Trainee project number two is about to end
After our two months in Oslo, I have been situated in Stockholm with some travels to Linköping, a Swedish city south of Stockholm. My project here is for the Visma company Commerce and its software systems for public procurements called Opic.
Management Trainees 2017 practicing the dance around the Christmas tree.
Alongside my main projects, which are two months each, I have a project that will go on for the entire trainee year. Here, my task is to identify and analyse opportunities for machine learning in Visma’s products.
When they told me about this machine learning project, I got really excited! I have always been fascinated about structuring processes and making it more efficient, especially with some coding. Machine learning was only a buzzword for me before Visma. As you can tell, I did not have much of a background in the area, so I enrolled an online course. For those of you who are interested in learning about machine learning I can recommend the course by Andrew Ng on Coursera.
Together with Business Analysts I have discussed several opportunities for automating customer workflows in one of our systems with machine learning. From this, I presented the three ideas that will bring most customer value. The ideas also have to be feasible in terms of what data we have and whether it is a repetitive processes that cannot be explicitly programmed (the main requisites for machine learning).
These ideas are now further investigated by the development teams and I have examined a new software for opportunities with machine learning automation. This time, my proposed ideas are about making internal workflows more efficient, which requires a calculation of the potential value that the automation will bring, in terms of time and cost saving.
In other words, I have to understand how the customers use our softwares, where they struggle and how we can solve that with the latest technology. I love working with the combination of people management and technology, which is what I get to do here at Visma!
A Christmas picture from me, Stina, Brian and Maria.
As a Management trainee, I get to influence the decision of my placements. I asked for a project related to sales, since it’s an area I want to learn more about and this was exactly what I was assigned. I have been responsible for mapping the customer journey for the Opic-products. In other words, I have identified all touchpoints or interactions between Visma and the customer in each phase before, during and after their purchase. This has implied working close to sales, marketing and product management. In addition, I have held many interviews with customers to understand their assessment and satisfaction of each interaction.
This week, I will present the results, including the customer pain points, my recommendations of improvements and what business opportunities I have identified. Not only the management team but also the CEO of Visma Commerce will attend. A combination of nervousness and excitement! I like presenting and I know that I will be confident as long as I am prepared, which is why I start preparing the presentation at least one week ahead.
During this second project as trainees we have been five out of ten situated in Stockholm: me, Maria, Stina, Brian and Magnus. In December Visma throws a Christmas party (or julbord) in every country. We all went, including next year’s trainees, dressed out by the party theme “Hollywood movies”, as you can see in the picture above.
After Christmas and New years, all trainees will come to Stockholm for courses in project management, M&A and Tableau. We will also share our experiences and learnings so far and of course do some fun activities together!
