Adrian Melrose

I am a Chartered Accountant turned software engineer with big ideas for SME's - I believe in the positive transformation opportunities that Custom Software affords to businesses large and small. I track disruptive technologies like blogging and podcasting and enjoy how they are positively changing our world.

I grew up in South Africa and qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Deloitte & Touche in the mid 90's after majoring in Accounting & Economics at Wits University in Johannesburg.

Despite wanting to study Music, in South Africa we were never given the option to start our university careers with anything but the field in which we were to specialise. So by day- I studied Accountancy and often spent the evenings in the Orchestra Pit supporting Amatuer Opera or Ballet.

I served my articles at Deloitte within the Entrepreneur Services division which exposed me to a range of high growth owner managed businesses. It was during this time that I realised that the efficient use of technology more than often gave businesses the edge over their competitors. Technology was primitive compared to what we have at our disposal today.

I left Deloitte after doing some consulting work for them to found my own professional services practice and later founded a technology company which built time recording systems which sold to two of the Big 5 accounting firms in Southern Africa.

I moved homes from South Africa to London just before the millennium and Consulted to various SME's involving myself in in-house technology led process transformation programmes.

I then accepted a position with Answerthink - a US based consulting company - an offshoot of KPMG. I was tasked with founding the UK Finance Transformation practice. I helped grow a US brand in Europe at a time when the Consulting economy had been badly hit by Sept 11. I left Answerthink some years later after leading a number of large scale ERP package implementation projects- Oracle, Peoplesoft and SAP - I ran the business process design before the ERP configuration took place. Most of the work was in Finance Process design but I also worked with HR and Procurement although to a lesser degree.

I then accepted an appointment as Director within Answerthink's Hackett Benchmarking (www.thehackettgroup.com) which provided benchmarking studies across all functional areas of business. It was at this stage that I realised the world was crying out for a product which helped benchmark the effectiveness of communication and left Hackett to start Reputation Intelligence – a business which was sold to Factiva (Dow Jones Reuters) two years later.

I now run a company called iConcertina Creative. Our boiler plate reads “ iConcertina Creative is a custom online solutions provider. We build bespoke solutions to meet our clients’ specific needs by blending superior creative design, technical functionality and business process understanding”

We build Smartapps at iConcertina and it’s the engine which makes my vision for the transformation of businesses happen every single day.