Intern success: Project approved by the president
As Talent Acquisition Intern, I work on creative content and use social media to highlight SAP Internship Experience Project (SAP iXp). SAP iXp is a robust ten-week internship program in ten locations around the world. Interns work across all areas of the business, from marketing to human resources, finance and engineering, and are challenged to bring their innovative perspectives to the forefront of their work.
I caught up with a few of this summer’s interns to learn more about how they are moving the needle here at Concur. Today we check in with Matt Watson, a pricing analyst intern who recently pitched a new pricing plan to Concur President Mike Eberhard.
Meet Matt
Matt, whose background is in economics and finance, completes the five-member Pricing Team within Global Product Marketing. He plans to graduate a year early from the University of California, Berkeley, and is passionate about all things finance and problem-solving. In his role, Matt’s goal is to create and improve financial models that show customers the return on investment (ROI), or the financial benefit, of implementing Concur solutions. After only a few weeks at Concur, Matt presented that project to Mike Eberhard.
Pricing Analyst Intern Matt Watson
About the Project
It was day three of Matt’s first week when his manager Carrie Miller assigned him his first pricing plan project: to develop a client-facing ROI model. The model will be used to show customers how much money they could save by implementing Concur solutions.
After working with his team to create a detailed draft of the ROI model, Matt presented the model to Mike Eberhard. Now that it has been approved by Mike, the next step is for Matt’s team to train Concur sales teams so they can begin using the pricing model.
What’s Next?
When talking about the importance of trust in the workplace, Matt shared that his manager Carrie allows for greater freedom to run with certain projects. “I think what’s cool is that, once you get in, you figure out how your team operates, you can pick out problems or areas for improvement and then kind of take on your own project,” he says. “It doesn’t have to be passed down from your manager.”
That trust between manager and intern has driven Matt to solve problems he has encountered in pricing models and has encouraged him to start another project. “The pricing team has one model for all of its analysis, kind of like a template,” he explains. “There are a lot of different templates they apply to different scenarios, so I’m trying to build one pricing model that can be more robust and can be applied towards all of the situations that could arise on the pricing side of things.”
Matt recognized the inconsistency between using several pricing models, which led him to work towards creating one concise, structured model. He is already almost done with his second project and hopes to create a portfolio of his incredible work at the end of the summer.
Matt’s ability to spot incongruences in economics allows for greater transparency and efficiency not only within Concur, but also with our customers. Keep an eye out for great things from Matt Watson and the impact he will make at Concur, and throughout his career.
Visit our careers pages for more information about the iXp program and Concur internships.
Follow our interns throughout the year on the iXp Twitter page and #MyiXpStory.