By: Adegbenle Rasheed
When Abbas Irekeola talks about code, he speaks like someone sketching the architecture of a city: every line matters, every connection shifts how people move and what the skyline becomes. The Nigerian-born software engineer and innovation architect shared that the quiet problem that has nagged at him through six years of building large-scale systems for the likes of American Airlines, the Home Depot and PureWeb Technologies, companies that had digitised processes but still couldn’t say, in one clear sentence, what those investments were truly delivering. That frustration became the catalyst for OPTRA™, his Operational Performance Transformation and Analytics Framework, a system he built to close what he calls “the performance gap between automation and accountability.”
Abbas remembers the moment the idea hardened: years of watching automation projects launch with fanfare, only for teams to discover later that the automation had no unified instrument for measuring its operational value. Metrics lived in separate rooms; analytics and automation were strangers. He set out to design a framework that would blend real-time monitoring, process intelligence and predictive analytics into a single lens, one that doesn’t just report numbers but translates them into corrective, revenue-driving decisions. “Organisations invest heavily in digital transformation but rarely have a unified view of how those transformations translate into measurable operational value,” he says, matter-of-factly. OPTRA™ is his answer to that gap.
The framework’s first public test came at Vertexnexa Inc., and the results are the kind of headline metrics engineering teams dream of: within six months, OPTRA™ reduced system downtime by 38 percent, lifted operational throughput by 44 percent, and improved cross-departmental efficiency by 31 percent. Those figures didn’t arrive from magic; they came from turning disparate telemetry into context, spotting performance patterns as they emerged, pinpointing recurring bottlenecks, and giving managers the confidence to make targeted, data-backed changes. A Vertexnexa executive who watched the rollout said the difference was immediate: analytics stopped being a rearview mirror and started driving the steering wheel.
What makes OPTRA™ adaptable is its modular design. Abbas built it to plug into existing reliability models and predictive maintenance systems, and to flex across industries from logistics and manufacturing to finance and SaaS. That versatility isn’t incidental; it’s deliberate. He asks a deceptively simple question of every organisation he meets: “What’s the real value of your automation?” If a team can’t answer that clearly, he argues, they’re not optimising, they’re merely operating. OPTRA™ forces organisations to articulate value, measure it, and then iterate.
Abbas’ approach balances pragmatic engineering with a broader philosophical nudge: technology must be accountable. He views OPTRA™ as a mindset shift for enterprises contending with the promises of intelligent automation. The framework reframes success metrics away from superficial uptime numbers and toward outcomes that touch profitability, user experience and cross-functional collaboration. “Technology should not only work, but it should also work better every day,” he says, and OPTRA™ is his attempt to embed that ethic into the daily rhythm of operations.
Beyond the code, Abbas is committed to mentorship and responsibility. As OPTRA™ expands its footprint, he spends time guiding young engineers and helping organisations adopt automation practices that are measurable, scalable, and ethically minded. The aim is clear: make performance transformation something any enterprise can engineer and sustain, not just a buzzword reserved for the largest firms.
If there is a practical creed behind OPTRA™, it is this: the connection between innovation and impact matters more than novelty alone. By building a framework that forces organisations to quantify the value of what they automate, Abbas Irekeola is nudging enterprises to treat performance as a continuous, measurable practice rather than a one-off project. With OPTRA™, the work of progress becomes something you can see, measure and improve, engineering momentum, not just chasing it.
