Head of Delivery and Innovation Craig McLintock tells us about his career development from aspiring Accountant to Innovation & Digital all rounder. 

What did you want to do career-wise when you left school?  

I planned to become an accountant after leaving school. Whilst studying at Otago University I discovered Information Science, which was in its infancy back in the early 90's. I really enjoyed it and the foundations I learnt are still applicable today.

Tell us about your career to date.

After my studies, I began working for Mainland Products in Dunedin as a Programmer. During the 90s, Mainland expanded significantly due to dairy industry mergers, growing from 600 to 2,500 employees by 2021.

My role incorporated many responsibilities that a Business Analyst and Tester would do today. I spent a lot of time in the organisation, seeing how people did their day to day tasks in areas like mobile sales, warehouses and production facilities. Our core focus was how we could use technology to streamline these processes. I was fortunate to work for an organisation that invested in technology and with mergers and acquisitions I was exposed to a wide range of projects.

I became more interested in the business aspects and less in coding, so took opportunity to move into a Business Analyst role at Mainland. The skills and techniques are very portable and have served me well in various industries such as electricity (Meridian) & animal disassembly (ANZCO Foods).

This path continued as I moved into consulting with Assurity, working with a wide range of organisations and technologies. I was there for 6 years initially as Senior BA, progressing to Principal Consultant.

What led you to Farmlands? 

As part of my role at Assurity I worked for Farmlands in their Fuel business unit, specifically on their after-hours payment system at Challenge service stations. I hadn’t done anything with payment systems prior and needed to work out requirements, what to do when it wasn’t working, understand the Farmlands card, and how to make the solution replicable across more sites.

This led onto other improvements in the fuel space as well, working on improvements for the scheduling team and delivery drivers. We got a lot done and saw significant improvements.

How have you grown in your time with us at Farmlands? 

I started working at Farmlands in 2018 as an Enterprise Architect during the Braveheart project implementing Dynamics 365 and was responsible for the transition - going from the old systems to the new. This included the retail network which went well. We learned from each roll out and reduced the implementation time for each launch. A good lesson was around doing dress rehearsals – preparation, doing dry runs, and addressing issues as they come up.

What are you most proud of during your time at Farmlands? 

Moving our fuel business to Fern Energy (a joint venture combining Farmlands Fuel and South Fuels) was a success, helped by my expertise in that field.

Working to modernise the Farmlands card systems is also a big achievement. In addition to in store transactions, it supports e-commerce transactions and in the future digital payments. The key was selecting the right solution partner to establish a solution that will make using the Farmlands card easier for both our card holders and card partners.

What would your advice be for someone who's interested in a career in your area at Farmlands? 

Take advantage of opportunities offered. Do what you're interested in, take what you know and pivot on it. At Mainland I was a Developer which incorporated Business Analyst tasks. I realised I could then pivot industries as a Business Analyst. I started working in simple projects then built up to more complex projects - i.e. ERP projects. I've now done three. Learn those foundations and grow from there.

Why work at Farmlands? We have modern solutions and great relationships with organisations like Microsoft. A culture of continuous improvement constantly challenges us to look at how we can do things better, use our solutions more effectively and how we can benefit from cool stuff that is evolving like AI.

Interested in what we offer in the Innovation and Digital space?

Check out our I & D page for more details.

Interested in working with Craig in our Innovation and Digital team?

Connect with us on our careers site or check out our current vacancies.