Fort Smith Gets New Industry, State Grant Helps Land Jobs
by July 13, 1998 12:00 am 80 views
survey, Westark Community College and a $982,000 state grant.
Applied Systems Technologies Inc., a software development company, announced it would move from Omaha, Neb., to Fort Smith, starting in mid-July. All 20 employees should be in Arkansas by late September.
ASTi’s growth has been constrained by a lack of qualified employees, company spokesman Larry Thomson said in a telephone interview. With an unemployment rate of just over 2 percent, Omaha hasn’t been able to supply the workers needed by the company, he explains.
“We’re a small fish in a big pool up here,” Thomson says about Omaha. Other larger firms offered graduates of two-year colleges starting salaries of $42,000 annually, he says. With two years’ experience, applicants expected to make $70,000 annually.
Thomson says the company had considered relocating to Florida or Phoenix and had even looked at Seattle, where, it was expected, the qualified labor pool would be larger. Fort Smith chamber officials “got wind of us looking. They ran a survey and had a very high response rate from [computer] programmers within the local area” and from others outside the area who indicated they would be willing to work for the new company and move, if necessary, he continues.
That survey response, along with a $982,000 grant from the Economic Development Fund Commission and recruitment help from Westark Community College, persuaded ASTi officials to choose Fort Smith as its new home, Thomson says. The grant money will help with relocation expenses and will provide venture capital needed for growth.
Because the training period for new employees is lengthy, ASTi expects to double its work staff in each of the next several years, eventually growing to about 200 employees, Thompson says. Average salaries for computer programmers will be around $53,000, but the company will employ workers in other capacities, too, including hardware technical installers and administrative workers.
ASTi markets a catalog management software package that tracks inventory, makes purchase orders, does billing and other functions. It has a satellite office in Roanoke, Va.