Meeting with Alain, project manager at Jalios
In this post, we go to meet Alain, a Jaliossian who is celebrating his 5th birthday with Jalios this year, and especially his new position as project manager! Beyond this great career development, we will discover the challenges awaiting Alain, his daily life and a little of his life in the Professional Services department.
First of all Alain, congratulations! What are your new responsibilities as a project manager?
As a project manager, I place myself as a conductor between the business engineer, support, R&D, etc. with the objective that the missions carried out by our consultants go smoothly, and give complete satisfaction to our customers.
My role is to contact our clients or prospects, qualify and analyse their needs, choose the appropriate consultant profiles, describe, cost and plan the assignments and deliverables. The Jalios Professional Services catalogue on which I rely includes nearly 40 offers: specific development, training, certification, audit, classical support for Cloud or on-premise customers, assistance with the installation of a module, or the implementation of an optional service on JCloud, etc.
These exchanges with our customers have also enabled me to participate in the development of new service offers, such as the documentary take-back service.
My biggest challenge is to anticipate as much as possible any difficulties, from start to finish, i.e. from the moment I initiate the incoming request to the invoicing. It is necessary to be able to imagine the analyses or workshops to be done, the possible upgrades of versions, but also to plan logistics such as travel or remote interventions. This is where the experience and also the capitalization effort with our Knowlegde Base (knowledge base) comes in.
I have to put myself in the consultant's shoes and give him the context and all the information about a service: intervention on the client's site, remotely, version of the application base, etc. My objective is to ensure that the consultant does not have to ask these questions to the client, and that he has all the elements to carry out his mission successfully.
The daily routine for Professional Service consultants is customer missions, sometimes with travel, stuffing, etc.? How do you do it?
That's right. That's right. It is the variety of services but also the size of missions (from 1 to 200 days!) that forces us to constantly adapt. And it is all the more complicated when it comes to responding to urgent requests. We are expected to be highly responsive, but we are not an ESN, Jalios' business is a software publisher.
At the moment, I am on about fifteen missions and I already have 5 new ones to receive. We use the Jalios JTask module internally for macro tracking, and a market CRM tool for timesheets and billing.
One area of concern that often comes back to the department's kick-off is that of travel for consultants. We do it regularly, but it's part of the job, with clients all over France and the world: Germany, Switzerland, Africa, etc. We take into account each other's constraints, particularly with regard to family obligations. And in any case, the consultant gives his agreement to validate the trip. Recovery hours are allocated, especially if you have to work staggered hours. However, it sometimes gives you beautiful trips: Tahiti, Guyana, etc.!
In any case, and until someone invents the teleportation machine, the project managers must also talk to each other. You have to look at the whole context of the consultants and in particular see what they do the day before the missions to be planned!
As for the atmosphere, the consultants are a solidary team because when there are difficulties, it is for everyone. This is reflected from the moment of hiring by a recruitment validated by the entire team. We are not only looking for technical skills, it is also a lot for the person: he must think collectively with all the collaborators at Jalios. It is important to understand interdepartmental expectations.
The missions of the consultants are sometimes very similar to those of Jalios' integration partners (Integrators and consultants). How do you work with partners?
Jalios has always worked with partners. And even if on some missions, there is no real difference, we are never in competition. On the contrary, we are collaborating.
Often upstream, we present partners to our customers, who will choose an integrator to support them based on their knowledge of the technical environment or business knowledge.
Sometimes we also subcontract to partners, and for the customer, we ensure that the quality of service is the same, because the commitment remains a Jalios commitment.
The partners also take services from Jalios or sometimes advise their clients to call on us, especially when it comes to specific subjects that touch quite strongly on the core of the product and its management rules. Jalios consultants are then really in an expert role and are there to reassure customers.
Can you tell us about one of the projects you are particularly proud of?
My most beautiful achievement is undoubtedly the project for the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations. It is one of the first projects with a large budget that I managed entirely. And I am particularly proud of it because we have respected the budgets announced.
However, there was a challenge with 3 graphic charter changes to integrate in less than 6 months, which we were able to absorb thanks to good development practices, with my colleague Alex Wafo as technical referent on this project. It is a project that has gained visibility and received very good support at the community level.
The mission also included a very complete scope of business integration. I really appreciated the agile approach with priority management, sprints, user story description, refinement, etc. I had the opportunity to interact directly with the business lines, which came to participate in workshops at our premises at Jalios. I felt that we were listened to as product experts and we were able to meet the needs of users without distorting the product.
Indeed, the feedback from the project manager at the last DWS19 is a great testimony of project success! We can also mention the 16 km Paris-Versailles race, in which you participated with 5 other Jaliossians. Once again a great success!
Once again, congratulations for all these successes Alain. Thank you for your time and good luck!
If reading what Alain is doing inspires you and makes you want to join his team, you should know that positions are open!
