Team Member Spotlight: Authorship and Africa Travels with Wouter Wyns
Welcome to the first installment of Xurrent’s Team Member Spotlight series! Every month, we’ll be interviewing a member of the Xurrent team to learn more about their lives, interests, and passions. ITSM is, after all, about humans: User-friendly, efficient service management makes everyone’s lives easier and less stressful, and that’s Xurrent’s mission. So what better way to celebrate that than taking some time to get to know all the incredible humans here at our company?
This month, we sat down with Wouter Wyns, Xurrent’s Antwerp-based Service Management Architect and Support Lead.
Wouter’s Xurrent Journey
Wouter has been with Xurrent for almost 7 years, and has seen the company grow from a small start-up to a groundbreaking, international ITSM provider.
“I had a feeling from the start that Xurrent was creating something quite atypical,” he says. “ITSM is a very saturated market, with many players doing the same thing. But Xurrent was approaching things very differently.” Intrigued, he signed up for the adventure.
These days, Wouter is still enjoying the Xurrent difference:
“At Xurrent, you feel backed up by the success of our product. It motivates me. Our development team resolves issues within a few weeks. That is very atypical, again. I enjoy that. You feel that you’re a part of a complete team, a big team that makes success happen for the customers.”
Picking Up the Quill Pen
Wouter’s biggest news these days is his plan to take a sabbatical from Xurrent to write a full-length book about the Xurrent platform. He’ll be taking a few months off and crafting a work that describes how Xurrent is genuinely shifting the ITSM paradigm.
“I believe Xurrent deserves a book,” Wouter says. “We are special, and it’s important for people to know that. I want people to have one location where they can find all the information they need about the platform and how it works.”
But writing a book, Wouter adds, can be daunting. “I’ve never written a book, so this is all new,” he admits. “I initially had doubts that I would be able to do it. And I worried about whether the topic was valuable enough to write about. But, over the last few months, I’ve already written a few chapters, and I’ve received a ton of positive feedback and encouragement.”
Wouter is delighted about the opportunity: “My ability to take a sabbatical for this project is another example of how Xurrent is unique. I feel so happy with the culture here and the support I have.”
Looking Toward the Future
As he works on his book, Wouter has also been pondering what the future of ITSM will look like. He’s optimistic about the changes AI will bring, especially to Xurrent: “AI will ensure that requests provide the right information and go to the right people, without humans needing to spend extra time confirming info. And Xurrent will excel here. AI works only when it has a context, and Xurrent synthesizes all the data AI will need.”
Wouter details how AI can revolutionize help desks and improve people’s jobs: “Help desk work will be replaced by knowledge management careers. People will gather and input the knowledge that AI needs to function. Doing that is a much more exciting job than traditional help desk work. You need better skills, people will be paid more, and the quality of service delivery will increase. I feel very positively about what AI is doing in our world and how it will change ITSM.”
Travels and Playlists
Life isn’t all about ITSM for Wouter. He loves escaping to Africa, where he says he finds rest and happiness. “The people and nature are extraordinary,” he tells us. “Put me in a remote part of Africa and I am a happy man.”
We asked Wouter a bit more about his working routine (and his soon-to-be writing routine). “I normally work without music,” he says. “I am very focused in the morning and like quiet, specifically so I can focus and get creative. In the afternoon my mind is a little more tired, and that is when the music comes in.”
What kind of music? “The genre really depends on my mood. When I am feeling content I will probably put on Miles Davis, some jazz music!”
Make sure to keep an eye on Xurrent’s LinkedIn page for the future announcement of Wouter’s book publication. And if you think you’d be a fit for our culture of innovation and energy, check out our Career page here!