Nic Passmore

Role Overview

Knosys is a Melbourne-based, ASX listed software company focused on delivering world-leading knowledge management software to the mid-tier and enterprise market. 

As Chief Technology Officer, all area's of Knosys product development, deployment and architecture fell under my purview. The CTO role at Knosys is a highly varied one, and during my tenure I have undertaken various projects and tasks, from building and establishing an in-house development team (transitioning from primarily out-sourced development) to creating and managing the development roadmap for the Knosys product streams through responding to tenders, participating heavily within the sales process as the technical architect and subject matter expert and in the organisations M&A activity. 

A key achievement in this role was formalising the development process, which was managed in a primarily ad-hoc manner prior to my appointment. The development process has been formalised using agile and lean practices, ensuring the business can continue to respond quickly to changing customer requirements whilst maintaining structure and direction.

During my tenure with Knosys, the company has grown in both staff and revenue numbers. Staff growth has grown from four when I first joined Knosys to now approaching twenty (with most of these being direct reports); revenue has consistently increased year on year, relating primarily to acquisition of key new customers via tender responses to which I directly contributed. 

Part of Knosys' growth can be attributed to the excellent customer experience that the company has delivered; this has primarily been driven by my team, including both support staff, infrastructure staff and myself (as I have acted as a key account manager for Knosys' largest customers, which include some of Australia's largest banks and telecommunication companies). These interactions have also yielded increased revenue (in the form of license and project-based revenue) along with significant contribution to the Knosys product roadmap. 

In addition to my contribution to the organic growth of the Knosys business I have also actively participated in Knosys' desire to grow through acquisition. As the technology expert within the Knosys Executive, it has been my responsibility to assess potential targets from a technical perspective, as well as the participate in all aspects of due diligence. 

Accomplishments and Responsibilities

• Define development process, roadmap and direction
• Significant contribution to winning tender responses and negotiations for key customer acquisitions
• Manage all technical and product  aspects of the Knosys business

Role Overview

Intelematics is a leading provider of traffic and telematics services to domestic and international car clubs, navigation system providers and OEM vehicle manufacturers. 

As a Senior Technical Business Analyst for Intelematics, I had responsibility for working with OEM vehicle manufacturers to analyse current business requirements and processes and develop technical requirements for solution implementation. Given the highly visible nature of the developed solutions, a high degree of robustness is required in all developed solutions and as such it is vital that the requirements produced meet not only functional requirements but detailed technical requirements for availability, data retention and customer service. 

Accomplishments and Responsibilities

• Act as the senior member of the business analyst team
• Customer relationship and liaison
• Creation of functional and technical requirements for implementation
• Establishment of both in-house and out-sourced development teams

Role Overview

Cleventure is the holding company for a number of online products, including Migration Expert, Metrixa and lots:op. 

In my role as Product Manager, I was responsible for leading the development of Cleventure's suite of products. Working directly with the Software Development Manager and a team of fifty overseas software developers, it was my job to set the technical direction, define product requirements, architecture and user experience. 

With multiple products developed using a variety of technologies including Microsoft .NET/Mono, Java and PHP, this role required attention to detail when defining requirements, deep understanding of multiple product streams and project management to ensure product release deadlines were met whilst maintaining quality. 

Accomplishments and Responsibilities

• Management of local and overseas staff
• Frequent travel to overseas offices
• Management of software development, design and test staff
• Project management of multiple product streams
• Creation of sales and marketing collateral for new and bespoke products
• Introduction of an agile software development process, unit testing and continuous integration practices resulting in a 20% reduction in defects delivered to production

Role Overview

In mid-2014 the assets of a portion of the Sigtec business were sold by its investors to another business. This changed the dynamic and size of the group and required a number of redundancies, including that of our existing Executive team.

Following this restructure, I was appointed as General Manager by the Board of Directors.  I was tasked with ensuring the profitability of the business continued with targets in the first year of around ~6M AUD in revenue.

This has been a very challenging and rewarding role for me with a focus on cost management, staff well-being and motivation and customer engagement, as well as on-going sales of Sigtec’s GPS and mobile-data enabled vehicle tracking solutions.

Reporting to the Sigtec Board of Directors, this role requires full P&L responsibility for the business with assistance from the groups Finance Manager.

Accomplishments and Responsibilities

• Management of local and overseas offices and staff
• Management of Software Development, Support and Sales staff
• Financial management and accountability
• Maintained business sustainability through cost reductions and top line revenue management
• Implemented streamlined processes for software development lifecycle, support and administration to save > $250K AUD
• Direct involvement in on-going business sale process
• Account management of key customer accounts
• Sale and delivery of large hardware upgrade project for key overseas customer

Role Overview

Following a restructure within the organisation I was appointed to the role of General Manager - Sales & Marketing, with direct responsibility for the entire sales budget of the Group, approximating $22M AUD.

This role has seen me take on account management of all key group customers as well as direct responsibility for all major responses to government and private customers. This typically involved working with the marketing and project delivery groups to scope the solution, develop the appropriate response and provide costings.

Given the former structure of the group and that functional teams had not existed previously, the role has also required that I work with these teams to develop sales processes, marketing collateral including a new web site, style guide and branding guidelines, initiate social media marketing within the Group and select and implement a new CRM package.

Part of the brief for the role has been the explore additional mechanisms to grow the Group’s market share and to that end I have developed and initiated a channel partner model within the Group as well as work with the board and other executive management to develop new pricing strategies to allow us to compete in the current price sensitive global market.

Accomplishments and Responsibilities

• Achieved $21M revenue budget during a trade sale process
• Streamlined trade show attendance and presentations
• Completed re-branding of business marketing collateral including on-line and print media
• Scoped and managed out-sourced development of mobile app to integrate with existing Taxi vertical product for overseas markets

Role Overview

As Operations Manager, I was responsible for managing the operations of the division, including:

• Software engineering and research and development
• Project implementation 
• Customer support.
• Sales and customer account management

In addition, I was responsible for managing the human resources of the division, which boasts more than forty staff spread across the areas describe above across Sigtec’s offices in Australia, the United Arab Emirates and Europe.

The operational management of the division presents a number of challenges including developing more defined processes for customer support and engineering as well as management of staff across multiple geographic regions.

In this role I have been responsible for all aspects of the divisional profit and loss budget, including driving business development and management of divisional expenses. Since taking on this role, I have been instrumental in the creation of expanding Sigtec’s product offering in this space with peripheral technologies that complement our existing product set. These new products have already proven to be a commercial and technical success, with multiple orders already received.

When I took on the role, the division was experiencing a severe slump, having experienced two consecutive years of negative growth as well as negative results. Within twelve months, through expanded sales efforts as well as the aforementioned additional product offerings, the division has experienced an impressive turn around, with positive results for financial years FY12 and FY13.

Accomplishments and Responsibilities

• Returned the Taxi Solutions business to profitability (>$500K AUD EBITDA) after three consecutive years of losses
• Grew the taxi solutions business to become the most profitable vertical within the Sigtec business within three years
• Successfully completed major upgrade project with key Middle East customer (~9000 mobile devices) that was twelve months behind and has since been responsible for more than $5M AUD in revenue since the completion of the project
• Secured key Australian government customer (project value ~$5M AUD)
• Directed key software and hardware delivery project for key Australian customer on-time and with a 10% increase in project margin
• Key contributor in scoping, sale, design and deployment of mission critical infrastructure for key Victorian government customer
• Implemented agile-inspired processes within the development teams which increased development output and decreased rework.
• Mentored key staff, including direct and indirect reports, to ensure alignment with business strategy

Role Overview

As the main point of contact for all of the groups shared IT services, I managed a team of network engineers and system administrators, supporting them in their daily work and ensuring they achieve results for the company whilst also acting as a mentor and escalation point when advanced problems surfaced.

In this role I undertook the architecture design and project management of a key business project to replace the company’s existing network infrastructure, updating it to cope with current demands, and interconnecting the many offices of the group to allow better communication and more effective utilisation of IT resources. This project had strict timelines and a tight budget but was vital to the continued success and growth of the business. The project proved a resounding success, not only in the functionality delivered but also in that it was delivered within the short time line allotted, and under its projected budget. The completion of the project lowered barriers to inter-office integration and allowed the business to streamline internal process and reduce costs associated with managing multiple, redundant procedures across domestic and international offices.

In this role I provided pre-sales support as well as project implementation assistance to the three divisions of the group during the sales and implementation phases of projects. This involves designing the solution from an infrastructure perspective, taking into account both technical and business requirements and presenting a solution to the customer that is cost effective yet achieves their desired outcomes. This often involves drafting responses to tenders as well as technical proposals or presentations for clients. Once the solution has been accepted by the client, both myself and my team are involved in assisting the technical staff from the division in the implementation of the project, up to and including closing down of the project and moving the system into an operational phase.

Accomplishments and Responsibilities

• Integrated networks and systems from three companies following M&A activity
• Rationalised communications and co-location contracts for a net savings of more than $1M AUD over two years
• Contract and Vendor management to ensure delivery of infrastructure projects within budget
• Implementation of large scale infrastructure projects across all business verticals
• Mentoring and succession planning that saw the next senior resource within the team step up following my departure from the team
• Managed capital and operating budgets of approximately $1.5M AUD per annum.