Interview with , Fernando Moreno-Torres, CEO of MTC Soft

Moreno-Torres has 25 years’ experience in the development of software solutions and computer systems for companies and institutions.
MTC Soft’s applications have one principal objective: to offer specific, custom-made solutions for each sector.

Q: Twenty-five years in the business for a man of your age seems almost suspect. You’ve really been creating software for all that time?
A: Yes, I was 18 years old when the first Spectrum computer (which was a milestone in personal computing) came on the market, as well as the Commodore 64. I was beginning to study aeronautical engineering in Madrid, and I had a tremendous curiosity to know what a computer was. I took my first shaky steps with a little programmable calculator. Then I bought a Commodore with which I would spend long hours programming in Basic. A year later I created my first video game, based on the then-popular Spanish television quiz show, "1, 2, 3, Answer Again," though it was for the British market.

Q: The origins of your company, MTC Soft, and its first product, are fascinating. Would you like to share them with the readers of this interview?
A: Although my first steps were in the world of video gaming—which was much more fun than management software—one Christmas vacation I noticed how the staff in my father’s notary office introduced client data manually on 20,000 cardboard file cards. It seemed so backward to me that I decided to create them a program in dBase III to manage their file system. That was December 28, 1987, and a few months later the application had grown sufficiently that I could offer it to other notaries who were pleasantly surprised just with the “search by surnames” feature.

Some years later, on January 1, 1992, I founded MTC Soft in order to put a more professional face on the operation.

Q: Creating management programs for an important number of Spanish notary offices is a complex job. What was the most difficult part to bring under control?
A: Though it may sound strange, the hardest thing we’ve had to do in these 21 years was to make the transition from MS DOS to Windows. By that time we had a program with 500 menu options functioning perfectly, and we had to translate it into Windows starting from zero, without producing any downtime for our clients. It was a long—several years—process, slow and full of problems. I know of companies which died in that transition. It cost us a lot of money and prestige to achieve the level of quality and dependability which we had before the changeover.

Q: Would you like to tell us a bit about the process and the anecdotes regarding the evolution of the notary application. How did it grow? How has it changed? Is it still changing?
A: In the beginning, running on MS DOS, the process was very uniform. The initial program was quite small and grew continuously in a more or less uniform manner in response to the demands of the customers themselves. I was the only programmer for 12 years, and I had the whole program in my head, so the changes were fast and uniform.

Then came the traumatic changeover to Windows, and I was obliged to hire various programmers. Once the basic functions were under control, we started introducing new features related to text processing and its management database. A couple of years ago we added document management and now we’re in a stable situation in which we continue to incorporate improvements which facilitate the work of our users.

Q: Once your services for notaries were consolidated your company began to diversify. How did the new products come about?
A: Our first important project outside our work for the notaries was a custom-made program for the Granada Mercantile Register. It was an interesting job, though not very profitable, because the registrars’ professional association (Colegio de Registradores) developed their own program and we were unable to distribute ours in other cities. Later, coinciding exactly with the Olympic Games in Barcelona, I began to develop a similar program in MS DOS for Property Registrars which was installed in 16 registries in the following years. At that time we also won a public tender to develop a program in Windows for the Colegio de Registradores. That was an interesting time which lasted five years, during which we had up to 35 employees.

Recently, in the past two or three years, we’ve created programs for other sectors. The most universal of these is ArchivaTech, our document management program, which is our fastest growing product right now.

Q: Have all the new initiatives been successful, or have there been any false steps? Have you learned any lessons for the future?
A: We’ve made lots of false steps, many of which I prefer not to remember. Perhaps the most traumatic was the process of changeover to Windows, because it lasted five years and was one nightmare after another until we finally brought the program under control with an adequate level of quality.

Yes, of course, we’ve learned a lot, not only in the technical part, but also in terms of business development.

Q: What was your favorite new project, the one that inspired most enthusiasm?
A: We are currently working on two very interesting projects. ArchivaTech is one of them, because it’s a program based on an innovative less-is-more philosophy, and I sincerely believe we’ve done an excellent job on it. It’s always gratifying to do ArchivaTech demos because the people who see them usually aren’t expecting a tool which is so user friendly and so useful at the same time. I never get tired of showing it, and I enjoy the experience every time.

But the most ambitious and inspiring project is VICTOR Translator, our machine translation program, for its difficulty, its intricacy and its reach. I think this is the program for which we’ll be best known in the future.

Q: What’s the team like which developed these new projects. How many of them are there, and what do their profiles look like? How long have they been with you, on average?
A: The two principal groups are support technicians and programmers. The technicians have a more general profile because they have varied tasks: installation of systems, networks, operating systems, our own software, formation of users… They’ve been with MTC Soft for an average of five or six years, although there are some newer ones.

The programmers do program development work and have university backgrounds. Four of them are computer engineers. Their average time in the company is about eight years, and they’re still very young. None of them has ever worked permanently in any company but MTC Soft.

Q: What are they working on now, unless it’s a secret? A: These days we dedicate a lot of time and work giving support to our customers and updating our existing products, which are continually being enlarged and improved, ever better adapted not only to our customers’ necessities, but also to the demands created by changes in the legislation. Fortunately, however, a margin remains for carrying out new projects, the most important of which is putting a ribbon on our machine translation project, which we’ll be presenting in May, 2009.

Q: Are there disadvantages for an innovative software company being located in a provincial capital like Granada, without a technological tradition? On the other hand, are there advantages?
A: The main drawback is that most of the technology companies we’d like to collaborate with—or we already are—are located in Madrid, or in lesser degree, Seville or Malaga. Also the number of potential clients here is much smaller, but that problem is easily resolved, as we’ve had an office in Madrid for the past eight years.

The advantages may sound insignificant, but they’re not. Life in Granada is much simpler, much slower paced, so our work time is more productive here. It doesn’t take us hours to drive to work and back. These factors make a difference in our everyday professional life. Another important factor is the cost of living in a small city. Everything is less expensive here: services, salaries, rents, etc., and it permits us to be more price competitive.

Q: All the businesses in the world are concerned with the delicate economic period we are going through. What is your recipe for weathering the storm, if there is such a recipe?
A: We don’t have a recipe. We neither grew too much during the boom times, nor are we obliged now to tighten our belts. Of course we notice that sales are not as easy to close as they were a couple of years ago, but we’re well dimensioned,so we’re not suffering a significant impact of the crisis. Perhaps the most noteworthy factor is that we maintain a healthy financial situation, the fruit of the many years we’ve been working and also thanks to a sensible financial department when it comes to planning investments.

Q: Last question: What advice would you give to a young person who found himself in the same situation you found yourself in 25 years ago, faced by an opportunity and having to invent everything yourself?
A: It’s impossible to sum up in a few words everything we’ve learned in these 25 years. Furthermore, I think that each person is different and what may be good for one may not be good for another. That’s why it’s tricky for me to give advice. What is true is that I would readily repeat my own experience because being the driver of your own future, of your own decisions, is very gratifying. The responsibility is great, but the successes are more rewarding.