Starting the 14th of March I will be working at BrandCommerce, which is the B2B department of Smartphonehoesjes.nl

In this Journal I will be sharing my experiences and, most importantly, reflect on those experiences. These reflections will help me working towards the completion of my 10 PLOs and give an insight to my peers, and my assessor in my internship.

Day 1

First day at the office was immediately a good day at the office, my office is located in Leusden (small town next to Amersfoort) and it costs me around one hour to travel from Utrecht to the office. Which gives me enough time to properly wake up before the day starts ;).

The B2B department, where I will be working, consists of 13 people and I will be having an introduction meeting with all of them personally today and tomorrow. By having those personal meeting, i will already get a clear insight in everybody’s day-to-day tasks and what they could expect from me.

Moving on, The first days will be focused on meeting everyone and making a plan for the first weeks. These first weeks will be mainly focused on making market research and introductionary meetings.

Week 2

After my first week at Brandcommerce, which was primarily focused on introduction and getting to know eachother, I started my first full week at the company. I have to say, I already feel quite welcoming at the office. It helped a lot that i was able to have an introductory meeting with every person of the team alone.

Monday morning I immediately enclosed details for my project I will be doing during my 15 weeks at Brandcommerce. So what are the details of my project? To understand my project I’ll first have to explain several business models of Brandcommerce. Brandcommerce is the business side of the E-commerce website smartphonehoesjes.nl and accounts for a large proportion of the succes of smartphonehoesjes.nl. One of their business model is setting up a data connection tool on webshops of their clients. This means we are selling our products through the webshop of our client. This is a very effective way of E-Commerce and quite succesful for Brandcommerce. I will be mainly focusing on this particular business model and I used this week already to familiarize myself on this model. Now that you have a bit of understanding on this businessmodel I can explain my project. I will be investigating the french market and researching if expanding this model to the french market is possible, viable, and profitable. The team gives me a lot of freedom for this project which is, most of the time, pleasant.

This week I planned a meeting with a developer within the company, who could give me some insights in how those data connection tools works and if there might be some problems which occurs on a regular base. Furthermore I did some research myself and planned meetings for next week with a client to see how satisfied they are at the moment with our services. I will comment next week on how this meeting went and some insights on the communication.

Last thing I want to adress this week is the amount time I am working from home or from the office. Normally I am working three days a week at the office in Leusden, next to Amersfoort, and one day from home. I am glad with this way of working, and also prefer to work from the office. Only downside is the one hour travel from Utrecht to Leusden.

Week 3

My Third week at BrandCommerce was a very interesting week in general. I made some good progress on my projects and had some good conversations with my coworkers. For my projects I mostly familiarized myself with the different systems BrandCommerce is working with and the technical aspects of the data connection system, as mentioned in last week’s journal. Last week, I shortly wrote about a meeting I had with a developer at the company who could introduce me to  the different technological systems. I thought it would be interesting to elaborate a little bit more on this particular meeting.

 First of all, I want to address that I am not the most technological gifted person out there. It really is not my field of interest and it will also never be my field of interest (i think). However, this doesn’t mean certain aspects will not interest me. But it might be a bit more complicated for me to understand everything. This was also my main point of attention, the fact i wouldn’t be able to understand a thing he would explain me. And he immediately confirmed my concern basically. Overall it was a very interesting and good meeting, but it was quite difficult to comprehend all the information he was throwing out there, and it was a lot. I noticed something interesting during the meeting, something I can use for PLO6 (unfamiliar situations). The developer explained me certain aspects in a way like I also had a background in IT, which made it very difficult to follow as I logically miss some background on this topic. I struggled how to explain him that i was missing the basics of his field of work, making the meeting a little bit stressful for me. I was too much trying to keep up with the conversation instead of being really invested in the conversation.

This whole area where I am working in right now is fairly new and unfamiliar for me, so it is alsof or me quite interesting to see how I behave in those situations. So what did I learn from this situation? If i see myself again in a situation like this, and I am sure I will be, I shouldn’t be afraid to adress at the beginning of the meeting my lack of knowledge on the subject. I think the majority of the people would understand this and adress the situation differently. Which will result in a more enhanced discussion where we will profit from both. I am interested if you guys already experienced something similar in the workplace, and if yes, how did you act on it?

Furthermore I want to adress this week that I already quite improved my french skills. As I mentioned before I am researching the french market, which means I am reading a lot in french. I have to say, in the beginning it was difficult to constantly switch from dutch to english to french, but now I am quite used to it. For the moment I am mostly reading in French and not so much speaking or reading. But this will change ofcourse during these weeks.

Week 4

Hey Peers, here to talk with you a bit about my experiences this week. I am feeling more and more welcome and involved in the office. Especially happy about the getting involved part. As before, which I did not really tell in previous journals, I struggled a bit with getting involved in the team. This has nothing to do with how my colleagues are around me, as I have a good relationship with them, but it is more about daily tasks and everything what is going on work-wise. In these weeks, I am doing more research work and working on projects my company assigned me to work on. I like to work like this, however, it also has a downside. Being the fact that I felt less involved in daily activities and I had to adapt a bit.

I talked with my supervisor (Glenn) and another colleague on Thursday about this and they were really understanding. So we came up with somewhat more daily tasks to do on the side which connected me more to the rest of the team. I can’t say I really like those specific tasks, as it also some administrative work and back-office. However, it is also part of the job and it gives me a clearer understanding of the strongest aspects of our business financially seen and some points of attention I could include in my reports for the international markets.

One of those points which is interesting to share is that, in my opinion, a lot of back-office work and order processing is a bit of a mess. We have an automated processing systems but it still has some issues and not every kind of order is integrated. As a B2B company, we have a lot of different order streams coming in, and I feel like not everything is processed in the most effective way. There is at the moment one employee plus one other intern working on this order processing, but the other employees all depends on them for everything related to the back-office. What will happen when they are both sick, this was also something I discussed with a colleague today and I believe it will be a nice topic to include in my portfolio at the end about hierarchy.

Finalizing this week with a positive point, I really enjoy the atmosphere at work and I am sure this is also on of the strongest points for the business of Brand Commerce. Everyone here has a lot of social skills, which makes it very easy to build relations and ask certain questions. Having those social skills is very important in the Business to businesses industry, as many deals are made based on relation and trust. Next week I have some important meetings on the planning with businesses who can tell me more about the French market, keep you updated.

Week 5

Hi Peers, Hoping everything is going well at your internships. Here everything is going pretty well actually. Let me update you guys on my fifth week here. Let’s start with something not really work related but what annoyed me a lot and really did me think about the fact that I want to work close from home in the future, I picked up 30 minutes to one hour train delay on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. Because of this, also missed an important meeting on Monday. Fortunately, I catched up pretty quickly and my colleagues understood the reasons of my absence.

As I mentioned in last week’s blow post, I had some meetings on the planning this week which were very interesting for me and also for the blog ofcourse. As told in the first few weeks of my internship, I am primarily working on a course of action for entering the French market. I also mentioned in previous blogs that this industry is completely new for me. This is why it is important for me to talk with a lot of people who are involved in this industry to give myself a clear overview of the market, as well nationally as internationally. This week, I got in contact with Rene Stolz, Sales manager at one of the biggest electronics resellers in Europe (Renewd) and a partner of us. My colleague Joost gave me his contact and I immediately reached out to him if he had 30 minutes to an hour available for me to discuss the market and the way of conducting business on the French market in particular. As Renewed is a very important business partner for Brand Commerce, I had to come over professional and with a certain level of knowledge. I prepared myself by reading into his business and prepared some questions and follow-up questions. I did not want to prepare to much questions because I prefer an open conversation instead of an interview. The meeting itself went very good and better than the meeting I told you about a couple weeks ago. Why? I was really able to have a proper and insightful conversation which helped me a lot for my research. To give myself a bit of a compliment, Rene told me after the meeting that I was very eager to learn and picked up things very quick. He offered me an internship as well afterwards. This meeting showed me that I improved my professional communication and my knowledge in this industry in the last two weeks.

Week 6

Hi all, here I am again talking about some things I experienced during my internship here at Brand Commerce. This week I want to address two things in particular which are interested for you guys but also for my PLP and working towards those missions. I worked this week on attracting new clients, with an emphasis on international clients. Because I have a French background I was working on calling French clients and being the contact person between the client and the responsible account manager. What I found very funny was the fact that French businesses were far more interested to listen to us when we were able to talk in French instead of English. This is something that I already took in account before and also something you read a lot when you research about the French way of conducting business, but it was interesting to experience it myself. I think it has to do with trust, and being more comfortable in your own language. When we started talking with potential French clients in English, they hesitated more and also talked less because of their limited level in English. It is good to understand that French clients are indeed interested in doing business with us, we only have to approach them differently.

Furthermore, I worked a bit on PLO 4 of business experience & knowledge (Internal management structure) and I would like to share one interesting issue which is occurring within our organization. Brand Commerce is the business side of E-commerce website smartphonehoesjes.nl, and this causes certain problems. You have to understand that Brand Commerce consists of 12 people, and almost everyone has their own accounts and is business oriented. That means that for all technological related tasks, design tasks, financial questions, etcetera, we are dependent on the people of smartphonehoesjes.nl. However, this is causing some problems as we are trying to be an independent organization and we are also presenting ourself to the outside world as Brand Commerce and not as Smartphonehoesjes.nl. This means that all other departments are often prioritizing tasks for smartphoneshoesjes.nl and we, as Brand Commerce, have to pull more strings to get things done.

Week 7 and 8

Hi again, this week I am covering two weeks as week 7 was a very short week due to the holiday ‘Kingsday’ and a team building day. The last two weeks I experienced that there are not many people in my department who are an expert with Excel, even though a program we use very often. I noticed that there are 2/3 people who are mainly working on all excel related tasks which are a bit more complicated than the usual Excel functions everyone knows how to use. When I talked with some colleagues they also explained me that there were not a lot of people in their previous jobs who were an expert in Excel. I understand now that is very important that I complete my excel course and that I keep improving myself on this matter, as it can be seen as a personal USP in the future. At the moment I think I am decent in Excel, but there is still some space for improvement.

During these weeks I also felt more comfortable discuss my own thoughts on certain aspects with colleagues and my manager and I luckily also felt that they valued my input. I think I am someone who is very social and I have no issues starting conversations. However, when I am in a professional setting I tend to be a bit more on the background. As the weeks are going by I have more and more the feeling that my colleagues treat me more as a colleague than as a intern. An example of were I get this feeling from is when I had a meeting with my manager about a project I a working on. And at the end of the meeting we had a really good conversation about how we can implement my findings in current revenue streams and he was going to include our thoughts in the next managerial meeting.

Week 9

This week we worked a lot on client acquisition and I spent a considerable amount of time on potential customers in France and how we can exploit our USPs so that we will become interesting enough for those customers. As I mentioned in other blogs, French businesses are often very sceptic in making business deals with foreign businesses, especially when they have the feeling that French businesses can offer the same products and services as us. So I worked this week on what our specific USPs are and how those differ from French businesses, as it very important that we can offer something different. Think of faster delivery time, better personal service, or maybe a broader product catalogue. What I discovered that the strongest point for Brand Commerce is their personal service and involved account managers. I will write more about these USPs and recommendation in my PLO portfolio of course.

At the end of the week we had an informal party at the office, with almost everyone attending. So I am talking about an estimated 250 people. It was for me a first time I was at an office party of this scale, and I noticed immediately that, even though it was an informal party, people were talking a lot about business and I got many questions about my internship. I have to say, I did not really expect it to be so ‘professional’ as well and I struggled a bit finding a good balance between staying professional and having fun. In this industry, working in a B2B company, I realized that business deals are not always done between working hours and a lot of business deals are based on social connections and trust. This is something I have to get used to, because we are not taught at school on how to approach potential partners and in what way to use your social skills. This made me realize how important it is to have such an internship and see how professionals are dealing with these matters.

Week 10

So starting with a little recap, as I am now 2 and a half months in my internship and starting my last month. Overall it’s going better than expected, I really like my colleagues and I am also building personal relations with them. Which also helps my work as they are more likely to help me with certain aspects. My projects are going very well and I mostly get good feedback on my work, and also just the daily activities are not something I hate doing and it’s actually quite interesting to see how everything operates. Points of attention? I still struggle with some technological knowledge for some things I work on, and I find it difficult to address the right persons to help me with this.

I had a very interesting phone call Tuesday with a potential client which I like to talk about. I talked with a big French and Belgian reseller for hardware if they would be interested to position our accessories on their website. This would be a big opportunity for us as it will open up a way into the French market and also open up opportunities to start a network for other revenue streams. I did the meeting with a colleague of mine and got the time to ask for some feedback after. I did this for two reasons. First being, of course, to implement this in my PLO portfolio and get a clear overview of progress and my level of professional communication. Second one, being more personal, to see if these kinds of meetings and conversations suits me and where I have to improve. As feedback, I heard that I listen very well, ask the right questions and show that I understand what they talk about. As progressive feedback I heard that I should try to make more observation instead of mostly asking questions and not being afraid to give an other opinion. I believe this really depends on your internship, as some companies really want you to ‘behave as an intern’ and mostly learn and ask questions.

Week 11 and 12

In the middle of ‘national holiday season’ so last week was again a short one. I want to write this week about something what happened on Monday. I worked with a colleague of mine, who is responsible for the international accounts, on some potential clients and putting together an offer where they were interested in. I worked a lot of time that day on calling the clients, e-mail contacts etcetera. At the end of the day, just before I wanted to go home, he asked If I could take a look and he told me that one of the potential clients was probably a swindler. He was on the blink of sending the offer worth around ten thousand dollars, and just did some double checking. As I already called with that man twice that day and sent multiple emails, I was a bit disappointed in myself that I did not see it coming before. Because, after re-reading the mails and think about what the ‘client’ said on the phone, you could have seen it a little bit coming. At the end, I learned from it. It showed me that also in this industry, were you solely work with other companies, you have to be cautious. We could have a laugh about it after but it was kind of annoying I lost a couple of hours for nothing at the end.

I read afterwards, that this way of scamming is a known and effective way in France. This is a part which is different from the Netherlands and something we have to take a look in. We, as a Dutch company, were not aware of this. And if this didn’t happen we wouldn’t be aware of it right now. So somewhere it is a good thing it happened before are integrated in the French market with daily contacts and orders coming from France.

Week 13

Now that my Internship is almost coming to an end, I want to use this weeks blog to write a bit about time management. Time management is one of main points of attention and also one of the points I would try to improve during my internship. Working mainly on researching topics and projects I was sure that this would be an ideal place to improve my time management skills, as I will be working towards deadlines in a professional workplace. I read the book Getting Things Done by David Allen as part of my PLP, and I was a bit sceptical about how the book would help me. And after I read it, there are still some parts which I find a bit ‘dreamy’. However, there are also a many parts who helped me put things in perspective and worked as a sort of step-by-step plan for projects and other deliverables. I used those guidelines for my internship, but also for things I had to do at home, for example. For example, I try now to immediately finish smaller tasks when they show up and making a plan right away for bigger deliverables. Finishing smaller tasks immediately means it won’t be standing in the way after and how longer you wait how more time-consuming the task will be. A good quote consisting this information is: ‘It’s a waste of time and energy to keep thinking of something you make no progress on’. How are you guys on time management?

Week 14 and 15

Last two weeks of my Internship here at Brand Commerce and to give already a very global conclusion here in the blog; I give it a 7 out of 10. And don’t get me wrong, a 7 out of 10 is very good but it means there is still room for improvement. One of those points can be that I would be integrated a bit more in the first weeks here, this would result in me understanding more about the daily activities and the most important forces for Brand Commerce. After a couple of weeks this luckily got a lot better. Furthermore, and I know I shouldn’t be complaining about this, but it got a bit annoying to be travelling everyday two hours in total. Note to self to find something closer next time. Because I was working on the international side of the company, I was not involved with al 12 colleagues. I was mainly working with 5 people, what I actually found quite nice to have a smaller group. I would not work here in the future at the end, but as an internship it was very nice,

To finalize this blog for good, I want to finish with a story of this week. As you guys maybe remember, I wrote in one of my first weekly blogs about the fact that the team is very dependent on one person and a intern fixing everything related to back-office and other administrative tasks. I wrote that things could fall apart if those people wouldn’t be around for example. Well, I think I can look into the future because part of my prediction came true this week. Our back-office employee is three weeks on holiday now, and even tough she transferred all important information to the rest of the team, it is very clear that everything doesn’t go as effective as before. Offers are not processed correctly and not every question from clients can be answered correctly. I think this is a danger of sales oriented departments with solely account managers, everyone is responsible for their own accounts but when the one who is responsible for process at the back is not present, everything kinda falls apart. This is also a good point for me to write about for some recommendations about the internal management structure. I hope you guys finished your internship on a positive note and I look forward to read your stories.