Dawn Byers, project manager of Asset Panda, in REEA’s office at Tîrgu-Mureș

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After the summer of 2015, when we were visited by Rex Kurzius, CEO of Asset Panda and one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the IT area of the U.S., this spring Dawn Byres, the project manager of Asset Panda, has paid us a visit. She met the development team she has been working with for several years now, visited the town and talked with Ibolya, our colleague from the Communication and PR team. We like face to face meetings, even if our job involves many hours working on the computer. 🙂

Welcome to Tîrgu-Mureș! Are you here for the first time?

Yes, it is my first time here and also in Romania. So I came to visit the Asset Panda team, as well as the teams which are working on the other projects. I’m working with Reea for several years now, and I really wanted to be able to put faces with names that I worked with all this time, so seeing everybody was the primary purpose, but then getting a chance to kinda sit down together and talk about some of the upcoming things on the different projects that we have going on.

Your colleague Rex has been last year in July at Reea. What did he tell you about his trip?

Yes he did. Actually, he really enjoyed also visiting and meeting everyone. Rex is an entrepreneur, and I think it was really interesting for him meeting Dan (CEO Reea), he had a lot of respectful things to say about Dan at his meeting, everything that he’s developed, and obviously meeting the teams that really developed Asset Panda and the people behind them. He was very supportive of me coming as well, he thought it was a great idea because he had such a great experience.

Do you like being here?

Yes. I have seen a little bit. Marius Pantea (team leader of the iOS team) showed me around the city, it’s beautiful. I really enjoy meeting everyone, hearing about the culture and everything.

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How is working with REEA’s specialists?

For us it works extremely well, your developers are extremely responsive anytime when we need anything, they are always there and very helpful. I think one of the biggest advantages to us in the US is that our time zones overlap perfectly. Most people have an 8 hours day and we really extended that at 16 hours day, instead of having to wait for stuff. For example, if we are doing the development in the US, the development team would work a day, they are done until the end of the day, but it would be the next day before could be verified, testing or the operation stuff, so you lose that day where for us works perfectly. It`s actually compressing. So what normally takes 2 days to program and develop only takes 1 day, because of the time zone. And the fact that the mornings overlap there’s still enough time to talk and give any questions and anything answer that way.

How has Asset Panda grew since last year?

We have grown dramatically since last year. We put a lot of sales focus.

So what’s your position in developing Asset Panda?

I’m almost like a project manager. As we get requests from clients or internal requests on changes to be made to the software, then I communicate all of that stuff to the Reea team. I try to be kind of a filter in the middle. Try to know that we have everything that we need to develop or what developers need, do we have all the information to the project so we can start it, and talk about the operation side of things: what exactly do you need, do we have that already in place in a different way.

What are the five key objectives for the next 6 or 12 months? What have you decided together since you are here?

 A couple things from the development side specifically on Asset Panda is that we are integrating more and more other applications and single sign on, so integration is our No. 1 priority right now.

So which things you want to integrate?

Single sign on, QuickBooks, Google calendars, some of the other Google services. So we have a whole list. So integration is one of them, and some of the others not quite in this order are billing process, our payment and billing process, and how we handle those.

How does a typical work day look like for you?

I usually get up in the morning and the first thing I do is check the tickets from everything that has been completed and then I work with different team members with any questions do they have: with Ruby team, iOS team. So I work with them until they leave for the day, then I work with my colleagues at Asset Panda to see any new items that come in, any client request, any issues that they have and then I know I have until my midnight to get the information for the Reea teams.

What do you like most about your job?

I get different challenges, each day is something new, to work with a whole bunch of different people. You guys have a really great team and being able to work with them. They are very many partners in the development of this products and that is the fun part, putting an idea out there and see how they solve it and how they recommend different options and stuff. I have a good job, it’s fun, I love my job.

How would you describe REEA?

I would say dependable if we ever need anything. Innovative. At any time of the day, if anything comes out. Efficient, very efficient. Getting things done, and very fast and in an efficient manner. It’s never a challenge that it’s too big, we can come up with stuff and they always try to find a way to resolve the obstacles.

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