StayinFront Group Australia (2006 - 2010)
StayinFront produces the leading edge StayinFront CRM for Consumer Goods, Sporting, Financial Services and Consumer Goods markets.
www.stayinfront.com.au
From May 2006 – October 2007 I worked as a Training and Support Consultant for Client Support Services. I was responsible for running training courses, performing regular client support visits, handling helpdesk calls, troubleshooting technical issues and installing software for multiple versions including 7.5, 8, 9.1 and 9.3. StayinFront supported customers nationwide providing end user and server support for their software. Training courses involved learning and training custom client solutions to their new staff usually in small classroom sessions.
Between Aug 2006 – March 2007 I additionally acted as the Australian System Administrator/IT Manager. I was responsible for all IT infrastructure in the Sydney and Melbourne office. This also involved responding to emergency incidents such as alarms or power failures out of business hours and liaising with building management for major work. I took on this responsibility near the end of a major project to implement a Cisco voip network with 100 endpoints including softphones and desk phones. I resolved all outstanding technical issues and supported the system and handed this over to the new system administrator. At this time the network consisted of over 10 physical servers and 6 virtual servers. Each virtual server ran up to 12 virtual machines. The system consisted of an auto-loading tape backup, UPS hardware, SAN with 5GB SCSI backplane, Cisco switches and routers, Cisco VOIP system, Windows 2000/2003/2008 servers, VMWare Server 2.0, Virtual PC, Cacti network monitoring, VMWare ESXI servers, Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server 2000/2005, Active Directory, VPN. I was responsible for removing legacy Virtual PC servers, standardising vmware and migraing to ESXi from the Windows based Server 2.0. I trained the new system administrator on internal systems and assisted in IT administration and support when required for major upgrades or incidents.
From October 2007 – May 2010 I worked as a PreSales Engineer/Business Analyst for Professional Services.
I performed these roles simultaneously shared depending on workload. This allowed me to follow some customer solutions through from the presales to the sale, design, development to the implementation. During this time StayinFront introduced CRM 10, 11 and 12. I was involved in the testing, design and development of solutions for all of these platforms. StayinFront is ISO 9001 and GMP compliant.
In my role as a Business Analyst I was responsible for conducting customer solution scoping workshops with clients. These sessions led to the creation of Technical Specifications for their solution. The final project I worked on involved over 12 months of Business Analysis and 500 pages of Technical Specifications for the solution for which I was the primary business analyst. I reported to the Manager of Professional Services and I worked with various Project Managers, Developers and the Head of Software Development in relation to scoping solutions and designs. I also worked closely with Client Support Services in identifying issues and solutions, training staff in how to resolve specific issues for this customer and in identifying issues to be escalated for future changes. I assisted in developing test scripts and working with the QA team to train them in new solutions and assist them to develop and run test scripts, identify and resolve issues they identified in testing and escalate to these to developers. I worked across approximately 15 clients with 6 active projects at any time.
In my role as a PreSales Engineer I was responsible for responding to RFI (Request for Information) and RFP (Request for Proposal) technical documentation, configuring and demonstrating client specific solutions on various platforms to 'c' level audiences, developing sample websites with API integration, assisting in technical sales meetings, providing technical support for the sales team and working with R&D on new solutions, resolving major issues and custom solutions. As the sole PreSales Engineer for StayinFront Australia I supported the sales team in both the Sydney and Melbourne offices and conducted sales support for clients on the east coast.
Demonstrations were performed on Mobile Devices, Laptops, Tablets and using WebEx online conferencing. As I was more aware of new technologies and solutions and responsible for assisting in selling these my experience in visual basic assisted in customising the StayinFront CRM .NET platform and I had the opportunity to extensively learn new products. This led me to train and support Client Support Services in the deployment of the latest platforms to customers. One of my personal areas of interest was Customer Analytics and Segmentation. In this role I reported to the Sales Director and Managing Director but worked closely with the sales executives and developers in designing and demonstrating new solutions. This gave me more involvement in new solutions and development allowing me to assist in the design of new industry platforms, internal systems and new components. I was heavily involved in the configuration and design of the financial services solution and sporting solutions unique to the Australia market. I also developed some local R&D components for demonstrations including Google Maps, Geolocation and social network integration. One of my final projects was to assist in the business analysis for the Australian configuration of the StayinFront CRM 12 EdgeRx cloud saas solution in its development.