Chief Technology Officer, McKenzie Intelligence Services
SituationB2B geospatial intelligence SaaS platform serving governments, insurers and financial institutions. Delivery was slow, cloud spend was high, and the board had limited visibility into engineering and data metrics.
StakesThe platform underpins disaster-response and risk decisions for its customers, so delivery speed and platform reliability were commercial constraints, not just engineering ones. Cloud costs were compounding against margin.
My roleOwned Engineering and Data for the company, up to 8 professionals, reporting directly to the Board and investors.
DecisionRedesigned delivery processes and rationalised cloud architecture, and introduced data governance and management reporting as a single coordinated programme rather than three separate initiatives.
Execution
- Defined and executed a five-year technology and data roadmap tied to commercial growth objectives
- Rebuilt delivery process and automation to remove manual bottlenecks
- Redesigned cloud architecture for cost and scalability simultaneously, rather than treating them as separate workstreams
Outcome
- 3× increase in engineering delivery speed
- 60% reduction in cloud infrastructure costs, with improved scalability and reliability, not despite it
- Governance and reporting framework adopted directly for board and investor updates