MEET THE STAFF - Tom Hawkins

Hello! My name is Tom Hawkins. I work in the Shannon office based on the west coast of Ireland. There is a growing team of workers here which is a big change from when I started in 2012 when the Irish team consisted of just Roger Leyden in sales and I was providing customer support. Working independently like this for B2BGateway was challenging, but I have seen significant process improvements, new business and expansion which have led to a much bigger team now based in our Irish offices. As a result, this has brought about its own rewards, particularly at the times when we see improvements and business strengths develop from the Irish office.

I am from Galway, further North on the Irish west coast than the Shannon office. I completed college in the University of Limerick. Since then I have worked in jobs with great variety. These gave me the chance to work in various countries and experience different working perspectives in these places. This has helped with supporting EU clients, many of whom are using our systems to bridge their business across the ocean to their US trading partners.

Hobbies/Interests
Coming from Galway I cannot avoid but be interested in certain sports such as hurling and horse racing which are traditional to the area. There is a week-long horse racing annual festival in July which the Galway summers revolve around. Being a Galway hurling supporter has many ups and downs, with few ups recently. However, the beating heart of hurling is at a parish and village level so there was nowhere better to be on St Patrick's Day in 2013 when my home club, St. Thomas hurling club, won the premier hurling competition, the All Ireland Club hurling final, quite a feat for a small community with a few hundred people. At the moment I am hoping the Connacht rugby team can close their season with their first international silverware. Typically for the west of Ireland, someone, in this case the coach Pat Lam lives locally so it's easy to feel part of a sporting community.
However I keep fit with other sports. I play 5-a side soccer regularly, cycle regularly - the west coast of Ireland is great for cycling but you need a rain plan for the very changeable weather.
Probably due to the wet weather, like so many more people here I travel a lot, sometimes if only for warm sunny weather. Travel has brought me throughout Europe, to Africa and the Americas. I think it's important to maintain fitness as it enhances your holiday options when travelling.

Music
I passed up a chance to see Bob Dylan in concert to see a Galway band, The Saw Doctors, on another stage at the same festival. So, I'll stop talking about music now...

Favourite Food
It's gotta be Supermac's finest after a couple of Guinness.

Approach to work
Because we have a smaller office in Ireland, I have found that we are more prone to cycles in work so I find it important to keep on top of work queues and plan as much in advance. We deal with many more standards in Europe so the customisation we are required to do takes much more testing than we can sometimes plan for in advance. This adds challenges to work but it's important to realise it's a nature of customisation and not to get stressed about it.

What occasionally happens is we get contacted by a client with a business critical problem. When this happens, we realise just how important our systems are to clients, responding to these problems with efficiency really builds up client relationships. Often a unique technical problem for a client is something we have experience with before and can resolve . The sound of relief from a client when we can help to resolve their problem is often better than any thanks (but not better than the beer sent by a client once as thanks).

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