Updated: Darrel van Dort joins FlexiGroup

Darrel van Dort has been named the general manager of digital, data and IT transformation at FlexiGroup Limited, a financial services firm based in Sydney.

Van Dort, was most recently the CIO of Beerfarm, and formerly the CIO of Merivale, a role he held for over three years.

He told CIO Australia his responsibilities at FlexiGroup includes looking at digital from a platform and customer experience perspective, and working closely in the martech space and aligning his team with marketing and sales.

He will also lead the development of the delivery plan for the future state IT platforms. As such, he will lead the digital team to deliver business benefits across robotics; mobile and UI dev (working with product and marketing teams to deliver a mobile first customer experience); as well as lead the digital experience in the business, both reactively and proactively.

“FlexiGroup is more of a fintech company these days. They are a big competitor to Afterpay. They have their humm product and we’re about to release a new app called Bundll in a month. We’re hoping it will be a game changer in the buy now, pay later space. It doesn’t require any involvement from the merchant at all.”

As CIO at Beerfarm, he played a key role in the executive, marketing and technology team and created the short, medium and long term strategies. On the tech strategy side, he focused on efficiency, scale, visibility, innovation and growth.

While at Merivale, he said customer experience was his focus and priority, as well as intelligent and efficient technology and change management.

A few of his milestones included transforming and building a team of people committed to a shared vision and strategy.

He performed a company-wide assessment of IT capability, gaps and opportunities to formulate and implement a whole-of-business technology advancement program aimed at future proofing infrastructure, enterprise applications, data management while also delivering rapid change to enhance customer experiences.

“This role has been all about driving necessary and innovative change initiatives across the IT landscape and setting up capability that supports future strategic plans,” he said.

He’s particularly proud of the HR technology transformation work – one of the biggest tech projects for Merivale, and where he was nominated as a finalist in the HR Australia awards for best technology strategy.

“This was around the implementation of success factors and most of the modules in SAP and Kronos. Bringing all of that together for Merivale was probably the big achievement over there – it was one of their biggest ever tech investments as well.”

Asked about moving into the financial services sector, Van Dort said he’s excited to jump in – particularly at this point in time.

“It’s an exciting place to be at the moment. It’s just such a very quick moving market at the moment, with a lot of innovation and investment going into this space.

“I was waiting to find the right company, with the right strategy, the right people and the right investment.”