bloom: Sigrid Van de Wiele
Constantly continuing to learn, that's the path Sigrid Van de Wiele followed to eventually join Flexso in 2018. Flexso finding her niche. "The choices that I had trouble making during my studies, I don't have to make them at all now," the mother of two teenagers explains about her path, that of SAP FICO (Finance & Controlling) Consultant as well as that of mother and human being.
Right off the deep end
"I had no idea what I wanted to study and what I wanted to do after," Sigrid kicks off when we ask her how she ended up in tech. "I then went on to study TEW (Applied Economics, nvdr.) because that was broad enough to offer job security," she echoes. "I planned to travel the world. So I went to London in 2003 to apply for a job. Only my parents wanted me to apply here too, which I did at the time. Among other things, I went for an interview at IKEA, for a job as a business analyst. After our second interview I was hired and so it happened that I also immediately secured a job in tech."
Whether she knew anything about IT back then? "No," she shakes her head. "In terms of IT I wasn't very strong yet, but what attracted me enormously was that I got to travel a lot. Because the end users of the internal system were in Sweden, Switzerland, Singapore and Hong Kong, and our team of developers was in Germany and consisted of Germans, Swedes and one Czech." Gradually Sigrid expanded her knowledge. "To maintain the IT system and brief the developers on what to change, I had to go behind the scenes myself. So I started to delve a bit into SQL anyway to better analyze the data. I also thought it was pretty cool to get a first look under the hood like that, although it was still very limited."
Although she also encountered challenges. "It was very overwhelming because I didn't really know what I was getting into or what the job entailed. Moreover, there were a lot of language barriers and cultural differences between me and my colleagues. A funny fact: my colleague from Singapore had never seen snow before when we were in Sweden in February. She went crazy on the train!" laughs Sigrid.
Planter pur sang
After 3 years, she switched jobs. "I was not an IT person," she explains. "The developers expected things from me that I couldn't deliver. Moreover, the system we were working with was exclusive to IKEA. That was too narrow for me. I preferred a broader field of work. And that's what I found, in 2006, when I applied to AkzoNobel, after attending career counseling. The same job but with SAP, a much more comprehensive ERP package. Although I had never worked with that at the time."
"I was allowed to support the local Belgian organization for the FI/CO module," Sigrid looks back. "Finance & Controlling was the best place to be, because there you have the whole broad spectrum: everything ends up in accounting sooner or later, from the purchase of raw materials to the payments from customers and everything in between. In other words, I had a very broad view. The choices I had trouble making during my studies, I didn't have to make now."
"Little by little, I learned. It seemed very disjointed, but over time the puzzle pieces fell together. That did require some perseverance and patience."
Although this time, too, she relied on her self-reliance. "My predecessor had already left when I started. And the people in accounting that I was supposed to support had years of seniority and about 3 years of SAP experience on the counter. So there I was, never having logged in before!" she chuckles.
"Fortunately, I could count on my colleagues from the other SAP modules. And in particular on a colleague in the Netherlands, who was doing the same job there as I was," sounds grateful. "Every month I went to the Netherlands for a week with a pile of questions from the end users under my arm. I sat next to my colleague and gradually got to know the different domains within Finance. It seemed very incoherent, but after a while the puzzle pieces fell together. That did require some perseverance and patience."
Broadening and deepening at Flexso
Sigrid grew from the local team to the central team in 2015, where the customizing & custom development happens. "That's where they were at the controls. I wanted to learn even more and deepen my knowledge. That's the nature of the beast. I will not easily say that I can do something or am an expert in something, there is always something to learn," nods the Flexso consultant self-confidently.
"Unfortunately, 3 years later AkzoNobel decided to outsource all SAP support. My position was eliminated," Sigrid continues. "That again made me very doubtful about what to do next. Consultancy did not seem to be an option for me. Meanwhile, I had a partner and two children and I was convinced that consultants worked day in and day out, no way they would work 4/5ths. That didn't seem compatible to me with a family."
"I have been with Flexso for almost 5 years now. I know by now that I can't solve everything within 5 minutes, but I bite into it and I keep digging and searching until I find the solution."
Still, she took the plunge and joined Flexso as a consultant. "I now get to work with the AMS team (Application Management ServicesI now get to support many different customers. Our customers are very diverse, both in terms of industry and the version of SAP they work with. For example, we support customers who are working with an older ERP version of SAP, but also customers who are already working with the latest S/4 HANA," she says about her position. "My experience is improving rapidly, also thanks to the developers on our team. I can now read code, interpret it, figure out errors and look for solutions together with the SAP technical consultants. I am still learning. I have been with Flexso for almost 5 years now. I know by now that I can't solve everything within 5 minutes, but I bite into it and I keep digging and searching until I find the solution. And I succeed. Thanks in part to the fantastic team."
Always up
Whether she's proud of anything in particular? "When I joined Flexso, I immediately said my goal was to become a good consultant. For me, it meant that other colleagues would come and ask me questions and my input would be valuable to them. And that has since been the case," Sigrid replies. Again, she is particularly humble: "I don't consider myself the expert. I always look upward, to the people who do it better. Along the one hand that works motivating, but along the other hand it never stops." (laughs)
"I think I've always jumped on the right train at the right time."
"The steps I took were not part of a conscious strategy," Sigrid says when we ask her about the key to her success. "I think I always jumped on the right train at the right time and had a good sense of whether it was a good train or not." Sigrid clearly feels in her place at Flexso. "I like doing my job. I don't want to move on to something that doesn't feel right. If you're good at something, you shouldn't suddenly start doing something else."
The taster type
It may be obvious: Sigrid loves the broader picture, of possibilities. And that's not just the case professionally, we learn. "In my spare time, I'm the 'tasters' type," she laughs. "A Red Cross first aid course, a ten-part guitar lesson series with my daughter, an improvisational theater course ... I try it all out and quit as soon as I think it's enough," she explains.
She has her reasons for that. "Just because I get so attached, I have to stop myself in time," she candidly admits. "After my job at AkzoNobel, I committed myself to a community reading project. For ten weeks I went to an underprivileged family's home to read to them. That was fantastic. It gave me so much energy!" she says with visible enthusiasm. "But I felt I had to stop myself: I would have thrown myself 300 percent because I saw so much potential. I sometimes had to stop that train before it left properly."
Starting from your talents
Living according to one's talents, being happy and helping others to develop is therefore very important to Sigrid. "If I were to change one thing, maybe after high school and after my higher studies I should have thought more about what direction I wanted to go and what I liked. Being a care teacher and helping children who didn't come along from the first time, that might also have been an option," she smiles.
"If we look for people's talents more - preferably from an early age - and use them to their full potential, we increase the chances that they will end up in jobs they love. And that they will continue to do. That benefits everyone."
And that's where Sigrid also sees opportunities for improvement in today's society. "Our education system quickly impresses upon our children that they have to be good at language and math. But there are so many other qualities besides that, for which you don't get points, but which are also very valuable in our society," she says with disappointment. "When people then cry out from politics to put more effort into math and Latin I think: guys, we're throwing so many kids overboard! We are giving them a stamp that they are not good enough, when we need all those other talents too!"
"If we look for people's talents more - preferably from an early age - and use them to their full potential, we increase the chances that they will end up in jobs they love. And that they will continue to do. That benefits everyone," she concludes.
