Marcin Penczyk

President of Hogart

Marcin Penczyk, 45, cofounded the IT consulting firm Hogart along with his partner, Janusz Fortuna, in 1992 and has been the firm's president during its nine years of activity. With his prior experience as general director of the Polish business software company Macrosoft, Penczyk knew the speed and direction of the country's economic growth in the early 1990s would attract companies interested in international technologies. Today, he attributes Hogart's success not only to Poland's speedy economic development in the 1990s, but also to the firm's expertise in IT project management.

Penczyk's strongest attribute is his ability to predict the trends of IT market development. Hogart wouldn't be able to develop sufficiently without good planning, nor without being able to define the market demand for its services, he said. Yet Penczyk also credits his team of consultants who are well prepared to work on projects for Hogart's success, as well as the firm's partnerships with top international software vendors, including J.D. Edwards, International Business Machines (IBM), Siebel Systems, Systems Union, Cognos and Microsoft.

Now Penczyk is overseeing Hogart's new e-commerce service in the business to business (B2B) sector called com2Sun, allowing companies to access software supporting global financial solutions provider SunSystems' management solutions via the Internet. In 2002, he will focus on developing Hogart's customer relationship management (CRM) systems department.

Past notes:

1980 - Graduated from Warsaw University's department of mathematics

1987 - Worked for Macrosoft

1992 - President of Hogart

Word of advice:

"Right now the fastest developing companies in Poland are those that could elaborate project management standards high enough to become reliable partners to foreign software producers. I also think that the (computer software) market has stabilized already, so we shouldn't expect any significant growth."

Roseanne Gerin