What is your role and focus areas at TradeTech, Erik?

I work as a technical consultant in mainly two areas; treasury system development and Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence development.

You’ve worked at other consulting firms – why did you choose to join TradeTech?

I worked with another treasury consulting firm before I joined TradeTech and wanted to stay within that field. One thing that appealed to me about TradeTech was its mix of local and international customers and the variation of projects - anything from short, one-man assignments to extensive system implementation projects with many people involved.

Another thing that impressed me is that TradeTech fully understands the very basic concept that the consultants are the "capital" of the organization. TradeTech takes excellent care of its employees and offers opportunities for professional as well as personal growth.

What types of assignments have you had at TradeTech?

I appreciate variation, and I’ve not been disappointed. My projects have ranged from international assignments for large multinationals where I’ve implemented or upgraded complex treasury systems, to support issues where I help customers with their day-to-day business. At the moment I’m working on a Data

warehouse and Business Intelligence project at a major financial institution, helping them improve their reporting.

What does a typical work day look like for you?

It varies with the type of project I’m working on. My current assignment allows me to dig deep into the technical design issues of Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence. While still an extremely important of my job, I meet the customer less frequently than in other, larger projects where the team effort is more critical in order to succeed.

One thing that doesn’t change with the type of project I’m working on is that I’m always more or less directly in contact with the customer and their requirements. This makes the work more dynamic as I get deeply involved in the customer’s business side as well.

Do you see any trends in the types of services customers need now, compared to five years ago?

Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence users are naturally more savvy now than they were just a few years back, as the concept of Business Intelligence is now integrated into the organization and the benefits are very well understood. The technology behind it has matured significantly over the past years as well. Today, the trend is to some extent moving toward self-service Business Intelligence, i.e. the users want to be able to easily analyze big loads of company data and more dynamically create reports on their own (e.g. power pivot tables in Microsoft Excel 2010). This is challenging since it places high demands on the quality of the underlying company data.