Below we have a blog written by our new Technical Sales Apprentice, Deborah Manley.
The task
Upon accepting the invite for a two week trial for a Technical Sales Apprenticeship at Invotra, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. The jump from fashion retail into software sales was a bit daunting.
I was given a task to learn the product and company, followed by presenting a demo to senior management, with two weeks to prepare.
How did you find the process?
The first few days were spent getting to know the team, the history of the company, how it got to where it is today, and then the real challenge began.
Our brief was to create a demonstration site with synthetic data as if we were presenting to a potential target, which would be presented to members of Invotra’s board.
One of the things I found daunting was the thought of editing an intranet platform, presuming that there would be a level of coding involved. I just missed the MySpace days, in which everyone seemed to know basic coding just from personalising their profile, so I didn’t have any experience, but was willing to learn. However, this was a whole site and I was concerned at the complexity. Thankfully, when I actually got on to my demo site, I found all these fears to be completely unwarranted.
What are your first impressions of the product?
The first thing I noticed when logging in for the first time was just how easy navigation was. Everything I could need was right in front of me and I could change the entire layout with a single click using the simple drag and drop interface.
While we were able to ask for assistance, we were essentially left to our own devices to see how easily we could figure out exactly what we were doing.
Within only a few days, I had re-branded the entire site and figured out how to:
– embed external media
– create site sections
– create content
– change layouts
– target widgets
I ended up creating a fully-customised site that I was, and still am, genuinely proud of.
The flexibility of the product and the sheer range of tools at the disposal of the intranet manager (as well as end users in general) is fantastic.
It’s not only the design related aspects of the product that’s easy, it’s the control too. You have the ability to:
– distribute responsibility for site sections
– delegate appropriate roles and permissions across your user base
– target content so that it reaches the right audiences, at the right time
– customise your settings to authorise/moderate where you see fit
In summary, if I can pick it up this quickly, anyone can. I am really looking forward to my apprenticeship and learning more about the product.
