Hani Joakim Drives Massive Tech Innovation with a Global Team at Invenco by GVR 

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Hani Joakim prefers to deflect attention from himself and his impressive accomplishments. Unpretentious by nature, he tries to avoid the spotlight. But that’s tough to do when you’re responsible for driving unparalleled tech transformation and innovation at organizations so large and complex that they’ve tested and brought tried and true technologies to their knees, leaving world-class tech consultants scratching their heads.  

Joakim has led large-scale technology modernization and transformation initiatives throughout his career and now, as the chief technology officer (CTO) at Invenco by GVR, he’s doing so again.

Invenco by GVR serves convenience retailers globally with solutions including pay-at-the-pump terminals, point-of-sale and self-checkout technology, forecourt automation services, media capabilities, remote site management, and wet stock management offerings. Under Joakim’s guidance, the engineering team is building universally compatible, modular, cloud-connected offerings that unlock scale and threaten to disrupt the industry. 

“I’ve been in this business long enough with the scars to show it,” Joakim says. “I’ve worked for companies that have broken highly scalable technology. I’ve seen massive companies experience outages and issues they’ve never seen because of the scale and volumes processed.” 

Joakim’s self-effacing style makes a little more sense when one considers that Joakim grew up in Canada, maybe the world capital of the undersell. But the CTO has amassed experience at the likes of Sabre, 7-Eleven, and Air Canada (as well as a large military defense contractor), organizations where technology transformation is required to survive and innovation was a mandate, not just a pipe dream. 

“Technology debt is the silent killer of tech companies. That usually gets leadership’s attention loud and clear.” 

Hani Joakim

At Sabre, Joakim spent nearly twenty years helping the company evolve into a leading technology provider for the airline, travel distribution, and hospitality industries. 

After leaving the travel industry, Joakim was asked to help lead an incredible digital transformation for one of the most well-known brands on the globe: 7-Eleven. Per Joakim, these were some of the most exciting and rewarding years of his career helping an iconic brand through its digital transformation.  

Initially hired as Vontier’s CTO, Joakim’s role morphed into leading the technology teams for the retail solutions business following Vontier’s acquisition of Invenco and introduction of a new convenience retail-centric technology operating company assets under a united banner: Invenco by GVR. Joakim’s team was challenged to integrate all of these companies into one leading software provider for the retail convenience space. The CTO set about doing what he’d done before: creating a world-class global engineering organization under a united structure.  

Joakim spent a year on an incredibly aggressive talent transformation. Invenco by GVR hired over 180 engineers globally, a 30 percent year-over-year increase in its capacity. That talent is located in newly established hubs in the US, New Zealand (where Invenco is located), Israel, India, Argentina, Italy, and Eastern Europe—taking advantage of world-class engineering talent across the globe in countries that produce the best software engineers. 

The CTO has agreements in place with partners tasked with finding the best of the best in their fields, and from that roster, Joakim is building his teams from the top 5 percent of that already high-performing crew. 

“We automated everything (e.g., testing, continuous integration development pipelines, environment setup) using the latest technologies [and] saving an incredible amount of work. We increased our engineering workforce by 30 percent at 40 percent lower cost by building a global organization backed by relentless automation,” Joakim says. 

The transformation was as top-down as bottom-up. Joakim sourced vice presidents and directors from his network to lead teams in key locations.  

“You need leadership with the tech chops that can eat nails and provide technical guidance,” Joakim says. “Otherwise, you can’t drive real change.” 

When asked how Joakim has secured buy-in for so much heavy technology innovation and to address tech debt, the CTO says he used a simple analogy over the years that helps even the most casual of technologists understand the need to address technical debt. 

“I’m sure someone smarter than me made this up, but I’ve used it for so long I can’t remember where it came from,” Joakim says, laughing. “We all have arteries. We all have plaque that accumulates in our arteries at different paces depending on our lifestyle and DNA. If left unchecked, that plaque builds and eventually can cause a stroke, a heart attack, or outright death. They call it the silent killer, and it’s the same as tech debt.  

“You need leadership with the tech chops that can eat nails and provide technical guidance. Otherwise, you can’t drive real change.” 

Hani Joakim

“The longer you keep using bubble gum and barbed wire to patch your technology ecosystem, eventually, you go out of business because you just can’t compete with newer and more forward-looking competitors that don’t have that debt,” he continues. “Technology debt is the silent killer of tech companies. That usually gets leadership’s attention loud and clear.” 

With an elite team in place, a team he is far more interested in highlighting than his own exploits, Joakim is expecting big things from his organization. It comes back to a leader from his earlier years whose mantra was “5 times not 5 percent.” Joakim wants to see demonstrable and massive improvements. He’s done it before, and he knows he can do it again. His infectious passion for driving disruptive technological change inspires his team to deliver the previously unimaginable.    

“There is so much to be proud of at this company,” he says. “I think our story needs to be told because it’s doing incredible things.” Under Joakim’s humble leadership, Invenco by GVR is delivering industry-disrupting technologies that offer retailers end-to-end solutions to improve automation, productivity, and compliance for their networks. 

These extendable solutions offer retailers the ability to seamlessly connect devices and software across their networks today and in the future through a modular, plug-and-play design. These connected offers enable retailers the ability to drive growth and reduce costs with faster transactions, better reliability, and remote management capabilities. 

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