About the interviewee
Based out of COMPAREX USA’s Dallas headquarters, John Havlick serves as Executive Vice President of Americas & Asia Pacific for COMPAREX AG. He has experience across information technology, marketing, sales, operations and product management at companies including Zones and Insight Enterprises. He began his career in IT outsourcing in the oil and gas industry in Houston. Havlick holds a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas in Austin, USA.
Tell me about your firm (number of employees, location, type of companies you work with, etc.).
COMPAREX is a global IT provider specializing in license management, sourcing, technical product consulting and cloud-based professional services. The company has just been recognized on a global level as a 2015 Microsoft Partner of the Year in both Volume Licensing and Software Asset Management.
The firm operates in 33 countries and employs 2,150 employees globally.
COMPAREX USA has recently established a new state-of-the-art headquarters at the Plaza of the Americas located in downtown Dallas, TX.
COMPAREX USA has more than one hundred employees based out of Dallas and plans to hire approximately 200 employees in Dallas by December 2015 who will work from the new 13,449 square foot location. The Dallas office design features a collaborative, open workspace for the company’s 19th floor headquarters, symbiotic of its focus on migrating enterprises to cloud-based applications and technology solutions, which allows organizations to build a more connected, informed and engaged workforce.
What type and size of companies do you have as clients?
As the 6th largest Microsoft Partner in the world, COMPAREX works with small to medium sized companies as well as larger, publicly traded organizations in various industries to reduce risk, cost and complexity for their IT solutions and licensing requirements.
We work with a number of Fortune 500 companies across the world. In the past, we’ve worked with public sector entities, universities, schools and non-profit organizations. We pride ourselves in our ability to deliver first class service and build relationships with our customers.
Tell me about your business experience outside of Texas?
COMPAREX USA also has dual operations in Raleigh, NC. Since I joined the company I have opened several new markets for the company including India, Brazil, Mexico and Indonesia. I have also lived and run businesses in Australia as well as India. While I am located in Dallas, I am in an international role. So, as you can imagine, quite a bit of international travel.
Tell me about when you first considered moving to Texas, what persuaded you to make that move?
One year ago, COMPAREX USA was operating from a temporary office in New Jersey. We did an extensive search where to place our business in the US. Initially, we incorporated in New Jersey and reached out to NJ about the economic incentives available to a firm like ours but they were not overly receptive. We considered Raleigh, NC; Seattle, WA and Northern CA. I made a single phone call to Karl Zavitkovsky, Director from the Office of Economic Development and the Mayor’s office. They met with us and made it clear that they wanted tech jobs in Dallas. Their support and willingness to work with us made the decision that much easier. Now that we have our permanent location, we’re tapping the technology work force in the Dallas area which ranks highest in the state for tech jobs.
As a proud resident of Dallas, TX, I feel confident that this was the right decision for COMPAREX and there are great things to come in the future.
Why do you think Texas is good for business?
Texas is a great place to base our Americas headquarters, Texas is known as a pro-business state and for all those reasons like tax and labor law it made sense for our business. We also wanted to be close to a major airport that had international flights, this was particularly important as we are a global company. Also we needed to be able to reach our European customer base easily. Public transportation, access to a robust labor market, labor costs, diversity and other factors led us to put Dallas on top of the short list.
While working with the economic development team in Dallas, it is clear that they are committed to job creation to attract people to the area. DFW metro area, the nation’s fourth largest, with nearly seven million people, has relatively low housing costs and great transportation, not to mention many local tax incentives for corporations.
Do you have any final thoughts on this topic?
We are excited to be here in Texas. Thank you for this interview. Please let me know if you would like to discuss other topics.
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