Chris Donoghue, IT Business Analyst

Department: IT

"ForFarmers provides an exciting work environment in a fast paced and dynamic industry."

Communicating across departments and countries

“I joined ForFarmers over four years ago as a Planning Manager for the northern business unit. After working in logistics for 3 years, I thought it was time for a change and I was lucky enough to be able to transfer within the company to the IT team in March 2019.”

“I work within the Business Analysis team and there are four of us in total. I live near Manchester, which means I am only a short drive away from our Preston, Penrith, Brydekirk, Selby and Newcastle mills. Other members of the team are located more centrally, as well as in the South West. As a team we work with different business cycles, assist in projects, development and day to day operations, therefore no day is ever the same.”

“The UK team is part of the group IT department and we come together and collaborate on large scale and integration projects. As the largest feed company in Europe we operate in the UK, The Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and Poland and within each of these countries there are local IT support and Business Analysis teams. Collectively we are quite a large team but with modern technology, increasing user numbers and site locations, there is always a vast amount of IT projects that need to be completed.”

Supporting users working from home

“I frequently work from home so when the Covid-19 social lockdown began, I was already set up at home so had very minimal disruption. However, visiting sites and working face to face with a lot of different people from across the business was one of the best parts of my role and this is obviously been set aside for the time being.”

“With a large proportion of employees including account managers and customer service staff now working from home, the IT teams had to pull together in order to provide equipment, training and communication software in order for them to work from the safety of their own homes. This was logistically quite challenging but we were able to overcome the issues by breaking down and prioritising tasks.”

“We also had to maximise the utilisation of available and existing technologies to ensure that the operational and logistical departments of the business could continue. We recently put in place some technology that allows managers to connect remotely from home which enables them to supervise a shift within an operational mill. From an IT perspective Covid-19 has caused a few headaches but it’s been a time of change and as a result has driven IT innovation and developments in a new direction.”