Information about Ask Corporation

The The ASK Corporation, aka ASK Group, Inc. was a producer of business and manufacturing software. At its peak, ASK had 91 offices in 15 countries around the world, before its acquisition in 1994 by Computer Associates.

Beginning and Growth (1972 - 1982)

ASK was started in 1972 by Ari and Sandra Kurtzig in California. Sandra Kurtzig had quit her job as a marketing specialist with a unit of the General Electric Company, and invested $2,000 of her and her husband's savings in starting up a new company in their home. The two coined the company name by taking the initials of their names, Ari and Sandra Kurtzig.

At first the firm built software for various business applications. In 1974 ASK was incorporated, but it was not until four years later, in 1978, that the Kurtzigs came up with their most significant product. This innovation was a factory-control program for use on a Hewlett-Packard mini-computer. With ASK's program, companies could plan purchase of materials, production schedules and other administrativa, functions which previously had only performed on very large mainframe computers. ASK's product, called "ManMan," (Sandra Kurtzig's original name for this was "MaMa") an abbreviation for manufacturing management, had a six-figure cost and was aimed at the long-tail small and medium-sized manufacturers. Small companies wishing to have the least expensive solution could purchase timesharing cycles of the software.

ManMan was a huge hit, and ASK's fortunes rose as a result: it went public for the first time in 1981. Within two years, Sandra Kurtzig's personal stake in the company was worth $67 million, as ASK had come to dominate the market for manufacturing systems and software.

Plateau (1983 - 1989)

In March of 1983 ASK made its first acquisition, purchasing a privately held software company called Software Dimensions, Inc., for $6 million, and their successful product, "Accounting Plus". After taking over Software Dimensions, Kurtzig renamed it ASK Micro and launched an aggressive program to sell Accounting Plus. ASK overhired and mismanaged the sales channel for the product, angering existing sellers and ballooning the burn rate for the company, and the product faltered. Finally in June of 1984, Kurtzig announced that she was shutting down ASK Micro, at a cost of $1 million, and auctioning off the rights to Accounting Plus. Regarding this series of mistakes, in which the company also failed to transform ManMan for use on the personal computer, Kurtzig told Business Week, "We have our fingerprints all over the murder weapon" that killed Software Dimensions. ASK never truly found its footing in the small computer market, and struggled to keep its market share from being eroded by competitors offering similar services in less cumbersome formats.

By the fall of 1984, ASK planned to offer a version of its original product, ManMan, for about one-third of its previous price. Lower-priced minicomputers from Hewlett-Packard and the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), the two hardware platforms for ManMan, made this possible. The company hoped to protect its market share with smaller companies and emergent middle-range manufacturers, but by 1985, ASK declined as its customers spent less and less in the market. Exacerbating the problem, Kurtzig and her family members also began selling off large blocks of their stock holdings in the company, which triggered a shareholder lawsuit. Kurtzig also backed away from ASK's day to day operations. In 1984, Kurtzig named Ronald W. Branniff president of the company, and in 1985 he took over her post of chief executive officer as well. Kurtzig attributed her declining interest in the business to family pressures, along with other factors. Divorced from her husband, with whom she had founded ASK, Kurtzig was trying to raise her two sons, who were aged 12 and 9 at the time.

Although the company remained profitable, ASK's earnings and sales declined in 1986, falling to $5.89 million on revenues of $76 million. ASK acquired the NCA Corporation for $43 million in cash in 1987, a slightly better year. Despite these small advances, ASK was losing ground to its competitors. In its research and development activities, ASK began to focus nearly all of its resources on upgrading and improving existing products instead of creating new ones. ASK had lost its entrepreneurial edge.

In the meantime, Kurtzig had spent her time traveling, writing her autobiography, and investing in other technology companies, but this proved to be unfulfilling. In mid-1989 the ASK managing board approached Kurtzig and asked her to resume an active role in the company, and she accepted their invitation. Kurtzig spearheaded ASK's purchase of Data 3 Systems for $18.7 million, a privately owned competitor to ASK. In addition to this complementary expansion, Kurtzig began to revamp the way her old company had been run, shifting organization and priorities to new products. She changed such minor but important details as the quality of the food and beer at the company's Friday evening celebrations in an effort to reconnect upper level management with the company's employees. As part of this effort, Kurtzig instituted 360 degree reviews (where employees review bosses), hired entrepreneurial managers, spearheaded product entry into IBM and Sun Microsystems platforms, and opened international offices in Europe and Asia. The improvements resulted in 1989's earnings of $13.5 million.

Decline and Acquisition (1990 - 1994)

In 1990, ASK purchased the Ingres Corporation, a declining software company. The deal called for 30 percent of ASK to be sold to Hewlett-Packard and EDS for a total of $60 million, which in turn enabled ASK to pay $110 million for Ingres. ASK's stockholders complained about this strange multi-way financing move, notably one man who held ten percent of the company's shares and who announced that he would try to have the company's managing board ousted at the next shareholders meeting. Despite this, Kurtzig's deal proceeded as planned. In this way, Kurtzig was able to unite several components in partnership with ASK that were essential for the company's success. ASK already made use of Ingres software in its own work, linking the accounting and manufacturing departments of its clients to its own database. Hewlett-Packard made the hardware upon which much of ASK's software ran, and the company resold Hewlett-Packard products as part of its software packages. Both Hewlett-Packard and EDS had strong histories of involvement with manufacturing businesses, and this heritage promised to open up more potential markets for ASK.

Although this seemed like good news, ASK had mediocre results over the past several quarters, indicative of a lull in business while the company tried to bring new products to market. With its new purchases, ASK had moved beyond its original scope, as a software company that catered to manufacturers, to become a much larger, global, diversified company. The unified ASK and Ingres group expected yearly revenues of $400 million. Upon beginning the merger of its acquisition into its operations, ASK announced that 270 jobs, or 12 percent of Ingres' workforce, would be eliminated, because they overlapped with operations provided by ASK. The company ended 1990 with revenues of $206 million.

In the early 1990s, ASK concentrated on the development and introduction of new products, designed to provide communication between different computer systems and programs. In 1992 the company also introduced ManMan/X, an updated version of its original manufacturing management program. In 1992 ASK was restructured to better reflect the nature of its operations. The company was renamed the ASK Group and was now comprised of three separate business groups--ASK Computer Systems, Data 3, and Ingres. Also, ASK underwent a significant shift in top management when Kurtzig appointed a new president and once again retired, retaining only the title of chairman. ASK appeared to be on solid footing as the company faced the challenging environment of the computer industry in the 1990s, but it continued to decline. Finally, Computer Associates acquired the faltering ASK Group in 1994.