% to my work. In this respect, I think it has no impact on me in terms of quality. Naturally, there is a lack of direct contact with colleagues, but I think I’ve learned to patch this up with suitable communication tools. What’s more, in the past year the rest of the company has started working this way, and all the minor deficiencies caused by home office have been ironed out. Obviously, it can never replace personal contact, but we have had to learn to work under these conditions. What I do miss, and which is related to one of the previous questions, is a certain degree of socializing, talking to colleagues in person at the office, going for lunch, partaking in shared activities… When it was possible to meet at the office, I travelled to Prague minimally twice every month, at least partly satisfying this “craving”. I think I managed this twice, maybe three times last year, but not since. I can’t wait for the situation to improve, so I can visit my colleagues at the newly reconstructed office :-).
And what about the Golden Fish, what could it do for you?
May my second child be healthy. And in general, may all of us remain healthy and may this period finally end…