Andy Kelk
Chief Information Officer
Professional Profile
Accomplished and focused IT executive with unsurpassed technical and leadership skills. Strong commerical acumen with a deep understanding of how to drive revenue and profit. A proven track record of delivering IT transformation and operational efficiencies in fast moving, highly competitive environments. Highly respected thought leader and innovator with experience working across Australia, US, Asia and Europe.
Work Experience
June 2010 - Present
CIO
iProperty Group
iProperty is Asia’s number 1 online property group. I am responsible for the group's entire IT strategy and operations. As part of the company’s executive management team collectively responsible for $18 million in annual revenue and manage a direct budget of over $2 million.
- Responsible for the management and development of the market leading property search websites. We serve 4 million visitors every month.
- Developing a multi platform digital strategy across our multiple businesses and delivering mobile websites, applications for iPad, Android, Windows and more.
- Pioneering the migration of traditional print media to the digital world by launching interactive magazines on the iPad.
- Rationalising IT Operations to realise cost savings and focus internal resources on delivering against core competencies.
- Transitioning hosting of our sites and services to AWS
- Out-sourcing of non-core services.
- Elimination of many Single Points of Failure ensuring better availability of sites.
- Initiatives for site performance improvement resulted in page load times dropping by 50%.
- Implementation of ITIL processes impacting incident and problem management.
- Leading a focus on metrics across IT including application performance monitoring.
- Migration of core listings search logic resulting in improved speed.
- Consolidation of multiple legacy platforms in a set of services to enable faster time to market.
- Rollout of CRM to streamline sales workflow.
- Lead organisation's business and technical innovation.
- Initiated and delivered transformation programme to adopt Agile software development.
- “Hack day” events which encourage IT staff to work on a new project of their own choosing to deliver new products, facilitate team building and enhance morale.
- Founded the Agile Malaysia movement to encourage innovation in the industry across Malaysia.
- Regular speaker at events showcasing how innovation can be applied in businesses as an enabler for growth.
January 2007 - June 2010
Delivery Manager, Customer Experience
REA Group (realestate.com.au)
REA Group is the ASX listed operator of Australia’s most popular residential and commercial real estate websites (www.realestate.com.au, www.realcommercial.com.au). I was a key member of the IT leadership team, developing and implementing IT strategic direction and vision.
- Member of the REA Group Senior Leadership team, leading a team of developers, BAs and QAs responsible for end-to-end delivery of major strategic projects focusing on customer/advertiser relationships and core business systems
- Responsible for building key IT assets that will see the company through its current and future growth phases.
- Delivering business cases to executive sponsors that balance the need to deliver on new products quickly and deliver immediate revenue, with the need to invest in a scalable, maintainable software platform.
- Focusing on delivering value to the rest of the business, our customers, consumers and shareholders
- By using Agile methodologies and a strong understanding of what is important to the business, I ensured that the team delivered value early. Prioritising the highest-value initiatives, we maximised the value of our investment.
- Instilling a strong culture in the team of doing work for a business reason and not for its own sake. This allowed us to balance technical excellence with pragmatic decision-making.
- Involved in all of the key people and technical decisions. For example, organisational restructures, software platform changes and infrastructure issues.
- Thought leadership: presenting new ideas, updates and innovation initiatives to the IT team and wider organisation through town hall meetings and blog posts and regular liasion with the Executive Leadship team.
- Budgetary responsibility for major strategic projects, headcount and contractors for $1M+ projects.
- Management of existing vendors and negotiating new partnerships.
October 2001 - December 2006
Head of Integration
Venda
Venda is a leading global provider of SaaS eCommerce websites providing services to Tier 1 retailers including Tesco, Nokia, Panasonic, Xerox, BBC Worldwide, Universal Music Group, Virgin Megastores.
- Founding member of the technical team, building the company from a start-up to a global business with over 250 staff and operating more than 100 websites.
- Leading a team of developers to integrate the Venda platform with client systems;
- Fully responsible for delivery of all integration solutions – integrating with large-scale ERP systems for major retail organisations.
- Pioneering the opening of Venda’s wholly owned, offshore development facility in Thailand. Leading a team of local developers in Thailand to create sites and integration modules.
- Managing communication, work and process with a team of offshore developers. Building relationships across geographies and timezones (UK, Thailand, US).
- Defining and implementing internal business processes to ensure quality and robustness of code
- Growing the development operation from two people with no processes or tools to a team of over 50 working with source control, code review, etc.
- Development using Object Oriented Perl, SQL Databases, using Linux and Microsoft platforms
November 1999 - October 2001
Applications Developer
Ask Jeeves (ask.com)
Ask Jeeves is one of the top-ranking websites in the UK and, as part of an international parent, is a provider of search services to business and consumers.
- Key member of the initial business start-up team; part of a focused group responsible for building the search database for the site’s successful March 2000 launch
- Instigating and building a high-volume, scalable reporting solution to maximise relevancy and monetisation of the search database
- Continuously improving operational efficiency and implementing best practices for search operations
- Maintaining and optimising all databases within the company using Microsoft SQL Server