inCase Insight: Andrew Kirkham
Andrew joined inCase in January as Chief Technology Officer and is already an integral cog in the inCase machine. Andrew uses his extensive knowledge of legal technology and systems to oversee all of our integrations and has developed great relationships with our clients, often advising on technical queries. Andrew leads our team of developers and is also responsible for our apps, maintaining current apps as well as developing new features all the time. Outside of the office, Andrew loves to spend time with his wife Chun and his son Leo. Andrew is also a passionate Liverpool supporter which greatly benefits the office, as we now all firmly believe that this is inCase’s year.
Andrew talks us through his career so far…
Could you tell us a bit about your previous experience?
I’ve been very fortunate in my career to be in the right place at the right time to be able to work with some incredible people and businesses. Following a pretty circuitous route through higher education and some very interesting work with Lee & Allen Consulting in London and New York, I caught a break joining a small washing machine sales company in Bolton called DRL. I think there were only 30-odd people there when I joined and it was a very small operation but with some incredibly ambitious and smart owners. Over the 9 years I was there we turned it into the international brand behemoth that is ao.com. My teams built pretty much everything in-house as we had no significant funding but delivering innovation in customer service, supply chain and logistics and web sales was absolutely key to our growth. I used to get pretty nervous when then CEO, John Roberts, was going on holiday because he’d come back with two suitcases full of ideas and he’d be like: “Can you get this, this and this done by yesterday?” It wasn’t really a question! But we never ran out of ideas. We were never stuck. And it was all in the pursuit of giving the best customer experience imaginable and I Ioved it.
What was the proudest moment of your career?
Profile-wise, I think around the time when I was leaving AO, we had the second major Black Friday event with significant profile in the UK. AO went on to complete its highest ever trading day that day (and it was HUGE!) and happily all of our systems which had been carefully engineered to perform at high volume – all the way from the websites, inventory and logistics to the call centre all performed exceptionally well while our competitors were all struggling and turning away business. On a more personal level, there are the many moments when people I’ve hired have left me to go and take on other challenges but have made the time privately to say “thank you”. I always invest in my people and I expect them to invest in themselves just as much. My teams will always get through more work than anyone thinks is possible and will always grow their experience quickly as we push and stretch ourselves outside our comfort zones. Life’s too short to plod along when there is so much fun and learning to be had!
What do you want to achieve at inCase?
inCase has a very similar feel to the early days of my career. There’s a market that is ripe for innovation and needs to dramatically improve its customer service offering; we’ve got an incredibly ambitious and insightful CEO who can simplify the most complicated of challenges; and we’ve got a smart team who are dedicated to improving our customers’ businesses and making them happy. With inCase, my ambition is to create a platform that delivers the world’s best communication experience for business. My teams and I are well on our way to achieving that!
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-kirkham-0680815/
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