I’m the manager of the men’s first team at the Amersfoort hockey club. It’s something I really like to do and I don’t mind putting a lot of my free time into it. My role as a manager is to make sure that the team can shine; that the physiotherapist can do his job; that the gear is in good order; that the team trip is arranged, and so on. I don’t contribute anything in terms of the goals that are scored on the field. The coach is the boss, not me. I am, of course, a sounding board for the coach at times. I do like to think that my contribution adds to the performance of the team as a whole. In the 2017 – 2018 season, for example, we made huge steps. We finished 6th out of a total of 12 teams in the league. In the top half of the table. We are now aiming for promotion next year.
“I think it’s cool when customers are successful, based on our technical possibilities.”
You can easily compare my enthusiasm for this hockey team with my passion for my work at Onetrail. Here, too, making things easier for the client is what we like best. I see our customer as the hockey team. Our work consists of setting up a technical connection to enable our customers to establish a business connection with their suppliers and customers. Onetrail ensures peace of mind. Our electronic data interchange solution could be called a smart EDI that removes traditional obstacles and complexity. We call it The Clever Connection, because we have incorporated the complexity and dependencies into our solution, thus solving them for the customer. I’m constantly seeing SMEs struggling to keep up with new technological opportunities. Our work is to enable those parties to make further progress. We find solutions to the associated complex IT questions. I find that really cool. Especially when you see how integral it is to the success of our customers.
That’s how I grew in my role as well. What I used to do myself, is now being done by others as we have become a larger organisation. Learn, earn, return are different stages in your working life, according to entrepreneur coaches. I’m now in the third stage. I’m giving back what I learned. It gives me great satisfaction when I see success in others, be it my hockey team, a customer or an employee at Onetrail. By coaching others in what I did myself at first. I can see in the figures whether it’s working or not. The hockey team is still in the learning phase. And the ambition to earn is set for next year.
Jeroen Moonen
CEO & Corporate Development