Tom Billast, SAP Consultant, explains why he feels happy about his job at Atos Origin Belgium:
The IT market is famous for its shortage of good trained and experienced professionals and retention is one of the huge challenges in IT companies. What makes the difference for people, to stay with their employer, despite attractive offers including bigger company cars ? We talked to 28 year old Tom Billast who decided, a bit more than one year ago, to take up a new challenge with Atos Origin and therefore left his (excellent) position at our partner SAP Belgium.
“I discovered SAP already before I graduated”, remembers Tim. “I had enroled for a 5 year Trade Engineer programme at EHSAL. This choice had to allow me to move on in various directions, including business. For my thesis, however, I went for a technology related subject, more precisely ERP. That’s how I discovered SAP and why, after my graduation, I choose to start my job search at SAP Belgium. I was lucky and got a position with them, in the field of sales support. I also became one of their ‘key users’ for some internal tools. That is how I got familiar with SAP CRM and SAP BW (Business Warehouse). It was a very interesting job but since I am ambitious I ended up looking out for a new challenge. I knew I wanted to get involved in consultancy, in a job which would offer me opportunities and chances such as trainings, in order to grow in the right manner. Atos Origin offered such chances, so I decided to make the move and to start here, as a SAP BW consultant.”
Since he joined us, Tom has had the chance to seriously improve his knowledge of SAP BW and to him, that fact alone clearly is his motivator. He has participated in sessions that are part of the “Accelerated Consultant Education Program”, a program we organize together with SAP. At the same time, he started working in the Customer Competence Center, in a BW team with two senior colleagues. The combination of learning and practice allowed him to be perfectly prepared for this Solution Consultant SAP Netweaver 2004 BW 3.5 certification which he got last summer, in August. He also recently succeeded in getting the newest SAP BI release (7.0) certification.
Tom has gained a clear vision on his future. “I want to focus on consultancy. On the longer term, I would like to work as a project manager, first of course in smaller projects but than also in bigger ones.”
Whether he will stay at Atos Origin? “As long as I feel good, here and as long I can continue to learn, I certainly wills stay!”, goes Tom.