A Day in the Life of Patrice

Balancing Work and Family Life

“I joined CSC’s performance management competency center, specifically the business intelligence (BI) practice, almost four years ago. CSC gives me the opportunity to combine different roles in my day-to-day life as a senior consultant.

"I work both as a project manager and BI solution architect, which means I look at how we will implement a decisional system to best suit the client. In the morning, I meet clients; I seek to understand their vision and their goals, help them define their needs in terms of the enterprise information, reporting, and analytics that would help them monitor their business performance and make the right decisions. With total transparency, we also check on how current projects and teams are doing and update each other on the status and planning of activities. At lunch time, I frequently meet one of my coachees, I listen to them to find out how well things are going – or not –, and how they can best achieve their career goals with respect to the plan we defined together at the beginning of the year. In the afternoon, I’m back at client site to work with our project teams. We discuss the right path to build the required solution as well as the impact the change will have on the client organization. At the end of the day, I generally discuss our business development strategy and progress with my peers. Big Data, Social Media Analytics, Mobile BI: What will be the next innovation track and how will we address it? I also meet our software partners, especially in the context of some of the service offerings and taskforces I lead, such as SAS, Customer Intelligence, and Advanced Analytics.

“My role is extremely diverse, which I like, as are the projects I work on, the clients I work with and the types of people I meet. I often jump from topic to topic, which can be a big challenge, but as I am given the freedom to work in the way I want, it is a challenge I happily take on. The company’s open-mindedness in letting you find your own pace of work and allowing you to work in the way you want is something I haven’t come across before. And it’s not just professional freedom, but personal too. When I took the job I made it very clear that my family was important to me and that I wanted to be able to take my children on time to school, for example. Balancing my work and family life has never been an issue. CSC understands that as well as employees we are people with our own lives, and the company leaves space for that.

“CSC also gives you the space to define your own career path while offering the support you require for good career progression. Having a coach to turn to is extremely useful as they offer real guidance candid feedback, both positive and negative to help you move to more complex roles when you are ready.”

“CSC also gives you the space to define your own career path while offering the support you require for good career progression."