In this month’s user spotlight blog, we’re talking to Chris Ben (Chris_Ben), Senior Solutions Engineer at Nintex.
What is your current role, how long have you worked at Nintex, and your career background?
I’m a Senior Solutions Engineer, and I started officially working for Nintex in 2020. I say “officially” because before then, I was awarded the title of vTE which is a Virtual Technical Evangelist. I don’t think we have that certification anymore, but it used to be awarded to people in the Nintex partner community who were recognized as Nintex experts. So, I cut my teeth on Nintex while working for a Nintex partner and loved what we could do for our customers with the Nintex platform.
Which Nintex Product are you most passionate about and why?
I love all of the Nintex products—each one offers so much value. However, if I have to pick just one, then it is Nintex Automation Cloud. I constantly surprise myself at how much you can achieve with this product in such a short period of time! I also love how our product teams are constantly innovating and adding new features, which enables us to create even more advanced solutions.
What do you enjoy most about answering Community questions?
The Nintex Community is exactly what the name suggests—a community. It’s great to “give back” to others who have questions—many times, it’s for someone starting out, but you’ll often get questions from people who are very experienced, and it’s fun trying to problem-solve with them.
Is there any advice you would give to users learning Nintex?
Nintex is a very easy platform to learn and you can achieve so much with it. That’s possibly where you can get into trouble – you can do so much that you don’t know where to start! I’d suggest looking at a manual business process that you’re trying to enhance and identifying the low-hanging fruit first. Don’t try and boil the ocean and automate the whole thing straight away – pick one part of it and automate that. When you’re done, release it to production and see what a difference it makes to your organization. In doing so, you’ve released something of value very quickly, and you’ve learned a bit. Then, move on to the next piece of low-hanging fruit. By taking this approach, you are building up your knowledge while adding value, and you can start to tackle the larger or more complicated pieces of work. Also, never be afraid to ask questions here in the Community – there’s a high likelihood that someone else has already completed what you’re about to do. Finally – take advantage of the Nintex University, which will take you through structured courses to build up your knowledge.
What's one thing — either industry-related or not — you learned in the last month?
I learnt that the mighty Queensland Maroons State of Origin team needs to have a big think about how they’re going to win the series based on their performance on 26 June. For those of you who don’t know what I’m referring to, I encourage you to watch a State of Origin rugby league game—it’s such an exciting, action-packed 80 minutes.
What's something about you (a fun fact) that not many people know?
I can stick both legs around my head just like those acrobats in Cirque de Soliel—except I am nowhere near their level of flexibility. They do it with so much ease!
