Career Progression Stories: Abram Bobis

We caught up with Abram Bobis, the General Manager of Theta Technologies. To talk about this career progression story with Theta and now at Jonas. 

Career Background

My name is Abram Bobis. I’m the General Manager of Theta Technologies, one of the business units part of Jonas Australia.

So my background prior to joining the team, I was born in the Philippines. I grew up in Townsville, which is a small city in North Queensland, Australia. I studied computer systems engineering and business management.

I was working in Sydney as a software engineer, and cubicle life and being stuck in Sydney traffic didn’t really seem like a long-term thing I wanted to keep doing. So I found a job in Brisbane for a company called Theta Technologies.

Theta makes a product called Information Leader, and it’s software to help quality assurance teams for food manufacturers that export. The software helps them be more efficient, to gather their information and to make sure that they’re compliant with any of the standards that they have to adhere to.

The job was as a pre-sales engineer, and it was advertised as something where you could travel with the salesman and see regional Australia and New Zealand -and possibly the rest of the world. And that sounded way better than sitting in a cubicle – so I joined up with Theta Technologies.

Theta is a small business, and so you end up putting on a lot of hats as you go. Then I ended up joining the implementation team, running that. I ran the help desk for a while when the admin person was away. I sent invoices, did all sorts of things as part of the job.

Then I felt I’d learned everything and sort of like end of sort of around that COVID time where people are sort of assessing where they are in life – so I quit. That’s where I was prior to the role that I’m in now.

Career Progression Since Joining Jonas

The progression is a little interesting compared to some of the other business unit leaders.

Because I was outside of Theta, I was contacted by Theta’s founder and Joshua Hewitt from the M&A team at Jonas Australia. They needed help in acquiring Theta Technologies, and I did contract work for them, basically getting all the data together, the facts and figures that they needed to get the deal across the line. I knew the business, obviously I’d worked in lots of various aspects of it. I was well positioned to sort of help them out through that process. And then the deal went through, I sent in my invoice and I thought that was the end of it.

Middle of 2023, my now portfolio manager, Michael Henton, contacted me and he offered me a General Manager role to be a business unit leader. He said that during diligence, after I’d sort of stopped working there, a lot of the team, the wonderful staff at Theta Technologies, told him that to lead Theta, they recommended that he reach out to me. So that was really gratifying and really great to hear, but it was still a surprise to say yes.

Watch The Career Progression Video Below

Typical Day as the General Manager of Theta

Theta’s 13 people, so it’s basically run as a small business. When I’m not doing glamorous things like interviews and presenting to Canada or the CEO here at Jonas Australia, it’s run like a small business.

There’s not many typical days. Last week I fixed a toilet, if you wanted to hear about that. A month ago I got a snake catcher out because a python had managed to creep into the office.

A bit more seriously, normally it’s checking emails, making sure there’s any fires that need putting out. I review accounts, make sure we’re in good shape. We have weekly reporting, monthlies, which feed into quarterlies. So all of that gets done.

Lately I’ve been doing a little bit of e-learning at the end of the day with, with AI being a new sort of technology that we all have to adapt to.

What Do You Enjoy Most About The Role?

One thing is a bit hard. I enjoy multiple things.

Top 2 would be I get to work with the wonderful people at Theta Technologies. These are people that I’ve spent, (I did the maths the other day), almost half my life working with. On and off around 20 years coming on in September. They’re wonderful people, and to get to spend time with them doesn’t make it feel like a job.

Most of the time we’re just trying to serve our customers, to try and solve problems together and sort of achieve great things together in that space. We also have really important clients, Australian and New Zealand food manufacturing, making sure that their products are the best in the world. And that always feels really gratifying.

The other half, and that’s something more that Jonas gave us, gave me personally, is the learning. We’re part of a much larger family now. Where each of the other business unit leaders are really happy to share their experiences. And I often feel like it’s almost like cheating, like I get to see all their mistakes and things that they complain about, the things they tried and spent a bunch of money trying and didn’t work out, and I can just learn to stay away from that.

One of the main reasons why I quit Theta was I felt I’d already learned everything, and being part of Jonas now, makes me feel like there’s so much more to learn.

What The Most Challenging Thing About Your Role?

Probably the most challenging thing about the role is where to put your attention to. There’s so many aspects of it and so many things you want to try and do, and I’m a nerd at heart, so I always gravitate towards the technical challenge or something new and shiny.

Part of stepping into the General Manager role is having that objectivity or learning that objectivity, in my case I didn’t come across that naturally. I had to force myself to step back and think what is the highest value thing I could be doing right now and prioritizing.

How Have You Seen The Jonas ABC Differentiators in Action?

Jonas has 3 core values that I think are best demonstrated or shown in action at our quarterly strategic reviews.

One of the reasons why I’m here in the wonderful Brisbane offices is that we do a quarterly strategic review every 3 months. What you’re able to do is get the whole management group in your portfolio, and representatives from Canada and Jonas Australia, and you’re able to tell the story of your business.

I love talking about Theta. You’re able to tell that story and get the experience and feedback from them based on all their learnings across all these different businesses about directions that they could do. So that’s part of that sharing of knowledge.

The other part is the autonomy because they give you all this advice, but your decisions are still your own. You go on that journey. The leadership teams are looking to learn all the time. So if you have success in one area and it sort of isn’t an area that they’re used to, their curiosity that sparked these quarterly strategic reviews is amazing.  You see, they sit up front, they sit up, they’re very attentive. This isn’t like a checklist sort of exercise. They’re really looking for it.

And the main part, – my favorite part, of Jonas is what’s part of their slogan. It’s ‘software for life’. And you can really see that at these quarterly reviews. You see that the things that they gravitate towards that really sparks interest and gets them talking is when you take business actions that that result in long-term value. They’re not interested in boosting your numbers for the quarter. They’re interested in business decisions that mean that you will succeed forever.

So that software for life really exemplified every quarter.  I’m reminded that for these guys, it’s a real thing. It’s not just lip service. It’s actually being taken very seriously.

Leverage our vertical market software expertise. Jonas has completed 200+ acquisitions and our parent company, Constellation Software, 1,200+.

How Has Your Experience Aligned With The Jonas ABC Differentiators?

It’s proven to me that what they pitched to the original founder. I was very close to the founder of Theta Technologies. He gave me that opportunity to join, to travel the country, to go around the world selling Information Leader to food manufacturers. And when Jonas approached us, the Jonas ABC’s were something you hoped would be true, but it’s demonstrated to us that they are true.

It’s a scary thing – to be acquired. You build a business and you put decades of your life into it, you put your house up for it to keep it going, you do all these sorts of major life decisions. And even though you’re selling a business, you still want that legacy to be preserved, your hard work to mean something.

With Jonas’s core values of software for life, what I’ve found in my experience is that – they walk the talk. It’s real, and it’s shaped my journey. It’s made me more excited to grow with Jonas. It’s made me believe in the future of Theta under the Jonas ownership.

What Gets You Excited About The Future of Jonas

Lots! There’s there’s so, so many things and aspects of the job that are now brightened because of the Jonas acquisition.

Before the acquisition, our focus was hitting our fortnightly payroll. The business was driven to make decisions that made sure that every 2 weeks every person at Theta Technologies would get paid. And that was very exciting at the time, but obviously not the best way to grow a business.

With Jonas, it allowed us to sort of look towards the horizon and beyond and actually plan for the future, make those decisions to make sure that it Information Leader is software for life. Theta’s offerings are software that will stand the test of time. And that’s really exciting.

It’s also allowed us to do things like look at AI and other automations and basically business improvement technologies and to grow intothat future. So yeah, heaps to be excited about.

I went to Canada for the first time last year to see even more businesses and learn from them. So I’m excited to do that again, just that information sharing and experience sharing, you know, so not really alone in your own little world as a small business, but you can still act and definitely grow as your own individual business, but you have that backing. You’ve got that network, that instant network of wonderful people who are fighting the same fight as you are. So it’s definitely an exciting future.

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