Benjamen Walsh, Founder & CEO
20+ years of business analysis and systems leadership, channelled into Optified.
I've spent my career inside the organisations behind New Zealand's biggest systems and data programmes — before founding Optified in 2013 to bring that same discipline to more businesses, enterprise and growing alike.
Organisations I've delivered for
- Z Energy
- Ministry of Education
- NZTE
- TEC
- Royal Commission of Inquiry
- Sony Ericsson
The career behind Optified
A track record, not a pitch
A career spent inside the delivery, not just advising from the outside.
- 2001
Career begins
Started as a Project Analyst at Hamilton City Council, moving into business systems analysis — early work spanning records management and telecommunications rollouts.
- 2007 – 2009
UK & Europe
Business systems analysis for Sony Ericsson (Sony Mobile Communications) across the UK and Germany, and the London Borough of Hackney — ITSM, service management, and CRM implementation.
- 2012 – 2015
Z Energy
Senior and Enterprise Business Analyst, mapping projects and programmes to strategy, and leading CRM and asset management systems delivery across commercial and retail.
- 2013
Founded Optified
Started Optified as the umbrella for consulting, and later training and thought leadership — bringing enterprise-grade discipline to a wider range of clients.
- 2016 – 2019
NZTE & TEC
Co-founded GoCloud Systems, a Microsoft Gold Partner cloud advisory. Then Lead Business Analyst at NZTE and the Tertiary Education Commission, including the national Career System Strategy programme.
- 2020 – 2021
Royal Commission of Inquiry
Led CRM/Dynamics 365 product design for the Abuse in Care Inquiry — human-centred design, customer journey workshops, and design sprints. Also founded ADON, a niche out-of-home marketing agency.
- 2023 – 2025
Ministry of Education NZ
Senior Business Analyst & Business Case Writer for the Data and Insights team — authored the business case for an enterprise data & analytics platform, and led the ECE data collection and public attendance dashboard work behind our featured case study.
- Today
Optified — and beyond
Running Optified's consulting practice, while building The Better Business Analysis Institute and hosting The Better Business Analyst Podcast.
Value Optimised
Every engagement — whether it's a national data platform or a ten-person business — runs on the same C.O.S framework: aligning Customer, Operations, and Strategic systems around measurable value.
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