Conexiom Voices: Senior Manager, SaaS Operations Andreas Freyvogel Ensures Conexiom Maintains High Quality of Service

Living in Vancouver, British Columbia, with his wife Nathalie and daughter Sophie, Andreas Freyvogel started working at Conexiom in January 2000.

Andreas was one of the first 20 employees and remembers when the entire company could sit at one table for a meal together. Now, Conexiom consists of more than 200 employees, half of which were hired in 2020.

In this Q&A, Andreas explains how Conexiom’s superb production services are a byproduct of taking the time to understand customers’ requirements and desired business outcomes.

 

How do you define Software as a Service (SaaS)?

If you ask 100 people, you will get 100 answers, but when I think of SaaS, it’s offering a global service which is available at anytime from anywhere. Conexiom offers manufacturers and distributors a valuable SaaS service that doesn’t require any local installation, and there’s nothing to maintain. The Conexiom solution is an always-available, IT-light platform.

What are the SaaS Operations teams responsible for?

As the senior manager, I lead the SaaS Operations teams, which are responsible for monitoring, maintaining, optimizing, and improving our production services.

I lead three teams: Application Support, Application Management, and Data Management.

I’m accountable for making sure these teams acquire the information they need to provide effective and timely support. Typically, I’ll roll up my sleeves and help whenever and wherever I can.

I also ensure that any production changes are implemented safely and consistently. The goal is to ensure the evolution of our SaaS environments by designing and building a highly scalable, globally deployed infrastructure.

My department works with other business units within the company and, when needed, we work with customers to help troubleshoot issues or discuss new business needs that Conexiom can help automate.

At Conexiom, we treat every customer with the highest priority. No matter the reason for a customer to reach out, we ensure the issue is expediently and professionally handled.

How is your department involved in new product releases?

When the Product team gives final approval for a new release, they share that information with my teams. I review the technical documentation, find out what’s new and what’s changed, and if any changes require new resources. I also look at what’s involved with an upgrade, because some might require architectural changes.

Once I know what is involved, I dive into the business requirements on behalf of the customer. Although my department works more on the technical aspect of Conexiom, I have a background in hospitality and sales. This has led me to ensure we support the end customer and fulfill their business needs first and foremost. I find, to best serve our customers, we need to understand the dependencies and their specific business requirements.

I have a background in hospitality and sales. This has led me to ensure we support the end customer and fulfill their business needs first and foremost.

With your background in hospitality and sales, you seem to natively think about the customer and the usability of Conexiom.

Since I started my career in customer service, I will always consider the impact to our customers first while troubleshooting or when rolling out upgrades.

One of my mentors had a sticker in his office that said, “Seek first to understand and then to be understood.” That’s how I approach my role:

1. What do the customers want? 
2. What are their business requirements?  
3. Why are they asking Conexiom for this fix/new feature?

 

 Understanding the ultimate goal of a customer’s request is important before starting any project.

My team serves primarily on the backend. Our role is to modify, upgrade, or roll out a feature to improve our service or provide new functionality. One thing I emphasize to my team is that we are not to do anything until we actually understand the requirements. Because you can spend hours building something based on the limited information you have, present it to a customer, and have the customer say, “That’s nice, but that’s not exactly what I needed.”

What do you find to be the key to Conexiom’s 5-star ratings on review sites like G2 and Capterra?

Conexiom has great tech. And it is so configurable. We can automate the processing of any type of document. But in my opinion, what makes Conexiom truly valuable and unique are its troops—the teams.

The power of Conexiom is that we can fit into almost any procedure to allow document automation without impacting changes for our customers or their customers.

What is so special about Conexiom is that we truly understand our customers’ business and what they are looking to achieve. If you look at the Conexiom reviews, you’ll see many comments surrounding the customer success team and the configuration team/developers. We truly build a relationship with our customers and strive to deliver a technology that exceeds their desired business objectives.

What about Conexiom makes you love logging into work each morning?

This is an exciting time at Conexiom. You can feel the momentum. You can feel that it’s growing. And we’re becoming more mature as a company.

We offer a unique solution to manual invoice- and sales-order processing that guarantees 100% data accuracy and delivers touchless document processing.

Also, we have an amazing team. For example, a while back, there was an incident that was impacting the service. My team was troubleshooting the issue, and during that time, we had people from Sales, Engineering, and other teams reaching out to ask, “How can I help?.” Not every company works cross-functionally like that.

 

In the next Conexiom Voices blog, we’ll hear how Lead Software Architect Chris Pirvu guides Conexiom’s purpose-built technology to customer needs.

 

Hear More Conexiom Voices: 

Senior Manager, IT Operations Peter Pacuch Streamlines Processes to Maintain Customer Trust

Lead Software Architect Chris Pirvu Guides Conexiom’s “Purpose-Built” Technology 

Senior Manager, SaaS Operations Andreas Freyvogel Ensures Conexiom Maintains High Quality of Service 

Software Developer Paz Gonzalez Provides Behind-the-Scenes Insight into Conexiom’s Base Automation Solution  

Product Manager Paloma Scheck Leads Conexiom’s Apps Within Salesforce 

Product Manager Conor Lees Gives Us Something to Look Forward To—The Partner Portal Release 

VP of Software Development Will Anderson Explains ML and AI in a Way Non-Techies Will Understand 

EVP of Product Management Ricardo Craft Ensures Conexiom Delivers 100% Data Accuracy