Software’s Fralick ’82 a role model, mentor for students
Mark Fralick, a 1982 graduate of UW-Green Bay in Business Administration, is a force to be reckoned with in the high-flying world of business software.
His company, GetUsROI LLC, with offices in the Houston Metro Area and Brookfield Wis., just made its debut in the Inc. magazine 500/5000 list of the nation’s fastest-growing companies. It claimed the No. 7 spot among all software companies in the entrepreneur-rich state of Texas.
GetUsROI designs the systems that drive the conveyors, robotics and database tracking that make contemporary warehouse management a modern marvel.
“I’m not a guy who likes to spend all my time doing budgets, but I’m a developer, a coder,” Fralick told a UW-Green Bay computer science class during one recent visit. “I can code well. And, as we all know, it’s hard to do… and harder to do well.”
Along with his occasional guest lectures on campus, Fralick is a consultant to Computer Science Chair Peter Breznay on curriculum matters. He also has placed UW-Green Bay students in challenging, advanced-level internships serving major accounts including Georgia-Pacific, Panasonic and Crown Bolt.
“Mark hired three interns,” Breznay notes, “and paid them a pretty good rate. Each of them got their own projects and were sent as a group to visit warehouse sites where GetUsROI technology is used.”
Another four or five interns were set to follow in their footsteps in a Green Bay “pod.” All students get credits and grades for their internships — the class number is COMP SCI 497, Internship in Computer Science.
Fralick made his first big splash in the industry in 1990. He co-founded Software Architects Inc., offering proprietary supply-chain solutions to companies including Compaq, Panasonic, Delta Faucet and Timex. He eventually sold the rights to that software to industry giant RedPrairie, in 1998.
In his rare spare time (during plane rides and down time on business trips), Fralick writes. His first novel, Opa’s Rhyme, is targeted at the young adult market.
