Congratulations to Alex Rose who celebrated his 10-year long service milestone last week.
We caught up with Alex to find out more about his time atOGL so far:
"I started at OGL in 2016 as an apprentice on 1st Line prof.IT plus Support, which I joined straight from school. The team at the time was made up of me, Mikayla, Derry and Matt Bell. I passed my apprenticeship at aged 17 but I had to stay in education until I was 18. Because of this, OGL were kind enough to pay for me to study for Level 2 AAT qualifications, which helped with the support role with accounting queries.
I passed this by getting 100% (I think, memory is a bit hazy with this one), and I stayed on 1st Line for just over 2 years. I then moved to 2nd Line prof.IT plus, where I stayed for a further 2 years. I didn’t cause Charlie or Sharon any problems during my time in prof.IT plus support 😄
I was then asked to move across to Profit4 to be the first support person, and I worked closely with Nathan Lord and Andrew Davies, who showed me how Profit4 worked. We only had 5 live customers at the time, so it was a very different time to what it is now.
Working closely with Development helped my knowledge greatly, where I could investigate both front and back end queries. The team eventually grew with Jay, Louise and Ed joining in the 2 years I was on the team. It was a great period for us and we really enjoyed supporting our Profit4 customers as a close-knit team. I then moved into Customer Success and managed the Profit4 customers to begin with, before moving into Transitions to speak with our existing prof.ITplus customers about Profit4.
I have learnt a lot in this role and wouldn't have been able to do any of it if it wasn't for people like Matt, Claire, Dom, Rich etc supporting me and teaching me new tricks. I have done this for the past 4 years and have enjoyed every second!
I think my favourite part of working at OGL is the support and progression opportunities. It is amazing to be able to start on support and progress into other roles - I definitely wouldn't be able to do the role I do now if it wasn't for the strong foundation and skills that being on support taught me. For the first year of selling Profit4, I was in the process of learning all thing sales, so the knowledge that being on support taught me carried me through the demonstrations which is great.
I am also proud to see how Profit4 has such a positive impact on our customers and helping them get more from the software. It is also a nice feeling that I have gone from being 16 to 26 while at OGL, and I have changed a lot since I started. I definitely wouldn't be able to present software to a group of board members when I started here, so OGL has helped me so much to grow as a person.
Alex's manager, Matthew Meredith added: "When Alex first started with OGL, he seemed to shift from a young apprentice to a go to member of the team in no time at all. He was the first to transition over to supporting what was then a very early Profit4. Al took everything in his stride, and his calm, knowledgeable approach quickly led him to become popular among customers, often waiting for him personally to answer their calls. It was through this period we started to wonder if Alex would like a move into a sales role; this wasn’t a difficult spot though, given that alongside flourishing within the support team, Alex would source and sell what ever he could, to whomever he could. My favourite of these being a pair of Nike Air Max trainers to Rich Meredith, who wore them out one day only to find the air bubble had a puncture and the trainers were now flat.
When Alex moved into sales, we spent a lot of time out on the road together, which was always fun and it was clear early on that Alex’s sales career was going to go from strength to strength. His personality and calm nature saw him through. Alex was never phased even when faced with the most complex questions, or demanding characters. It's great to watch our customers warm to his style, all while he maintains a quiet determination to realise his objectives to help our customers.
A couple of moments stand out for me during our customer visits, one being when he spilt coffee all over a customer’s stock take printouts. Alex, clearly mortified, somehow found himself with the customer apologising to him for leaving them in his way! Another is when Midway Tools signed with us, Al didn’t have a pen so he went to their stationery cupboard pulled out a box of pens and said ‘here you go Pete, just use one of these to sign the order’; Pete signed the order and told Alex to keep the box of pens.
Al, you are a credit to our company, and to our team. You should be proud of all you have achieved, all while maintaining your infectious personality. Here is to the next 10 years 😊."
CCO, Claire Jones commented: "I’ve had the pleasure of working with Alex for the last few years in Software, and it’s been genuinely great to see him grow, both personally and in his commercial awareness as he’s moved through Customer Success and into Transition Sales.
We’ve tackled some large and complex transitions together, and each one has brought its own challenges and curveballs. What I’ve really noticed is how Alex has gone from solving problems as they land on his desk to being much more proactive and looking for solutions before they become problems.
It’s been great to see and says a lot about how much he’s come on, and I know he takes the responsibility of his customers and deals very seriously. That said, on a personal level, Alex never fails to make me laugh. You can never quite tell when he’s being serious, and he’s always trying to catch me out, in fact, he’ll quite happily negotiate with me which I’m not sure whether to admire or be slightly concerned about!
Congratulations on your 10-year anniversary Alex, it’s been a pleasure working with you. Here’s to the next 10 years! 🍾🎉🥳👏"
And finally Charlie Grant, who was Alex's manager when he first joined OGL also added: "I still remember interviewing Alex 10 years ago and being genuinely taken aback by just how well he came across. Here was a 16-year-old interviewing like a fully-fledged, experienced grown-up!! He was confident and seemed incredibly capable for his age. That was, of course, until he asked whether he could finish at 3pm each day so he could go and meet his mates when they finished school! A timely reminder that, despite the interview, we were still employing a 16-year-old.
Thankfully, we recruited him anyway! He started on 1st Line Support, quickly got to grips with the software and soon progressed into User Support, while continuing his accountancy studies and AAT alongside the day job. Ten years later, he’s built up a wealth of knowledge across the business, which he now puts to good use in the Sales team, helping our prof.ITplus customers make the move to Profit4. With his knowledge of both systems and his ability to talk about the software with such confidence, I’m fairly sure he could convince even the most die-hard prof.ITplus customer of the benefits of moving to Profit4.
Alex has also always been an absolute character, and there are plenty of stories from those early years. Two that stick with me are him casually returning from lunch, mentioning that he might have left his iron on at home, then sitting down and carrying on working until we told him he should probably go and check; and the time he came back from lunch and explained, completely unfazed, that he’d let a strange man into his house and left him alone in the loft while his parents were on holiday.
We were concerned enough to send Mick Hood home with him, only to discover his parents had arranged for someone to install solar panels and forgotten to tell him. Becky, you’ve been warned! Joking aside, having recruited Alex at 16 and managed him through those early years, I’m genuinely proud of everything he’s achieved. He’s grown into an incredibly knowledgeable and valued member of the business, while thankfully never losing the character that makes him Alex. Congratulations on 10 years, here’s to the next 10, although perhaps by then we’ll have found someone responsible enough to check the iron for you!"
Congratulations Alex from all your colleagues at OGL!
