Our people are central to the ‘Inixion Difference’ and we’re particularly proud of the fact that we have had zero employee attrition since our inception. 

Check out the next instalment of our employee spotlight series, with David McCallum, our Customer Service Manager since 2012.

You moved from the ‘client side’ to the ‘partner side’ 11 years ago. What convinced you to move from being an accountant to a Sage X3 customer service manager?

In the early 2000s, I became the Site Accountant for a cosmetics business in Skelmersdale. At the time of my joining, this business selected Sage X3 as its ERP system. The project lead for our business partner was Ian Bromley, who later went on to set up Inixion.

The key part of my role was to be the finance lead on the project. Over the next 2 years, I became increasingly more involved in the overall project until by the time we went live I was the “go-to” person internally and the main contact with the business partner. I enjoyed the chance to work with Sage X3 daily and to learn how configurable and flexible it was.

When the business was taken over in the late 2000s, I was effectively managing the Sage X3 system full-time. By this point, Ian had founded Inixion and had carried out consultancy work for us on several projects.

Ian was obviously aware of the changes within my company and at the time Inixion was starting to expand and looking to recruit to support the growth. I was approached about coming on board, but the stumbling block was that I was required to stay with my current business to manage the system until the takeover was completed. Fortunately, Ian was prepared to wait for around 18 months from when he first spoke to me, to me coming on board.

In summary, what convinced me was the product, which I had grown to love working with and Ian who I really enjoyed working with, who had shown such faith in me by waiting until I could join.

How has Inixion changed over these 11 years?

The ethos of Inixion has not changed. The importance of being professional when working with our customers continues to be paramount. The idea of Inixion being a family is still part of our culture and the importance of family and “work-life” balance remains key to everything we do.

The most obvious thing to have changed is the size of the business. Turnover has increased rapidly; customer numbers have increased significantly, and the team size has tripled in my time. We now have a more structured organisation. The heart and soul of Inixion however remain the same.

You’ve been managing our customer support team for years, have things changed in Sage X3 customer support over the years?

I would say that supporting Sage X3 in its current guise is radically different from the support that was required for the product I first started to work with nearly 20 years ago.

It is now much more complex, with 3rd party applications, proprietary software and “open source” elements all in the mix. Not only have the core modules and functionality of Sage X3 itself expanded, but combined with the multitude of server/hardware and hosting options available, makes every customer’s installation of Sage X3 different. Factor in any local customisations and each customer presents a unique challenge that my team must deal with.

What do you think are the hardest and best parts of your job?

My job is like a plate-spinning act in a circus. That is the hardest part of the job for my team and me. Every support call raised is a plate that needs spinning. Even if our customers each only have a handful of support calls open at any point, that equates to hundreds of plates that are all in danger of wobbling and crashing to earth if we don’t keep them spinning quickly enough. The hard part is making sure none fall.

The best part of my job is helping all my colleagues, along with our customers, to work as a unit to ensure we don’t have any broken crockery. That means that we are forever learning about Sage X3. Each support call is a “mini puzzle” that needs to be solved and that is the key to what makes the job so enjoyable.

What do you like best about working at Inixion?

I feel that each of us at Inixion is appreciated for what we bring to the team each day. There is a shared ethos and mentality and we all get along as a group, which makes Inixion a great place to work. It probably helps that as we all work remotely, we do not get under each other’s feet every day in the same way that you might do in an office.

What does a typical day at Inixion look like for you?

I think the most consistent thing I can say about my days is that they very rarely go exactly to plan.

Each day I start around 7:30 am by reviewing emails and checking what has happened overnight with our customers in the USA. From this, I can get an idea of priorities for the team for the day. We have a Teams call at 9:00 am each morning where the whole team spends 30 mins going through key calls worked on previously and what is being brought forward into today. Normally, I will have a scheduled support review with one or more customers later.

The reason why things rarely go to plan is that during the day you do not know what new calls are going to be raised. These could include critical “system-down” type problems which mean taking people off planned activities to react, and so then re-scheduling existing work and resources. This may need to be done multiple times per day and can be challenging.

I try and aim to finish around 6:30 pm at the latest, although, as you can imagine sometimes it is later than this if there is a pressing issue.

At Inixion we talk about ‘Making your business our business’, how do you experience that?

In some ways, support is at the forefront of this philosophy. We advise customers of changes that will need to be made to their system for any issues to be resolved. To do this, my team needs to understand how the customer works so that we can understand the issue, the impact and how or what we need to do to assist in providing a solution. This is the whole “Making your business our business” approach.

What do you think makes Inixion stand out from its competitors?

I believe that it is our ‘continuity approach’ to dealing with the customer. Right from the first engagement with a potential customer, we introduce the Consultant and the Project Manager who would be involved in the implementation. It is this team that does the demonstration and then the project scoping and is involved right through implementation to post project sign-off and handover to support. They then remain engaged with my team to assist in support issues if required. Since we have not had anyone leave Inixion unless they have retired, the Consultant who worked on the customer project 15, 10 or 5 years ago is still the Consultant for that customer and so has all the history and knowledge around the project. It is this continuity, combined with the family ethos that Ian has instilled into the business and the professional manner that all the team exhibit every day, I believe makes Inixion different.