01732 759725 18 WORKPLACE Richard King, Channel Partner Manager (UK & Nordics) at iTS, picks the tools he uses every day and couldn’t do his job without I couldn’t do my job without... one hour with nine other people. This appointment ended up being a 500-mile round trip and this approach to time management was considered totally acceptable at the time! Fast forward to 2023 and since we adopted Microsoft Teams, I can now have multiple appointments in the same day without the organiser feeling underwhelmed that I wasn’t there in person. That said, I still feel that you cannot beat a face-to-face meeting with real human interaction to build long lasting partnerships, so a healthy balance of online and on-site meetings is certainly my approach now. 3 Google Translate Having been responsible for the UK channel for over ten years I relished the opportunity to expand my territory to include the Nordic region during 2022. Whilst the majority of our Scandinavian friends speak perfect English, I sometimes find that trying to navigate complex tenders created in the native language can be a challenge. Rather than take myself off to the local night school, hide at the back of the class and curse that I am too old to learn anything new I like to take the easy alternative of cutting and pasting text using Google Translate, as if by magic I know exactly what’s being asked or being shown on their website. 4 Podcasts and Air Pods Whilst bouncing around the Nordic region on a monthly basis, I spend a lot of my time these days queuing at airports. In general, I try to stay active as much as possible, whether that be physically or mentally so I always make sure I have a number of my favourite podcasts downloaded ready for any downtime. I would like to say that I 1 Freshdesk All at iTS, regardless of department, take our obligations to offer all our customers an excellent level of customer service seriously, so we are always on the lookout for any tools that help us achieve this aim. Freshdesk was chosen as our customer support software that we have now implemented across all our internal departments, from our channel support team, through to technical pre-sales, sales order processing, installation services, marketing and our customer facing technical support helpdesk. When a query comes in from our network of EMEA channel partners we can easily and simply assign it to the relevant department or product specialist. Tags, notes, priority flags and reminders help to ensure our SLAs are always met with a modern dashboard view so I can always stay on-top of the regions I am responsible for. Oh, and the mobile app makes it super simple when I am on the move. 2 Microsoft Teams How did we ever work without it? I remember, pre-COVID, driving to an appointment in the Northeast of England for a meeting scheduled for have an eclectic mix of go-to podcasts but looking at my play list it’s either business, sport or history with my firm favorite being ‘high performance’. I can thoroughly recommend it. 5 iPhone Simple, but how would any of us do without our smart phones! I always travel with multiple cables, a power bank and a plug adaptor to keep me fully charged as I am lost without it, and I mean literally! I use Google Maps to navigate around the Nordics, rely on my boarding pass to pop up at the appropriate time, have Apple Pay to avoid any nasty currency conversion fees and Expedia to tell me what hotel I am staying at. Plus of course LinkedIn, Outlook, Freshdesk, Microsoft Teams, not forgetting the odd podcast now and again. 6 The iTS family I am the lucky one here as I get to fly the plane but without the wonderful team around me it would be impossible to take off or land. The entire team’s enthusiasm and passion for our carefully selected connected product portfolio is truly inspiring and certainly keeps us all motivated to service and support our loyal channel. https://www.its-group.com Richard King
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDUxNDM=