Meet A ServiceTrader
Kentrel Lee, Accounting Integrations Product Manager
Kentrel is a part of the Product team and manages ServiceTrade’s accounting integrations.
Tell us what you do and what a typical day is like for you.
I am the Accounting Integrations Product Manager, so I specialize in accounting systems that integrate with ServiceTrade. At ServiceTrade we produce financial data—revenue, costing data, etc.—and we take that information and transmit it between the systems. That way, the end users can make critical financial and operations decisions based on the data that we send out to those accounting systems. It’s been a humbling experience.
Tell us about your background and what brought you to ServiceTrade.
Shawn Mims! That’s how I arrived here at ServiceTrade. He reached out to me on LinkedIn. He had seen that I was wrapping up a very large product release between a Sage 100 contractor and ADP. Shawn was like: “Oh! We need a product accounting integration manager to come in and focus on getting the Sage 300 integration out” because Sage 300 is roughly 21% of the targeted market segment.
And wonderful news! The Sage 300 CRE integration with ServiceTrade has been developed and released along with the integration with Foundation Software! Currently the ServiceTrade Accounting Dev Team is cooking up more ‘goodies’ for the market.
What do you like to do outside of work?
I’m a jack of all trades and a master of none. The one thing that always interests me is humanity—people. I have a fascination with people. So I love having conversations and just talking with people.
What’s it like working remotely when some of the team is here together in the office?
It’s a different kind of feeling. I’m one of those people who loves “popping up” in offices of clients and colleagues to ask two important questions, “How are you doing and how am I able to help your workload a little easier? I’m not able to do that.
I know if I was in North Carolina, I’d live in our CTO’s (The Professor Brian Smithwick’s) office. I’d just be like: “Brian, I’m gonna put a pillow over here and sleep in your office.” So it’s probably a good thing I’m not in North Carolina.
Working remote has its challenges but it also has its rewards. It’s the kind of mindset where you have to figure things out. That scrappy sort of mindset. You’ve got to have that. Where you say: Okay, I don’t know how we’re gonna do this, but we’ll figure it out.
ServiceTrade Dayzzz ’21
What is your favorite ServiceTrade value?
“We are weird.” That’s true! ServiceTrade has very wonderful leadership. Shawn, Brian, Billy, Adam, Tim, Anna, Skip, Aaron,James, [David] Varnadoe, all of them. That’s the beauty about ServiceTrade.
If you were to describe a product manager in one word, what would it be?
Curious to learn and grow! You have to be curious! You know that old saying “curiosity killed the cat?” Well, if you’re not curious about the product, it’s going to be difficult to make it as a product manager.
You have to be willing to ask the stupid questions because we can’t make assumptions and build the wrong product. Sometimes in product we can get arrogant’ and think we know something that we really don’t know. So we always have to have that curiosity. “I don’t know anything. Teach me.”
The day I lost feeling on the left side of my face.
