I find the pain points, and help you work out what to do next.
Business and technology consulting. I have been in technology since 1986, and I have built, run and successfully exited my own companies. That is where the advice comes from.
How I can help you
- Build a business or technology strategy
- Work out where you are now, and where you actually need to be
- Find where you could disrupt, and where you are exposed
- Review, scope or govern a technology project
- Put a project that has gone wrong back on track
- Find the weak points in your people, process and systems
- Identify the empires that may have formed within your business
- Challenge your thinking, in the nicest possible way
I am fluent in board.I am fluent in geek.
I can put a strategy in front of your directors, then sit with your developers and work out whether it can actually be built. Most people can do one of those two things.
I take on a limited number of projects, and I method consult. That means I immerse myself in your business until I understand what you are really facing, rather than what it looks like from the outside. What you get back has been tested against how your business runs, not against a framework.
The kind of work I do
- A listed retirement village and aged care developer
- Digital transformation strategy for the construction arm, then building information modelling across the build programme.
- Ski field operators
- A ticketing and RFID strategy that is now used across much of the New Zealand ski industry.
- Civil construction and infrastructure delivery
- Building information modelling, and the change management needed to make it stick with the people doing the work.
- Law firms, for over thirty years
- Adding value to client relationships while taking cost and time out of the back office. My first company built its whole reputation on legal work, starting with one firm in the early 1990s and growing on referral alone.
- Tourism operators
- Ticketing, guest engagement, and where the model was exposed to disruption.
- Technology and software businesses
- Architecture, product direction, and getting the engineering team and the board talking the same language.
- ERP platform transition
- Taking an old and rigid ERP and navigating a path towards a modern, open framework, without bringing the business to a halt while it happens. I am doing this for a client right now.
- Projects in trouble
- Several, over the years, put back on track. Usually less about the technology than anyone expects.
Client names on request, with their permission.
Governance, and why it matters to you
I chair boards, so I know what a board needs to hear, what it will not accept, and how a business case has to be built to survive the meeting. If your project needs a case put to your directors, or an independent set of eyes governing it on your behalf, this is work I excel at.
I am currently Executive Chairman of Stratos Technology Partners, Chair of OneLaw, and incoming Chair of Antlar in Australia.
Who you are dealing with
I founded CommArc in 1993 and spent 27 years building it from one person into a team of sixty and one of the country's substantial IT services and private cloud businesses, and successfully exited in 2020. I was an investor and director in Alchemy Group from 2000, took over as CEO when the founder retired, built the business up, and then structured its exit through the merger with Stratos Technology Partners. In 2009 I co-founded OneLaw, the practice management and trust accounting platform now used by three hundred New Zealand law firms. I was an early investor in Bulldog Skincare, built from nothing into a global brand and acquired by Edgewell Personal Care. I am now building Keel, a governance system for professional firms.
In 2025 I was inducted into the Reseller News Hall of Fame. One person is inducted each year, selected by peers.
Tell me what you are dealing with
The first conversation is just a conversation. Tell me what is going on and we will work out whether I am the right person to help.