Leon van Rooyen

I started at DM Information and I implemented financial and management systems at a variety of companies from Value Logistics, Ster Kinekor, Pepkor and Canon South Africa to name a few. It involved changing their whole business process and involved changing the way these businesses ran their operations. Apart from the technical system changes the most work was done on implementing the change management strategy to improve the productivity of these businesses. I was also involved in the marketing and financial management of the business.

At Quasar we developed a complete operational and financial system for Legacy hotels and resorts. This involved managing the complete Software development lifecycle then implementing the software at all their time share resorts, marketing it to third party resort’s and implementing in these resorts. This also involved extensive change management as I managed a team to completely re-engineer the way their business processes were being completed historically. As CEO I had overall management tasking of the whole team and was responsible for marketing, budgeting and software development management.

At Temp u Air I was instrumental in transforming a HVAC contractor from being a small operation doing residential and small office projects doing a turnover of 13 million rand to an operation that was completing projects in excess of a hundred million rand. This involved extensive change management skills focusing on all aspects of the business i.e. operations, marketing, financial, contracts and HR. The last project I was involved in with them was to start an online retail site that has become the biggest retailer in the air-conditioning industry in South Africa. I had an overall financial management role from managing all administration staff to financial management of operational project managers. I produced monthly management accounts, did all the tax, vat and other corporate tax calculations and assisted the auditors in producing the audited results.

I then on planning to emigrate from South Africa, set up a business in Angola focusing on data centre support and construction projects as well as designing, supplying and installing equipment for industrial kitchens. I did this while transitioning from Temp u Air. When the Covid Lockdowns happened I was forced back to South Africa and could not travel back to Angola for 16 months. I supplied equipment for a school feeding scheme remotely and also equipment for one of my projects a five story guesthouse in Luanda. As I was unable to return to Angola, I just focused on the Industrial kitchen portion of my business. Unfortunately the manufacturer I represented in Angola was liquidated by their holding company Grand Parade Investment Ltd thus my search for a new challenge.   

B.Com (Accounting and Commercial Law)