Sophie spent many years involved with large ERP systems: Siebel and PeopleSoft.  She was a Siebel business analyst and project manager for six years for DERA/QinetiQ/Accenture.  She has a thorough understanding of large databases, the distinction between vanilla, configuration and customisation *, and works hard to avoid the latter.

Before working with Siebel, Sophie was a process improvement manager for sales, marketing and bidding for QinetiQ, the privatised element of the Ministry of Defence’s research agency DERA.  As part of the Siebel work, Sophie created nine training modules and was responsible for training approximately 1000 staff to use Siebel.  She is also an expert tester of complex new processes and software.

*Vanilla is what the software looks like when you first install it, right out of the box.

*Configuration is setting up the software using the administrative functionality provided to do what you want, it can radically change the way the software looks, feels and operates.

*Customisation is writing additional code to make the software do things it wasn’t designed to do: it causes problems if the software is upgraded or the software provider is asked for support; it is almost always an on-going headache and should be kept to the absolute minimum.