In Chamber Shoes - Digital Transformation Team

This week the digital transformation team have shared their experience behind the scenes of the launch of the new Chamber brand and this brand new website.  Read below to see what each member of the team got up to on the week of launch!

Monday 19th July - Alison Henderson

So, after a huge amount of work by the Chamber’s Digital Transformation Team and mtc, we’re all starting this week in anticipation of the new website & member dashboard go-live! 
 
I’m keeping one eye on that project while my Monday consists of meetings about Circular Tayside business support, a short-life working group we’re working on to examine the difficulties businesses are facing at the moment in recruiting, a discussion with the Netherlands-British Chamber of Commerce about their support for our upcoming Virtual Trade mission, and the day finishes with a meeting with one of our newer Directors to catch up and make sure they have all the information they need. 
 
I’m incredibly proud of the work that the team at the Chamber does to support businesses – we’ve got such a breadth of services that we offer, and in the coming year we’ll be looking at key themes: Net Zero; Future Skills; Digital Innovation and the Future of Workplaces. 
 
I’m excited to get our Board, Members and Team all working to support businesses as we look to the future. 

Tuesday 20th July - Glen Kelly

Today is the day before we are launching our new website and brand, and I have spent the day making sure everything is going to be ready for us to help all of our members to enable their account.  I kicked off the day with a meeting to discuss a new process for distributing new membership certificates, complete with our updated brand.  I then took time to look back through the last year of data on our CRM to identify members who have attended events, taken part in our In Your Shoes blog and submitted news and events as these are the members that would get the most out of the new dashboard.  After lunch I did some training on our LMS system to learn the Ins and Outs of our ‘Live Chat’ function on the new website so I would be ready to help with any queries I will get tomorrow.          

Wednesday 21st July - Ross Barty

Today was quite emotional - for two reasons. 
 
Firstly, today was my first proper day of working back in our office for nearly 18 months! It was so good to finally meet some of my new colleagues in real life as well as getting a bit of chat over coffee and lunch. My first achievement of the day was that I had so far successfully avoided splitting the backside of my nice suit trousers – this had been playing on my mind since leaving home this morning!    
 
And secondly, today is also NEW WEBSITE & BRAND LAUNCH DAY! Believe it or not, this too was very emotional! Probably even more so than being back in the office. This project has been over 12 months in the making and to see the new site with all its cool new features launch was really satisfying. We nervously pressed the big red button to switch off the old site and turn on the new but there was nothing to fear. Our new site was up and running on schedule and we were totally blown away by the positive feedback across social media.  
 
Typically, I’m not a very emotional guy but today was different!   

Thursday 22 July - Sarah Young

It’s the morning after the night before and I start it with an early run, the digital transformation has been such a big project that even though we’ve launched I know it’ll not be an early finish tonight.

I’m expecting to come into a barrage of emails and missed live chats bringing up issues with the website, members enabling their accounts………… I mean these things don’t ever really go that smoothly do they but…………… there is nothing to report when I get to my desk at 9am, phew!

I catch up with some of the team on the new benefits available to members on the website before heading off to meet Kim from Heritage Portfolio who manage Tatha Restaurant at V&A Dundee. We discuss the opportunities available to host in person events and I leave excited to finally be looking at opportunities for our members to connect in person.

Back at the office I start preparing for the tasks and responsibilities I need to hand over to colleagues before I head off on annual leave for 2 weeks tomorrow. Before I know it the office is quiet and everyone else has gone home for the day, I should probably do the same!

Friday 23rd July - Vince Mitchell

It’s an office day. Hybrid working means our team meetings consist of some in the office and those working from home transform into massive, 6ft faces on a projector screen.  
After some cake (breakfast), I contemplate correcting data – I have some international stuff to pick up so I just tell the computer to fix this data for me. It’s customs day (it’s a bit like leg day) so I need to stretch into International for a wee bit to cover George. Best thing about customs is the clients (best thing about anything International really).  
After coffee (lunch) it’s time to look at data analytics, specifically the Chamber’s new KPI dashboard. Write some SQL, scratch my head over Twitter’s API then move onto helping Gemma B with the new Take a Seat podcast thingy that’ll be ready end of August.