NTT DATA Business Solutions Graduates Blog - Antonio Minkov

The final week of our intelligence training program consisted of preparation for our presentations and culminated in presenting before intelligence employees. An email was sent out detailing each of our presentation topics so people could turn up if they were interested in a particular subject and/or were willing to listen.

The core of my presentation was about airports and how Business Intelligence can help improve their operations. I had played around with my slides a little and had produced some great animations to illustrate major points throughout and these were very well received. On the whole, it went very well and management congratulated me on the work done which was amazing!

Anyway, that’s that, training done. I had an amazing 8 weeks, learned a huge amount and met some brilliant people. On the Friday that week, three of us ‘grads’ were involved in some functionality and report testing for a client, which was my second client engagement since I started in August. On the same day, I was told I was going on client site for three days the following week to do some validation work as part of a migration project to SAP Business Objects 4.1. I was working with lead consultant Michael Quinn, helping him in testing connections, universes and Web Intelligence reports.

On Wednesday, I received a call from my manager, Emma, telling me I had been requested to work on a large Microsoft data warehouse project with a client in Southampton so I was on a train first thing the following morning. I worked alongside Microsoft guru David Morrison in decoding old top priority SQL reports, rewriting them and inserting the queries into SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) reports.

After an amazing 4 days, I was back in the London office on Wednesday. I was told I had received great feedback from both my client engagements which felt awesome and boosted my confidence big time!

In other news, I’m on my way to finishing the introductory Open SAP course, with a current average of 91% and two more exams to go! Also, I’m currently having to study hard as I’ve been appointed as one of the people attending the 70-466 and 70-467 Microsoft exams. I’m scheduled for the 17^th so wish me luck! Oh, and I’ve just completed my quarterly Success Factors self-assessment review so let’s see how that goes!