What was you work and education experience before CBO?
I started out in customer service doing casual work at St James’ Park. Doing this allowed me to become more comfortable dealing with customers.
At the same time, I was studying a Business and Management degree because I wanted the skills to give myself a wide range of job prospects going forward.
This included a placement year in the US doing customer service work that really opened my eyes.
I think the thing that tied all of these experiences together was communication; it’s central to being able to carry out a consulting role here at CBO.
How did you get the job and what were your first few months like?
Once Uni finished, I joined the Sunderland Alumni service and started looking for jobs.
When CBO got in touch, I anticipated the job would be a typical help desk role but I quickly learned that this wasn’t the case.
The emphasis is very much on independent learning and being knowledgeable enough to empower the end user to fix problems themselves.
Rather than intervening in the software directly, we prefer to advise and educate the customer – this means they maintain ownership of their ERP software and become more self-sufficient with time.
If anything the focus was less on my current technical skillset and more about whether I had the capacity to self-learn.
Once I discovered this, I knew working for CBO would tick my boxes.
The fact that the ideal candidate needed a mix of technical and people skills definitely worked in my favour.
How has the job progressed?
At the start, there is a lot of independent learning to be done in order to familiarize yourself with the software.
This is obviously an acquired taste, but I was always itching to learn as much as possible in order to get hands on with the product and with customers.
Once you have the fundamentals around Epicor and the ethos of CBO, you begin to pick up basic user and software issues.
Most challenges are investigative and eventually, you have become exposed to enough situations to build a generalized knowledge around Epicor and the businesses we deal with.
From that point on, you can begin to specialise based on whether you are more interested in finance, technical or applications.
You’ll join a dedicated team and be given a mentor who can help take your skillset to the next level.
At this point I’m heavily involved in consulting from an applications perspective, but this can change depending on a person’s interests.
Most of my day is spent helping customers map how they do things around applications with their current software to Epicor.
What are the next steps?
There are a few options. If I wanted to I could diversify my knowledge – for example improving on the finance or technical side of things.
Another option would be to take a more lead role in projects. This would mean focusing less on specific areas of a project and taking on the whole system and design.
Once you feel comfortable with those aspects, the world is your oyster really and there isn’t a limit to what you can do.
How can a person succeed at CBO and what skills have you developed?
It’s a cliché but it’s true when people say you have two ears and one mouth – listening to the customer is absolutely key and taking the time to learn about their business needs can help so much in navigating their problems.
Understanding this is a big part of success.
Managing expectations is a huge thing that I’ve learned. You can’t be perfect all the time and not every aspect of your work will be a success.
Owning mistakes, being comfortable with not knowing the answer to every question, managing expectations from the start with customers and being clear on what is and is not possible are all key skills that I’ve learned here.
What’s it like working for CBO?
It might sound cheesy but it’s more like a community of experts rather than a workplace.
The CBO way of working is very much focused on “we” and not “I”.
As a result you’re safe in the knowledge that experts around the business can be leaned on when needed to help support your learning and help navigate challenges.
Are you a recent graduate looking to start working in the world of ERP software? Have you got an appetite to learn or an interest technology and manufacturing? The CBO Academy could be a fit for you. Get in touch here to learn more.
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