The ANS Podcast

The season 1 finale has landed and CEO Paul Shannon is in the podcast green room with Anthony and Olivia to talk all things leadership and success. Listen to find out why Paul was kicked out of university, what it's been like leading a company through a pandemic, why you should always be out of your comfort zone and the mantras Paul lives by.

In the penultimate episode of season 1, Anthony and Olivia catch up with ANS Legend and Chief Architect Jamie Sinclair to find out about our recently launched ACE program. Jamie is part of a team developing a suite of career development roadmaps designed to challenge and guide our top techies onto the next phase in their career. Whether that be in DevOps, Data & AI or Networking (with more paths on the way), we want to hlep build the next generation of digital thought leaders.

The past few months have been busy at ANS as we all rack up points during our latest CSR campaign. This week, Anthony and Liv catch up with James and Sheryl who are 2 people in the team championing the initiative. We're making it our mission to see out lockdown right by keeping moving, giving back, staying social and protecting the planet. Listen to the episode to find out how it works.

This week Anthony and Liv talk to ANS Product Manager, Ben Potts. He's only been with ANS a year and he's already making a positive impact on his own team and the rest of the business. They caught up to find out more about Ben's role, why a Product Manager is so important in the customer journey and what exciting things are on the horizon for ANS services.

This week, Ant and Liv invited Solution Architect, Adrian Woodrup onto the show to talk about how driving a digital culture is important in the world of App Dev. Our teams are helping customers create a modern working environment that centres around the use of technology. Adrian is passionate about culture and technology to say the least so we wanted to hear what he had to say about combining the two. And if you want to see that video Anthony is talking about, head to our YouTube page. 

This week Ant and Liv are joined by some special guests from our partner charity, The HideOut Youth Zone. Having launched in September 2020, the road to opening definitely wasn't smooth for the staff at HideOut. We caught up with Emily & three young ladies who attend the youth zone to find out how HideOut supports the young people of Manchester and the opportunities it has offered to our guests. To find out more about the amazing work they do at HideOut, head to their website.

The Microsoft Most Valuable Professional award is given by Microsoft to "technology experts who passionately share their knowledge with the community." But sharing their knowledge is just the start. Here at ANS, we have an MVP right in our midst. Solutions Architect, EY Kalman joins Anthony and Liv this week to discuss not only the exclusive access MVPs receive but more importantly, why he is so passionate about giving back to and educating the tech community he loves to be a part of. 

This week, Anthony and Olivia catch up with ANS Technical Director, Joe Wolski. Joe's time at ANS stretches 7 years and has recently stepped up to join Liv on the board. Find out how he arrived at ANS, his first strange experience of an ANS Christmas party, what's in store for the future and what trends he sees on the horizon in the tech industry.

We're back! Anthony and Olivia are kicking off 2021 the best way they know how, by talking to one of the most formidable women at ANS, Rachel Wood! Rachel has been Head of Professional Services for 4 years now and has made some huge changes in that time. Anthony and Olivia catch up with her to find out how she took the best parts of the Agile methodology and made it into her own, transforming the ANS PS team into squads, the challenges she found on the way and why it was the best decision they ever made. 

It's the final episode of the year and Liv & Anthony are talking to ANS traditional-dev turned low-code-dev-extraordinaire, Simon Cobb. Simon recently made the move from the App Dev team at ANS to the Business Applications team and has never looked back. This year, Simon challenged himself to recreate the classic arcade game, Pacman, unlocking so much potential in his own skills as a low-code developer. Find out what challenges he came across building the game and why he made the leap of faith into business applications. Simon also built Pacman using Javascript and you can play it here https://www.simoncobb.co.uk/pacman/

Anthony and Olivia chat with ANS Women in Tech Ambassador and Development Delivery Manager, Helen Crowther on this years' WIT campaign. Helen shares her own journey into tech before taking a look back at some of her own highlights from the WIT campaign this year, including the countless events we've done, the connections we've made and the amazing women we've hired this year. And no, Covid19 was never going to stop us.

During our second women in tech campaign at ANS, we've realised how important mentoring can be since there's a serious lack of female representation in the tech industry. We recently held a virtual event for our women in tech community to talk about how to get started with mentoring, how to find the right mentor for you, the differences between mentoring and coaching and why it's ok to put yourself out there to find someone. The chat was run by our panel of mentoring professionals and enthusiasts: 🔘 Yvonne Matck - Founder of Coachere, a coaching, consulting and mentoring practise 🔘 Caroline Whyatt - Head of Digtial Innovation and Experimentation at PRS for Music 🔘 Helen Stansfield - Communications Manager at ANS 🔘 Helen Crowther - Development Delivery Manager at ANS and ANS Women in Tech Ambassador 2020

This week Anthony and Olivia welcome ANS CTO, Andy Barrow onto the podcast. Andy is joining the team as our 'roaming reporter' (from his home of course) to find out what is going on with our customers and partners right now. But first, we thought you should get to know Andy. In this episode, find out how he joined ANS, what his role as a CTO entails and what his predictions for the world of tech are going forward. 

Episode 7 sees Anthony and Olivia catching up with ANS' Head of Strategic Alliances, Leah Stiff. Leah tells us what happened when she tuned into Microsoft Envision this year, talking about why she found the event so refreshing, why we're leaving the old normal behind and how ANS can work closely with Microsoft to help build a positive future post-covid.

This week we're talking to Head of Digital Connectivity at ANS, Mark Johnson. Mark oversees all our digital connectivity services and has been instrumental in developing our connectivity offerings to align with the latest and emerging cloud technologies. In this episode, Anthony and Olivia find out how Mark got into tech during his military days and how connectivity has come to the forefront of organisations digital strategies during the recent pandemic.

It's been 365 days since we became a #Microsoft Dynamics 365 specialist after the acquisition of an important Dynamics 365 player, Alithya UK. On 2nd October 2019, we welcomed Adam Spurr and his team to ANS to begin an incredible year providing Dynamics 365 solutions to our customers. Listen as Liv and Anthony interview Adam and our CTO, Andy Barrow, all about why Alithya and ANS were the right fit, how the team found it becoming part of a bigger company and what the next 12 months look like for ANS as we expand our digital services post-Covid. 

In episode 4, Anthony and Liv catch up on what it's been like returning to the office before we listen to our latest webinar with leading accountancy and business firm, BDO. Mark Sykes, Partner at BDO joined us to discuss how they have leveraged Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM to keep current clients content and engaged, attract more clients and win more work.  Since implementing Dynamics, the organisation has been able to improve the client experience though improved insight, promote cross stream working and reduced waste and improve leveragability.

We turned to Microsoft Power Apps to help us make our office a safe space for everyone to work. We’ve developed an app which employees can use to book a space in the office, managers can use to track office occupancy and housekeepers can use to track office hygiene. We spoke to Head of Business Assurance, Danny Johns and Chief Engineer, Nathan Gaskill on how the app works, why it was important and how other organisations can leverage the app also.  To find out more about the app works and how your organisation can use it, head to our hub.  And if you just can't wait to get started, download the app for free from GitHub right here. 

Episode 2 sees us hear how Essex and Southend-on-Sea Councils are tackling Covid-19 in the local community with a case management system for coronavirus contact tracing at a regional level.   Our guest, Paul Aldred, IT Business Partner at Essex County Council explains how the councils have leveraged ANS’ pre-built Microsoft Dynamics Case Management Accelerator to create, triage and action complex cases which are passed to them from the national Track and Trace system.   Using this Accelerator, the councils are now able to contain potential Covid-19 outbreaks in locations such as workplaces, housing complexes, care homes and schools. If you're interested in finding out more about our Case Management Accelerator, head here. 

In our very first episode, we're talking to our People and Development Specialist, Katy Rawlinson, about the amazing apprenticeship opportunities we offer, what it's like to be an apprentice at ANS, why we think ANS is the best place to start your career in tech and why we're continuing to grow our teams and hire inspiring people throughout lockdown. Find out more about what it's like to work at ANS on our Instagram.

Think you know ANS? We’re about to open your eyes to what it’s really like. Join Olivia J, our Marketing Director and Anthony, our Bid Manager, every week as they fill us in on the latest from, ANS. No filter. Listen to the trailer to hear the moment Olivia asked Anthony to co-host our brand new podcast!