A Day in the Life of an Application Enterprise Architect

My name is Stuart Allen and I am an Enterprise Architect for Applications at Acora. I have been part of the team for 14 years, however, I originally started my career here as a Pegasus Opera consultant. However, this isn’t where my career began. After studying Financial Accounting and Computing at A Level, I bypassed university and landed my first proper job at a small business that’s specialised in software for the glass and double-glazing industry. The software was designed to help manufacture Windows, as well as produce billing and thus linking into accounting software like Pegasus Senior or Pegasus Opera or Sage. The business sold and deployed Pegasus Senior and Pegasus Opera, so I was able to work on that as well. This led me to my role as a Pegasus Opera consultant at Acora. I quickly started working on Dynamics NAV and, as the team was smaller, I turned my hand to consulting, supporting and development roles.

My Job Role: Supporting Customers

Demoing the software

As an Enterprise Architect at Acora my main role is to provide technical support to the sales team to ensure that we can Sell NAV and CRM to new and existing customers. This means that I create and maintain all of the demo environments that we use. I will run all of the demonstrations that we do, which usually means that I will need to tailor the demo to fit the customer requirement including customising NAV.

Troubleshooting

Often, I’m also used in a troubleshooting role, where a customer or prospect is having issues. I will be able to analyse what has happened and provide the best solution on how to fix the complication.

Knowledge sharing

Being a senior member of the team, I am also responsible for sharing knowledge to the other team members, usually via a series of webinars. I also get a sneak peek at all the latest technology when it’s released! I then make a decision as to whether we should sell it. If we do decide to take the product on I’m responsible for presenting it to our customers either via an event or series of webinars.

Job highlights

To many, my job role sounds incredibly varied, but this is what keeps it engaging. Whilst it can be challenging as, typically, everything is needed yesterday, there are some serious highlights. Nothing is more satisfying than meeting our customers, understanding their problems and providing solutions to fix them. At the end of my day I will often look over everything that has been achieved since the morning. I will then prep appropriately for the next day to ensure I can be off to a running start.