About

I'm Tye Fender. I live in Ipswich, Queensland, with my family and two small children. For over a decade I was the Commercial Manager at a large manufacturing facility in the transportation industry, a role I worked up to from the bottom of the chain.

My favourite thing in the world is putting together systems that last: digital systems as well as physical ones. The way people enter and exit a facility is a system. The flow of work through a workshop is a system. How paperwork gets filled out, which desks it lands on and why. All systems. I hold a Bachelor of Business and Commerce (Supply Chain & Logistics) from USQ, but most of what I know about systems came from running them every day.

The implementation that changed my direction

In 2022 I led the implementation of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central at the manufacturing company where I worked. It had a rocky start. We had to fire the first consultants and start again. The second time through, I was the person driving the whole thing, learning everything from scratch. We completed the full implementation in fourteen weeks.

After go-live I taught myself AL, the language Business Central is built on, and started adding customisations: new fields, automated reports, live dashboards that replaced the whiteboards on the factory floor. I fell in love with the software when I saw the impact it had on the whole business. Scheduling that took fourteen labour hours a week came down to two.

Why Fender IT

I founded Fender IT to do for other businesses what I did inside my own: set the system up right the first time, so people can get on with their jobs. I've been in the trenches of an implementation from the client side. That is real-world experience many consultants simply don't have.

It's a boutique practice on purpose. When you work with Fender IT, you talk to the person who actually does the implementation and writes the code. That's the whole model.

What I believe

• Systems run the business; people run the systems.
• Software should be making you money, not costing it.
• Set it up right the first time, then let people work.
• Don't install and vanish. Stay for the long haul.