Team Talks: Marina

In my previous job I was missing the spirit of entrepreneurship. Therefore I am happy to have found a company like Numlix where I can be more entrepreneurial, where I can be more valuable as an independent professional and where I can really focus on the flexibility towards clients.

Before my job at Numlix I have worked for about twelve years for the big multinational Cargill. During these twelve years I learned a lot: from working internationally to learning core financial planning and analysis skills that I still use every day. I started my work experience at Cargill in Rusia and later on ended up at the office in Belgium. As a result, I met a lot of new people, discovered new systems and gained a lot of new knowledge. All this combined with my passion for systems, applications and data analytics led me eventually to join Numlix.

I believe there are two different periods in life when a job as consultant is the ultimate opportunity:

• It could be a point in life were you start working and you don’t really know (yet) what you want to do and where you want to focus on. Then consultancy is a great opportunity and I suggest you go for it, because you can work on different projects for different companies. And at some point, eventually, you can choose to go deeper in the process of one specific company or you can continue being a consultant and only becoming better at it.
• There is also another point in life when I would recommend going for a consultancy job. Namely, when you have been working for an established company, like in my case, and at some point you believe that you want something else. You want to feel more valued as an independent professional and not as a part of the process of a bigger company.

My everyday job has two sides: One side is searching for potential customers. Which gives me the opportunity to see different companies, get in contact with different systems and talk to different people. The other side of my job is to make our Numlix customers happy by helping them improving their FP&A (Financial Planning & Analysis) processes. To achieve this last part we have teamed up with the tools Anaplan and Power BI:

• Anaplan is a connecting planning tool that is used for financial planning and analysis. Connected planning means that Finance never stands alone and that you always have to take into account the input from other departments (HR, Supply Chain, Sales and so). In order to simplify connected planning for our clients, we guide them throughout their entire Anaplan journey, from planning, building to forecasting.
• Power BI is a known Microsoft BI reporting tool, which we use to help solve our clients’ challenges of business intelligence. More specifically, the tool helps us to make decisions based on data using data analytics. The outcome of these decisions we then put on visual and comprehensible dashboards that can be used for management purposes.

Numlix is a young dynamic company which ensures that there are still a lot of things for the team and I to accomplish.

• For me specifically, I want to do more projects and I want to do them faster, better and with more quality for our clients.
• For Numlix in general, we want to build an even greater team by hiring new (Junior) Model Builders, Solution Consultants and Financial Analysists for both Anaplan and Power BI.

But while doing this, while growing, I think it is important that we keep our core culture of entrepreneurship, flexibility and service-mindedness.

If I have to pick one challenge, I would say I want to be able to manage a better work-life combination. I realise that my job is really my passion and I like what I’m doing, but that sometimes I get a bit taken by this passion and I want to take on more and more tasks.

So in the future, I have to make sure that I take enough breaks and that I have enough time for family, friends and other activities. As a result, I can be more efficient while keeping my work-life balance.

What most people don’t know about me is that I really like walking. This passion of mine started two years ago with the start of the pandemic, where we all had to stay at home for quite some time. With the extra free time I then had, I decided to go for an everyday walk. At first, I did walks of 10 kilometres, then 20 kilometres and in September I even did a walk of 60 kilometres at the seaside of Belgium that was organized by the Federation of Walking of the Flemish region.

Just to add: I don’t walk to achieve a goal, but I do it because I really enjoy it. So if anyone wants to join me, let me know. 😉

Numlix is a brand that is linked to the waves of sound, the feeling of rhythm and flexibility that we try to give to all of our clients. That is why we created our own Spotify list with a lot of known and classic songs.

My favourite song on the list is Paradise by the Dashboard Light. Not only because my husband and I are die-hard metal fans, but also because the title is linked to Power BI dashboards and storytelling through dashboards. And while we are on this subject, on the 10th of February our bussines unit Ufinity is organizing an event where I will be talking about storytelling through dashboards, so come and check it out.