CIO50 26-50 Dan Kerr, Fremantle Ports

Name: Dan Kerr
Title: Chief information officer
Company: Fremantle Ports
Commenced role: February 2020
Reporting line: CFO
Member of the executive team: No
Technology Function: 28 staff

Armed with a solid three-phase strategy, Fremantle Ports chief information officer Dan Kerr has led the roll-out of a raft of crucial technology initiatives over the past two years.

The most impactful of which has been delivering a fully-fledged ERP platform comprising financials, budget and forecasting, contract management, and human capital management.

The ERP implementation was a significant transformation initiative for the organisation, Kerr tells CIO Australia.

“With the ERP we have been able to simplify business processes reducing the overhead on teams within the business while integrating data – providing a single source of truth that did not exist before,” he says.

“Organisations typically don’t deliver all of this in one project over an 18-month period.”

This achievement was due largely to Kerr’s resolution to develop a three-phase approach for the organisation’s technology when he joined Fremantle Ports as chief information officer in 2020.

His first goal was to address the fundamentals to stabilise the organisation’s ICT environment and bring risk to a business acceptable level.

Then he wanted to optimise the environment by upgrading and implementing appropriate systems and procedures.

And finally, his aim was to drive innovation through data and technology.

To achieve these goals, he implemented an IT strategy with five themes: governance and assurance, strategy and planning, business engagement, data and insights, and operations and technology transformation.

Aligning IT strategy with business impact

“Given the immature digital position I inherited, my IT strategy set out this vision with a focus on building the foundations,” Kerr says. 

“My approach to winning support and funding approval was aligning outcomes of the IT strategy with business impact and risk mitigation and alignment to the business strategy.”

With the first two phases of his strategy largely complete, the focus for Kerr and his team over the past year has been on the third objective – driving innovation through data and technology.

Topping the list of initiatives delivered along the way is the implementation of the ERP platform based on Oracle Cloud.

Completed on time and within budget, the project replaced seven disparate systems for financials, budget and forecasting, contract management and human capital management, with the removal of around 10 legacy applications. The project was supported by a transition initiative to help embed the ERP within the organisation and to simplify processes.

The platform has resulted in increased business efficiency and reduced risk.

“The outcome [of the ERP] is having single sources of truth in core systems for critical data across the organisation allowing the business to access it in real time and create reporting on the fly. This could be anything from financial, operations, safety, and people data,” says Kerr.  

“The platform will continue to be evolved and developed as we continue embedding the ERP.”

As well as the ERP, Kerr and his team also delivered several other projects over the past couple of years. This includes a data warehouse, which Kerr says has set the foundation for a central data repository to assist with real time reporting and decision making, while a software-defined network has equipped the company with a reliable, scalable, and secure network.

A cyber security uplift has resulted in an aligned approach to identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover reducing business risk, while IT/OT integration has removed single points of failure within people and technology.

At the same time, Kerr has led a data management council and the creation of associated platforms to better understand and report on data including the removal of numerous paper form processes and the introduction of real-time dashboards.

He has also focussed on developing the capability of the IT team by recruiting several key roles, lifting engagement within the team and training, and developing current team members.

Recreating relationships

Kerr’s strategy behind these initiatives was developed with input from across the business and IT, and has been endorsed by the organisation’s executive leadership team, audit and risk committee, and board.

“The strategy was the source of direction for all digital investment once it was approved and as further strategies were developed such as cyber, data management and cloud. It set the direction for what we have today,” says Kerr.

But while the IT direction remained constant the business strategy it was meant to deliver on has not.

“In the last 15 months, Fremantle Ports has gone through significant change with 75% of the executive team commencing in that period. We have also introduced a new business strategy. This meant I had to recreate relationships I had to build with the previous executive team,” says Kerr. “With foundational issues addressed, and the credibility gained from leading the digital implementation, I have been able change the view of digital for the executive leadership team and board, to one seen as an enabler of new business strategies. This is an exciting time to be part of the port – I look forward to continuing to develop my skills and capabilities to further drive transformation at the Fremantle Ports.”

Louis van Wyk