What is your role at Now Book It and how long have you worked here?
I’m a Business Development Manager and I’ve been with Now Book It since 2019.
What role did you do before joining the team at Now Book It?
Senior Account Manager at the Entertainment Book.
How did you get started in your career?
I started my career in hospitality doing bar work and then transitioned to managing events which allowed me to travel all over the world.
What is your favourite part of working at Now Book It?
I love selling a solution that I have faith and confidence in, knowing it will be in the best interest of the client. Then receiving their positive feedback of what an amazing difference we have made to their day-to-day operations.
What does your typical day look like in your role at Now Book It?
I don’t have a typical day, which I love! Every day is different. My days can consist of prospecting, travelling to fantastic destinations, setting up or training new venues and more. It’s never boring.
How do you describe the culture at Now Book it?
Our culture is driven by the people we employ. We are a fun, out going bunch with big personalities that support each other. We love what we do, we are given the freedom to structure our day in the way we see fit, but our Management Team are always on hand to guide us when needed.
What is the most interesting project you’ve worked on here?
Identifying that the Snowy Valley region was somewhere that Now Book It needed to grow. Spending time there meeting with venues and now working with many venues in Thredbo and Jindabyne.
How do you define success in your current role?
Meeting my monthly goals, signing amazing venues, seeing these venues use the system to it’s full capability, getting their feedback of how Now Book It has made their life better in many ways and when they refer Now Book It to someone they know is definitely a sign of success.
What makes Now Book It different than other organisations you’ve work for?
I am given the freedom to be autonomous, to plan my day in a way that works for me to reach my goals. But I know I can always pick up the phone and speak to anyone and get assistance if needed.
What is your role at Now Book It and how long have you worked here
My role is Front End Team Lead and I have been with Now Book It for 3.5 years. In that time, I’ve seen our team grow from 5 to more than 20 people. I started off doing mostly coding, but also sharing tasks like “Quality Assurance” testing and occasional “Dev Ops”. As we grew, many of these roles were diversified with new staff and my role now has become mostly planning, code reviewing, mentoring and making architectural decisions.
What role did you do before joining the team at Now Book It?
Before Now Book It I worked as a Senior Front End Developer, mostly doing agency jobs, where I would work with small teams of 4 or 5 developers, plus a project manager, to build “Content Management System” websites. Each project would go for roughly 6 months to a year and required coordination between designers, off-shore front-end developers and usually 1 or 2 back-end developers. I also did some intensive flow-chart-based development for about 6 months.
How did you get started in your career?
I originally came from a Photo Retoucher / Desktop Publisher background, but while working 6 years for an architecture-based marketing agency in London in the early 2000’s, was able to explore Adobe Flash and gradually migrated towards this, eventually becoming a full-time Actionscript + Front End Developer.
What is your favourite part of working at Now Book It?
There are plenty of things I like about working at Now Book It, but the product itself I would have to say is my favourite. When you work different agency jobs you often move from product to product and most of the time you don’t have a natural affinity to the content. I use Now Book It all the time though, when booking dinner out with friends and family, and it is rewarding to see our work out there being used by all manner of people. I have built some solid work relationships with my colleagues in my time here too, which makes the day-to-day working life easier and more dependable.
What does your typical day look like in your role at Now Book It?
Our development team works in 3 week “sprints”, which we pre-plan and try to give realistic targets for, assigning everyone in the team their tasks at the beginning. Each morning we have “stand ups”, where we all gather on a group MS Teams meeting and discuss yesterday’s and today’s work, which gives everyone a chance to collaborate collectively. The work varies each day, but is a mixture of peer code reviewing, assisting with any issues developers or testers are having, and planning for the next sprint.
How do you describe the culture at Now Book It?
The culture at Now Book It is fast-paced and very collaborative. We share responsibilities as much as possible, have daily “Stand up” meetings, group chats for common communications and every 3 weeks have a “Retrospective” meeting for everyone to voice any concerns and discuss it with the team. Our team members come from many different cultural backgrounds and work remotely in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane, Adelaide, Vietnam and Japan. While most of our staff enjoy the benefits of working from home, we encourage staff that live in the same cities to meet face-to-face occasionally and have small offices set up for them in Sydney, Perth and Melbourne.
What is the most interesting project you’ve worked on here?
The most interesting project I have worked on so far is definitely the upcoming mobile version of the “Restaurant Diary”. We have had design agencies involved from the beginning and have incorporated it into our incremental rebuild, with a more modern interface and front-end architecture. Many of the same components will be reused between the mobile and desktop versions of the app. The work has been split up amongst the front-end team, which has been logistically challenging, but I’ve enjoyed organising it and watching it come together.
How do you define success in your current role?
A successful outcome in my role is to have a product completed within the estimated timeframe and not have staff overworked. Poor estimates lead to unhappy stakeholders and stressed-out staff and, while unforeseen obstacles are a commonplace in our industry, regular revisiting of roadmaps helps to keep future visibility as realistic as possible. We occasionally may have to do overtime for emergencies, but making this a regular event just leads to poor work/life balance and you will end up losing staff in the long run and having to spend more time training up new people if this happens too often.
What makes Now Book It different than other organisations you’ve work for?
I have been working partly from home and part in the office for most of the last 10 years, but in most jobs I’ve had it was very much office-based for the majority of the staff there. At Now Book It this is not only standard to work partly from home, but most staff work 100% remotely. Aside from this I find the managers very open for discussion and feedback is welcomed. Customer feedback is also picked up, assessed and acted upon quickly too, when required.
What advice would you give to someone wanting to join our company?
We are continuously growing and have a lot of work to get through. Talented new staff that work hard and like to solve problems are always welcome.
What is your role at Now Book It and how long have you worked here?
I am a customer success manager and have worked at Now Book It for over 4 years.
What role did you do before joining the team at Now Book It?
I was a restaurant / cellar door manager for a venue in Mclaren Vale, Adelaide.
How did you get started in the hospitality industry?
My first job was a hostess at a restaurant at 15 years old.
What is your favourite part of working at Now Book It?
That no day is ever the same! Catching up with clients and forming great relationships.
What does your typical day look like in your role at Now Book It?
Any day can range from onboarding new clients, checking in on existing clients in person or through remote sessions, mixed in with a bit of restaurant consulting and problem solving.
How do you describe the culture at Now Book it?
Supportive. There is always someone on the team happy to help answer questions or guide you through tricky scenarios.
What is the most interesting project you’ve worked on here?
The onboarding of the Fink Group was a great memorable experience and the ongoing account management. But a fun interesting project was when I got to set up La Luna Beach club for the Gennari Group. They aren’t necessarily a restaurant venue so it was cool to be able to be a bit more creative with their set up and offerings.
How do you define success in your current role?
We essentially work for restaurants, helping them to maximise revenue and create less friction with their customers, so when venues feel looked after and supported and have success stories I know I’ve done my job.
What makes Now Book It different than other organisations you’ve work for?
I have always worked for small restaurant businesses, so it’s great working for a company that’s been continuously growing and moving into the global space.
What advice would you give to someone wanting to join our company?
Software technology can seem a bit intimidating if you’ve never worked within it before, but if you have an enthusiasm for the hospitality industry and love the idea of creating genuine relationships, the rest will come.
Fill out the form below, and we will be in touch shortly.
Have a question? Contact sales
By submitting this form you accept Now Book It’s Privacy Policy
