George Palmer Email & Phone Number

Sandton

As the Group Technical Officer at Coaxle Group, I serve as a trusted technology advisor to several of our subsidiary companies, including Lightstone, Ince, Media Connect, and Sawubona. My responsibilities span across managing teams of technical experts in Database Management, Infrastructure (both on-premises and cloud), Networks, Security (cyber and systems), and user and systems support.In my role, I oversee the full budgeting process and strategically align the technology team with the business objectives of each subsidiary, catering to their unique developmental stages - from mature businesses to those in their incubation phase.As a certified ISO27001 lead implementer, I ensure the implementation of rigorous policies and disciplines across all our businesses. I proudly sit on the group's executive committee (Exco), as well as each division's Exco, where I use my experience to facilitate and prioritise risk-adjusted approaches tailored to each company's specific functions. I am dedicated to steering the group towards a unified, replicable, maintainable, and sustainable set of processes, standards, and disciplines whilst ensuring that we add the most value to the businesses and the group.

Bryanston, South Africa

My role as the Group Technical Officer for the Lightstone includes the overall responsibility for the centralisation and management of the Information Technology Infrastructure (Wan/Lan, Servers, Databases and endpoints), Security, Compliance and related requirements for the business units within Lightstone. In my position I am also responsible for the provision of Technology Leadership, Strategy and Policy Direction to the group. This requires engagement with the Exco and the Board. I am required to generate and manage the annual IT budgets, and present the budgets and progress reports to the Board.I have 3 managers (Data, Security and Infrastructure) that report directly into me. Management teams and their direct reports are based in 3 physical locations across South Africa. Operationally, we focus in the areas of Cyber Awareness, Penetration testing and Training, Perimeter Security, Internal Security, Database management as well as Endpoint security, Additionally, Internal Help-desk, IT Audit, Risk and Compliance, Server and Systems management, Change Advisory and Change Control Processes also fall within the ambit of my responsibility. We subscribe to and implement ITIL and ISO 27001 practices (Including IT service continuity and Business Continuity Programs).A key focus of my role is to provide leadership to and develop my staff in order to enable them to make decisions which are in the best interests of the business. This leads to an empowered and engaged team that works more effectively, across the strategic and tactical layers of IT. I focus on building legitimacy as a leader through trust thus enabling contribution by holding people accountable.I report directly to the CEO and work with the Revenue, HR and Analytics Heads of Departments to ensure that we deliver safe, secure, relevant and market leading products to our clients; furthermore, growing our team members to be able to deal with any events which may arise, with the right intent in mind.

Johannesburg Area, South Africa

Strategically I am responsible for the delivery of products and solutions into our existing client base. I am also responsible for the development of new products that can either be sold into new areas of business or to existing clients. Functionally I am in charge of our Auto Data Department, the IT Department and the Product Management Team report up into me. I sit on the Auto Exco.

Bryanston,

Based on capabilities we developed in the property, motor and retail consumer areas, we have developed a start-up company information bureau that allows B2B companies to accurately engage with both companies and directors. Our company/director database is built on the CIPC database and covers the entire CIPC universe. The base has been de-duped, and dormant and shelf companies have been eliminated. The data has been geocoded and augmented with judgement, VAT and other 3rd party data sets. All records (companies and directors) have been analytically scored for value and risk (i.e., all companies and directors are ranked in terms of value and risk). About 128,000 companies have been manually researched to confirm/add the trading name, trading address and contact details, and a high proportion have had their SIC codes confirmed. We are growing the base of researched companies rapidly all the time. We focus on : * Business Ecosystem – ongoing monthly/quarterly service providing accurate (active company) market share sliced by company size, risk, geography and SIC code. * Data cleaning and augmentation – clean, verify and enrich our client's customer data using our proprietary companies database and in-house data cleaning capabilities (Dataflux). * Sales and marketing optimisation * Trigger solutions – provide positive (prospecting) and negative (risk management) triggers on a monthly basis based on changes in our companies data base such as: * Company and director reports – proprietary online reports for use in upfront assessment and downstream tracing

Johannesburg Area, South Africa

Transunion Auto is a division of Transunion South Africa. I am responsible for the conceptualisation and implementation of new products that will account for the bulk of the companies revenue within three years. I look after the refreshing of our existing product and data sets into new digital and mobile channels (such as web services and mobile application development). I am focused on removing the silo thinking that preventing the unlocking of value in our product sets. I am also responsible for the Business Intelligence function as well as the location-intelligence and geo-spatial development.

Midrand, Gauteng

At Syntell, I managed a number of e-commerce websites namely www.payfine.co.za, www.energy.co.za and www.paycity.co.za. These sites were positioned to alleviate the pain that citizens have when trying to deal with municipal functions in South Africa. We enabled them to buy prepaid electricity, pay speeding fines and pay other municipal bills with very little hassle. This was a Public Private partnership with the Local Authorities. I had full responsibility for the HR function, P&L, budgeting, Sales and Marketing. This was both a consumer facing as well as a government organisation facing role.I managed the product development with a small team of developers.

Johannesburg Area, South Africa

Did a short term contract to perform a Business Continuity Management (BCM) analysis of a large Security and Cash Management company. This entailed the collation of information gathered from interviews and audits, reviews of the current technology solution as well as its shortcomings, the presentation of this in a risk matrix as well as the development of a proposal to outsource this function to the company. I manage this within the allocated time and cost budget.

I was the General Manager of the DFS division in MWeb Business. DFS is an acronym for Direct Field Sales channel, as opposed to an inbound and outbound call center. When I was promoted to the position, I was responsible for three divisions :1. ISP Direct Field Sales – this consisted of the direct field sales division for MWeb Business. Reporting into me I had a National Sales Manager who in turn had a Sales manager in Durban, Cape Town and Johannesburg. This team had a task of delivering on R154 Million revenue for the 2008/2009 financial year. This team consisted of approximately 30 sales staff and solutions architects. We were in the process of changing the nature of the business from that of a sales organization to that of a selling organization. By this I mean the changing of the team to look for new business, rather than to wait for business to come in. This was necessary to get away from the historical call center mentality of waiting for the phone to ring. It involves a mindset change in how to deal with the existing or potential customer, This is vital as we move up the solution selling stack and meet the strategic objectives of the overall business.2. BSD – Bespoke software development division. Developers of such sites as PnP Home Shopping, Makro, Incredible Connection, Imperial Car rental and a number of others. There are approximately 30 developers and project managers in this team. 3. CSP – Consisting of McGregor BFA and Legalnet. I initiated a project to sell CSP to another division in the group, as I felt that the strategic fit with the internet business was not correct. This was completed in 2007, but I remained in the ISP business even though I came from the CSP side of the business. I reported into the General Manager of Mweb Business, and is part of his senior management team.

I was the General Manager of one of the revenue divisions of MWeb Business. There are 4 divisions (ASP, ISP,BSD and CSP). I run CSP, the second largest by revenue contribution. I currently have three brands (McGregor BFA, Smartnews and Legalnet) reporting into me, with a total of 4 managers that are my direct reports. I report into the General Manager of Mweb Business. I had my own Head of Product, who looks after a product team and therefore a product set, a Sales Manager who is responsible for the sales and CRM function, a Content Manager who sources content for the division to resell, a Professor who is involved as a strategic and JV partner manager, as well as a legalnet operations manager. I looked after the full management function, incorporating budgets, forecasts, expense management, capex, opex, marketing, product and customer/Service Provider liason. The only functions that are not mine are billing and finance as that is done centrally. In the past year I have achieved my companies new business sales targets of approximately 12 million in data sales, even though the market was saturated, and achieved significant cost savings through good cost management. I came in 15 percent under expected cost budget. I have introduce 4 new products into the market and have begun a diversification project to ensure that i achieve my next years targets through growth in new markets.I am part of the senior MWeb Business Management team.

Managed the full IT (Network, Security and Development) function for the company

M-Web and Naspers were co-owners of McGregor BFA. It made sense to consolidate this relationship (as Naspers also owns M-Web) and operationally merge the two companies into one, as they are both Corporate focused (as opposed to individual focused) companies in the largely individual focused group. I was appointed as the Operations, Development and Support manager, reporting to the General Manager Operations, with three managers reporting to me. These managers collectively manage 45 staff, and consisted of the IT Operations department, the Product development department (which includes my old team) and the 24 by 7 Technical Assistance Center (TAC).IT Operations – this comprised of the staff that managed the server and infrastructure network. Hosting, Managed services, E-Commerce, Networking, Leased Lines and security all fell under this departmentDevelopment – This department comprised of a team of developers that developed applications that were sold on an ASP basis. Mostly e-commerce and communication based, but also the McGregor Data remodeling project.TAC – The technical assistance center is a 24/7 assistance center dedicated to solving Mweb Business Client issues.I was also responsible for the forecasting and budgeting both Capex and Opex. I consider the following to be my major achievements: * Completion of the New Data Center and the migration of Equipment. - This project entailed the design and building from scratch a new data center to house the Mweb business equipment, as well as customer equipment. Came in roughly 1 million under budget, on time. The migration was completed with no more than 45 minutes downtime on any service. * Instituted a well defined promotion plan from TAC to Dev or Ops. * Achieve development time frames given to the dev department.

I was the Application Delivery and Development Manager at JP Morgan, after a takeover of Flemming Martin. I was responsible for the planning and co-ordination of system analysis and programming activities for the JP Morgan operation in SA. This included: Ensuring that the customer requirements are met. Interfaces with the customer to determine needs and specifications requirements Reviewing time and cost benefits. Developing, review and manage implementation plans Planning and conversion of new systems. Ensuring that systems engineering activities are coordinated with other internal support groups. Member of IT management team, and reporting to the IT manager Monitors projects to ensure requirements are met on time. Advise business clients on new technology solutions Do recommendations in terms of capacity planning for technology solutions Develop, grow and mentor staff Advising staff on administrative issues and duties, technical issues and prioritization, standards and methods. Evaluate and measure staff performances. Co-ordination of internal staff and consulting staff. Ensure that standards, procedures and policies are implemented and maintained in the departmentWhen I began, the company name was Fleming Martin, and the position was new, as there was no development team in place before. I was given an opportunity to create a department, employ staff and begin to produce results. I had a staff of two permanent employees, one technical programmer, and one business analyst, which reported to me. However, there were also three contractors that I used on various projects and they also reported directly to me.I was responsible for the delivery of all development projects.On the management side, I was responsible for the creation of the Software Change Control procedures, as well as the creation of project charters and project plans.

IT Support, Network Support and Application Development

Hde, Education

Activities and Societies: University Squash Club I studied a Bachelors of Commerce, with Majors in Computer Science, Economics.

Bcomm, Computer Science, Economics

Activities and Societies: League Squash Computer Science Economics

Education record

Activities and Societies: Science Olympiad Team I was the Rotary Exchange Student from South Africa

Education record

Activities and Societies: Squash Matric