Our Teamlead of the Care-Team: An

Hello, An! We’re very curious about you and your job. Could you tell us more about your traject in the IT industry?

I have always worked in the software industry! At first, I used to work for Navision where I did implementations, back in the day, I even implemented the very first version of Navision DOS.

I was also in charge of the support for the Navision dealers, a fun fact is that NORRIQ was one of those dealers. And when Navision was bought by Microsoft, I moved to Microfot as well - where I worked for almost 10 years. At Microsoft, I was in charge of the localisations for Belgium and the Netherlands, for Navision and Axapta.

And then in 2011, I started my adventure at NORRIQ. After a couple of months, I was a part of the Drink-IT product team. Here I helped with the testings, descriptions and documentation of the functionalities. But I also specialised in Taxes and EMCS – something I still do for example is the two-yearly update for EMCS for our customers.

And since last year, I’m the Teamlead for the Drink-IT Care Team. That step was very easy to make since I was already very involved in the Care Team when I was working for the Product Team.

How does a typical day of a Drink-IT Care Teamlead look like?

As a team lead, my day always starts the same. We start every day with our planning meeting to put together the plan for the coming day. We prioritize our tasks and divide them, so every team knows what to do that day. This is not only the Care Team but also our project department and our product team. After this meeting we start our Care scrum, here we shortly discuss everyone’s tasks. If there are team members that have an overload or if someone is struggling with a task, we help out. This meeting is to keep close contact with all my team members and to stay on top of things.

The meetings are a steady part of my job. The rest is very diverse with a lot of different tasks.

Can you tell us more about your tasks?

So of course, as the name says I lead my Care team. This by keeping a close eye on the tasks of the Care Team and help them with questions. This is a very ad hoc part of my job since you never know what problems or questions will occur. It’s very diverse, which makes it fun for me.

But I also follow-up on several product cases, for example the Brexit, is an item that started when I was still in the Product team. But is now also a part of my job in the Care Team. The Brexit is of course very important for our customers, so we provide webinars together with the ERP team to make sure everybody is informed about the consequences but also how to be ‘Brexit-prove’.  And by the end of the year, when the Brexit is (normally) planned, we’ll give an update about the steps they have to take.

And of course, the administrational part. Togetherwith Backoffice, I take care of the Care contracts and monitor them. 

You have quite a lot of meetings as a Teamlead. Has the current COVID-19 situation a big influence on the way you are doing these meetings?

Not really, since we have several locations in Belgium but also internationally. The Care team is very much spread out, we have colleagues in Belgium, The Netherlands and even Tunisia. So, we always had to do these meetings online and were already used to doing this remotely. 

Planning is of course very important, how do you take care of the Care planning?

Indeed, planning is very important to us. We have a big and international team so keeping everyone in the same direction is a big priority. Besides the daily meetings, we do also a weekly planning meeting where we plan the next two weeks, based on the current situation. But of course, we can’t know upfront what tickets or problems our customers will run into. So even though we make a specific planning, we have to keep in mind the unplanned items and book in enough time to help out our customers and partners.

We have a clear schedule of our ‘first line’ consultant, this is the person that keeps up with the tickets that come in. They will fix the ticket themselves or lead it to the necessary team member.

What are the Care Team tasks concerning our partners?

With new versions of Navision or other updates, we prepare a new release of Drink-IT. So, to our partners, it’s very important to communicate the changes between the old version and the new one. This is not only for partners but also for our key-accounts. That’s why we organize several webinars to help out where we can when it’s time for a new release.

This way our partners, who implement this with their customers, know the potential changes but they also give us valuable insight into new technicalities.

Are you in close contact with our customers?

Yes, we have several customers and key-accounts that require a weekly or monthly update from Drink-IT, to give them an overview of their tickets. But also, when we have questions, we can reach out to our customers. For example, with the current Covid-19 situation, there was a tax change in Germany and we had to make changes for them. But we also made a phone call to our customers in other countries, to check if they need these changes.

Our customers can always count on their specific contact person within the Care Team, someone that’s up-to-date about their project and most of the time has been acquainted with it from the start. But of course, the whole team can help out when there is an urgent problem!

What makes a good day at the office?

What the whole team strives to is good support for our clients. So, everyone can use Drink-IT the way it should. To guide them through difficult tasks or solve issues smoothly and quickly. When we close a tough case, a client is happy and compliments our team and company, that’s what makes our day!

 

Thank you An for this interview! 

More information about the Drink-It Care Team?