Friday, July 20, 2012
DS Intern Last Blog Post...
Hello again,
It’s Robert from Detroit and this is my final blog post. To say this summer has been great, would be an understatement. What I have learned here at Dwellworks will prove to be invaluable in my future not only in the workplace but also in my academic pursuits. The people I have met and the projects I have worked on have made this an unforgettable summer. Some of the big projects that I worked on this summer were:
-A Pipeline Report
-Assisting Managers with closings and billings.
-Client Reports.
-Data Analysis.
-and many more…
I have honed my excel skills working with many people (Aleks, Andy, Molly) and those skills I will take with me from Dwellworks. As this was my first real exposure to a office I did not know what to expect. Because the team here in Detroit is so great and so easy to work with, I have looked forward to coming in to work every day and doing my part to help the company prosper. This internship has been valuable to me and I won’t forget the summer I spent at Dwellworks.
DS Intern Last Blog Post...
"I am hoping to learn as much information as possible from this internship. I want to learn more about being successful in a corporate setting and the steps necessary to transition from college life to the corporate world. I am also looking forward to speaking with current Dwellworks employees and learning from their past work experiences and tactics/information that I can use to be successful in my future endeavors." It is unbelievable to think that I wrote that statement almost two months ago as I sat at my cubicle as the new DS intern! Time swiftly passes and after months of Atlas, Cartus, FileMaker, Excel, MAGIC, food, birthday treats and glitter/markers (BPI project); my time at Dwellworks slowly comes to an end.
I would explain this internship as one that is well-rounded and has taught me more about myself and the things that I can accomplish. As the DS intern I was responsible for a variety of task ranging from updating files in atlas, filling out authorizations, completing Cartus billing and closing files. I worked alongside some of the most genuine, honest and hard-working people in the Cleveland downtown team who have added to my experience here. Outside of DS I had the opportunity to work alongside Aleks and a few others interns on a DS Profitability project. The project allowed me to utilize and enhance my excel and problem solving skills. It also gave me the opportunity to analyze data and make conclusions that could make a substantial impact on the department and help improve different facets of DS moving forward.
Working on the BPI Roadmap project was another great moment of my internship. As a marketing major I had the chance to utilize my creative side when designing the downtown skyline of NYC. Knowing that our roadmaps will be utilized in offices across the country is another great feeling, after we leave Dwellworks our presence will still remain. MAGIC training was also another moment during my internship that stayed with me. We participated in many hands on activities such as mock phone calls to test our customer service skills, block building to test our communication skills and a variety of team led discussions about proper customer service standards. Overall the experience was very informative and I was able to take away some pointers that I used during my daily task as an intern in the office.
Dwellworks bases part of its mission on 5 key values. Integrity, Performance, Innovation, Teamwork and Fun! Throughout our video the downtown interns were able to incorporate all five of these aspects into a film that I believe truly summed up our time here at Dwellworks. We recorded images of the 5th anniversary birthday party that took place in May, weekly lunch excursions downtown, birthday celebrations and much more! During our innovation segment we sampled a part of CEO's Bob Rosing’s BPI speech, where he talks about the tremendous growth that Dwellworks is doing as a company and how we all play a vital part in it. That is what I will take away the most from my experience here at Dwellworks, being a part of a company that is growing tremendously and learning from each and every employee. I am excited to utilize the skills and knowledge that I learned from this experience and utilize it not only in the classroom but in my daily life.
I am truly blessed to have been a part of this experience and I enjoyed sharing it with all of you! Hope you all have a wonderful school year!!!
FINAL BLOG DC Intern
Hello everyone,
I cannot believe it but this will unfortunately be my last blog post L The Dwellworks internship was a fun and amazing learning experience. I can truthfully say that I was fortunate and glad to be part of the Dwellworks family over this summer. Everyone in the office was welcoming from day one till this day. From working here in the summer, I see that employee’s morale is quite high here at Dwellworks. Everyone is happy to come to work and show great enthusiasm in their work. I only hope I find a job that I truly love when I graduate from college in the upcoming May!
In my 1st blog post I said that I hoped to accomplish how to better enhance my communication/interpersonal, customer service, multi-tasking, and time management skills. I feel that through this internship I truly have improved upon these skills. I especially appreciated that as an intern, my everyday task were beneficial and important to the company and not just getting coffee for someone. From week one, I was trained on how to use Filemaker and conduct the coordinator duties for filling in Authorizations. From doing this I was able to assist Destination Services Managers with the management of international programs. I also remember that one of my earlier tasks was to fill in all missing information into Filemaker whether it be relo date or first contact meeting, etc. for all closed programs which was necessary for the transition to Service Engine. Other than these tasks, one of my main roles was to conduct and create many reports through File maker. One of the important reports I ran was ACD Reconciliation for the month of May. This report was important to determine how many of our DS programs actually closed in May. Another report that I ran that was important was the weekly manager report which showed all active, closed and entered programs for all managers in all offices. From what I understand this report was mainly used for revenue purposes and to assist Directors. Another way I was able to assist the managers was to run an audit for the managers program in my office to help her with closings. Apart from helping managers, I was also was assisted the BPI team here at Dwellworks. Like all the other interns, I was involved in creating a BPI roadmap to outline the BPI process in a FUN way.
My favorite task that I was involved in over the summer was being part of the testing team for Service Engine. During that week, I felt really important because I was given to the opportunity to assist with a new Destination Services database that would be soon be fully implemented after I leave Dwellworks! During the testing I was able to play the coordinator role and fill in test Authorizations into Service Engine. I was glad to have worked with Ghadeer Hasan, Jack Silver, and Aleks Quenneville, Kaitlin Whitt, and Nancy Cavallo. This experience will be great to put on my resume since I am a Computer Information Systems major! I also loved making the internship video last week. I really found it fun interviewing my fellow coworkers and their experiences working at Dwellworks! Another favorite experience I had this summer was my trip to Detroit and meeting my other two fellow interns Mark and Robert. The MAGIC training taught by Suzi and Shana was another great learning experience. Even though some of the information was common sense, the information gained from the training will help me to succeed in my customer relations skills not only at Dwellworks but at all future companies that I will work for.
The committee that I chose to be a part of at my time here at Dwellworks was to the FUN committee! When I saw that this was an option, I felt that it was the perfect committee to be a part of. I mean having FUN at work sounded like a great idea at the time. As a FUN committee member, I was able to sit on committee meetings and suggest FUN ideas for Friday. The idea of the crazy hats and slurpee was definitely my favorite! I enjoyed working with Brenda Colvin-Akhras to come up with so many FUN ideas!
As I write this final blog, I cannot stress how much I loved working here. As next Friday, my last day comes closer I will continue to give it my all and perform duties to the best of my ability. I will always remember everyone here and will be sure to keep in contact. I believe what I have learned here will help me to prosper in the future and eventually land the job that I want in the future after college. I hope that all of you have enjoyed this internship as much as I have! Good luck to all of you after I leave next Friday in continuing your all’s last days here at Dwellworks!
See you everyone,
It was a blast, while it lasted,
Arpan Sarkar
Friday, July 13, 2012
Final Post from Detroit
Hello again everybody. This is Mark.
Final Post from Detroit
Hello again everybody. This is Mark.
For the last post I will summarize some of the main projects I have completed and also explain the main things that I have learned from the internship.
Most of my time here at Dwellworks has been spent assisting the Domestic team with closings, creating CAFs and also with assisting in spreadsheets. They leaned on me for support throughout the summer for many different things. My largest projects though, have come on the Supply Chain side of DS. One large project that I took on was to collect and enter all the DSC Kudos into our database. This means that every time the transferees sent a message explaining how great their service was, I took these messages and stored them into a word document and also put them into Filemaker under the DSC that was complimented. This gives us data as to how much the transferees enjoy the services each DSC provides. Another large on-going project I was given was to monitor and report out on the volume of DSCs. This was given to me to allow the supply chain team to recognize when DSCs are overloaded with work so that they can contact the managers to put a hold on assigning programs to the DSCs with high volume. The other large project I have had was to update Service Engine with DSC information. The information I inputted into their profiles was their areas of work and also their pay rate. On top of all these projects, all of us interns had to create a video of all the company values. This was a very fun and entertaining project to complete since it allowed us to socialize with members of our office.
There are a few big things that I have learned in this internship. The first is just learning the office atmosphere. This was my first office job so becoming acclimated with the business atmosphere was one of my main goals of this internship. I have also learned how to give out excellent customer service. This I learned by the MAGIC training. Although much of the MAGIC training seemed like common sense, I believe it was very important to put a name to all the steps of successful conversations between you and your customer. This will help me because every person you come in contact is your customer, so hopefully the training will increase my communication skills for the rest of my life.
Lastly I learned that getting involved is the best way to make sure you are always busy and to be able to work on unique things. Joining the philanthropy group allowed me to work on things other than just typical work stuff. In the group I have worked on multiple fundraisers in the office and helped in planning events. Also, just taking the initiative and asking for work typically brings some projects that are different than the standard closings or CAFs. By asking around on what I could do I was able to work on spreadsheets and projects that required me to do work that was different from the status quo.
Overall this was a great internship. I have learned a lot of basic yet valuable lessons and I feel like I have made an impact by helping the company and supporting members of the office.
Hey everyone, this is Mark. Week 9 has been a busy week here at Dwellworks. This week I have been working a lot with helping our Domestic Team director, Katie Vargo, with many spreadsheets and reports. I have assisted her in creating the Cartus Domestic Scorecard, assessing year to date volume, and also working on multiple spreadsheets for our client Graebel. I have also helped Molly Feldman with a small project which included the use of our Cartus Evaluations. Along with this I have worked on finishing up the Internship video with Rob which, in the process, we have recruited the help of a few members of our office to show off our great company values. The internship video has been a fun project to work on and also increased our communication with the whole of our office. Today, our fun committee planned a crazy hat day, so it was great seeing the office operating with everyone wearing ridiculous hats! I am looking forward to next week due to our Magic workshop and also having another meeting with the Philanthropy group.
Below is a picture of our office members that were sporting their crazy hats!
Below is a picture of our office members that were sporting their crazy hats!
Good Morning,
We have completed another week here at Dwellworks! It is unbelievable to think that we are approaching the end of our time here. This week the Destination Service department at the downtown office welcomed two new employees. It is always exciting to see new faces in the office and it is a great example of the tremendous growth that Dwellworks is doing in such as short time.
This week I continued my work as a coordinator updating, billing and closing files. I also continued work on my Cancellation project gathering further information and data for my presentation later next month for the senior level executives. BPI unveiled it plans for the future during the companywide meeting. It was exciting to see our roadmaps displayed for the entire company! After we have completed our internship apart of us will continue to remain in each office!
This week was also fun-filled! We ventured out on our weekly food stop for lunch. This week we travelled to Great Taste Chinese Buffet. It has been rewarded as one of the top 100 Chinese buffets in the World!!! The food was great and the fellowship with my fellow interns and employees was even better.
PM Intern Addison enjoyed Great Taste!
As part of our 5 minute video presentation, we decided to utilize our FUN value and filmed some of the many attractions and sites in the downtown Cleveland area. On Thursday we were able to be a part of a live studio outdoor radio session hosted by MPR. The band was amazing and had everyone dancing and singing along.
As a member of the philanthropy group, we kicked of our fundraisers with a bake sale this past Thursday as a way to raise funds for the office's Race for the Cure Team that will be taking place in September. Treats ranged from cookies, cupcakes, rice krispies and intern Amanda's popular Oreo cups!
Overall this week was a great representative of our company's five values: Fun, Teamwork, Innovation, Integrity and Performance.Have a great weekend!
Meagan
Hi everyone,
Wow so week 9 has gone by, which unfortunately means I only have 2 weeks left here! With this being said, I am now in the process of finishing up my last projects here. In fact I am currently working on my video demonstrating our 5 values. I’m sure it will turn out great due to the help of my awesome and friendly coworkers that are the stars of my video! I want to especially thank Ghadeer Hasan; the head of our BPI branch here for suggesting some great ideas that will go into my video. Before I start on the video, I want to talk about what I did and learned this week. My task this week was to act mainly as our coordinator because Martrez, our prior coordinator had to leave Dwellworks for his amazing opportunity for a full ride at Grad school. Our other current coordinator Nancy was busy with the implementation of Service Engine so I was given the responsibility of being the coordinator. I learned that this week that coordinator’s job can be really busy. As I did the several authorizations this week, I also learned the importance of paying attention to detail. Earlier in the week as I was being slammed with authorizations I made some crucial mistakes (such as wrong Depart country or relo date, etc), which my Director had to point out. I’m glad she did provide me this feedback because now I feel I am able to fill in authorizations with little to no mistakes. I learned from her that even when things get really busy, it’s ok to ask for help and take things slow to avoid possible mistakes, which is an important life lesson. Apart from doing auths I attended the BPI meeting and learned what BPI is all about. It’s great to see a branch that full of people who are very innovative and at the same time pride themselves of having fun at work! As Friday will end, I look forward to MAGIC training in Detroit next week and the opportunity to meet the Detroit interns in person!
Arpan
Friday, July 6, 2012
Good Morning,
I hope that everyone enjoyed this shortened week in honor of 4th of July. The Downtown office enjoyed pizza, salad, pasta and popsicles as way to bring in the 4th of July holiday. Because of the short week things have been pretty slow on my end as a DS Intern. I spent the week closing, updating and billing files for the end of the June billing month. I also continued work on my DS Cancellation Project for BPI. Speaking of BPI I enjoyed seeing everyone’s roadmaps; they were very creative and displayed a lot of personality and charisma. My group worked on the roadmap for NYC, and I must say that it turned out well. We were able to incorporate our love for fabrics, paint and most importantly glitter as we tried to reduplicate the bustling city of lights.
We are over half way through our internship experience here at Dwellworks and I am excited to see what the rest of the internship has in store for us!
Have a safe and fun weekend!
Meagan Simmons
Meagan Simmons
What's up everyone?
Week 8 seemed to pass by faster than the other weeks. It might be because we had a break in the middle of the week J Speaking of, hope everyone had an awesome 4th of July in this great nation of ours! I definitely enjoyed the day off. I ended up going to the National Mall, saw the Amazing Spiderman and saw the Fireworks at night in DC. I should add that everyone’s BPI roadmaps turned out great. It just shows that we are all very creative people J The overall week wasn’t too busy but I managed to end up doing a decent amount of work running many important reports from Filemaker to my Director. I started Monday off running the weekly manager report. On Tuesday I ran an ACD report for all programs prior to July 3rd. I also had to run a program for all active programs form June 25th- July 3rd, 2012. On Thursday I ran a client report for all programs concerning Graebel, SIRVA, and Cargill. Today as soon as I got in I had to pull a report for all authorizations entered since April across all locations in order to see if there are any duplicate auth entries. Also today there is Service Engine Training in our office! I’m excited to see the Microsoft launch this Monday if it ends up happening! Last thing I should add is farewell to Martrez Marshall, our newly recent coordinator because today is his last day with us at Dwellworks. Congratulations to him for being given the opportunity to a full ride to grad school and best of luck to him in the new chapter of his life!!!
Arpan
Hello again, this is Mark. This week has been power week for us in Detroit which means that for a solid hour every day the whole team is focusing on billing and closings. Throughout this week I have been included with this, so most of the week I have been help the team with their billing and closings. To motivate us more for this event, we have been having lunch provided for us this week. The places we have order from include Jimmy John, buddy's pizza, Johnny P. Salad Sandwiches, Taco Bell, and today we are having Little Daddy's. It has been nice to be able to chow down on some good food while focusing our work on closings. Other than that I have been working on a few other projects. For domestic I have been working with a spreadsheet to get information about each program. For supply chain, I have been continuing to work on updating the Community Guides that are provided in the welcome packet, and have a few other ongoing projects that I have been working on as well. It’s been a busy week here in Detroit with the DS business doing so well, but we got through it as a team with a little encouragement with our nice lunches.
Rob Here:
What a crazy week it was here in Detroit. We had our big push this week to get billings done. In conjunction with helping the billings I had a few projects on my own.
I worked on more of my weekly pipeline report for Aleks.
I had a project for Andy and Eve that was dealing with revenue prediction as well as managerial progress.
And I continued to help out Paul Soley on a project that he is currently working on.
This week was very busy but was also very enjoyable per usual. We got to get lunch provided for us every day this week which was very delicious and thoughtful of the company. Today was also America day so I threw on my America outfit:
Rob Here:
What a crazy week it was here in Detroit. We had our big push this week to get billings done. In conjunction with helping the billings I had a few projects on my own.
I worked on more of my weekly pipeline report for Aleks.
I had a project for Andy and Eve that was dealing with revenue prediction as well as managerial progress.
And I continued to help out Paul Soley on a project that he is currently working on.
This week was very busy but was also very enjoyable per usual. We got to get lunch provided for us every day this week which was very delicious and thoughtful of the company. Today was also America day so I threw on my America outfit:
Great week as always and looking forward to the next one and to the 4th of July!
Also let's go pistons, happy to have Andre Drummond as our first round pick and newest team member!
Week 7: DS Intern
Hello Everyone,
It has been another HOT week here in Cleveland, in fact yesterday was the hottest day on record for the summer with temperatures reaching almost 100 degrees. Despite the HEAT we kept cool in the office working on various projects and most importantly for the DS team, closing out files and billings. Everyone in the DS department took part in a power hour (name thought of by our new manager in Cleveland Samantha Martin). We spent this hour solely focusing on billings and closings. The perk, lunch was provided everyday and we had the wonderful opportunity to enjoy various restaurants in the downtown area and surrounding the office.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Hi everyone,
I know its Thursday but I decided to go ahead and start my blog post early this week. So week 7 has just gone by and we have had several visitors come to our office again. Susan LaSalla, Corporate Controller for Dwellworks, Joshua Smith, Accounting Manager for Destination Services, Cathy Wallace of Service Engine, arrived on Wednesday. We even had the pleasure of Gene Novak, the CFO coming to our office on Thursday. I learned that he has a passion for roller coasters like I do J Apart from all these visitors; this week has been really busy for all the managers. They all had power hour during lunch to close all programs that needed to be closed. Because of this we had free lunch all this week J I’ve also been somewhat busy this week. First thing on Monday I had to run the weekly manager report to see the number of active, closed and entered programs for all Dwellworks managers in all offices. I also ran another audit for one of the managers in my office to help her with closings. On Tuesday in order to further assist with the closings I had to run an ACD report for all managers in the DC office, run a 2011 Relocation date report, and run a report to find any programs entered in 2011 that had not been closed. On Wednesday I participated in the monthly meeting and like all the other new interns/ associates I had to introduce myself to other members of the company at the other offices. It was awesome to hear the backgrounds of all the new employees and congratulations for Dwellworks on welcoming its 200th employee. The company sure is growing! Other than these things I have been working on my project for BPI. I can’t wait to see what everyone else has done! Have a wonderful rest of the week!
Arpan Sarkar
Myself along with two other interns continued work on our BPI roadmap of NYC. Let’s just say that things got a little messy and by the end of the day I was covered in glitter, glue and paint! All in all I believe that our roadmap turned out wonderfully and I am excited to see what everyone else has designed. One a side note, the NBA draft was last night and Cleveland welcomed Dion Waiters to the CAVS, hopefully he can help change some things around!
Have a great weekend, and happy 4th of July!!
Meagan
Hey everybody,
Its Friday of Week 6 now and I truly feel like an intricate part of the office here in DC. My role now is to assist DS managers in any way I can whether it be closings or anything else. On Monday, I was given the opportunity to run the weekly manager report. For this task, I had to run three different reports and then using those reports I had to create a final weekly manager report using pivot tables in excel. The first report I had to run was a report for all active programs prior to the Monday (6/18). The second report involved me running a report to find all closed/cancelled programs for the prior week (6/11 -6/17). For the last report I had to run it using the entry date field for all programs last week. Using this report I created pivot tables to find out the sum of all Active, Entered, and Closed/Cancelled programs for the prior week all DS managers in all the offices. For the rest of the summer I have to create this report first thing every Monday! On Tuesday, I conducted an Active File Audit for two of the DS managers in the DC office. For this task, I had to review the two manager’s active programs and see if there were any opportunities to close the programs. This was an important task for revenue purposes. Wednesday was the most exciting day of the week because I was given the chance to be one of the new testers of Service Engine! As a tester my job is to play the coordinator role and assign test programs to the person who plays the manager role. I did testing all of Wednesday and Thursday. Wednesday was also interesting because of the town hall meeting. It was great to see that all services provided by Dwellworks, including DS services, Valuation Services, Property Management and Shared Services were all generating an increase in profits from last year! It was also cool to see the future goals and objectives of the company in order to ensure more success!
Arpan Sarkar
Good Morning!
I hope everyone has enjoyed this HOT but beautiful week. Temperatures reached above 90 degrees everyday in the Downtown Cleveland Location. This week I continued my work as a coordinator doing closings, billings and updates in Atlas. I also continued work on my DS cancellation project that I am working on with a few other interns and employees in the office. I had the opportunity to speak with Katie Vargo and Lorraine Vargas as they gave us further information about the history of domestic services and the role that cancellations play in this setting.
Last Friday we were given an introduction into our BPI projects that all interns will be working on this summer. My group was delved the task of making a road map for the New York Office. This week my fellow group members and I designed a general overview of our roadmap and the details that it will entail. In essence our road map will be a tourist guide of NYC, each step will represent a famous monument or landmark within NYC and the rest of the roadmap will feature fun facts and other attractions. I am very excited to begin work on this project so I can utilize my creative and colorful style.
On Thursday all of the interns from the downtown office along with the interns from the Cleveland Warrensville office gathered together to participate in MAGIC training. MAGIC stands for making a Great Impression on the Customer. This is all done through “an integrated system of assessment, customer service training and consulting that ensures consistently exceptional service to external and internal customers.” The workshop was facilitated by Shana Zollar and Suzanne Scott who are in charge of human resources here at Dwellworks. When I first heard that the workshop would last from 9am-5pm I wasn’t too excited to be sitting in a room for 8 hours. The experience was far from boring, but in fact very informative and FUN! We did many hands on activities such as mock phone records to test our customer service skills, block building to test our communication skills and a variety of team led discussions about proper customer service standards. Overall the experience was very informative and I was able to take away some pointers that I will use during my daily task as an intern in the office.
On a side note* Even though I am from Cleveland, I am still a Lebron James fan and he finally received his well deserved ring last night! Congrats! YAY HEAT!!!
Enjoy the weekend everyone, and stay cool!
Hello again, this is Mark. Week 6 has been a much slower week than the past few since we did not have any visitors this week. It was nice to get back to normal. Throughout this week we have had many of our domestic team out so this week I have been working specifically with domestic. I have been assisting then by doing billings and closings and also creating the CAF files for the DSC to use. Slowly but surely I am starting to learn more and more about the process of programs and may have a chance to take on a few programs myself. With the domestic team shorthanded I was relied on heavily so working with domestic has been the main focus for me in week 6.
Rob Here:
Hello all. This week as Mark said was a little different than usual. No visitors came this week, which was definitely a shame. I spent a lot of time this week closing files as well as setting up client quality scorecards for conference calls that Dwellworks was having with some of our clients.
I continued my work o the pipeline report and spent some time chatting with the very knowledgeable Katie Vargo in order to get some answers for some of the questions I had. This continues to be my big project for the summer and I am finding it very interesting to see how and why things are the way they are in terms of content and timing.
The weeks really are flying by here and it has definitely been an entertaining and invaluable experience thus far and I plan to keep up the hard work and help out the team as much as they need me.
Thanks!
Rob Here:
Hello all. This week as Mark said was a little different than usual. No visitors came this week, which was definitely a shame. I spent a lot of time this week closing files as well as setting up client quality scorecards for conference calls that Dwellworks was having with some of our clients.
I continued my work o the pipeline report and spent some time chatting with the very knowledgeable Katie Vargo in order to get some answers for some of the questions I had. This continues to be my big project for the summer and I am finding it very interesting to see how and why things are the way they are in terms of content and timing.
The weeks really are flying by here and it has definitely been an entertaining and invaluable experience thus far and I plan to keep up the hard work and help out the team as much as they need me.
Thanks!
Hey fellow interns,
I can’t believe it’s already been a month since I’ve worked here at Dwellworks! I’m finally getting used to the groove of things! I’m so glad that waking up early in the morning isn’t as difficult as it used to be in the beginning of summer J with this being said, I can attest to saying that that this summer is flying by so quickly! Early this week on Monday, I was given the opportunity to work on something new. I performed an ACD Reconciliation for the month of May. This meant I was given the task to determine how many of our DS programs actually closed in May. In order to do this I had to run an ACD report and cross reference it with a closed report for the month May. Unfortunately I found that percentage actually closed vs. what was anticipated was not that high this month. As a result of this I have been given some training to do closings in order to assist the DS managers when things get really busy later in the summer. From the training, I learned a little more about the internal billing form (IBF) and the proper ways to close a program in Filemaker. My director said I should be able to finish the training early next week to fully help the managers when need be! Another assignment I had to do this week was to do a program mapping for all Microsoft programs. This task basically meant that I had to look at all closed Microsoft programs and describe the services and the number of days it took to complete each service. This task was essential and necessary because the report that I generated would be given to testers of Service Engine who are not familiar with Microsoft programs.
Tuesday was my busiest day of this week. I ended up filling a total of 21 authorizations that day! Lastly for the week on my downtime, I did a word search that was given by our wellness committee J It was a great way to pass the time when I wasn’t busy. At 12 today I have my 30 day evaluation. I’m actually looking forward to seeing what my director has to say.
Arpan Sarkar
Hello again, this is Mark Fritschen. Week 5 was an exciting week to say the least. This week I began to monitor and report on Destination Services Consultants that have high volume and also monitor and report on new DSC's to see how their volume is. This information is used by the managers so that they can choose DSC's that are in need of works or make sure to avoid those DSC's that are too busy. Along with this I have aided the domestic team more by doing more billing and closings and also by completing spreadsheet that are then sent to our clients. The main spreadsheet I worked on for domestic was one that summarized the programs and results for Graebel Amazon Programs.
The main event for this week was Bob, the CEO and Gene, the CFO along with a number of the board of directors visiting our office. Both Rob and I gave them separate presentations on what we have been doing so far and how what we have accomplished fits into our goals for this internship. It was great having the Higher-Ups here to socialize with and to learn from. That about summarizes my week. I look forward to working on new projects and having new opportunities for next week.
Rob here:
Hello all,
this week was a really cool week here in Detroit. We had the board of directors come and have their meeting at our office. I had the privilege of being able to give them a presentation on who I am and what I am doing this summer. It was a privilege to get to talk to them and meet them. It was also my first exposure to Bob and Gene and they are as great as everyone says they are!
In terms or projects I am continuing my work with Aleks and now I just got assigned another project to help out the BPI team. I continue to work with excel and Filemaker and really am starting to get in to the groove of the weeks at Dwellworks.
I am having a good time this summer and I really am learning a lot. I look forward to next week.
The main event for this week was Bob, the CEO and Gene, the CFO along with a number of the board of directors visiting our office. Both Rob and I gave them separate presentations on what we have been doing so far and how what we have accomplished fits into our goals for this internship. It was great having the Higher-Ups here to socialize with and to learn from. That about summarizes my week. I look forward to working on new projects and having new opportunities for next week.
Rob here:
Hello all,
this week was a really cool week here in Detroit. We had the board of directors come and have their meeting at our office. I had the privilege of being able to give them a presentation on who I am and what I am doing this summer. It was a privilege to get to talk to them and meet them. It was also my first exposure to Bob and Gene and they are as great as everyone says they are!
In terms or projects I am continuing my work with Aleks and now I just got assigned another project to help out the BPI team. I continue to work with excel and Filemaker and really am starting to get in to the groove of the weeks at Dwellworks.
I am having a good time this summer and I really am learning a lot. I look forward to next week.
.
Friday, May 25, 2012
Mark: Philanthropy
Rob: Sustainability.
Rob: Sustainability.
Good Morning!
I hope everyone has enjoyed the second week of our internship here at Dwellworks. As the Destination service intern at the Cleveland downtown office I have had the wonderful opportunity this week to meet with senior executive officers, sit in on meetings and conference calls and most importantly, getting acclimated to Cartus, Filemaker, atlas and the other key features that play an integral role in DS.
This week I had the opportunity to meet with Andy Horvath the VP of destination services. He was able to sit down with myself and another colleague to discuss the history of Dwellworks and the Destination Services department. As a fun fact, he ran the ½ marathon last week! I enjoyed my discussion with Andy as it gave me a deeper knowledge and understanding about the background and important influence of Dwellworks in the community.
This week we were also asked to decide on which committee we would like to join during the duration of our internship. I decided to be a part of the philanthropy committee! As a member of one of the largest service based sororities in the world (Alpha Kappa Alpha), it was not hard to make my decision. I along with the rest of the philanthropy members at the downtown Cleveland office will have our first meeting today! I am looking forward to working with various charities and organizations in the Cleveland area! I will keep you guys updated in the coming weeks about the great things that the philanthropy committee has planned!
Each week members of the downtown Cleveland office travel to a “’hot spot” downtown for lunch. This week we went to the Galleria! The Galleria is “an indoor greenhouse and gathering place.” It is home to retail stores, restaurants and concerts in the summer. I have attached some pictures below of our adventures at the Galleria! I have also attached a picture of the entire DS staff at the downtown Cleveland location! Have a great rest of the day!
Happy Memorial Weekend!
Peter Krusing: Accounting Intern! 
Hey everyone,
It’s Friday of week two so I’m going to give you all a preview of how my second week went in the DC office. First of all I want to say, interning as a DS intern at Dwellworks has been really awesome. As I said in last week’s post, the people here are amazing. I wouldn’t be able to get through the day if it were not for the great staff. On Monday, we actually had a new addition to our staff, a new coordinator. In honor of him joining our staff, we had pizza for lunch just like last Monday when I joined. I joked with my director that pizza on Mondays should be a tradition in our in our office now J
Early in the week, I watched several modules of consultant training to learn what their role in the company is. From watching these videos I can now see the steps and procedures that consultants take to handle a transferee’s request. The process is very structured and even though consultants are considered independent contractors certain procedures must be followed in order to ensure that the transferee is satisfied.
My main task this week was to fill in all missing information into Filemaker for all closed programs. There were about 1300 total programs total that I had to look into! This was necessary for the transition to Service Engine, the new database which will actually launch next week! I’m actually excited to see it because to be honest Filemaker can be really irritating to use at times J by doing this project, I was able to look back at past emails between consultants, transferees and destination managers. I point this out because I am now able to better understand the interaction between all three important functions and also learn proper email etiquette in the corporate world.
On Wednesday, me and five other staff members in the office went through phone training. We all learned to transfer calls, look through the phone directory, and make conference calls. I found this training to be very useful because now I can actually pick up the phone and won’t be embarrassed when a customer or someone within the office calls! During that day we also had a team meeting to discuss important thing that had been going on the office during the week. Lastly, I was given the task to conduct several Authorizations throughout the course of this week, which basically meant to process new invoices for the Destination Managers and uploading AUTH’s into Filemaker.
Arpan Sarkar
Hey Again, this is Mark, The Supply Chain intern.
I have started a few large projects in week 2. My major project as of now is updating the community guides that go into the welcome packet. For this task I have contacted many DSC's to help me on making sure all the facts in them are updated and also to make sure any sort of new destinations in the area are added into the guide.
Another task I have begun to do is to update Service Engine with information on all the DSC's as we work to have it ready for its launch date.
Lastly, I have also begun learning to be able to take on my own Domestic Destination Services programs, which includes authorizing, assigning a DSC, overseeing the progress, and closing the program.
I look forward to all the new experiences I will be having within the next few weeks and also excited to meet the Cartus representatives that are coming to stay at our Detroit office for a week.
Robert Here:
These last few weeks have been very interesting. I have started spending a lot of time doing auths on Filemaker as well as closings and billings.
I have been assigned some special projects like pipeline reports and job description updates that I look forward to working on in the future.
I have been updating staffing analyses and also have been setting up weekly meeting for the DS team and this plethora of different projects and experiences has been very helpful in my development.
We have been having good time learning about everything and will continue to handle our projects and help this company succeed!
I have started a few large projects in week 2. My major project as of now is updating the community guides that go into the welcome packet. For this task I have contacted many DSC's to help me on making sure all the facts in them are updated and also to make sure any sort of new destinations in the area are added into the guide.
Another task I have begun to do is to update Service Engine with information on all the DSC's as we work to have it ready for its launch date.
Lastly, I have also begun learning to be able to take on my own Domestic Destination Services programs, which includes authorizing, assigning a DSC, overseeing the progress, and closing the program.
I look forward to all the new experiences I will be having within the next few weeks and also excited to meet the Cartus representatives that are coming to stay at our Detroit office for a week.
Robert Here:
These last few weeks have been very interesting. I have started spending a lot of time doing auths on Filemaker as well as closings and billings.
I have been assigned some special projects like pipeline reports and job description updates that I look forward to working on in the future.
I have been updating staffing analyses and also have been setting up weekly meeting for the DS team and this plethora of different projects and experiences has been very helpful in my development.
We have been having good time learning about everything and will continue to handle our projects and help this company succeed!
Monday, May 21, 2012
Hello everyone! My name is Meagan Simmons and I am the new Destination Services intern at the Downtown Cleveland headquarters for Dwellworks. I am a senior marketing major at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. Marketing is such a versatile major and it allows me to use both my creative and analytical skills. I also love advertising, supply chain management, and public relations which all play an important part in marketing. Xavier University is the 6th oldest Jesuit University in the nation. Since Xavier is a Jesuit university many of its core principles are founded around the Jesuit faith which stresses giving back to the community and being a servant for all mankind through servant leadership. I choose Xavier for its small size (only 4000 undergrads) and the close knit community, seniors know freshman and vice versa. Xavier also has a great basketball program! We are noted as one of the top mid-major programs in the country, making the sweet sixteen four times in the last five years. GO MUSKIES!
At Xavier I am involved in a variety of clubs, programs and organizations that range from student ambassador, vice-president of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc and student volunteer at the Boys and Girls Club of greater Cincinnati. I am hoping to learn as much information as possible from this internship. I want to learn more about being successful in a corporate setting and the steps necessary to transition from college life to the corporate world. I am also looking forward to speaking with current Dwellworks employees and learning from their past work experiences and tactics/information that I can use to be successful in my future endeavors.
In my spare time I like to travel, eat and shop! I have traveled to three different continents and over 10 countries in my lifetime and I hope to expand that number tremendously in the future. I am also a huge fun of international cuisine, especially Indian food, West Indian food, Thai and Japanese (sushi to be exact). I am also an avid shopper and I enjoy shopping at thrift stores and unique boutiques. I look forward to reading everyone’s post this summer. Happy Friday!
P.S: Below I have attached a few pictures of the downtown Cleveland office. The building is very new and has a cool modern art deco theme that is prevalent throughout the office. I have also attached a picture from the 5th birthday celebration that we celebrated at the downtown office yesterday. To be specific it is a picture of the kitchen and the decorations that the wonderful HR team assembled.
Have a great day!
Friday, May 18, 2012
Hey everyone,
My name is Arpan Sarkar. I am the one intern at the DC office. So far the first week has been awesome! The staff here is so nice and welcoming. On my first day we had pizza during lunch to welcome me to the staff. I definitely think I will have a fun and rewarding experience this summer. I have learned so much this week about the company and as a Destination Services Intern, I was able to do my first AUTH's yesterday!
Also yesterday we celebrated the fifth anniversary of Dwellworks. Cheers to Brenda Al-Akhras, head of the FUN committee to set up an office party that was much fun. I especially had enjoyed playing musical chairs during the party. The cider we had in the conference room was also quite tasty and refreshing!
So I’ll talk a little bit about myself now. I currently attend James Madison University and will be a fifth year senior in the fall semester. I am a double major at JMU studying Management and Computer Information Systems. The reason I chose to go to JMU was because I loved the campus from the very first day I saw it during freshman orientation. It was so beautiful and the people giving the tours were so lively. Also before I was accepted, I read that JMU had one of the best schools for undergraduate business in Virginia. Lastly I chose JMU because The Princeton review rated JMU for having the 5th best campus food in the U.S.
When I was applying for colleges, I decided to choose to major in business management. I always joked around with my friends that in high school that I wanted to have a job in the corporate world because that was where the money was at. However, I really had no idea what business entailed and how difficult of a major it could actually be in college. In fact during my freshman year, I was required to take economics which I absolutely hated it. Honestly I was considering dropping the business major. My dad however, convinced me that graduating college with a business degree would be worth it so I stuck with it. From this day, I am glad I listened to my dad’s advice and remained as a business major because I truly find it rewarding to be in JMU’s business program.
Last year during my senior year of college, I decided that I wanted to stay an extra year to complete the Computer Information Systems major. I picked the major for one, because I was not ready to graduate and second because the job market for IT is growing. I also learned that 90% of CIS graduates have job experience coming out JMU. With this in mind I look forward to my final year at JMU and hope to end strong.
As business major that will soon embark into the real world, I hope that being an intern at Dwellworks will provide me the experience necessary to be prepared for the future. As an intern I hope to accomplish how to better enhance my communication/interpersonal, customer service, multi-tasking, and time management skills. I would also like to learn more about the relocation industry and learn about proper managerial techniques to deal with difficult customers/clients. I anticipate that the knowledge I learned in school will help me to be successful at Dwellworks.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Here in the D, Mark Fritschen and Robert Vanderpluijm are the 2012 summer DS interns. We will be blogging about our trials and tribulations on this site throughout this exciting summer. Here in our first post, we will both begin with some intro information about ourselves:
Robert:
I just finished up my sophomore year at the University of Michigan. I am studying Economics and Environmental studies and sustainability. I choose to attend Michigan due to its academic prowess as well as the fact that I grew up in Ann Arbor where Michigan is located. I choose to be an Economics Major because I find the economy fascinating and I want to learn about why it is the way it is. I also combined with environmentally sustainability as alternative forms of energy and global sustainability are some of the hottest topics right now and I decided to do my part and get involved with those subjects.
This internship is a very interesting opportunity. I hope to learn the in's and out's of a business as well as how an office functions. I plan to develop my technical skills as the Operations intern and I hope to further my knowledge of online databases and programs. For fun, I like to play soccer as I am on the Michigan Men's Club Soccer Team. I also like to hang out with friends and do anything active.
I look forward to a great summer and experience at Dwellworks as an intern!Let's Go Blue!
Mark:
I just finished my freshman year at Michigan State University. I am studying Human Resources. I chose to attend Michigan State University because I loved the campus and because of the strong business programs. I chose Human Resources because I find the selection process for new workers to be interesting.
What I hope to learn in this internship is to understand the office atmosphere and increase my knowledge in information systems.
For fun I like to play basketball and video games and I like to hang out with all my buddies.
Robert:
I just finished up my sophomore year at the University of Michigan. I am studying Economics and Environmental studies and sustainability. I choose to attend Michigan due to its academic prowess as well as the fact that I grew up in Ann Arbor where Michigan is located. I choose to be an Economics Major because I find the economy fascinating and I want to learn about why it is the way it is. I also combined with environmentally sustainability as alternative forms of energy and global sustainability are some of the hottest topics right now and I decided to do my part and get involved with those subjects.
This internship is a very interesting opportunity. I hope to learn the in's and out's of a business as well as how an office functions. I plan to develop my technical skills as the Operations intern and I hope to further my knowledge of online databases and programs. For fun, I like to play soccer as I am on the Michigan Men's Club Soccer Team. I also like to hang out with friends and do anything active.
I look forward to a great summer and experience at Dwellworks as an intern!Let's Go Blue!
Mark:
I just finished my freshman year at Michigan State University. I am studying Human Resources. I chose to attend Michigan State University because I loved the campus and because of the strong business programs. I chose Human Resources because I find the selection process for new workers to be interesting.
What I hope to learn in this internship is to understand the office atmosphere and increase my knowledge in information systems.
For fun I like to play basketball and video games and I like to hang out with all my buddies.
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