A day in the life of: David Roberts

It's Monday 4th January and the Christmas break is over, it's the start of 'term' and back to business! Defrosting the car and a frozen 37 mile commute is the first challenge of the day.

First off, is to catch up with everyone and ask how their Christmas and New Year's celebrations have been. We've an unexpected new member of staff in the form of Katie, the six year old daughter of Amatica's Solution Architect. Her school's closed for the day as it's an INSET teachers' training day; however she's fantastically well behaved and completely absorbed in her new laptop PC.

Checking my emails, I find that there isn't much as I've logged in occasionally over the break. Amatica runs a skeleton staff who work flexible hours over Christmas in order to ensure that the hosting services run smoothly and to staff the helpdesk.

A quick check with Amatica's technical manager tells me that there are no issues. Furthermore, a new website went live as planned on New Year's Eve - a testament to our dedicated team! Then it's a quick update with my marketing assistant Val to refresh myself on our schedule of marketing activities for the first few weeks of the year.

Then it's into our weekly management meeting where as a management team we review the status of all our projects: customer, internal and management as well as Amatica's marketing and sales activities and pipeline. It's a fierce acclimatisation after ten days absence; all those topics that would normally be 'front of mind' seem to need a bit of encouragement to return to familiarity. Perhaps it's the effects of too much Christmas pudding and merriment; more probably age! After ninety minutes the agenda is covered and it's time to 'get on with it'.

Next is to draft some news items which will be used on the Amatica website and Impact newsletter. We've found them an effective way of keeping our clients abreast of the projects and technologies we're working on. One needs client consent so the draft is emailed for approval.

I'm planning to recruit an addition to our new business team and we need to reorganise the 'commercial' end of our open plan office. There are a number of issues to deal with, privacy being one as there are issues of confidentiality for the finance team to consider. And there's the perennial problem of mains power, phone and network sockets never being in the place you need them. However, Kevin, Amatica's technical manager appears unflustered by this off-the-wall internal project.

We're a tight team operating in an open plan office and pretty much everyone takes a turn to make the team a tea or coffee. I'm one of the worst offenders for avoiding my contribution to keeping the team watered so I take a few minutes to do my bit for team morale.

Then it's into a meeting with Amatica's MD and a discussion on candidate attributes for the new business role. The role and market sector is relatively easy to define and we end up discussing the merits of a couple of individuals that we have in mind.

Next, is to pick up on a presentation that I'm preparing for our company meeting later in January during which we share our business plan with everyone in the team. The vulnerability of the financial services sector has had it's impact but now it's time to get our growth plans back on track. Even though we have a comparatively small team, it's really important that everyone knows what our plan is and what's expected of them individually.

All too soon, it's the end of the day and the office is emptying, so it's time to down tools, well mouse and keyboard actually, switch off the PC and head for home. Snow is forecast for the journey home so no doubt it'll take a bit longer than the 45 minutes that it usually takes; however, the journey runs smoothly; I'm home for 7pm and ready for a therapeutic glass of wine!

Footnote

Tuesday 6th January 2010: Heavy snow starts falling around midday and by 2:30pm brings roads and motorways in north west England to a virtual standstill!. Wednesday's roads are hazardous so our contingency plan slips easily into action with remote desktop access allowing essential tasks and services to continue uninterrupted. Incoming calls are re-routed leaving the office essentially unmanned. Everything runs smoothly and according to plan!