Clearview National August 2019 - Issue 213 | Page 26

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A Window of Opportunity
In its 40th year, Business Micros is paying tribute to some of the hardworking staff behind
the scenes who have helped to make the business such an ongoing success. Technical
Services Manager Bret Park is the latest member of the team to come under the spotlight.
» » WHEN BRET LEFT THE RAF IN 2002
and joined his cousin for a few months on
his commercial window cleaning round, he
probably wasn’t expecting it to lead to a career
in IT, but that’s exactly what happened.
Bret was cleaning the windows on the
outside of the Business Micros building in
Penpont, Dumfriesshire when he looked in
and realised it was a software company. That
was too good an opportunity to miss for a
young IT savvy ex-serviceman, so he went
inside and asked if they had any vacancies.
Within a few weeks, he had been hired to
work on the technical service desk, sailing
through the test he was given on his first
day to assemble a computer from scratch.
Over the past 17 years, Bret has never looked
back and is now Technical Services Manager,
looking after an experienced and highly
motivated team of eight who answer around
100 support calls a day from Business Micros
customers.
An awful lot has changed since 2002
– most obviously in how that support is
provided. Bret explains: “In the early days,
customers who had an issue with their
software would routinely take a back-up of
their system on disc and post that to Business
Micros so that we could diagnose the problem
and then either call the customer back to
talk them through the solution or send out a
replacement disc – again by post.
“At that point, Business Micros had just one
server and a single dial up line, which means
that everything was so much slower than it
is now. Now of course, our support is on the
phone or via TeamViewer direct log-in and
thankfully we measure the time it takes us to
resolve issues in minutes rather than days.”
What hasn’t changed though is Bret’s
enthusiasm for the job: “In any technical
service role, no two days are ever the same
but, in this industry, you really do see
something different every day. Things are
much more complex than they once were
when most of our customers were SMEs with
very little in-house IT resource. Now, we are
routinely dealing with multi-million pound
operations whose expectations are vast.
26 » AUG 2019 » CL EARVI E W- UK . C O M
“IT has become a key area for fabricators
in particular to maximise their competitive
advantage, and Business Micros is thriving on
the fact that so many customers want us to
keep on advancing our software applications
so that they can do more and more with
them. Clearly, Technical Service isn’t just
about supporting customers when things go
wrong anymore; it’s developed much more
into a partnership with them and that’s hugely
rewarding.”
With the launch of the Business Micros
Infinity software at the FIT Show, Bret is
now looking ahead to his next challenge
– providing technical support on the new
Capture, Showroom, Register and Rapport
products. He adds: “These products sit on an
entirely new platform and have an entirely
new interface. For an IT enthusiast like me,
that’s my idea of a dream job.”
www.businessmicros.co.uk