Dirk Ackerman Email & Phone Number

Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa

Irene, Pretoria

I am responsible for the core product offering of the company, a custom developed trading platform aimed at redefining consignment based trading in the fresh produce industry. The initial project started after I proposed the product and strategy to the board shortly after joining the company in 2015. I have been the product manager from the inception phase of the product as well as a member of the senior management of the company.As the senior manager for the technology department as a whole, I am responsible for the product’s vision and strategy, roadmap, capital budgets, staffing, project management, internal and external customer engagement, client support and change management. I have become the domain expert for the product, engaging on all levels of management and technical acumen in both customer organisations and internal departments.As a senior manager of the company, I am part of both the management and executive strategy teams. This allows me direct input in the business model, the direction of the business and day-to-day operation of the business. I implemented an agile software development methodology for the development of the product modelled on the scaled agile framework (SAFe). From a technological point of view I opted for a fully cloud based solution build on the platform as a service offering from Microsoft Azure and a design based on a micro services architecture incorporating the principles of domain driven design.

Pretoria Area, South Africa

I founded the company with the vision to create the next generation of business-enabling technology by leveraging connected embedded devices, or the internet of things. I led the firmware and software development efforts of the company, including an in-house developed Atmel microcontroller firmware stack used in our products.As a member of the senior management of the company, I was responsible for the product management of our entire portfolio of products. This included responsibility for vision and strategy, roadmap, capital budgets, sales, marketing, project management, internal and external customer engagement, client support and development.As a senior manager of the company, I had direct responsibility for the business model, the direction of the business and day-to-day operation of the business and its finance and administration.

Johannesburg Area, South Africa

I initiated the process to define a technology strategy for our business unit, the largest business unit of the Stefanutti Stocks group (a large construction group of roughly 10 000 employees and about $ 1bn turnover at the time). This culminated into the role of Business Unit Technology Manager.In this newly created role I had the responsibility to research, select, implement and standardize new technology and processes in order to enable the business unit to achieve its strategic goals as a construction business.I created a technology roadmap for the business unit designed to bring together the entrenched enterprise systems and the projects and initiatives that I led.To enable this roadmap I led multiple initiatives with the most notable being:- Custom developed software suite, called S4, which I designed to facilitate the day-to-day processes and controls of a typical construction project. This suite has subsequently been implemented across the Stefanutti Stocks group.- I led an initiative to propose a 5D Building Information Modelling (BIM) package as a strategic enabler for the business unit. I shortlisted two vendors and was part of the delegation who evaluated their respective products, and the implementations thereof at their clients in Europe.I also led smaller projects to support and enable the business, including a Microsoft SharePoint deployment; the design and development of a software system to manage construction equipment maintenance and utilisation (subsequently incorporated into the S4 suite); and multiple projects in conjunction with both business unit and group IT teams.

Bachelor Of Engineering (Beng), Civil Engineering

Education record