Nicole Sokira

I provide technical and navigational support at a procurement software company. Procurement software allows an organization to automate the processes of buying materials and keeping an up to date inventory of goods. In my current role, I keep a watch over online auctions to make sure that no rules are being broken. I do this to make sure that suppliers don’t have an unfair advantage. It’s all about fairness and neutrality. I have to be able to manage customers and troubleshoot effectively and quickly. Online auctions are extremely time-sensitive and millions of dollars are often at stake in just one auction. Decisions must be made quickly, so I rely heavily on my training and my critical thinking skills.

Working closely with my teammates is a must since it’s a small team and our efforts are represented by our team, rather than individually. We rely on the skills and assistance of each other to make sure our job is done right. For example, I speak English, Spanish, French, and – at the intermediate level – Portuguese. And I understand enough of Italian, German, Swedish, Dutch, and Romanian, to understand the issue. As a result, auctions that fall within those regions are my responsibility. There are often times where we need to work together to get a critical issue resolved or to simply meet a client’s needs. Each team member, myself included, has several projects running at once that we have to manage in addition to our responsibility monitoring online auctions. All in all, my role involves being flexible and being able to communicate effectively with customers, as well as understand the software and troubleshoot major browsers.