Employee story: senior IT consultant

The tasks of an IT consultant surely vary from company to company. Our colleague Ivana reports on how it is to start working for us and what a day of work looks like for an IT consultant at adesso insurance solutions.

Hello, I am Ivana and I started working in the property insurance department at adesso insurance solutions three years ago. At the time, there was the vision to develop a new policy management system for property insurances, which would be completely adapted to the requirements of different customers. This was a very exciting challenge for me that I really wanted to be a part of.

Beginning the new job

During the Welcome Days over my first days at work, I was able to feel the special adesso spirit that we have here. Everyone is very helpful and looks forward to getting to know the new colleagues. In order to make the transition easier, you get a mentor for the first few months who is at your side to offer help and answer questions. One or two questions surely come up particularly with all the administrative systems. But even if my mentor was for some reason not directly available, I quickly found out that all "adessi's", as the employees refer to each other, like to help and always have time for a good tip. I felt very welcome at adesso insurance solutions from the very beginning and quickly found my place in the company. My start in a new working environment could not have been any better for me personally.

My "usual" day at work

Every exciting beginning has an end and I was quickly in my professional daily life. But daily life does not mean a boring routine: every day the same tasks, the same office and the same people. Far from it! As a senior consultant at adesso insurance solutions, something new happens every day. And it is exactly this change, the daily learning and the possibility to constantly work on new ideas and solutions, that I like. In the three years that I have been here, I frequently have a new working environment through the changing projects with customers and, above all, many new tasks again and again. Sometimes I am with the customer on site, then again regularly in my office in Cologne for internal work.

The combination of internal work and customer projects has another advantage for me. I get the chance to directly observe things that we develop in-house being used with customers. That always gives me quick feedback. Thus, you can quickly see the success if the customer is satisfied and everything goes smoothly, but you also receive valuable feedback directly for optimization. I can share this in turn with the development team or the central product development department.

No project with a customer is like the other, because the customer's internal structures have to be considered. During my last project, for example, I was mainly responsible for business analysis and - together with another colleague and the customer - the actual situation was analyzed in different workshops and compared with the processes in our standard software. We show our standard processes in so-called UML graphics for analysis purposes in order to compare them with the customer's desired processes. Different graphics are needed to make the processes transparent. We use tools like Visual Paradigm or Visio to create the graphics, which support us with this work. The objectives have to be defined for later implementation and the difference must be documented precisely as well as added to the software specifications. That is classic documentation work. This is important and is a type of quality assurance, because you can determine if the processes were completely illustrated in a later comparison.

Furthermore, I am the contact partner for our customer on-site for any questions about our software, which means I have to be very familiar with it all. It is often the case that a meeting must be organized quickly to discuss and talk about bigger questions. A protocol must be created for many meetings as well in order to correctly implement all decisions and requirements. If I organized the meeting, then I take on this task as well.

I am also involved in the subsequent testing of new enhancements for the customer. During the implementation phase, I have to regularly coordinate and share information with the respective developers throughout the test process. We use Jira as a supporting software, because error tickets can be easily created and controlled here.

The challenges that you have as a senior IT consultant are different from customer to customer. My experience shows that open and regular communication with customers, your own team and all those involved is essential, because most challenges can be solved with this and it makes it easier to work together. That is why I recommend to all new colleagues, in particular consultants like me, to be open for new things and to be equipped with a lot of curiosity.