Kamari de Rijk

Enthusiastic product manager working for South Africa’s leading e-commerce business - with over a decade of experience specializing in supply chain and logistics business development.  Working with agile concepts, contributing to new ideas and concepts in rapidly adapting market conditions and  continuously looking at improving the project management delivery cycle. I derive my energy from working and interacting with people and teams. 

Takealot.com, Cape Town — Product Manager for Supply Chain Outbound (from 2020)  & Technical Program Manager for Logistics (2017-2020)

MARCH 2017 - PRESENT

Engaging with business stakeholders to build the logistics and supply chain roadmaps

Document business requirements and translating these into functional requirements for consumption by development teams

Collaborating with business at all levels to collate a set of business requirements to feed into the backlog to solve their needs

Facilitation of the sprint planning process across several development teams 

Engaging and collaborating with engineering teams to produce robust technical designs

Project managing multiple cross-functional projects from inception to project rollout - ensuring they are delivered within schedule and scope

Sourcing and recruitment of new business analysts for the product team

Projects: 

Decoupling the supply chain from takealot as a client allowing the takealot group to extend their supply chain and logistics services effortlessly to new clients (Ongoing - 2022) 

Designed and implemented a new fulfilment method which allows external sellers and internal staff  to request stock removals from any takealot warehouses.. The system provides user interfaces and API’s to capture orders and injects them to the warehouse management system (WMS) for processing - it also provides tracking updates and visibility from the WMS to a range of different frontends. The system processes around 50 000 orders on average per month using this method - this was a manual process before implementation  (2021)

Part of a project team that designed a new fulfilment method - drop shipping - allowing the business to expand their marketplace offering with unconstrained growth - customer orders can be picked and packed at the seller therefore bypassing the takealot warehouses thus reducing inhouse capex requirements. Approximately 20 000 customer orders a month are fulfilled via this method. (2020)

Integrated to an automatic sorter in the despatch facility that allows for sorting of up to 14 000 parcels per hour  by destination chute therefore decreasing dispatch headcount by 40% and improving sorting efficiency therefore reducing the error rate of sorting 

Capacity projects focusing on reducing late orders | built an app which improved dispatch time and decreased congestion during peak | re-architecture projects to allow for UX improvements |implemented a heavy goods charge at checkout | building a new supply channel for white goods |  systemic consolidation of parcels

Travelled from SEP 2016 - FEB 2017: Countries visited - Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, Malaysia 

DHL & Pick ‘n Pay, Cape Town  —EWM System’s Manager

JULY 2015- SEPTEMBER 2016

Managed team of business analysts to drive continuous improvement by planning, leading and organizing system and business process related warehouse projects

Performance review discussions - setting up career goals and objectives, KPI’s and career development plans

Requirements gathering workshops and translating them to business case documentation

Day-to-day management of the SAP EWM SAP system and other homegrown systems

Managing the first line of support, ensuring incidents were resolved timeously

Coordinate and control all UAT and Regression testing as required

Ensuring training was provided to the users before going live

Managed the BI role (Qlikview) 

AVI , Cape Town — SAP WM Consultant 

AUGUST 2012 - JUNE 2015

Consulted as senior WM consultant in the AVI Group for the following businesses:

• Fisheries: (I&J) dry goods, semi-finished, engineering, finished goods 
• Cosmetics: (Indigo Cosmetics) components, finished goods, raw materials 
• National Finished Goods Distribution Centers AVI Group (Entyce Beverages, Bakers, National Brands Limited)

Liaised with clients to define their business requirements and translated these into functional specifications, in line with strategic objective and corporate governance 

Planned and directed the project lifecycle from inception to completion (collated requirements,  quoted parcels of work, managed scope,  planned 

ABAP resources, coordinated testing, compiled training documentation for the AVI group, managed  go-live activities)

Managed diverse projects, ranging from configuration changes (for example 2-Step Picking) to large development changes requiring ABAP resources

Implemented a stock auditing system system which minimized stock losses on the outbound dispatch floor by 92%. 

Nestle , Johannesburg — Business Analyst, Project Manager

AUGUST 2012 - JUNE 2015

First line support for the SAP WM Warehouses across 3 distribution centers 

Improved SLA from 68% to 91% on-time resolution 

Developed a Health Check scorecard to measure all plants on a monthly basis with regards to systemic health checks. The scorecard assisted the team to identify which plants required further training/assistance/config changes 

Winner: Product Availability Award, Radio Frequency and Warehouse Management Solution Implementation

Winner: 2 Annual Awards in the  categories, Attitude and Responsibility, respectively [2007 & 2008]

Chosen as Nestlé Ambassador for road shows held at universities to attract talent to the organization

BCOM Honours (Information Systems) UCT - 2005

The Coach Practitioner at Coaching development (2021): ICF accredited Program 

Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) with PremierAgile certified by the Scrum Alliance (2021)

Python for Everyone by Coursera (2020)

User Experience  Course by GetSmarter UCT  (2018 - 2019)

Agile Product Management Course by MyAcademy  (2017)

Leadership Advancement Program by UCT Graduate School of Business  (2010)

Project Management Course- SETA NQF 5 (2010)