Edwin has been a true LINKIT explorer for over a year now. Read more about his experiences and challenges as a functional consultant below.
How did you end up at LINKIT?
I was approached via LinkedIn by one of our recruiters. After two messages and an explanatory telephone conversation, we scheduled a 1st meeting. It turned out to be the right time for me and I had a very good feeling about this conversation. That feeling was mutual and this was followed by a 2nd conversation with other future colleagues. That good feeling lingered there and that turned out to be mutual.
What is your current assignment?
My current assignment is at the Department for Implementing Subsidies to Institutions (DUS-I) which falls under the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport. Within this department I deliver functional consultancy in a functional consultancy team (together with another colleague from the FC Squad at LINKIT) on a custom (IBM Based) application where process support is also often requested. As the department name may (hopefully) suggest, the application is used for granting applications.
How do you experience your position at LINKIT?
In short: as very pleasant. You have the space to work independently without actually being thrown into the deep end without swimming diplomas.
In principle, you spend most of your time (obviously) with your client, but because of the Club Days, among other things, I really have the idea/feeling of working for LINKIT.
What challenges appeal to you as a functional consultant and what opportunities do you see within your field?
The biggest challenge I see as a functional consultant is, in principle, what the discipline of functional consultancy partly entails, and that is being the connecting factor between users and (among other things) development and not losing yourself in one of the directions.
What I now see with my current assignment, for example, is that you are in an organization that is relatively new and is therefore looking for an unambiguous working method/processes in management, but also in work processes and how certain things (within the application, for example) should work exactly. The challenge then is to provide support while you are still relatively new yourself.
Apart from the fact that there are still quite a few possibilities in terms of content, I see ‘brand awareness’ as a possibility within the field itself (“What is business information management”).
What do you run into as a consultant?
I think that’s where that ‘brand awareness’ comes into play again. In some cases, you are “just” a messenger. For example, you are going to say that something is “Works as designed” while a user has a different expectation. You often get back that I just have to make it as soon as possible while that is not my role (which is not insurmountable by the way).
A few other things I sometimes run into:
- Sometimes it seems as if users are not completely clear about their own (work) processes;
- Unrealistic expectations (follow-up of reports 1 hour after a report has been submitted, expecting something to be fixed just as quickly while it is at least a day’s work, etc.)
- Always too little time and access to satisfy your curiosity 😉
What gives you energy?
Multiple things:
- When you have been able to solve something structurally with a developer/the business;
- Puzzling to be able to properly work out an analysis of a problem (perhaps even puzzling in itself). For example, you can spend a day working on a problem where you have to connect all kinds of lines (from, for example, within a UI to the database level (as far as that goes)). When the lines are finally connected and your outcome leads to THE solution, it can be very satisfying;
- Learning something new (in the broadest sense);
- When you see that a (process) improvement promoted by you is bearing fruit;
- …
More than enough to keep it interesting 😊
