When Simon went to college he wasn’t really sure what he wanted to do. He worked in various roles across different sectors and landed his first sales position where he discovered that he enjoyed solving people’s problems. Simon then joined us as a Sales Consultant in 2016.
Simon was promoted to Sales Manager in 2018, this time as part of our Webonboarding sales team. Webonboarding is our onboarding product designed to help businesses by automating their employee onboarding process. The secure portal enables HR teams to manage the process of issuing and exchanging documents such as contracts, offer letters, personal details for payroll and pre-reading.
Working in a smaller team meant that Simon gained more exposure to the development of the product and he demonstrated a natural flair for this. At the start of 2022 he joined the Product team as a Product Owner with responsibility over both Webexpenses and Webonboarding products. This was a sideways move which enabled him to hone his skills in product management. In October 2022, Simon was promoted to Product Manager where he took on more responsibility and he now manages a team of three.
When we asked Simon what made him decide to change from a Sales role to a Product role, he said, ‘I am interested in solving people’s problems and in the Product team I get to ‘geek out’ on the product’.
In his role as Product Manager, Simon is the link between the client facing and technical teams. He takes information received from customers and passes it on to the technical teams to help them make improvements to the system and solve any problems our clients may be facing with the system.
Our R&D team works in 2 week sprints as part of the Agile methodology, and Simon plans what work needs to be completed in each sprint as well as presenting on the work which has been completed in the previous sprint. The work he plans ranges from a new feature, a change in the design of the software or a fix to resolve a technical issue experienced by our clients and end users.
Simon has recently been involved in launching a new payment service in the system, which enables businesses to reimburse employee expenses more quickly. He told us that ‘The payments service has been a highlight of my time at Webexpenses. I’ve enjoyed working on (it) and seeing it come into reality from an idea. It’s great to watch it come to life and to see it be used by our users.’
We asked Simon what he enjoyed most about his role and he said, ‘No day is the same, it’s very varied which I love’.
‘It’s lots of fun, hard work and really rewarding. If you are curious, driven, have an open mind and a growth mindset, I would recommend Webexpenses as a good place to work. If you are here to learn more and put the effort in, Webexpenses will recognise and reward this.’
When we asked Simon what advice he would give someone who wanted to start a career in product management; he said, ‘Continue to be curious. Be empathetic and this will help you think about the solution, and it will help you to interact with people who can help you.’
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