“IT is the base for everything nowadays”

		Interview
				Ariane Sioufi, SAS France Academic Director, interviews Felix Sportelli, a 23-year-old SAS trainee completing his fourth year at EFREI, a five-year engineering school that specializes in information technology and management. Felix talks about his excitement to be working at SAS, where he is able to incorporate his IT experience and management training. Interview - May 2008

Ariane Sioufi [SAS France Academic Director] - Hello Felix, let's start this interview. Can you please introduce yourself?

Felix Sportelli [SAS trainee] - Yes, so Hello my name is Felix Sportelli. I am 23 years old and I've just been hired as a 6 months trainee at SAS France.

AS - Glad to ear it, welcome aboard. Tell me about your studies.

FS - Thanks, I am actually at the end of my fourth year of a five-year engineering school (EFREI*), specialized in IT and management, at Villejuif, near Paris. A lot is based on IT (C/C++/Java languages, a lot of architecture, Cisco, UML, System Administration...etc) mixed with management, communication, change management, e-business etc. in order to be able to manage a team and/or a project in an IT-based company like SAS. My personal thought has always been that IT is the base for everything nowadays and especially to be able to go higher and higher in a company.

AS - Nice! But how did you get to know SAS?

FS - Definitely thanks to the French academic team who built a partnership with my school. SAS provides BI courses to 5-year students of EFREI. Then, I participated in the 2008 Global Management Challenge (international business competition) this year where we had to manage a whole manufacturing company in a very competitive virtual environment.
In order to have the best share price, we had to manage our predictive orders so we weren’t in overstocks or out of stocks. We made it to the French semi-final. At this time I wasn't able to understand very well the SAS solutions. Now that I work for SAS, I am able to get more documentation (through the SAS Video Portal or internal Trainings) and I hope being able to win the next year thanks to SAS.

AS - We hope you will! Ok, let's talk about your internship now. What are you doing at SAS France?

FS - I have been hired at the Pre Sales department and let me tell you how glad I am to be in this company. This is, actually, the part of SAS where I hope to be quickly able to help with my IT knowledge and ability to understand IT systems and the one to be able to communicate easily. The retail Business Unit has been kind enough to accept including me in their team and we actually work in a very big case.
We have to provide a full solution for a French Retail customer. First, we have to help him having order forecasts and then optimize his whole inventory policy, based on these forecasts, in order to reduce his huge inventory costs. All this thanks to our SAS® Services Parts Optimization solution. The functional part is really complicated to understand but at least I discover a new industry. On the other hand it is very interesting to work on the IT systems necessary to manage such amount of data and to precisely calculate these forecasts.
This could help the customer saving millions of euros worldwide, I am very excited! I have always worked in the same kind of jobs before SAS, as System and Network administrator and project manager of a few people team, in 15-20 persons companies. This time I have the opportunity to prove that IT knowledge can be used in background to be able to manage and/or to sell efficiently.

AS - Good! And what are your expectations at SAS in the next few years?

FS - Very hard question. For now I will try to train myself to SAS solutions and find my way at SAS France. But I like travelling and I have always worked hard to be skilled enough to get as high as possible in the company (Dr. Goodnight, if you are reading this, I will be there soon!) so I will keep living this way and do my best !

* EFREI: Engineering school funded in 1936, Engineering label since 1957, member of the “grandes écoles” committee. Used to be marked as one of the best after-high-school engineering schools. Six different LMD-based diplomas for around one thousand students. Fifteen months of internship before having the diploma. Pre-employment: 97%. Average salary: ~37000 € ($ 57,000). (http://www.efrei.fr/)