How do we spend our time here at Truckcom? This blog post gives you an idea of what we do, and how we work.
Firstly, here’s a quick intro to the team, so that you can put faces to the people that you speak to on the phone. From top left we have Jeff and Katie, Ash, and Rob; then the second row, from the left, there’s Pete, Alex, Ant and me.
One of the things that we feel distinguishes us from plenty of other companies is that almost everyone here is a “techie”. We all do a bit of everything; and we all work in the same room, so it’s easy to keep track of what’s going on. You’ll note I said almost everyone is a techie. Katie is the exception– and she does absolutely everything else: HR, payroll, credit control, buildings management, social events – you name it, if it isn’t techie stuff, she’s in charge!
So, what are exactly are the techies doing? They are spending their time talking to users on the ‘phone and via email, and writing and developing Truckcom’s software, all at the same time. Sometimes it gets hard to juggle these things together – so if occasionally we are slow to respond, this may be the reason – but for the most part, it’s this combination of activities that gives us our real insights into how things are for our users.
The people you are dealing with when you contact Truckcom are the same people writing the software. This means we have a very quick and responsive way to make sure the software is changing and adapting in the right direction – based on what the users tell us. It’s a winning formula, but in larger companies it can be hard to do. This is because you find that roles get separated – the person talking to you on the phone may be a long way (in skills, and even in time-zones) from the people writing the software. That’s why we’re keen to stay quite small.
If we do our jobs right though, small can definitely be beautiful. The Truckcom App has now been downloaded more than 10,000 times, and we have more than 600 web users spread across 75 companies in more than a dozen countries. Looking forwards, we hope to be able to provide an excellent service to an ever-growing number of users – but we hope to keep the ethos of a small, responsive software company central to everything we do.