My name is Sean Murphy and I have just completed my 3rd year of Business and Economics at Trinity College Dublin. For the past 6 weeks, to complete an internship requirement for my degree, I have been working at Big Red Book & Big Red Cloud.
My first role within the company was to get in contact with Big Red Book users and provide them with technical support. This support was mainly based around helping users get updated to the newest version of Big Red Book’s accounting software. This position meant that I spent a lot of time speaking on the phone to customers which allowed me to develop my communication skills and gain direct feedback from them about the product.
After this, I began working within the marketing department. I had the opportunity to work with some marketing tools that I had never come across before. For example, I used Unbounce to create different landing pages to help improve the conversion rate of people visiting the Big Red Cloud and Big Red Book websites. I also worked with Google AdWords to increase the flow of visitors to the websites. My favourite task that I had been assigned was to create several 15-30 second advertisements that Big Red Cloud could use for their video campaigns. For this, I used Biteable which is an easy-to-use video maker and it’s definitely one that I will be using again!
Last summer I was as an intern at Deloitte, Dublin. It is interesting to compare my experience in a big firm like Deloitte to a smaller company such as the Big Red Cloud. In Deloitte, you worked on an office floor that was dedicated to the department that you were in. In my case, it was consulting, and everything happening around me was consulting based. Sometimes it would be easy to forget that we were only a segment of the overall company and that there was so much more happening behind the scenes.
In the Big Red Cloud, you can see exactly how all the departments of the business work in sync and complement one another. Each department works side by side on the same office floor. It begins with the coders and the developers who create the accounting software product, the marketing team then places the product into the eyes of the potential users, the sales team sell the product and the support team help with any issues that the users might have. It demonstrates clearly how every department within a business is interconnected and how it is important to communicate between departments and to keep goals aligned.
The work environment and culture at Big Red Cloud is something that really stood out for me. From day one everyone was accommodating and friendly. There was always a good sense of comradery amongst one another in the office and I found that there was no power distance among the employees and the senior members of staff. Even in my short time of working here, there was a Summer BBQ and a lunch outing to celebrate Big Red Cloud’s 4th Birthday. This says a lot about the care that the management have for their employees and this is reciprocated through hard work by the staff.
To add to this, anyone is welcome to call into the management team’s offices with a question. An example of this was that Marc O’Dwyer (CEO), Paraic Nolan (Director) and James Caffrey (CFO) all gave me a generous amount of their time to ask them questions regarding career paths and advice. These chats were very insightful and have given me a clearer idea of what I want to work towards in the future. I thoroughly enjoyed my internship at Big Red Cloud.
