Tag: JonathanS- Tech Business

Today was my favorite day so far. I spent the day with a salesman who specializes in the transportation industry, and boy was he good at talking. He went through the entire process of a sale for me, from doing the research to finding contact numbers to making the cold call to setting up a meeting to talking to the technical specialists to finally receiving credit for the sale! He also talked about the support process after the software has been installed, referring to the “loyalty” department that ensures that the customer stays happy and loyal to SAS. He also drew me a very interesting diagram on how the process of customers having data works and how that data is managed which was very interesting too; a picture of that diagram is below. At 2:00, he had a meeting which I couldn’t attend, so he dropped me off at the “Data for Good” presentation, put on by Reese’s job shadow I-sah. They talked about how SAS analytics is used to help the world in times of natural disaster and mass migration such as the earthquakes in Nepal or the Syria crisis. The entire presentation was incredibly intriguing, and at the end they asked if people with Iphone programming experience (like me) might be interested in helping with their app. I gave them my email and am waiting to hear back!

Today was spent with SAS’s Adobe Experience Manager expert. AEM allows companies to build websites without a lot of technical experience, and a lot of people at SAS take advantage of it, building websites for their departments and divisions without taking a close look at the SAS requirements for a website’s aesthetic. The job of the person I was with is to look at the websites, fix any issues users may have with AEM, and ensure that users are falling within standard specifications. He went through how he and his co-workers manage their projects via a system called Agile. Agile allows workers to dynamically manage tasks for specific projects, working on tasks in an un-rigid order if it’s necessary. His job also involves a lot of math for his analysis of website use and design; funnily enough, he uses an old calculator for that math (featured below). Kind of makes me wonder if all our fancy graphing calculators are really needed?

Today was a bit of a whirlwind! The IT coordinator had me charging about the building to different people on fifteen minute blocks of time so that in the two hour period I was there I met eight different people and saw eight different jobs. My favorite part was talking to a person who managed chat services for SAS internal tech support. In addition to that job, he was running a program that dug through all of the files on one of SAS’s surveys, looking for files greater than a certain size. The program ran past his screen in a blur of black and white text, his eyes occasionally flicking over to see if it was still progressing. It was cool to see how that level of technology was integrated into every part of SAS. After lunch I talked to one of the IT managers. He showed me the various areas of the IT building he’s responsible for, largely under computer research and development. My favorite place was a room where they tested out all the new operating systems to ensure that they run correctly on all the computers SAS employees make use of.  The picture I uploaded is only about 1/3 of the computers in the room; that must be a busy place when the updates come out!

Today I toured in the internal and external communications decisions of SAS. Briefly put, internal coms deals with communications inside the company, employee information type things. External is stuff like PR and press releases that deal with anyone outside the company. My favorite part of the day was when I was talking to an external comm manager and he asked me if I wanted to take a short walk to lunch in a different building. As a guest in another place, I naturally said yes. I have to say I did not expect to walk nearly a mile to and from the different building, although the lunch and conversation were both fantastic.

Started off the day with Ms. Chase, VP of US marketing. She showed me an overview of how their marketing division functions as a part of the SAS whole. I was surprised at how complex even the minutia of the marketing systems and processes were. I then went with Ms. Martin to a 1.5 hour meeting planning a customer event, which was also very complicated. The focus of the meeting was whether or not to have recording technology in the rooms, an issue with as surprising amount of nuance. One of the issues was that the government officials generally don’t allow recording, video, or live stream of their speeches. They also spent a lot of time analyzing the data of what was successful and well attended last year to see if those speeches merited the live stream (ie, whether or not it was worth the money). Very interesting stuff! Everyone seems very happy to be here (the free mnms probably have something to do with it).