Hello everyone. Today, I'm taking you behind the curtains at Sopra Steria Next, the management and digital transformation consulting firm that’s part of the Sopra Steria group. Our mission: to discover how tech is working for business, all within a fantastic team atmosphere. No time to lose, so follow me. Can’t start the day without a coffee and a pastry and here we go!
Hi Aurélia!
Hi Léa!
You're a Consulting Director at Sopra Steria Next. Give us the elevator pitch about what your job entails?
I'm a public sector specialist. I also have expertise in human resources, and I'm based in Bordeaux. We have a community of directors and partners through France. We all have industry expertise: banking, insurance, retail, energy, as well as business expertise: data, AI, digital transformation, HR, in my case. We all share our knowledge in a community of directors and partners and also as part of the training available at the academy level. And it's that complementarity approach that ultimately means we can tackle customer issues in a really rounded way.
Another topic that’s really important at Sopra Steria Next is equality between women and men. As we know, unfortunately, there are fewer women in tech roles than men.
So, we, as consultants, go into business and engineering schools to promote careers in tech and IT consulting. And then, of course, we work hard to retain our female colleagues by trying to create a genuine work-life balance. That’s very important to us. And we also work to promote career paths that can take women into those roles of responsibility.
And you’re the proof.
Exactly
Thank you Aurélia… crossing the desert to find Olivier. You’re a Senior Consultant at Sopra Steria Next. Tell us a bit about what you do here.
I'm a Senior Consultant at Aeroline Consulting, which covers our projects in the fields of aerospace and industry. I mainly work on topics related to aerospace maintenance.
What did you have to study at university to get where you are today?
I graduated from top engineering school Centrale Supélec and started at Sopra Steria Next a little over 4 years ago. I arrived as an intern. Now I lead a dozen people on my project and I'm about to become a manager.
What's the biggest project you’ve worked on?
My current project, which is a major transformation project, aiming to set up a new information system to support fleets of military aircraft. The goal is to optimise fleet availability by anticipating maintenance and managing spare parts in the best possible way to make sure we have the right parts in the right place at the right time and to ensure that the aircraft can actually fly.
What do you enjoy most about Sopra Steria Next?
The human side. There’s a real culture of working together, a determination to make progress for employees and to help the people we work with to grow. And that’s the opportunity I’ve been given ever since I arrived at the company.
Thank you very much Olivier. Right, let’s speak to Milan and Anne Laure.
Hi Anne Laure! Hi Milan!
Hello!
Give me a quick rundown of your jobs.
I'm a senior manager on the industry and services side and I work on digital transformation projects with mixed teams made up of digital transformation consultants and experts, especially in artificial intelligence.
I wanted to talk to you about AI, actually. It's a scary subject for some people, but have no fear because you’re here to tell us about the projects you’ve been working on. that can sometimes arouse fears, but there's no need to be afraid, because you're going to tell us about one of your projects where AI is working for people and users to improve their everyday lives.
One project we did was to improve the punctuality of a transport operator’s trains. We recommended our client started using AI to optimize timings on the railways.
Milan, you wear a more technical hat. Could you tell us what you do here?
I'm Anne-Laure's technical support because of my training as an engineer specialising in AI. I basically share advice and technical support by implementing algorithms. ting side to the technical side by implementing algorithms that help us respond to very specific challenges.
How do you make sure those algorithms are high quality?
That’s really at the heart of our concerns, as we are members of the “Confiance IA” consortium, which is about bringing explainability and robustness to all our algorithms, so that customers – and the industry as a whole – can explain and really open up the black box of AI to justify our results and decisions.
AI is an environment that’s evolving extremely quickly. How are you adapting to these changes?
It’s a key part of the industry. You really have to stay at the forefront of things, and it’s constantly evolving because of all the research and applications across the industry, but also for Sopra Steria Next consultants, there are training courses available, and I recommend you go and speak to Manon at the academy to find out more.
OK Great, I'll do just that! Thank you, Anne Laure, thank you Milan.
Hi Manon!
Hi Léa!
You're an Industry and Service consultant at Sopra Steria Next and you support companies with their digital transformation, but that's not all. You've got a lot of strings to your bow, could you tell us a bit about that?
I run training sessions within my entity, on my area of expertise: change management. The idea is to bring out the best in one another and it also helps us gain flexibility in terms of training and speed of training.
Thank you very much Manon.
To sum up our time at Sopra Steria Next: lots of projects with a positive impact, led by business and tech experts and, above all, a great atmosphere. I don't know about you, but they’ve certainly convinced me!