What’s it like being a developer at The Cloud People?

«I especially like customer meetings, and I try to get to these as often as possible and with as many people as possible. Meeting someone face to face gets you a bit better known, and it makes it easier to understand the customer’s needs.»

Hi, Ole Marius! What do you do at The Cloud People?

Hi! I work as a web developer at The Cloud People. I’ve been here for 12 years now – and I love it! Here I work on everything from development projects and software development to websites. When I first started in the company, back then named Symfoni Next, I worked on the software platform Lotus Notes, before we all switched to Office 365. Today the whole company focuses on Google Cloud, and is a certified partner and dealer. This means that we can guarantee our customers solid expertise and the best products.

What’s it like being a developer at The Cloud People?

First and foremost every day is different, and that’s what makes it so much fun! Some days I’m working on customer support, which often starts with a message to our support system. Our customers log into our system, and explain the problem that has come up on their website or intranet. Depending on which customer has contacted us or what the problem is, the case may get assigned to me, and I get to grips with it. It could be about a new functionality they want, or problems customers don’t understand in existing solutions. Examples that may come up are problems concerning the use of templates that are predefined in SITES CMS, editing of a document/article, pasting in text from Word into an article, etc.

Other days I’ll be working on a project. If it concerns new solutions it may be more comprehensive, which at the start often means a meeting or a phone call to work out what it is the customer wants.

Meeting activities are important, and they are something I particularly like since you can get a lot done by meeting the customer face to face. I try to get as many customer meetings as possible, as I feel it’s important to know the customer well, particularly in order to understand their needs. In a meeting I show clearly how interested I am in the customer and the project, and this can form the basis for an excellent relationship moving forward.

Often the customer wants to set up Google Analytics on their website, and this is something I can help with and teach the customer what to do. With Google Analytics the customer gets an insight into traffic and user behaviour and is able to measure conversions. It is a superb tool, and something I enjoy teaching people to use!

In this job there are an enormous number of changes, which means you always have to keep up to date. By doing this I can make recommendations and perform updates for customers that I think will boost their website traffic and user friendliness.

Can you tell us a bit about the project or projects you have been working on recently?

The last project I worked on was the intranet solution for a regular customer of ours. They have an intranet for multilingual locations, and they wanted a new menu system to simplify the distinctions between the different countries. A new backend menu code was developed, so that the customer could easily add it to new articles that belong under the different locations/countries.

What motivates you, and when do you have most fun at work?

I especially like working in a team, and I’m motivated by working together with good colleagues. Then we can discuss solutions together and present that to the customer. It’s fun to succeed in satisfying and meeting the customer’s needs together.

Want to say hi to the rest of the gang as well? Take a peek here!