For OxTS customers, we are problem solvers – we are their innovation and technology partners. Our customers enjoy direct engineer-to-engineer relationships with our team and by working together, almost as an extension of each other’s team, we help our customers to do their best work and deliver their best products. Achieving breakthroughs and innovations requires collaboration, and our commitment to leveraging collective genius ensures we can overcome challenges and roadblocks. So, collaboration is critical to how we operate – and one of the people enabling and empowering these collaborations is Commercial Manager, Urszula Druett. Here she describes a ‘day in her life’:
1. How long have you worked at OxTS, and what attracted you to join the Company?
I joined OxTS in May 2015. The position advertised was channel management, and having worked with different channel partners for over 10 years by that point, I felt that my skills would contribute to OxTS’ success. I am a firm believer in working with channel as an extension to the vendor in respective territories. It was a good career choice for me and I really enjoy my role at OxTS. I’ve lived in the UK for 25 years now, and British engineering is renowned around the world. OxTS products are used globally and I’m proud to be a representative of this great company. The RT3000 is a benchmark in our industry.
2. What are your key responsibilities as an OxTS Commercial Manager?
My key responsibilities are to grow our business with confidence, today and into the future, with programmes and benefits designed to adapt to how partners sell OxTS and how customers choose to buy. I also manage the relationships with our channel partners (distributors) in Europe, Scandinavia, South East Asia, India and Africa. This is done through formal quarterly business reviews, as well as daily email and telephone communications, providing quotations, responding to tenders, etc.
Information is the lifeblood of any organisation so effectively conveying product information, collaborating with product management, R&D and new developments so that our channel is enabled, well informed, and motivated. One can say that I do a lot of talking!
Some of our partners have worked with OxTS for over 10 years, and this is quite unique in the industry. We are proud to maintain an effective, long-term ‘ecosystem’ – our family of loyal channel partners – and this is testament to our OxTS company ethos. I also have the pleasure to appoint new partners in expanding territories that historically have not been served by our technology for the automotive sector or our product solutions for the survey & mapping sector.
3. What’s the best thing about your job?
The best thing, and I think my greatest achievement in this role, is developing brand new territories where OxTS has not been present. This, of course, involves collaborating across different departments and effectively communicating our product value proposition, and enabling our new channel partners so that they become true evangelists of OxTS’ products in their territories.
It is fair to say that I am a salesperson through and through and winning exciting new projects for OxTS gives me a lot of satisfaction!
4. What’s the most challenging thing about being an OxTS Commercial Manager, and how have you overcome this?
This year has been particularly challenging due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Usually, our calendar is filled with exhibitions and other events, but since the beginning of 2020, most events such as Test Days at AstaZero, large exhibitions or product demonstrations have been cancelled or postponed. This meant adjusting to new working conditions and finding new ways of connecting to our customer base and channel partners. We’ve achieved this very successfully through, for example, a series of product support and topical webinars delivered by our colleagues.
Our next big event is INTERGEO. This year, it’s a fully digital event from 13th – 15th October 2020, and I hope it will be well attended. It’s an opportunity for us to connect with other industry experts and for customers to learn about our latest product improvements and developments. We are offering free expo tickets to our customers (usually costing 35 euros), available from our website here.
5. What do you enjoy most about being part of the OxTS team?
OxTS is a unique company and I will echo what some of my colleagues already said before me, in previous blog posts. The camaraderie and willingness to help between departments is second to none. Our superior customer care is always at the forefront of what we do. We are ‘team OxTS’.
We genuinely care about our customers and channel partners, and we’re passionate to innovate, and driven to deliver positive outcomes. Throughout our many departments such as support, engineering, operations, marketing, export… we form the ‘total package’ – and this makes it as easy as possible for channel partners to come and work with us – and this is, of course, very important.
Our team’s progress is satisfying to see. For example, two years ago, we expanded our presence in China and opened a new office. Since then, we have been able to offer our Chinese customers bespoke services, in their local language, from our own team of OxTS engineers in Shanghai, working closely with our UK-based support team.
6. What are you most looking forward to in the next 12 months at OxTS?
Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, many of our team have been working from home. I think this has had an impact on everybody and I miss the face-to-face interaction with my colleagues. Although we stay closely connected with regular calls, emails and meetings, and technology enables us to remain in close contact with our channel partners and customers very resource-efficiently, I am looking forward to balancing this with some in-person meetings when it is safe to do so again.
We have found innovative ways of connecting with our customers via technology this year. For example, we are running a fantastic series of webinars, including some great webinars in partnership with companies such as Velodyne, 3D TARGET, VSI Labs, Moshon Data, and others, to enable our customers to learn more about inertial navigation systems and to get the most from their OxTS products and software.
And just recently, together with my colleagues, I’ve started work with EC TEST Systems, our Polish channel partner, to host the third OxTS Demo Day in Poland. (This will be all online this year – so watch this space!)
Learn more:
- Contact us to discuss your own project requirements with our team.
- Find your nearest channel partner, from our team around the globe.
- To register to participate in a forthcoming OxTS support and training webinar, or to view recordings of sessions we’ve already presented, please follow this link.
- Explore OxTS survey and mapping applications.
- Discover market-leading OxTS automotive products.
- Find integrated solutions for your product developments.
- For FREE expo tickets to join OxTS at INTERGEO 2020 13th-15th October, please click here.
