Wow final day at SAS! It really has gone by quickly and I’m thankful to have had an opportunity to take part in this program. Today started out meeting with a technical consultant at SAS. Melissa told us about her career journey, and what lead her to SAS. She noted that her favorite part about working at SAS was the people, and talked to us about what consulting really is. We learned that consulting is basically people paying money for your services. Since SAS software is so complex, as a technical consultant she works to help guide companies who are using SAS software on how to use and implement it. After we met with Melissa, we met with Rani our final meeting of the program. Rani talked to us about her role in alliance. She acts as a liaison between SAS and some of its partners, like Deloitte and KPMG. She told us about the variety of jobs she has had before SAS. For our final activity in Risk, we had a round table with 3 of the summer interns who we asked various questions to. We talked to the interns about what lead them to SAS, why they chose to major in Comp Sci and many other things. As we wrapped up our activities with the Risk department, it was time to head over to building A for the conclusion of the program. In A we met all of the other CA interns and headed downstairs for lunch. After lunch, we had the opportunity to present our Gather IQ videos to some people who build the app and who work in HR for SAS.
Overall, It was great learning more about how business work these last two weeks at SAS.
Today began our second day in the Risk Management division. We started off the day listening to a webinar about risk management sales. Pauline told us that SAS offers many webinars and live streams that any of their employees can listen for self-education. After this, we had the opportunity to meet with Kim Bentley. Kim is the executive assistant to Troy, the VP of the Risk division. She talked to us about her unique career journey and how she ended up at SAS. She worked on Wallstreet and has a masters in music. Her main responsibilities today include helping Troy with his travel schedule, managing events, and everything in between. After meeting with Kim, we went back to Pauline’s office. She had her weekly call with her team and boss via Skype. During the meeting, each of Pauline’s team members gave their weekly update on what they’ve been working on. Once the meeting was over, we headed over to R for lunch with Jess Mayo who also had 2 CA students shadowing her. After lunch, Saavan and I began a Risk Management research project during which we searched for current trends in Risk globally. We worked on this for the rest of the day and sent Pauline a document with links to articles before departing after day 7.
Today began our second phase of shadowing. Saavan and I are shadowing Pauline Ashcraft who works in Risk Management. The morning began with a quick tour of building T and an introduction to what Risk Management really is. Pauline talked to Saavan and I about the work she does which includes helping outside banks and insurance manage the risk they are taking on. She also works on the marketing side of risk and works to sell companies software that will help them manage their risk. She talked to us about her career journey and how she ended up in risk management. She graduated from NC State in 2016 and had worked at SAS as a summer intern in college. After the morning of introductions, it was time for lunch. At lunch, we met two of her colleagues, John and Tatiana. They also work on her team of people who work on the marketing side of risk management. They both told us about their career journey’s and how they ended up at SAS.
Pauline’s Office
Since Saavan and I aren’t very sure what section of business we are most interested in yet, Pauline wanted us to get to know many different parts of a business. She brought in one of her friends, Nick Davis, who works in Sales at SAS, to talk to us about his experiences. Nick talked about how much he enjoys traveling the country to talk to customers and make sales. He noted that while Sales can be a stressful division of a business, it is fun because you get to travel a lot and interact with people across the country. After we talked to Nick, Pauline had a meeting with her team about their plans for the upcoming month. We sat through this meeting for some time before we got to learn more about marketing from another one of Pauline’s colleagues, Casey. She talked to us about the intersection of marketing and sales and different strategies that SAS uses to market their software. She also talked to us about how SAS manages their marketing by measuring its effectiveness. They make sure that they quantify how many new customers a specific kind of marketing brings, in order to better market their products in the future. Overall, it was a very informative day and I enjoyed getting to see a new side of the business.
Today was our second day of work on the Gather IQ video project. In the morning the HR team we are working with told us that they wanted us to shift the focus of the video to make it more “challenged based” rather than informative. While this was frustrating, this really gave us a perspective into what real business is like–sometimes plans change! So we spent the entire morning working on redesigning our video campaign. We came up with a new challenge and marketing campaign. After eating a pizza lunch with other CA students, we had a chance to get our video script and plan approved by some of the HR team members. They gave us feedback on the plans before we began filming footage. We also worked on collecting noncopyrighted images from sources like the creative commons to use in our video. We filmed some footage in the afternoon and will be working at home the next few days to put together and edit the video before presenting it to a panel on Thursday to conclude our work experience at SAS.
Hard at work on our video project!
Tomorrow, I will begin shadowing Pauline Ashcraft in Risk Management.
My fourth day at SAS started out in a new building–building R. Friday and Monday (days 4 and 5) are dedicated to working with the Gather IQ team, rather than shadowing a department at SAS. We will begin shadowing the business ops department next Tuesday. Today, however, was a good change in pace. Saavan and I had spent the last 3 days being rushed from meeting to meeting and learning so much about finance so quickly. The morning started in a conference room. The design team for SAS’s Gather IQ app talked to us about the design process and the testing and usability part of it. After this, we had the opportunity to test the software. Gather IQ allows users to watch videos, read articles, and take quizzes about global issues like hunger or clean water. Gather IQ is basically the BuzzFeed of education. The 10 of us split into 3 groups and worked through tasks to help guide us in testing the software. We then filled out surveys to give the team feedback about how we thought the software worked. Overall, I was very impressed with it. There were a few kinks that we discussed, however in general the app is very useful and well designed. Later, it was time for lunch. It was my first time eating lunch in building R but I found the food quite good–especially the parmesan garlic knots.
After lunch, we began working on a video project. Our task is to come up with a video that raises awareness about the global issue of clean water. We also have to come up with a marketing plan and a call to action. We, therefore, spent the rest of the afternoon writing a script and will be filming and presenting the video on Monday.
Looking forward to another week at SAS.
Atrium of building RWorking to bring awareness to Global goal 6- clean water for everyone by 2030
Today was our last day in the beautiful new Building A
My day started with another meeting. This time Saavan and I went to a meeting with Lisa Vulinec. In the meeting, Lisa met with people in HR and others in Finance. The meeting was centered around something called Headcount. Headcount is an area that overlaps HR and Finance. Headcount is basically determining how many people SAS employs and pays at any given time. Headcount is critical to finance because a company must know the number of people they are paying in order to properly account for their expenses as well as predict their expenses in the future. They showed us the software they use to count the number of people each manager is hiring in order to keep track of their incoming or outgoing employees and the expenses associated with them. They use a software called Workday to account for this. After this, we headed to the office of John Wilson. John was meeting with one of his colleagues in Mckinney Texas over Skype. During the meeting, John and his colleague discussed the changes that are happening in the finance division and steps they are working on to make sure these changes go over smoothly. After sitting in on this meeting, Saavan and I headed over to another meeting this time with Ashley Gatewood our original host. Ashley was meeting with Caroline, one of the summer interns. The finance division is switching over the software they use to process numbers and data. Ashley and Caroline discussed this during the meeting. They went over a powerpoint Caroline had been working on that simplifies how the changes are going to affect people throughout SAS. After this, another summer intern, Jaime, came in and discussed what she has been working on. Jaime has been working on organizing data in software called SAGA that they are going to use to train employees on how to use the new finance system. She has been working to make the online classes and help people acclimate to the changes.
After our morning full of meetings, it was time for lunch! We had lunch with 2 of the interns–Caroline, and Luke Wilson (a CA alum). Caroline goes to Wake Forest and Luke goes to UNC. We got to talk to them about a variety of things. Everything from what life is like in college, to how they’ve enjoyed working at SAS so far. But as lunch came to a close, it was time for our last two hours in the finance division, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned about finance so far, its that they have a lot of meetings! Saavan and I sat in on another hour meeting during which people on Ashley’s team discussed training for SAS employees all over the world to help them become better acclimated to the new systems they’re planning to implement. Later, we spent our last hour in finance with two members of the Global Reporting and Analysis team, Lisa Vulinedec and Alex Harrill. Lisa and Alex talked to us about what got them interested in finance and their past experiences in the workforce and college.
I have learned a lot about finance in the past 3 days. Tomorrow, I will be working with the group of CA SAS interns on an app called Gather IQ, and after that, we will begin our shadowing in the Business Operations Department of SAS.
My second day at SAS started out with something very common in the corporate world– a staff meeting. Saavan and I sat in on the staff meeting of Lisa Vulinec. In the meeting sat Lisa’s team of around 6 employees and 4 interns. During the meeting, the team recapped a trip a few of them had been on to Vienna last week and then began to discuss various projects they are currently working on. The biggest project the team is working on right now is unifying SAS finance across the world into one efficient and effective system. They call this goal “One Finance. One SAS”. Interestingly, there are SAS offices across 60 countries around the world. Which means that the team at the Cary HQ is currently working to consolidate and unify all the finance people in SAS offices across the world. After the meeting, we were able to talk with Jim O’Brien and Heather who spoke to us about the way SAS consolidates all of their expense reports into an efficient system. They also talked to us about the technology used in finance today including a SAS designed financial software called FM (financial management). They also told us about the many different divisions under finance.
After that, it was time for lunch. We went to lunch in the SAS cafeteria with 4 college summer interns. 3 of them go to NC State while one of them goes to UNC. They began their internships in mid-May and will be working in finance the entire summer. We talked to them about a variety of topics, everything from what college is like, to what made them decide to major in finance. It was great to talk to them about their experiences especially because in only 4 years I will be where they are, having already selected a major in college, and almost ready to enter the workforce. After lunch, we got to learn more about the Tax and Treasury department in SAS. I talked to two Public accountants who work in the international tax field– Meg Deal and Adam Neal. They talked to me about the variety of things they do, including helping SAS employees all over the world file their tax returns and making sure SAS complies with all federal tax regulations. Meg and Adam also shared with me what lead them to be interested in accounting, and why they enjoy their jobs.
Finally, to close out the day, we met two more interns. We then had a round table discussion with the 2 interns and one of the interns we had met earlier at lunch. Mostly the discussion centered around college, and what lead them to decide to go into accounting and finance. Overall, it was a very informative day and I enjoyed learning more about finance at SAS.
One of the many collaborative spaces in the finance floor at SASA view from outside building AA view from the 9th floor that overlooks the SAS solar panels and sheep
I always knew that SAS was right next to Cary Academy, but until today I had no idea that just beyond the tennis courts of CA lies 10+ buildings and a world of innovation. Upon arriving to the SAS campus, we were greeted by Christine Dougherty, who works in talent acquisition and university recruitment. Christine gave us a presentation about what SAS does and the core values of the company. She told us about how SAS software is used across the globe. I was surprised to learn about the vast number of ways in which SAS software can be used–everything from retail to cancer treatment to stopping terrorism. She told us about the great corporate culture at SAS and the many benefits of working at the company. After the presentation, we headed downstairs to the cafeteria. The SAS cafeteria had tons of options that were all very good.
After lunch, we began our shadowing. I started off in the finance department shadowing Ashley Gatewood. Ashley is the Change Management Program director in the finance division. Then we met Lisa Vulinec who is the Corporate Finance Manager. Lisa and Ashley gave us an overview of what the finance department at SAS does. They talked about the vision and goals of the company and how they work to fulfill that in finance. They also emphasized the way in which they are currently working to globalize finance at SAS and make it more globally efficient and effective throughout SAS offices around the world. Ashley then gave us a quick tour of the finance floor. It was interesting to see the amount of large open spaces dedicated to collaboration between employees.
