No 1 Solution for Growing Businesses

Just a quick break from our ‘The Life of a….’ series for some exciting news…

The National Placement and Internship awards are a huge deal for companies providing placements and I’m sure many of you used Rate My Placement to find out exactly what to expect from various different companies. In the past we have been lucky enough to win a variety of awards such as ‘Best SME Placement Provider’ and ‘Best Student Contribution to a Small or Medium-sized Enterprise’ (won by a returning placement, Vicki).

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During our intensive month of training at ProspectSoft, there was a lot of secrecy surrounding the specific job roles that the Sales and Marketing Placement Students would find themselves in for the following 12months. After many attempts to prise this information from employees and managers alike, Nikesh and I were placed in the New Business roles. Amongst other things, the role itself includes supporting partners and clients in progressing sales enquiries, but as always at ProspectSoft, you are also given the opportunity to take on different projects alongside your day-to-day role that gives you a chance to ‘dip your toe’ into different areas of the business.

The main responsibility I have been given is the recruitment of the Sales and Marketing Placement Students for the 2012-13 year – a very important responsibility as it is the main way we recruit new members to join the ProspectSoft team. This year, we have had a very large number, but at the same time a very high standard of applicants. We are looking for the right candidates to fill the (hopefully very large) shoes that we will all have left next September when it is time for us to return to University.

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It’s been a busy first few months in the Operations department. After 5 weeks of training in the working of ProspectSoft, we graduated to our full time roles as Assistant Solutions Developers. After bidding farewell to our predecessors, the office started setting up for its latest team of technical interns: Cristina, Simon, Mike and Matt, as well as Julian providing support in Client Services.

The extensive training consisted of a basic product knowledge course, mostly aimed at the Sales & Marketing interns, but highly useful for our side of things too; a look into the installation and configuration of a ProspectSoft system, and a few sessions on development processes within ProspectSoft.

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Back in September we gave you a brief update of how our first few weeks at ProspectSoft had been. We’ve now just come back from our Christmas break and I think you’ll agree, our next check in is well overdue. So what have we been up to?

I wanted to give you an overview of our day to day lives in the office, but when it actually came to writing something down I realised, no two jobs are the same. From planning events to getting us shortlisted for a Rate My Placement award and running customer days to helping develop our software, we have all had the chance to put our own individual stamp on the company. It’s safe to say that we have all been encouraged, not only to utilise our existing skills, but take on new and challenging tasks.

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August is always an exciting month here at ProspectSoft HQ. Not only does it mark the end of 13 months of hard work (and hard play) for the existing placement students but also sees the arrival of a fresh batch of Sales and Marketing Assistants.

We’ve been through four weeks of intense training in which we’ve presented a complete sales pitch, learnt how to install a ProspectSoft solution and even how to carry out some of the technical processes (amazing considering some of us could barely locate our C-drive before we started). After multiple cups of coffee and a lot of head scratching, we now feel confident that we will be able to perform well in our individual job roles and live up to the high standards that our predecessors have set for us.

June seems to have been a month full of preparation for events, video demonstrations and applications for the next round of awards. 

The Software Satisfaction Awards is a unique award voted by end-users only, every vote really does count.  Alice and I have been busy this month, writing and sending eShots to customers asking for their support to help ProspectSoft become finalists in the ‘Best CRM and Customer Management Software’ category.  On Monday 4^th July we find out whether the company has made it to the finals, fingers crossed! As well as the Software Satisfaction Awards, we have also been preparing our application for the National Business Awards, a prestigious awards ceremony that even Nick Clegg attended last year.
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I am the latest addition to the Prospectsoft team, I have been here around 7 weeks but I am not part of the placement scheme. I came here from an IT academy called Zenos, where I learnt the basic concepts of IT. Learning everything from Zenos has now given me the chance to be a part of the Prospectsoft team, I am able to put what I have leant into action and learn lots more while I am here.

My first day at Prospectsoft consisted of being introduced to all of my colleagues and running though all of the paper work, where I was informed about my role; taking all the incoming calls to support and logging them into the system. This gives the other guys on support more of a chance to solve more and takes the stress off their shoulders of answering the incoming calls.

Settling into the team has been fantastic. Everyone here has been extremely supportive with helping me out and pointing me in the right direction. I was given a lot of help from James M, Paul and Arthur with support procedures and how to log the calls. Alice and Serena helped me a lot with settling in and also doing practice phone calls to help with getting used to being on the phone.
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Sunday 15^th May was a memorable day for many of us here at ProspectSoft. It was the day we ran the 10km Oxford Town and Gown Race.

The ProspectSoft running team consisted of 14 of us, the group not only varied in age but also in ability, with some having completed half marathons and others having never trained before. For most of us it was quite a challenge - having decided to sign up just 7 weeks before the race, a lot of training had to be put in by all to ensure we were able to reach the finish line.

When the sunny but breezy day arrived we all gathered in the Oxford University parks, where pre race stretches began and photographs were taken. At 10am the gun was fired and off we went!
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Recently one of my main areas of focus has been our email marketing activities. This particular area of our marketing has developed a lot over my time here which includes the change from using Constant Contact as our email marketing provider to Communigator which is now an official part of the ProspectSoft Product range (http://www.prospectsoft.com/emailmarketing).

Before I started at ProspectSoft, email marketing was something that we spoke about in marketing modules at university, with the discussions usually ending with people saying ‘we would send emails to our target market about our new exciting product to increase awareness and sales’ or something similar; and surprisingly this is the way some companies do approach this type of marketing. However, since being involved in the real process of coming up with, designing and implementing email marketing campaigns I can say that it is far more complex than just sending emails to your target market, well if you want to be successful it is!
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A lot has happened on support since the last update. The evolution of the products we use and offer are constantly changing, as are the ways we support our customers. Every week my responsibilities grow as my colleagues trust in me likewise grows.

Since the last update we have recruited an extra member of support who will be starting next week. This will further increase our productivity and make the Client Services team work more efficiently, while at the same time making everyday’s work that little bit easier.

A few weeks ago my colleagues and I were treated to a special “support heroes” lunch in praise of our recent efforts and growing abilities. This sort of extra-work activity is the sort of thing that really makes ProspectSoft a special place to work, everyone here cares just as much about each other as they do about the job in hand.

We also had the familiarisation day for the next placements that will be starting 2011/2012. It’s good to see fresh faces around the office and it’s nice to know that ProspectSoft is continuing its world famous recruitment of first class placements.