A day in the life of Quick Consols

Starting the day

It’s a Tuesday morning and the time is 09:00.The co-space that Quick Consols calls home is buzzing; partly because everyone has already had two cups of coffee each and partly because they are still reeling from the excitement of the deal that was closed yesterday. The developer is not in yet, because he was up until 02:00 this morning finding away of squeezing in a function the sales guys asked for a day earlier. This is one of the advantages that come with not being a reseller of someone else’s software, charting our own course and being responsive to customer needs.

The day began a few hours ago already, when the tasks for the day were distributed amongst the team members. With a lean team, allocation of tasks can be flexible and doesn’t need to be planned in advance. There is a general level of trust that allows there to be no strict working hours as we know that each team member will pull their weight and do what needs to be done when it is required. People come and go as they need, and no one watches the clock. This is one of the key factors in attracting and retaining top talent in a small start-up with a tight budget.

Pulling rabbits out of hats

On a typical day, there will be a handful of meetings, either with existing customers or new prospects. Either the CEO or business development manager will attend these, with the developers tagging along to those where the customer needs a more detailed understanding of the technical side of Quick Consols. Prospect meetings are critical, because not only is this how we sign on new customers, they also allow us to delve into the deeper problems that need solving as customers inform our development agenda. Our meetings consist of a lot of convincing. People are reluctant to take a chance and put a new application into their business. We are lucky if we can find an early adopter, but as these are few and far between much time is spent de-risking the decision for our customers.

Turning milk into butter

And you can’t be in a software company without testing and bug fixing. The team spends hours every day testing new features or changes that have been made to the system. Like an iceberg, customers only see about 10% of the whole system and have no idea about the magic (and work) that happens in the back end. As a software company we’re under constant pressure from competing apps to match their user experience and functionality, so testing daily is a big part of conquering the challenge of achieving consistent quality with limited resources.

End of the week

Fridays are reserved for planning our development agenda. Quick Consols prides itself on delivery solutions, and we need to be able to provide a product that is not only world class, but that speaks to the individual needs of customers. Every feature a customer requests provides a view into problems that other customers could need solved as well. So, we invest a large portion of time into building out the development pipeline with all our customers, existing and future, in mind. While we prefer to plan for future development, we do also need to be as agile as possible. The needs of our customers change quickly, and if we are stuck planning and can’t accommodate them then we could lose out. Its a balancing act between now and tomorrow.

Service, service, service

We are on call 24/7, 7 days a week to provide support to our customers. Support calls seem to either trickle in or happen all at once. The service element is what makes Quick Consols successful. Enterprise software in and of itself is actually useless unless your service can back it up. Our support calls also drive the changes that we make and are integral to our training process.

We are constantly aware of changing trends, hot topics and the latest tech so that we stay on top of the game and don’t get left behind. We actively encourage conversation and healthy debate around these throughout the day, as it keeps us on our toes and thinking ahead. To disrupt, one needs to know what one doesn’t know. We believe that if you don’t look up from your screen, opportunities will pass you by.

We try and maintain an open and transparent culture in the business and everyone has an equal opportunity to present changes that they feel will make an impact to their jobs. No idea is ever rejected out of hand.

Quick Consols.....and chill

And then of course there’s always a little bit of down time, whether it be a game of paddle or Friday afternoon drinks, because at the end of the day work is not the only thing that we’ve been put on this earth for, and it smooths the bumps out a little as well.

Show up and keep showing up

And finally we like to believe that everyone shows up every single day, and that just might be the difference between success and failure.