Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
I started my Career as a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations Developer in 2003, which was back then called Damgard Axapta. After approximately 6 years of working for a partner as a Microsoft Dynamics consultant, I joined a corporate organization as IT manager with the specific responsibility to implement Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, which back then was called Microsoft Dynamics AX. After approximately 2 years in the position as IT Manager, I left the company to start my own Microsoft Dynamics Consulting business, which was called Premium Software Solutions (PSS). I was successful in growing in growing my company to become a Microsoft Implementation Partner with 16 Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations consultants. During 2017 I received an attractive offer from Altron Karabina to sell my company to them and become part of a bigger Microsoft consulting enterprise. As part of the acquisition I was appointed as Chief Solutions Architect in Altron Karabina. I perceive myself as a self-driven and hardworking individual who strives to be successful in whatever I undertake, without compromising on honesty and ethics. After 16 years in the industry, I still have a passion for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations especially Supply Chain with Advanced Warehousing.
After this acquisition, the business was able to land much bigger enterprise projects, forcing me to develop a new implementation methodology to enable the implementation team to deliver big projects faster and smarter. New processes have been implemented where consultants track all business requirements in excel to enable the project manager to track progress continuously. DevOps has been implemented with Power BI to monitor workloads with burn rates, hours behind etc. Being a full supported Microsoft partner and able to deliver a solution across the whole Microsoft Stack, Karabina sold the business to Altron, a large multi-national technology enterprise in South Africa. Currently I’m fulfilling the role of Technology Solutions Professional supporting consultants, developers and architects to deliver enterprise solutions.
Coeburg IT Solutions was still engaged with Foto Distributors, now called Premium Distributors, which was part of the newly formed Premium Group. The Premium Group experienced good growth and in order to support their IT operations they offered to acquire a 70% stake in Coeburg IT Solutions and rebrand the company to Premium Software Solutions. A year later the board of the Premium Group realized that they do not possess the required knowledge nor the appetite to own and manage an IT company and offered me the opportunity to acquire 100% of the share capital of Premium Software Solutions (PSS). An agreement was put in place for PSS to still support the IT operations of the Premium Group. With the group association, Premium Software Solutions was successful to acquire bigger and more profitable Supply Chain and Advance Warehousing projects as subcontractors to established Microsoft partners. During this period Premium Software grew to 16 consultants. In 2016 Microsoft made a recommendation to a large enterprise, Omnia Group to use Premium Software Solutions to deliver the Supply Chain including Advance Warehousing and Transportation Management for their Microsoft Dynamics 2012 Implementation across their 5 businesses, which are Protea Chemicals, Bulk Mining Explosives, Omnia Fertilizer, Umongo and Innofert. All these businesses have multiple legal entities trading across Africa, Australia and Canada. Being a subcontractor to Karabina, a large Microsoft Partner with all the Microsoft competencies except for ERP, specifically Microsoft Operations Finance and Operations skills, the potential was realized in Premium Software Solutions to enable Karabina to deliver the full Microsoft Stack. Towards the end of 2016 Karabina approached me and we started negotiations regarding the acquisition of Premium Software Solutions. This acquisition concluded in March 2017.
With the Ingram Micro collapse into Tarsus, a management decision was made to move the ERP application to Tarsus ERP. This forced me to make decisions with regards to my future and I decided to start my own business, called Coeburg IT Solutions. My first customer was Foto Distributors (Pty) Ltd, having sole distribution rights to distribute Nikon camera’s in sub-Sahara Africa. This site was implemented within 2 months. Dynamics 2009 did not support kitting, functionality required by Foto Distributors (Pty) Ltd. I then developed and implemented a new module to support kitting with scanning capabilities in the warehouse. Microsoft South Africa became aware of the work I was doing and started to engage with me. During this time Microsoft made a strategic decision to restructure the partner program. Competency requirements forced a few of the smaller Partners to work together to enable them to still work with Microsoft. The Gold Alliance between partners was created and with this more opportunities were created for Coeburg IT Solutions. With these opportunities I was able to recruit a consultant and 2 developers. During this time the camera industry started to come under pressure with cell phones replacing the compact cameras. The owner of Foto Distributors was forced to look at other brands and businesses to be sustainable. Premium Group was registered, and Foto Distributors was renamed to Premium Distributors.