Meet the Team: Vincent, Functional Consultant

“Meet the Team” is a blog series that features the different roles at Antidot/Fluid Topics. 

Today, we’re sitting down with Vincent, Functional Consultant, to discuss his role within our company.

Hi Vincent, could you please introduce yourself?

I’m Vincent, I’m 34 years old and I currently live in Lyon. I’ve been working for Antidot/Fluid Topics as a Functional Consultant for over 3 years now.

I’m from the Paris suburbs but I moved around quite a bit as a child. I’ve lived in 7 different countries including Qatar and Yemen.

I’ve mostly worked in IT, either as a developer, a project manager or as a sales manager.

What led you to Antidot/Fluid Topics?

I graduated from ISEP, a French Engineering School specialized in Digital Technologies. I worked for several companies including Alten as a Business Manager and Bouygues Telecom as a Project Manager.

I then launched my own company. The company was growing steadily but I had no income, so I decided to look for a job. I wanted to work for a French company in IT. I literally googled “startup Lyon” and came upon Antidot/Fluid Topics. I was also interested in understanding how search engines worked. As a software editor, Antidot was the perfect fit for me.

What does a Functional Consultant actually do?

My role sits within the Professional Services team. It’s located between the development team and the client. My mission is to support and best advise our clients during the implementation of Fluid Topics. This includes the APIs integration and the out-of-the-box portal. I understand our product on a technical level and know how to get the most out of it depending on the client’s (or partner’s) needs.

As you’ve probably guessed it, I spend most of my time with clients. We discuss business requirements and objectives. From time to time, clients will request new features. I’ll take it to our product team and explore whether that feature should be put on our roadmap or not. I make sure to share best practices and provide workarounds for functional requests when they arise. The combination of understanding my clients’ pain points and their long-term goals also allows me to spot up-sell opportunities.

Up until recently, I would also help the sales team with our proofs-of-concept (POC). We now have a solid pre-sales team who oversees these POCs so I don’t have to pitch in as much.

While I’m often our client’s sole contact point, I have many contact points on the client’s side. I chat with tech writers, project managers or even product designers. Internally, I’ll work with the development team, the IT team, the product team and of course the business team.

In terms of project management methodology, it’s really up to the client. He will either bring his own methodology or we’ll go ahead with our own project management methodology.

On a daily basis, I’ll have the following tasks:

• Create JIRA tickets for a new feature or for a bug 
• Write meeting reports and follow time tracking 
• Deliver training to clients and partners 
• Respond to clients’ email 
• Explain features to the client 
• Translate business needs into a technical solution 

Now and again, as I have a technical background, I’ll do some development – mostly HTLM, CSS and JavaScript.

Finally, when the software implementation is over, I’ll hand over the project to our Customer Success team.

What do you like most about your job?

First and foremost, I really enjoy the team I work with. There are 4 other functional consultants and 2 technical consultants. It’s a really friendly environment.

On a more professional level, I love solving problems. If a client is looking for something specific, I enjoy finding a solution or a workaround.

On a regular basis, clients are eager (and probably a bit anxious) for me to find solutions to their issue. When I do, they’re usually very appreciative. And that means that I’m doing my job well.

What would you want someone to know coming into this role?

As I previously mentioned, you really need to have a good knowledge of IT in general. There will come a time when you might need to do some development to speed up the process. And it will definitely come in handy to understand what can or can’t be done.

What did you learn at university that helps you in your current role?

I learned about programming which now helps me write scripts in JavaScript. To be a good functional consultant, you do need to be a bit technical.

During my years at ISEP, I also learned about project management and clearly this serves me well today!

Last but not least, can you tell us something unique about yourself?

I have lived in a lot of different countries. It gave me a better understanding of cultural differences. To this day, I still love traveling.

Thank you Vincent! It was great chatting with you!