Prophet SA Spotlight: Suzanne Burger
Software Development Manager at Prophet SA, Suzanne Burger, shares some of her highlights at Prophet SA thus far and tells us a little more about herself.
You have been with Prophet SA for 6 years this year. During this time, what have been some of your highlights at the company thus far?
Surviving financial training given by Paul Stofberg in week three at Prophet! I remember feeling on top of the world when I first followed a conversation between our MD and longstanding developers and understood everything! Jokes aside, although I cannot define one specific highlight, the overall stability of our systems has been the result of the past few years’ hard graft with a very special team.
What do you hope to achieve in your new role as Software Development Manager?
The extensive geographical representation of the Prophet offices means that we continuously work towards being One Prophet and I would like to further build on the strong interaction between these groups to ensure that we grow the Prophet global identity and provide a stable and ever-evolving systems environment to our clients across the globe
I intend to work closely with the managers in our other offices to accomplish a streamlined workflow whilst the stability of systems will be an ongoing focus. System integration and the use of API interfaces are viewed as the future and this area represents one of the more specific development drives I intend to pursue over the next few years.
What does your job entail on a day-to-day basis?
Although I am still actively developing, my time has rightfully been spread around working on the business and thinking more strategically about what we hope to achieve with our system offering. It has been a challenging, yet exciting time to get to grips with new responsibilities. Any day can start with some development, taxonomy approvals, discussions on specific logs with my team, meetings with my fellow managers, answering e-mails and some days, meetings with clients to solve issues or spec new developments. I’m also involved in the processes between the teams, and the last few months have been very busy with meetings to finalize a range of new processes and projects. I undertake all translation between the design manager and the developers ensuring necessary information is present that would allow for solid development deliverables.
One day per week, I try to spend on strategic planning – new development trends, keeping in mind where Prophet is heading and researching what is needed to get there.
What is on your wish list for the next five years at Prophet SA?
To keep following our methodology to improve the system stability, while adding direct integration with major third parties, including our own in-house clients using modernised methodologies and technologies. As stated above, moving closer to the “One Prophet” philosophy is a big-ticket item. Working on building our new development “factory” and servicing our other offices must be in place and working seamlessly.
Name the top three items on your bucket list.
Sailing through the Panama Canal on a cruise liner
Being able to converse in French (being of Belgian descent, my siblings tease me when I do not understand them, but soon I will be answering them…)
I have only been to 21 countries; I want to get up to 50! So many places, so little time and money…