User Spotlight: James Williams and Cavallo

Meet James Williams, Director of Custom Development at Cavallo.

Originally from Traverse City, MI, James is currently based in Grand Rapids, MI. Despite hailing from a state that shares a name with one of the Great Lakes, James never learned to swim. 

Luckily, aquatic acumen isn’t required for his day job at Cavallo, the premier distribution management software solution. At Cavallo, James heads up custom development, meaning he works closely with customers to design solutions that extend the core Cavallo products to meet the customer needs. These projects can span from a few months to multiple years. James is just wrapping up a multi-year project with a customer in the computer hardware and repair space that will save them thousands of hours a year in order and inventory transaction processing.

Recently, James helped lead a complete overhaul of how Cavallo manages custom development. This large-scale internal change requires ironing out wrinkles as they go, but James and the team are hugely optimistic about the direction they are heading in.

A day in the life

James wakes up early and tries to get in a workout (not a swim) and protein shake. He aims to get to the office before most everyone else has arrived so he can have 45 minutes of working through his priorities before his daily meetings get going. Given his position, days are generally pretty busy with internal stand-ups, cross-departmental meetings, and customer calls. But, James enjoys the problem-solving aspect of his days, enabling his team to do their best work and providing clients with solutions that make their lives easier.

One of the most rewarding aspects of my job is removing roadblocks for my team, allowing them to do what they’re best at.

James and Taskable

James tried several ways to manage his day-to-day tasks and priorities. He came upon Taskable while looking for a Kanban solution that was simple to use. Taskable fit that description. He likes the simple and easy-to-use interface, meaning he doesn’t have to spend as much time messing around with his productivity tool and can spend more time getting things done.

What I like about Taskable is the simple and easy-to-use interface. There’s nothing to complicate interactions, increase friction, or excuse procrastination.

In addition to Taskable’s simplicity, James was interested in the integrations, given that his team uses tools such as Trello to manage projects and collaborate. James was also interested in the product and team’s direction and was excited to be an early adopter.

James’ top productivity tip

While he has many thoughts on this, James’ top productivity tip is the ‘30 second rule’. Essentially, anything you can do in 30 seconds or less, just get it done then. No need to plan or prioritize; just do it.

In addition, James is a big believer in automation and tools like Zapier and IFTT to do simple, tedious tasks that can slow you down at scale. One example he has is to use Zapier to create a note in Evernote for every meeting automatically. That way, when you get on the call, you already have the place created where you can take notes and capture action items.

You can connect with James on LinkedIn and check out Cavallo if you are in the distribution management software and services market.