Australia’s TechnologyOne poaches global cloud ERP leader from rival SAP

Mr Potukuchi is a senior technology executive with more than two decades of experience, including Senior Vice President at SAP, where he led the global engineering team responsible for building the company’s solutions for small and medium-sized businesses.

Mr Potukuchi is only the second CTO in the company’s 36-year history, with founder Adrian di Marco setting the direction for the TechnologyOne’s R&D teams until his retirement as CTO and Executive Chairman in 2021.

“This is an extremely important role for TechnologyOne. Our customers build their businesses on our technology and stay with us for the long term. Ensuring we add value today and in the future, in a rapidly changing environment, is critical,” Mr Chung said.

“With this newly-created CTO role, we’re excited to continue to grow our leadership team as we evolve and scale as one the largest Australian-owned technology company.”

The global appointment comes off the back of TechnologyOne’s significant growth in the UK, where the company’s ground-breaking approach to software implementation – which sees TechnologyOne charge a flat, single yearly fee to implement, run and support the software thus avoiding the high initial outlay that usually comes with an ERP implementation – is gaining ground against established, multinational competitors.

Initially trained as an architect, Mr Potukuchi established a design firm before entering the software industry in 2002. His career at SAP also included Global Commercialisation Lead for the company’s Cloud Services portfolio.

Mr Potukuchi’s deep technical expertise allows TechnologyOne to bring together its innovation, product and technology teams under one leader at a time of rapid technological change. The leaders of the company’s New Engineering, Product and SaaS teams will report to him.

Mr Potukuchi said: "I am delighted to be joining TechnologyOne and its visionary team that is dedicated to transforming our customers lives through innovative technology. Technology is an enabler and the capacity for problem solving in the industries we serve are significant. I see fantastic possibilities to using technology to make our clients lives better.”

TechnologyOne is Australia’s largest enterprise Software as a Service (SaaS) provider and, for the last decade, has invested more than $500 million of its annual revenue into research and development; in the process reinventing itself and its code line four times.

“Chandan has joined us at an exciting time,” said Mr Chung. “Ten years ago, we set out to reinvent ourselves as a SaaS company and, in the process, help our customers simplify their operations through digital transformation. This year we expect to see our 1000th customer successfully make the journey to SaaS, and we will turn our attention to TechnologyOne’s fifth generation.”