Orion, whose software shares information within hospitals and between healthcare professionals, was the first company he invested in after leaving the dairy co-operative in 2011.
He has also bought a small stake in Canada's Lufa, a sustainable food company based in his former home city of Montreal that grows produce in greenhouses built on top of industrial facilities.
Ferrier and his wife Danielle Guitard have invested "several million" dollars to build up a roughly 1 per cent stake in Orion, which hopes to raise as much as $150 million through next month's IPO.
The tech firm, which will have a market capitalisation of up to $915 million following the float, will use the funds to take on new research and development staff and ramp up growth in overseas markets such as the United States.
"I put a significant investment into Orion because I really believe in the business," Ferrier says. "I love the competitive position that it's in - it's kicking goals every day."
"A genius" is how he describes Orion's founder and chief executive, Ian McCrae, who established the firm in 1993 and will still own around half of the company after the float.
"The reason Orion is where it is today is a result of Ian's intuition, his knowledge, his ability to pull together a great team and develop software that's intuitive and easy to use."
Ferrier says his experience running a complex, global company will come in handy as Orion, which posted revenue of $153 million in its last financial year, grows internationally - it already has more than 450 customers in 25 countries - and becomes an increasingly complicated business.
Although Orion is a fraction of Fonterra's size and has nothing to do with cows, he says there are similarities between the two businesses, such as the respect they command in export markets.
"Orion can be an amazing Kiwi success story, as I always felt Fonterra was an amazing Kiwi success story."
Ferrier, who is also chairman of New Zealand Trade and Enterprise and an officer of the University of Auckland Council, still follows Fonterra closely.
"I ran it for eight years and I'm emotionally tied up with it."
He led Fonterra through one of its darkest periods - its joint venture with Chinese dairy firm Sanlu, one of the companies caught up in the 2008 melamine scandal, which killed six babies and sickened thousands more.
Given that experience, he has a good understanding of the challenge his successor, Theo Spierings, faced during last year's botulism scare.
"The CEO is the one that's got to take it and be out there fronting for the business," Ferrier says. "Although it's incredibly hard, by the same token I was very proud that I was there constantly promoting and defending my company and Theo's doing the same thing ... you take leadership roles and you take the good and the bad."
Unlike other high-profile foreign chief executives who left this country when their tenures ended Ferrier, who took New Zealand citizenship six years ago, opted to stay.
"Kiwis often have a chip on their shoulder and think everywhere else is more exciting and better," Ferrier says. "But this is a fantastic country and here's this Canadian [who] can live anywhere in the world ... and I choose to live and work here."
