From its inception, Thaumaturgix was different from many of the technology start-ups, launched in the 1990s. It was the brainchild of three technologists working for a much larger information technology (IT) consulting firm. The founders -Peter Dolch, president; Moses Merchant, executive vice president of systems and networks; and Yogen Sanghani, executive vice president of software solutions -came up with the idea for the business at after-work happy-hour gripe sessions.

"Basically, we were fed up with working at our previous company, and we decided we could do it better. Over a period of time, we just decided to go ahead and do it," Dolch relates. "We lived off credit cards and worked out of my bedroom for three months, but we were able to launch the company and get it to where it is today."

If that all sounds very seat-of-the-pants, it was, but it was 1994, and doing a technology company start-up in that atmosphere seemed like a sure bet. After all, such giant tech firms as Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard had been started on much the same basis. Thaumaturgix was just one of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tech companies launched in the go-go '90s.But Thaumaturgix was a tech start-up with some important differences in three key areas: culture, change management and its approach to financing.

Right from the start, the company's culture was driven by technology.

Thaumaturgix is a professional services company that provides a full-range of IT services to its clients. Dolch,whose hobbies include linguistics, came up with the name. It's based on the Greek word thaumaturgy - "the performance of miracles or wonders; magic," according to the Oxford English Dictionary. "We added the `x' because it made it sound more tech-savvy," Dolch allows. Right from the start, it was a company whose culture was driven by technology.

"We (the founders) were strong technologists ourselves. That was a differentiator at a time when many start-ups in the technology industry were being. driven by sales people," Dolch explains. "That culture has allowed us to attract and attain really strong talent. We can be mentors to our staff. We understand them, and we can help them comprehend the issues they need to deal with. Basically, we created the kind of atmosphere that we as technologists would be comfortable in, and that has resulted in a happy and motivated workforce."

During the late 1990s when employee turnover in the technology industry was running about 50%, Thaumaturgix's rate was less than 15%. The tech-friendly atmosphere was one reason, but Dolch and his partners paid attention to other important matters. The company shared 30% to 40% of its profits with employees, established a relatively flat organizational structure that placed little emphasis on job titles or status and granted workers a great deal of latitude on the hours they worked and the types of projects they pursued.

While other tech companies were often desperately seeking workers, Thaumaturgix leveraged its creative approach to human resources to attract - and keep -some of the best talent available. It frequently found new employees by networking through existing ones. "Check with all your people -employees, clients, partners - and ask them for recommendations when you are to fill a job," Dolch advises. "Spending the extra time to get the right person is better than hiring the wrong person quickly. If you trust your employees, they should be a great source."

Thaumaturgix doubled its revenue and number of employees every year from 1994 to 1998, and it tripled its choices and strategic change management.

A combination of luck, good choices and strategic change management helped.

The company took a wary approach to the dot.com craze that for a time overshadowed the more-established sectors of the IT industry. It provided office space and support services to some Internet start-ups it thought had potential, a practice that got Thaumaturgix portrayed as a high-tech incubator in a number of publications, including The New York Times. However, incubating was never a core activity for the company.

'To the extent that people would come to us with an idea we thought was revolutionary, we would help them out if they had the resources, and we would still do that," Dolch says. "If you have a couple of available desks and there's no real added cost to doing that, it makes business sense. You help out a new business, and maybe you cultivate a new client."

However, Thaumaturgix's focus has always been on developing long-term client relationships, and its customer list includes some impressive names, such as the American Stock Exchange, Bloomberg, Conde Nast, Harvard University, Hearst News Media and Hewlett-Packard.

Thaumaturgix has maintained its focus on its core competencies, but it has added new ones where appropriate and become adept at packaging and marketing them in a way that responds to current business trends. Two good examples are its Managed Services and HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) practices.

Managed Services involves managing other companies' IT infrastructures on a 24x7x365 basis. It's underlying concept is one reflected in other popular business trends such as shared services and comprehensive outsourcing. Basically, companies benefit from greater expertise in a non-core competency than they could provide in-house, and they get it at a cheaper price. The practice offers the added benefit of freeing up resources that can be focused on the company's strategic activities, such as growing sales and building market share.

"Managing other people's IT infrastructures is something Thaumaturgix has been doing all along, but now it's become a business trend," Dolch says. "We follow trends closely, mostly by talking with people we know in the various industries we serve. So with Managed Services, we've taken something that is already one of our core competencies, branded it as TCOS, and it gives us a strong presence in the marketplace."

Health care is one industry where IT spending has been less affected by the downturn in the economy than many others. One factor driving that spending is HIPAA, which mandates a national standard to protect the integrity of all patient health care information. It applies to insurance companies, hospitals, health care providers, employers and any organization handling or storing data related to an individual's health and treatment.

Thaumaturgix crated a HIPAA Compliance Practice Group that works with its strategic partners to help health care organizations meet the challenges posed by the new regulations.

Paying close attention to accounts receivable is critical to business success.

The experience has been an education for Dolch, and he reels off a number of tips he has picked up in the process. Among them are:

* Get money when it's cheap; ,don't wait until you need it.

* Grow in as controlled a manner as you possibly can.

* o Pay close attention to accounts receivable. "That was the soundest advice we ever got, and we got it from three different people," he says.

* If you have to make hard decisions, make them without delay. "You have to be decisive, and that's hard to do when things change. If you wait too long, you can end up hurting more people and jeopardizing the entire enterprise," he says.

* Accept the fact that you don't know it all and be willing to learn as you go. "There's no handbook you get when you start a company. You learn about things like payroll regulations, taxes and insurance through experience," Dolch says.