The problem was never the technology. When Salman Akorede began his career as a chartered accountant, auditing the books of companies running complex enterprise software, he kept finding the same thing: systems built for transformation sitting on top of environments no one had properly secured.
“I’m a CPA, a chartered accountant, and I’m familiar with what exposes an organization to risk,” Akorede says. “Anything you cannot measure, there is no way you can manage it.”
SAP, the German software company that powers the majority of large enterprises globally, manages payroll, procurement, inventory, financials and compliance for organizations that cannot afford for any of it to fail. What most organizations also cannot find is the expertise to govern it.
SAP governance, risk and compliance is one of the scarcest specialties in enterprise technology. It defines who inside the system can access what and whether those boundaries hold under pressure. Akorede has spent the past two decades not just working in that specialty but building the people who carry it.
He came to SAP security through finance. After earning his CPA credentials, he joined Ernst & Young, where he was part of a small team called in whenever any group across the firm encountered SAP security problems. It was elite work by design, built on skills too scarce to find in the open market and consequences too visible to absorb in practice.
That scarcity followed him through BDO Seidman, through a stint working directly for SAP and eventually into founding IRSL Consulting. When his firm was brought in to deliver the SAP governance, risk and compliance implementation for Nigeria’s national oil corporation, spanning more than 12,000 employees and 40 entities, two other firms had already spent years on a narrower scope without delivering.
IRSL completed it in five months.
“They were hoping we won’t be able to finish it until about 22 months,” Akorede says. “But we finished it in five months.”
A subsequent review by KPMG Netherlands confirmed the work. The same model carried IRSL through a remediation for ECOWAS, the Economic Community of West African States, and a four-entity implementation for another multinational in Lagos. Consultants trained under Akorede now work in the US, the UK and Europe.
The reason IRSL could deliver when others could not comes down to a decision Akorede made early: he would not chase talent in a market that did not have enough of it. He would build it himself.
“We develop our own capabilities in-house,” he says, “because the skills are not very much available outside.”
That instinct, sharpened over years of watching consulting projects stall when key resources walked off mid-engagement, became the architecture behind everything IRSL does. It also became the seed of a second company.
Infotech Academy grew from the same observation that pulled Akorede into SAP security in the first place: the gap between what schools produce and what industries actually need. High school graduates were stranding themselves at home after graduation, and college graduates were accepting distribution jobs in front of box stores because nothing better was available. The credential existed, but the bridge to a technology career did not.
When the US Department of Labor and the Texas Workforce Commission began building out their registered apprenticeship infrastructure, Akorede recognized the alignment immediately. What he had been doing inside IRSL, training people from scratch through hands-on implementation on live systems, mapped directly onto a government-backed model that would fund the training, pay for the certifications and provide the accreditation framework to make it credible.
Infotech Academy launched, and the Zero2Hero program followed.
“We take you from zero level where you have no IT experience, no IT knowledge,” Akorede says. “We assume you don’t know anything.”
What happens after that assumption is a structured six-month pre-apprenticeship: digital literacy, critical career skills and entrepreneurship fundamentals, followed by the participant’s choice from 22 IT learning tracks spanning artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, cloud computing and SAP security and governance. By the time a cohort completes the pre-apprenticeship phase, participants hold five or more globally recognized certifications and hands-on implementation experience on IRSL’s own systems.
Entry-level placements are landing in the $50,000 to $65,000 range. One registered apprenticeship participant, while still enrolled in the program, secured a role paying $130,000.
“He was able to move from a lower-ending job to six figures, about $130,000 per annum, while still on our program,” Akorede says. “And the guy has been doing very well on the job.”
The integrated model solves two problems at once. Enterprise buyers running SAP need specialized governance and compliance talent that does not walk off a project halfway through. Infotech Academy produces validated consultants with a reason to stay: trained by IRSL, deployed by IRSL, supported by a community that continues backing them after placement. Employer partners who join the program gain pre-trained, credentialed talent at no cost to them, with government-funded accreditation and potential tax incentives built in.
The program is now in its first year of national expansion, pursuing accreditation in Georgia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and California, with a stated commitment to place 200 participants in 2027. The infrastructure is online, the accreditation is in place and the proof is already on the books.
For Akorede, the line from chartered accountant to SAP security specialist to workforce developer was never a pivot. It was always the same problem, approached from a different angle.
“If you don’t have anything, have your SAP skills anywhere you get to in the whole world,” he says. “You have a meal ticket.”
He has spent two decades making sure others have one too.
To learn more about IRSL Consulting and Infotech Academy, visit irslconsulting.com.
