In this month’s user spotlight blog, we’re talking to Brandi Woodson, an IT Systems SharePoint Administrator at Kellogg Brown and Root.
What is your current role, and your career background?
I’m an IT Systems SharePoint Administrator who specializes in Business Process Automation. My career background is actually in pricing and contracts – but my IT career has just begun! I have always found myself learning more and more about how applications communicate with one another throughout my journey. I have had great mentors and trainers along my journey who were always willing to share and teach me functions that were not necessarily in my job description. Through the years I found myself always pushing my leadership to consider new ideas or processes that would make our team more sufficient and productive. I guess you can say I have always been the “innovator” in my former positions and always wanted to find a solution to any problem that presented itself!
Which Nintex Product are you most passionate about and why?
I was introduced to Nintex back in early 2021 when I was a Procurement Specialist (prior to transitioning into my current role). We needed a solution for managing our procurement requests. Unfortunately, they were backlogged and we needed something sooner rather than later. I was then introduced to an amazing woman who was the Subject Matter Expert at our company for Nintex products (she won a Nintex Solution Innovation Award back in 2021).
She was gracious enough to show me the ropes with Nintex Forms and Workflow for Office 365 products. Shortly after a few working sessions with her, I was on my way to building a solution for my team! Ironically enough, fast forward to a year later she sadly took on a new position for another company and well … I joined that same team to fill her position – funny how everything comes full circle.
I was ready and pumped to get started with building solutions for new customers. Only one problem – I was told we now had to begin learning and building new solutions in NAC. I knew nothing about this product, I just started my role and was afraid I’d fail! What if I couldn’t figure it out without her - I was so used to NW for Office 365. At first, I HATED IT! Looking back, I’m sure it wasn’t actually the application I hated – ha - more so the fact I had to figure it out all on my own and was overwhelmed. Within months it started growing on me, and I found myself shifting from hate to a love/hate relationship. Before I knew it within 4-5 months of jumping headfirst into Nintex Automation Cloud I was IN LOVE!
I am a huge advocate for this product. Not only do we use this application within IT, but we allow users outside of IT to use it too – they go through an onboarding process we developed last year and then added as a Designer. We now have 60+ Designers we support with building solutions for our own customers! We have received nothing but positive feedback compared to other providers! It is fast, reliable, user friendly and best of all it’s truly a NO-CODE product (unless you have a complex or mundane process you must build that requires an Xtension or plugin). Even users with no experience or background in automation or IT can find themselves building a simple workflow to support their department! I AM IN LOVE WITH NINTEX AUTOMATION CLOUD!
What do you enjoy most about answering Community questions?
I just love helping people, especially when it’s over something I’m knowledgeable and passionate about. If I can help someone not spend hours on figuring something out that I already spent hours on figuring out – why not!? I love the Nintex Community and the users that support it! But mostly, with past experience with other vendors – I love how attentive Nintex employees are in the community – if something has not been resolved or answered – they always go the extra mile to ensure everyone has been helped!
Is there any advice you would give to users learning Nintex?
A very amazing lady once told me when you can’t figure it out, walk away and come back to it later with a fresh mindset. I still do that to this day when I am challenged with something new that I’m trying to figure out. I’d also say utilize the training resources that Nintex provides like Nintex University, their Nintex Community, and the Help Documentation center. Nintex does a great job at providing training on how their products work! You will find me in the help documentation 99.9% of the time when I don’t know how to use a specific action!
What's something about you that not many people know?
Hmm, well my ex-husband was in the military, and with that came a relocation from Texas to Alaska! Talk about a culture shock. I lived there for 2 years but hated it – the weather and the cost of living was so high. We were isolated from the main towns so a job for me was out of the question after you considered daycare and gas expenses. Anyway, I got extremely bored of not working – so I began making and selling hairbows at tradeshows. I was actually pretty good and it and made a little business out of it for a while.
