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“As an employee, you have a lot of freedom here”
“I just love coming into the office every day, I work in a great department with amazing colleagues. I am a real 'people person'. Working at home every day would drive me mad! Fancom is an employer that believes in freedom of choice and flexibility. I can decide how to allocate my 32 hours over the week, on condition there are enough people to staff the department and that you achieve your targets, of course."
Angelique Houben works at the Customer Fulfilment department at Fancom, and she has a long history at the company: “Next year will be my 25th jubilee at Fancom. I started working at administration for a few years, then worked part-time as one of the receptionists before joining Customer Fulfilment. I am there with three colleagues who do the same work, and our purchasing and production planning, article management and panel engineering. We receive all the orders by email or by phone and nowadays through the F-Quote platform. That is a quotation configuration program, that enables quotes to be converted into orders at the push of a button. It removes a lot of manual input from the process."
What does the Customer Fulfilment Department do?
“We plan the orders together with the purchasing and production planning team and take current orders into account to avoid unnecessary transport costs. We arrange transport and all the necessary documents if the order has to be exported. I mainly work with countries in the eastern part of the world, but the Netherlands and Europe are also my responsibility. I am in daily contact with customers, transporters and customs officials, but the chamber of commerce and embassies are also regularly on the list too. Until the order leaves the premises."
“It’s an advantage that I like to start work early. My customers in the east are usually still at work. I particularly enjoy the diversity of the many countries I work with. Exporting to Australia is always a smooth process and Australians are very pleasant to work with. Egypt, on the other hand, is more complex. I sometimes get called ‘Mrs Cairo’, because I often have to sort problems out with that country. One order can be exported without any hiccups, another order can get stuck in customs for weeks."
What is a typical working day?
“The majority of my work is arranging the right export documents and handing the incoming email messages. That’s where the orders are sent to - but also where the issues are reported. So I try to keep on top of the email as well as I can, and make sure all the orders are properly processed in our LN system. Volume calculations are also an important part of my tasks, so that we - and our customers - can organise transport movements as well and cost-effectively as possible."
“The part of my job I like most is the element of surprise - no two days are the same and you never know what lies ahead. The nature of my job obviously has a common theme, but at the same time it’s very varied, with different issues such as shipments being held up at customs, for example. That makes my work interesting and so diverse, but also challenging."
“What makes my day a success is when I manage to do everything I promised. I always hope that others have the same attitude. If I have answered all of the questions from external and internal customers, and when all the day’s orders have been entered into our system correctly, I can go home with a feeling of satisfaction. It is always nice to get thank you notes from customers too, for example when you have helped them with complicated documents. Or if I managed to prioritise an urgent order or solve a problem with the customs authorities. That’s what you do it all for in the end!”
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