FastTrack Introduces New Business As Usual Team

As part of FastTrack’s commitment to improve customer service, a new Business As Usual team has been established with the sole task to keep things running smoothly day-to-day. FastTrack sat down with BAU team leader David Moffat to learn more about how his years of experience have led him to where he is now, creating a more positive experience for FastTrack customers.

FastTrack: Hi David, thanks for chatting with us. What’s been your past work experience and how have you leveraged this at FastTrack?

David Moffat: I did a double degree at university, studying Accounting and Information Technology. I ended up working for a Chartered Accounting firm, in the early days of businesses embracing computers. We sold a program called CBA, which is an ERP system – and at one stage we had over 20,000 clients, which was massive, for the day. The firm sold and supported that, as well as doing customisations.

From there I worked for Linfox, not in a programming role, but more helping fix their software they were using at the time – moving around Australia, training people, teaching people how the software worked, and what to do when it didn’t. After a few years I took on responsibility for their accounting system.

After that, I went to work for another software company that worked with CBA in the past but had moved on to a program called Epicor. This was an interesting role – I had one point where I spent 12 weeks in Chicago making code work and eating my lunch at the same diner every day, which was an exciting job for a young developer!

The next step was Greentree, which also had been involved with CBA. I’ve only ever worked for a dealer, as dealers sell all of Epicor, Greentree and CBA. My expertise is talking to real people, finding what their problems are and making things work for them – which I’ve been able to bring to FastTrack. I have a business background, after all. As an aside, I knew about CBA in the first place as my parents had a small business that sold sleeping bags, so since high school I’ve been working with and customising CBA.

FT: How long have you been coding for?

DM: I’ve been in and out of coding roles for close to 30 years.

FT: How would you describe the Business As Usual Team?

DM: We find short and long-term solutions to make life easier for customers in a way that is as efficient as possible – meaning our customers can get back to work, sooner.

What process will you go through to assist a customer?

DM: Our first challenge is to make sure we understand what the actual problem is. Customers will share the symptoms they face with our customer support team; we then work in the background to identify the underlying cause and ensure we can fix it as quickly as possible. We have a great team that look at things differently and can think about your problem differently – meaning they’re able to come up with a perfectly reasonable solution, fast.

With the latest release (V11.36), there’s a host of changes going on there – how do you go about evaluating what will and won’t make a release?

DM: It’s a question of looking at the data and getting customer feedback. As a business we have recently introduced a new problem management process with the Customer Support team. So we look at this problem management data, the customer support data, and talk to our Customer Support team and Account Managers to see what’s been mentioned the most times.

We look to prioritise anything that causes pain today based on severity and impact.

I think everyone will appreciate the latest release with all its fixes. I think there’s a substantial, positive difference and hopefully clients notice it, as we’re here to make their lives easier!

What’s your vision for the Business As Usual team?

DM: Given the dynamic nature of SaaS software, there’s always going to be problems, there’s always going to be challenges. There’s never going to be a utopia where everything is fixed but the key is to minimise this risk, and fix things as quickly as possible.

We want a tighter release cycle so we can get a fix out there quicker – so that things become fairly instant for customers. That’s my vision for the team.

How can customers contribute to future maintenance releases?

DM: Always log a problem with the customer support team. I work closely with the customer support team to work out where there’s commonality within people’s problems, and to come up with a solution. We feed off what’s coming through customer service and use that as the basis for our releases.

What drew you to FastTrack?

DM: At the end of the day, real people have real problems and I enjoy problem-solving. It’s challenging, it makes a difference and we’re constantly achieving things behind the scenes.

Finally, tell us a bit about yourself!

DM: I have 15-year-old twins – which keeps me very busy. They both love sport, so a lot of my time on the weekend is spent watching them play – on Sunday I watched them play footy for school, and then club footy, which certainly keeps me on my toes!

I’m also a cyclist, which helps with exercise on the weekends. I did 60 kms on Sunday morning, before running around as water carrier at the footy, which meant I was exhausted Sunday night. That’s life, though!