Resources

In this Q&A session, we are having a chat with Anson, one of the long-term Acceleon team members, who just recently celebrated his 10th anniversary with the company. His rich experience with the Acceleon Customer Cloud platform powers up the voluminous work we have planned in our roadmap. Being aware of the importance platform has in the industry, it was essential for us to appoint the team member with comprehensive technical and client knowledge.

Anson, what’s your background, but really, looking very far and ‘back in the day?
I started my career in IT as a database administrator as I always felt that the use of data and the need to store it would continue to grow. That was almost 15 years ago. For the past ten years, I’ve worked for Acceleon, starting with designing and developing our in-house databases and consulting to our external clients as a data expert.

Tell us a little bit about your journey towards Product Manager?
Joining Acceleon when it was a start-up resulted in me wearing many hats over the years. I found myself in different roles, like help desk support, database administrator and developer, general IT consultant, and I was even an Account Manager and Project Manager.
The skills and experience from those roles combined with my passion for data and our products being data related meant the move to product manager was one not to be missed.

What would be the most significant experience in your career by now?
The most exciting thing I’ve experienced is being directly involved in the growth of the company. We were four people for about five years in a single office, then over the next 3-4 years we grew to 20, and now we’re at 45+ having merged with another great company.

What is your work style?
I love keeping lists and creating processes from them. Having a background in data means I usually gather as much information as possible and try to analyse and break everything down into a list of; things that need to be done, how important things are, or even just how things should work. I find that creating processes helps bring some form of structure to all the different interactions I have as a product manager.

Are there any specific rules you follow?
Yes, always make an effort to talk to the people you work with about things other than work. I love my job, but it’s the people around you that make it better.

What capability of our platform is your favourite one?
I love our online search interface for the Acceleon Customer Cloud and our team behind it. Our search interface returns so much data that can be analysed by the user, but, if for some reason users need help, our team is more than happy to work with them to understand and better solve their business problems.

What is the best path to follow to create a product that becomes essential for customers?
Listening to customers’ needs and wants. Essentially, working with your current and potential customers to understand what they need.

Acceleon is now a part of a bigger organisation, how has that affected the product team?
We now have more resources, more knowledge and more experience to provide an efficient and innovative offering.

Can you reveal any exciting news that you can share today?
We’re just about to start development on phase 1 of our roadmap for 2020/2021 which will bring new and improved search capabilities, but, it’s only a small part of our broader plan.

What is your favourite application outside the work?
Facebook Marketplace, although that’s a feature of the Facebook app.
When you are not working, how do you spend your time?
Aside from looking after my 1-year-old, I spend a lot of time searching for things to upcycle. I also enjoy having whiskey tasting nights with my friends, though they are now virtual tastings over Zoom :).

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