Harry Pottinger completed a work experience report at Perivan Limited from October 2012. Over the course of the week, he assisted various teams within the company, including the Virtualboardroom sales team, Marketing Store team, typesetting team, digital printing section, and marketing department. His duties included sitting in on meetings, updating databases, entering new client details, organizing paperwork, and providing general administrative support. In his evaluation, Harry noted that the experience was very beneficial and gave him valuable insight into the workplace, though there were sometimes lulls when he ran out of tasks. He thanked those involved in arranging the placement.

1. Harry Pottinger
Work Experience Report – October 2012
Name of Company: Perivan Limted
Address: 21 Worship Street
London
EC2A 2DW
Contact: Angela Cherrett
Work Done
I started on Monday by sitting in on a sales meeting of the Virtualboardroom team, in
which they were assessing what sectors were potential markets for them to sell to, and they
also discussed how well they were doing in the sectors that they were already marketing to,
such as AIM and Main Market companies. Once the meeting was finished I spoke to one of
the people in the sales teamabout what Virtualboardroom was and what people used it for.
Then we went back to the sales area, and I did some work on Microsoft Dynamics, a
customer relation management program, helping to update their databases by ensuring
that clients were no longer on the system. In the afternoon, I sat in on a conference a call
which a different company was holding to help introduce Virtualboardroom to its staff in
other countries.
On Tuesday, I was back with the Virtualboardroom sales teamto update contact
details in a database of companies who were potential customers, and I had a health and
safety briefing. In the afternoon, I was with another group in the company who were
working on another piece of software called DotApprove, which is a workflow management
system designed to help companies remain compliant to industry standards, and also to
help people to bring different parts of their company together in order to ensure that
development and signing-off of projects goes a smoothly as possible. Also, I did some work
with the Marketing Store team, who help clients who are using their Marketing Store, which
allows company to order stationery for their employees by using templates.
On Wednesday, I spent the morning helping the Marketing Store team again. I was
entering details of new employees into the company’s Marketing Store website. In the
afternoon, I helped to organize job bags, which is Perivan’s way of organizing all of their
current and past jobs and to show what they did during that job. I also spent some time
organizing mailing of reports that Perivan had printed onsite for their clients, which involved
entering details into a postal website and, printing off the postage label and then packaging
the reports. After that, I helped to collate data from recharge spread sheets for a company
so that they could bill their partners for stationery and other items that they had given out
to clients.
On Thursday, I spent the morning with the typesetting team, who were updating
documents for clients before they went to printing. This meant that they would receive a
change that a client wanted to make to a document that was being finished, edit what it was

2. that needed changing with software such as Quark and Blacklining. Then they proof read the
changes, and sent off the new copy of the document back to the client and waited for either
more changes to the document, or they would get approval to finish the document and
either print it or the client would keep the copy and use it digitally. I spent the rest of the
day with the digital printing section of the company. This is what the company is known for,
although they used to use other methods of printing because of the quantity that they used
to print. While I was with digital printing, I did some binding of reports and board packs.
On Friday, I spent the day with the marketing department of the printing part of the
company. They were trying to get new clients to use their printing services. This involves
calling up potential clients to see if they are interested and going to meet the clients in
person. They also generated estimates for printing jobs given to them by companies.
Evaluation
I think that the experience I have gained has been very beneficial, not only during the
work, but before and after it. I have learned what it is like to go in and out of work, and it
has been good for me to find my way around and to and from work by myself.
I thought that the overall experience was very good, and everyone in the company
was very friendly and helpful. However, there were a few times when I ran out of things to
do, especially on Friday when I was with the marketing team.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my father, who arranged the placement for me. I would also like
to thank Angela Cherrett, who supervised the placement while I was at the company, and
David Ray, who helped to organise the placement for me.