Under the new One Imperial and Gateway to Africa strategy, all Imperial Digital & IT functions on the continent were structured under the new EVP Digital & IT. My areas of responsibility are infrastructure, security & data privacy, procurement, end user computing & service desk, governance, IT support for functional departments, finance for Digital & IT.My total team size is 79 direct reports and approximately 30 indirect being the infrastructure teams operating in various countries in Africa.The total cost budget under my management is in excess of R150m per annum.

This was an exceptional brief appointment as Imperial was undergoing a significant restructuring and strategy realignment under the leadership of Mohammed Akoojee.My responsibilities were full IT oversight for Imperial South Africa.

This role was a secondment to assist in the assessment of the viability of CPG. CPG was a 3PL business providing service in ambient and cold FMCG and merchandising services.The decision was taken to close the business. I assume the role of the FD through the 2 years of closing the business. I supported Edwin Hewitt, who had been contacted to head the closure, in negotiations with all contracted parties such as principals and landlords. This was of the most challenging assignments that I have had but also an exceptional learning opportunity.

Imperial had appointed its first global CIO (Africa / Europe) at this time. I was asked to support the alignment of many IT contracts across Africa and Europe as very little synergies existed. The largest deals that required most of my attention were SAP, Microsoft and networking contracts.We did our first EA with Microsoft and I was tasked to oversee the migration from our on-premise exchange to the cloud (>20000 users).This role also required extensive travel to Germany to align with the procurement department there.

Imperial had established an IT business (Imperial Online) but at the time when I was creating the IT shared services department for ILCP, management decided to exit the IT services offered to 3rd parties and focus only on internal businesses. The newly created IT business, Imperial IT was established but we had to sell our services to our internal customers and operate as a break-even concern. No companies were mandated to use our services.Over the next few years, we continued to grow as we merged more of the business IT departments into IIT. The IT back office landscape had begun to change quite rapidly and the need for greater specialized technical skills rather than a small IT department running a few ‘desktop’ servers facilitated our growth and service offering.My role was the de facto MD of IIT with a team size of about 150 people.We offered the full infrastructure services (storage, compute, backup, networking, email, security) as well as application support and development for SAP and Proteus. System integration services were also a key offering.

The initial scope of the role was to consolidate and the IT functions of all logistics businesses within the Imperial Logistics Consumer Products division and create a shared services department within the division. A few months into the role, the scope was enhanced to cover more of the Imperial Logistics SA businesses.

Full management of accounting and reporting function. The business sales activity was approximately R2b per annum with a net profit of R100m. The position began with challenges but we were able to stabilize the business within a year.The high reliance on the IT department for any 3PL FMCG business cannot be understated. The knowledge and close business operation with the IT department in my previous roles positioned me well to oversee the IT function.

This role was a perfect bridge between the financial accounting / principal revenue generation and the logistics operations of the business. I felt it essential to gain a deeper understanding of the 3PL operations in order to progress further in the business.At the time of taking over the management of the department, our warehouses were overflowing and impacting service delivery.Within 8 months the stock rotations had more the tripled, Pareto profile was aligned to sales and lost sales were under our contracted minimums.A close working relationship was needed with the IT department to support the analytical and reporting requirements in order to achieve our goals.

Oversaw the full financial function of TFD. The business was a 3PL service provider to the FMCG market and one of the top 5 in the country at the time. A key challenge at the time was moving away from a manual revenue calculation methodology to a semi automated process, improving reporting accuracy and period end closures. A change in reports from the IT department was essential in the automation process.