Introduction

By 1998 Infogix had grown to be a $20 million company with offices in North America and western Europe. The company had completed a decade of sustained growth. During that period the company's founder and leader, Madhavan Nayar, had experimented with a number of conventional and unconventional management ideas.

In 1999 Nayar attended a Forbes Presidents' conference, where he heard one of the authors of this book (Flamholtz) make a presentation about a framework for building successful organizations. The approach made sense to Nayar, and later that year he invited Flamholtz to work with the company and apply the approach described in this book (see chapter 2).

This chapter presents a case study of a company that was simultaneously involved in two different but related types of change: strategic and organizational. The company needed to make the transition from entrepreneurship to professional management, while simultaneously defining a new market space.

The company is Infogix (formerly named Unitech Systems). This case also shows that the changes were supported by a combination of new organizational systems, including strategic planning, “performance optimization” (a version of performance management), and culture management. It shows how these tools were used at Infogix to help make the transition from entrepreneurship to an entrepreneurially oriented professionally managed firm, while simultaneously helping to define a new market space.

Background

Infogix, Inc., provides Information Integrity® software solutions that help major corporations ensure the accuracy, consistency, and reliability of their operational, financial, and management information.