After graduating from agricultural college, Els joined UNIFORM as a helpdesk employee. Supporting customers was very different in those days. Remote access was still in its infancy, so most problems had to be solved over the phone.

“You pretty much had to know the entire program by heart. Every now and then, if you were really lucky, you could connect to a customer’s computer remotely, but most of the time you couldn’t. So you had to talk customers through it over the phone and guide them to the right part of the program.”

Els also visited new customers on their dairy farms to show them how to use the software. What she remembers most from those visits is the personal connection. “If a training session ran over, they’d say, ‘Why don’t you stay for lunch?’ Sometimes we even stayed for dinner. You were always made to feel welcome.”

Moving forward

It wasn’t long before Els moved on from her role on the helpdesk. After just two or three years, she was asked to take charge of the department, which meant suddenly managing people who had previously been her colleagues. “I never really saw myself as ‘the boss’, but when something wasn’t going well, you still had to speak up and make it clear that things needed to change. I found that quite difficult at first.”

As the helpdesk grew, Els’s role evolved with it. She later took on responsibility for R&D, managing both departments for a while before making the move to R&D full time. That brought a whole new learning curve. “Communicating with programmers is completely different from working on a helpdesk. I had to learn to ask the right questions and make clear, specific agreements. ‘Sometime tomorrow afternoon’ simply doesn’t cut it.” Looking back, she can laugh about it now. “After eighteen years, you get used to it.”

Expanding horizons

As Els grew within UNIFORM, the company was expanding internationally too. Her work took her to Wisconsin in the United States, where she spent time finding out what larger dairy farms needed and how the software could be adapted to meet those needs. She also travelled to Russia three times for UNIFORM.

On one of those trips, Els and a colleague were staying with someone whose housekeeper normally took care of the alarm system. She wasn’t there that evening, and when they returned home, they couldn’t get the alarm to switch off. “Within two minutes, two armed men carrying automatic rifles were standing in the house. We looked at each other and thought, ‘Where on earth have we ended up?’” But what Els remembers most about those trips is the people. “The people we worked with were incredibly friendly and helpful.” Travelling also gave her a first-hand understanding of what customers in different countries needed, and just how much those needs could vary.

From major milestones to Version 6

Technology has changed dramatically over the course of Els’s career too. One of the biggest shifts was the move from DOS to Windows. “That was a huge undertaking and there was a lot to learn. We were pretty overwhelmed on the helpdesk for a while.” Another memorable period was the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak. Employees who had dairy cattle of their own could no longer come into the office as usual, while the technology for working from home simply wasn’t there yet. A handful of colleagues stayed in the office to answer the phones and pass messages on to colleagues at home, who would then call the farmers back.

Today, attention has shifted to the next major development: Version 6 in the cloud. This new generation of software is being built for larger farms, international markets and an increasingly connected world. That brings plenty of technical challenges. In the Netherlands alone, the software needs to connect with milk recording services, government systems, process computers, sensors and other systems. Larger farms also need to be able to control exactly which information individual employees can access and enter. For Els, the key is to make sure that progress is made carefully. The current version is well established and performing strongly for customers, while the team continues to build for the future.

Coming full circle

After many years at the helm of R&D, Els took on another new role around a year and a half ago. When Harm-Jan decided to step back, Arnold, Tineke and Els took on new responsibilities, with Els becoming COO. In some ways, it brought her right back to where she started. “Suddenly, the helpdesk was part of my responsibilities again. In a way, everything I’ve been responsible for over the years has come back together, just in a different role.”

Today, much of her work revolves around people and decision-making. She helps colleagues move forward, provides direction and makes sure teams have what they need to work well together. She also sees colleagues following a similar path to the one she took herself. Helpdesk employees regularly move into product management, for example, where their understanding of customers, dairy farming and the software gives them a valuable head start.

“Somehow, I just never left”

After more than thirty years, UNIFORM has been part of Els’s life for more than half of it. “There have been times when I’ve thought, ‘Maybe I should try something somewhere else.’ But then something here would change. I’d move into a new role and think, ‘This is exciting too.’ Somehow, I just never left.”

And it is about more than the work itself. “It’s the way we treat each other. The atmosphere here. No one thinks they’re more important than anyone else.”

And perhaps, after more than thirty years, that is the best reason to stay.

From left to right: Elsbeth Brouwer (COO), Arnold Evertsen (CFO), Tineke Ammerlaan-Sieperda (CEO), Harm-Jan van der Beek (Senior Advisor and former Managing Director).