Hired directly by the company and reporting directly to the owner
From November 1, 2015
Until August 1, 2019
How did I get to this job
While working for Vodafone I decided to take my own path. When I was preparing everything, training to undertake without making the mistakes of the past and looking for a business plan with few risks. In the middle of that maelstrom of endless courses, documents and tables I received the call from the CEO of Amigo Informatico to make the big offer.
Work description
In this work I changed a little the vision that I had of my work, becoming a problem solver, we could say that my work was reduced to that, to solve the problems of my clients. But my work was divided into 4 blocks
- Keep customers
- Staff pick
- Search for new solutions
- Process the processes
- System design
- Train technicians
- Be the highest level of knowledge
- Economic management
- Supplier management.
Keep customers
The goal was simple, not losing any customers. And how did we do it? Easy, not let the client have computer problems. This was a lot of challenges. since each client has a different technology and problem. There was nothing standard and much less something we could take advantage of from one customer to another. Which was one of my biggest professional challenges, serving more than 100 clients with different specifications and with a clear service.
Amigo Informatico is not a cheap service company, it is more expensive for the Spanish market standard. But our clients did not know how to leave because we gave them a unique value, the total carefreeness of their computing, the service we sold was that the user had the same experience as turning on the light. You hit the switch and it just works. And doing this with all these customers and with such disparate systems was definitely crazy.
Our server goes a little beyond SLAs, agreements and contracts. Our clients are friends, although not when they enter, if they end up being during the course of time. And the service we provide is much closer than normal, which has made me grow in more areas apart from purely technical.
We have clients in all sectors, from medical centers that treat celebrities (daily attacks numbers to try to find out who operates from what) to restaurants and event rooms (where WiFi is more important than the quality of food). The sectors with which we have worked are:
- Doctors (Agreement with the Spanish medical school)
- Clinics
- Dental
- High performance sports maintenance
- Stetic
- Banking
- Debt Collection Agencies
- Bank intermediaries
- Banking Information Development
- Real estate
- Sale to the public
- Luxury sale
- Sale of buildings
- Schools
- Foundations
- Art Galeries
- Bars and restaurants
- Concert halls
- Venues for events
- Government
- Coaching agency
- Naval
- Tax advisors
- Lawyers
- Private detectives
- Car industry
- Stores
- Factories
Among the clients, it is worth mentioning:
A music school
With hundreds of students a year and professors of the highest prestige. With more than 0.5 Pb in videos of master classes.
We have made an evolution of their systems, improved backup and uploaded a large part of their content to the cloud.
A banking company
With more than 50 critical servers that we have virtuality, in obsolete environments Windows 2000, 2003, versions of the IIS era. We have adapted all this to guarantee the security and integrity of the systems
A telecommunications multinational
We went to London to segregate their system from a company they previously collaborated with. An exciting project where we work with very critical systems and lots of resources. Segregation carried part of network work and part of servers.
Brand bond deployment
We have worked with several chains for deployment of facilities and offices. An exciting job that requires a millimeter coordination of many companies.
Photo retouching company
A leading company in Spain with more than 100 employees dedicated exclusively to photo retouching. A challenge for networks and storage. Where we go from transfer rates of 30 and 40 mb / s to more than 700 mb / s.
Apple
Many customers referred by Apple with the most complex facilities
Select staff
No doubt what I liked least about my job, the search for people suitable for work, negotiate with them salaries and fire them when they did not finish fitting. Amigo Informatico is a very fun company but requires a very low multidisciplinary technical profile, which also loves his work … because otherwise it is impossible to dedicate yourself to this level of disparate technologies. Try to innovate in this field, with various techniques, training in human resources, we hire human resources experts to help us.
In the end, what worked for us was to hire, try a season and fire more than 80% we hired. Although the resulting equipment is excellent, it was a personal burden that I did not like to carry. Most of the people she hired had to be fired, breaking illusions, dreams and hopes. And as clear as I explained in the initial processes I broke a little inside each dismissal.
Search for new solutions
Although the part of human resources disliked this part a little, the search for solutions illuminated my days. On the one hand we had new demands from our clients or new clients, on the other, audits where new demands came out and a live market that does not stop being renewed. For one or the other I was a lot of time a day searching, informing myself and studying new technologies. At this stage I have grown professionally more than in all previous years, I am being able to see, understand and explain things that were previously unattainable. Today there is no technology with which I do not dare. I am convinced that when I look back in a few years this point will be one of those that have been decisive in my life.
Process procedures
Sounds boring, and I don’t think it’s the funniest part of my job, but the most profitable. When I could devote hours to this my subsequent days will improve significantly. Both to proceed with simple tasks, thus simplifying the needs of technicians (and facilitating the selection process). How to proceed with complex tasks that allowed us to reduce intervention times. The best example was the procedure of mail migrations, a practically artisanal work, full of failures and uncertainty so that the commercial part could ensure results to a flat process that made technicians less prepared. We reduced migration times and the number of migrations we could perform.
System design
Another one of the things that made my existence happy… designing systems. Some from scratch, others based on what there was and a lot of migration to the cloud with hybrid systems, Las2Lan networks. Here I have learned a lot from networks, I thought I knew a lot until I started balancing networks, creating contingency systems and giving a lot of load to Lan2Lan networks, where I have been finding different bottlenecks and have solved them all. Safety has been another important section of these designs. Especially with the growth of spaces and the constant threats of cryptoviruses or how the evolutions of WiFi networks and the needs to integrate systems on domestic WANs.
Train technicians
This was a novelty, both doing it and discovering how much I liked it. I never expected that I would like to teach and train people. It has been a fantastic experience, we have trained our technicians and we have offered it as a server for other companies, where we have been able to design much more robust systems and train their technicians to keep it without problems. Both on the part of Apple, with technologies such as Mikrotik, VmWare, MDMs, etc …
Be the highest level of knowledge
This point was put in the contract, and I did not understand. It is more try to eliminate it at all costs. How wounded he was! Not only did I get to learn a lot, as I have explained before, but I have met many people, very good people in their field. When something skips our limits we have hired the greatest expert in that problem. But far from giving him the problem and disregarding me, I got involved in the solutions, trying to help and support the expert.
The result, of the knowledge of these experts I had crumbs. Migas with which I have been able to build more knowing, with which I have been able to train and proceed. Although it has been a problem for my departure at Amigo Informatico, it was certainly a great decision of my CEO since we have improved a lot thanks to this point.
Economic management
Obviously all the economic management of projects and systems management fell on me. And while I have had to support this part a lot about other people, the results have been brilliant. We have improved margins and increased turnover year after year by more than 30%
Supplier Management
Here is another point where I did not expect to learn much, I have managed suppliers all my life, but the peculiar way of working of Amigo Informatico has made this much closer to them and most have become friends, I have learned to get more in the place of the supplier instead of taking the role of “Demands, demands, demands”
Why I left?
For love.
My wife wanted to move to the United States for a while and I write these lines from Kansas. I know that when I return to Spain I have a place in Amigo Informatico (Not as technical director, since my substitute is very good) But for now I have three years to devote myself to other things.
However, I still collaborate with them, because I enjoy it