Life in the fast lane is 24/7 for Tony Stewart

CEO Tony Stewart divides his time between leading Intergen and following his passion for motorsports

By Vera Alves, Auckland | Thursday, 02 June 2011
Tony Stewart, a qualified accountant, has devoted the past 20 years of his life to IT. He has no plans to do anything else, and why would he? Stewart is the cofounder and CEO of what he considers to be one of New Zealand’s biggest software success stories: Intergen.

The company, a Microsoft Gold Certified partner, has won many awards and enjoyed something like 30 percent annual growth over its lifespan, and Stewart hopes to continue the company’s expansion in the face of New Zealand’s particular challenges.

“I would love to be doing this in a different market,” he says. “The only advantage here in New Zealand is that we know how to work hard.”

Stewart says the small size of the market makes it more difficult for customers to get a return on investment than other markets. Intergen, for this reason, has aggressively developed its Australian business. The company has staff in Sydney and Perth and intends to increase revenue with a number of new opportunities. “Australia is very competitive and it is as hard to win work there as it is here, but the wins are bigger,” he says.

Intergen was affected by the Christchurch earthquake. While the company’s data was safely tucked away in the cloud, its physical office near the Hotel Grand Chancellor remains out of bounds. Stewart says staff are moving to a new office in the Airport Business Park over the Queen’s birthday weekend.

Still, with so much going on at home and abroad, the IT business has never seemed so exciting, Stewart says. He has been busy working with new staff and customers across the region, and taking on new business ventures.
“Intergen has an interest in a couple of start-ups and I am on the boards of them,” he says. “I spend a reasonable amount of time working with those businesses, which I enjoy.”

Stewart lives in Takapu Valley, about 16 kilometres north of Wellington, with his wife Andrea and his two daughters, aged 10 and 12, in a lifestyle block that takes some looking after and, along with racing cars, keeps him as busy in his downtime as he is at the office.

“The pressure from both sides maintains the balance,” he says. “Between [my] racing and my girls’ karting, we are [competing] about three weekends a month. We travel around quite a bit.”

In April Stewart raced in the GT1 Support Race at the V8 Supercar Championship in Hamilton. His daughters have also raced karts recently in New Plymouth, Hastings, Palmerston North and Wellington. These events are very much a family affair, Stewart says.

“We have lots of friends in the sport and enjoy seeing them at all the race meetings we compete at.”

Stewart earned his Bachelor of Business Studies in Accounting from Massey University. What he never guessed was how technology would help shape his career, at a time when desktops still weren’t a common sight in offices.
“I was playing with computers in my spare time in university, developing software for some businesses,” he says. “I realised that was a little bit unique.”

Stewart leveraged his skills after he realised how rare his computing experience was in his first job with accounting firm Ernst & Whinney — later Ernst & Young — an office with only two PCs. Stewart eventually became a software developer for the firm in the early ‘90s and in 1995, he left to start Glazier Systems with colleagues Rod Drury, Andrew Kissling and Pat Ryan. Stewart became the general manager after Glazier was sold to the Advantage Group in 1999, and in 2001 he led a management buyout of the company from which Intergen was created. The company has since grown from a staff of 38 to its current roster of around 300 employees.

“I don’t have to look very far to see people I admire professionally,” Stewart says. “We have a really strong leadership team at Intergen, full of people I have worked with or known for a long time. I am lucky enough to have worked with some very good people over the years that I admire, and I have learned a lot from and am still learning a lot from.”

He says it is important to be surrounded by people that think differently to foster innovation.
“Having more people the same [as you] may reduce your workload, but does nothing to drive the business forward,” he says.