Transition of Leadership in the A/NZ Simplus / Infosys Salesforce Practice

Hi all

Big news to share, after eight years and an amazing journey from Sqware Peg owner to Simplus and now leading the A/NZ combined Salesforce Practice for Infosys it's time for me to move on. I’ll be finishing up at the end of this month. I’ll be moving to a more flexible working style pursuing board directorships, advisory, and consulting roles but who knows, I’ll have the summer to work out what’s next!

It’s been an incredible ride in the Salesforce ecosystem and I’m pleased to announce David Strangward will be my replacement and Ian Carson will step up to backfill David as Delivery Director. The practice is in great shape and I am extremely grateful to our global leadership Thomas Johanson and Indranil Mukherjee who have taken recommendations to promote from within.

There’s so many people to thank for their support, encouragement, and hard work. Firstly, thanks to Shawn Stilwell for providing the opportunity to take over the reins of Sqware Peg and become business partners. I’m most proud that our successful sale continues to help fund his son Harry as he continues his fight against Battens disease and importantly we’re still good mates!

To Elizabeth (Libby) Adams who had so many different options but chose to follow me from Optus to Sqware Peg and has been my wingman over the last 8 years. Libby and I have worked together on and off for the last 14 years and it’s been a privilege to work with someone who is so talented, has an amazing work ethic, great values and above all a kind heart. She’s been on the roller coaster / rocket ship the whole way, driving the strategic thinking and has been responsible for the incredible relationship we have with Salesforce. I’m looking forward to helping out her, Dan, and their family over the years ahead with odd jobs! I’ll be forever indebted to you Libby.

I want to thank Salesforce, who our whole business is based around as a Salesforce Implementation Partner. In particular, two gentlemen who were key in our success. Firstly, our Partner Account Manager Saro Minassian who is still our biggest supporter and has contributed significantly to our success. Secondly to Robert Keith from the Salesforce Ventures team who believed in us and helped fund us when my mortgage couldn’t stretch any further! A big thanks to other Salesforce executives along the way like Charles Woodall , Tara Ridley and Robert Wickham for their guidance.

In those first months in late 2015 when I joined we only had about 15 people and two of the team were responsible for keeping the lights on. Finance guru Mark Louder who’s still with us all these years later but enjoying life to the max and also Jim Bartlett Operations and Salesforce extraordinaire who’s now retired. These two champions are Aussie legends and were the backbone of the culture in the early years and I can't thank them enough for their support.

As we scaled the business we employed some amazing talent, some of which is still with us and others who have gone onto successful careers in Salesforce, other partners or other businesses. Watching people grow and supporting their journey has been the most rewarding part of my role. Thanks to people like Kegan Copas , James McKay , Greg Veitch , Justine Nowitz , Tuan Abdeen ???? ???? ???? , Alexandra Morris , Olga Rankin , Rachael Chidgey , Monil Pathak , Chris Whitbread , Danielle (Dee) Ozolins , and Suraj Sreekumar . There are many more and thank you to everyone who worked with me over the years!

The Simplus acquisition was a huge milestone in late 2018 and one that made all the weekend sacrifices worthwhile. Libby and I visited Simplus back in 2017 and everyone we met was lovely. Pretty quickly we knew there was a strong cultural fit and if we ever sold the business then this would be the ideal partner. A huge thank you to Ryan Westwood for his friendship, business leadership, honesty and being an all round good human! To Tanner Ainge who led the negotiations on the Simplus side, thank you for supplying me with cliff bars and drinks (so nice) for what was a marathon week in November 2018 in Salt Lake City. We somehow dragged ourselves to a Basketball game on Friday night. On the Saturday morning post finalising the deal another classy act by Ryan who let me sign the wall first at the new Simplus HQ!

To Isaac Westwood who became my manager and friend over the next 3 years, thank you. He was always fair and gave sound advice as we continued to scale Simplus. The support during that first year of integrating into Simplus was incredible, with Brad Warnock and then Kyle Hanagarne playing a huge role. They both relocated to Australia and assisted us becoming Simplus and expanding our offerings. Both Kyle and Brad are again amongst the best of humanity and I’ll always appreciate how much they put in to make our operation more successful. I’m looking forward to staying in contact with this crew over the years ahead when visiting America or vice versa when they make the journey down under.

To the whole Simplus Executive team at the time and more recently thank you to Lance Evanson , Paul Fletcher, Adam Wardel , Amy Osmond Cook, Ph.D. , Mike Lockert , Ryan Northington , Kathy Brown, PHR, SHRM-CP , Joe Carr , Marcy Chanin , Carlos Montejo , Timothy Huss , Paul Temple , Pete Shelton , Shane Howard , Jillian Elliott, MBA , Amit Shukla , and Jeff Sacramento .

As I describe our journey to people I say we were a fish who got eaten by a shark (a nice one) and then got bought by a whale! The Infosys acquisition in 2020 happened probably earlier than a lot of us thought but in hindsight timing is everything. Who knew COVID was going to turn into a challenging two year period for the world. In our case doing a second integration in a fairly short time frame without face to face interaction was less than ideal. However, fast forward three and a half years and I’m very proud of the combined Salesforce practice in A/NZ and what we’ve achieved together with Infosys.?

We have continued to grow and improve the business winning the APAC Scale Partner of the year and the Higher Education Partner of the Year in 2022. Whilst shifting to more Enterprise clients we have retained the best of both worlds. We’ve kept our family culture of Simplus and are leveraging the enormous global scale and expertise across adjoining technologies / services from across Infosys. A huge thank you to Indranil Mukherjee , Sunil Malik , Deepak Mandot , Anjali Yadav , and Sushil Hinduja in the Salesforce practice. Also to the local Infosys leadership in A/NZ especially Andrew Groth and Patrick Kouwenhoven who have always made me and the whole team welcome and been key to our success in working with all the fantastic talent in the Infosys Industry teams.

To all the current A/NZ Leadership Team thank you Elizabeth (Libby) Adams , David Strangward , Alyssia Tennant , Darren Parkinson , Shannon H. , and Cecile Jacques . Also a huge thank you to our? broader Leaders group Ian Carson , Anu Dhar , Adrian Selley , Damian Martina , David Bowker , Debashish Mukherjee , Jacky Zhu , Mohit Bajaj , Paul Carmuciano , Ray Moore , Robyn Pym , Shal Bali , and Sunil Bhargava .?

A massive thanks to these folks who have been with me for more than 5 years on the journey - Mandy Stoddern , Anu Dhar , Chris Franklin , Clyde Netto , David Bowker , David Strangward , Elizabeth (Libby) Adams , Ghata Joshi , Joanne Vincent , Lesley Millar , Levi Davison , Mark Louder , Abeer Qureshi , Naina Singh , Paul Carmuciano , Peter Chow , Purba Ghosh , and Shannon H. .

Lastly, a huge thank you to everyone in the Salesforce ecosystem, other partners ( Marty Nicholas , Chris Horn , Andrew France , Ian Goodwin , and Blair Cooke ), ISV’s and most importantly our clients over the years for trusting us with your digital transformations. It’s been incredible to work with so many great businesses across all industries. Thank you :-)