Meet NTT DATA People
Paul Münstermann
SAP Solution Architect
Paul was born and largely grew up in Bielefeld, Germany. He spent a year in the USA gaining his high school diploma and did volunteer work in Ghana before returning to Germany to complete an Information Science degree. He is the fifth of six siblings – four brothers – and so is a keen competitive sports person. However, since becoming married and having two young children, his sports have taken a back seat so that he can focus on his family. He currently works at the headquarters of NTT DATA Business Solutions in Bielefeld.
Developing my skills and growth opportunities.
Tell us about an interesting project
I am an SAP Solution Architect, currently supporting our customers in their S/4HANA implementation by coordinating various project teams. My role is to provide guidance and templates for how teams should work and develop their business blueprints. I also conduct the quality checks at the end of each project to make sure that the solution is as expected by the client. That’s what I do but let me tell you about an interesting project I worked on.
One of my customers designs and builds steel plants, which is an industry that is rapidly changing because of its high energy consumption. They are the first company to create large hydrogen steel plants producing CO2-neutral steel. For me being able to help provide software that coordinates their efforts to reduce CO2 emissions is something I am very proud of.
Describe a regular working day
The main challenge in my job is to decide what the business processes are for very large companies. In fact, our clients are so large that they rarely know their entire structure and how it works, and so it is our role to grapple with that and make sure that their software processes work well. Because of this, my work requires a lot of collaboration and contact with the clients.
When I first started doing this kind of work, I was on the road a lot, visiting client sites. I would say that I was on site maybe 3 days a week and the other days were spent in the office. However, these days I’m probably out at the client sites 3 or 4 days a month and I work from home the rest of the time. Everyone on our and the client side has become used to working in that style, and I just find it more productive to be able to balance working on my own and meetings in a remote location rather that at the office.
What do you like most about NTT DATA?
There are two things that stand out to me. The first is that, as I mentioned, how I do my work has changed a lot since I started working at NTT DATA. These days, I almost always work at home, which allows me to work smoothly while tending to my family needs. I can structure my day so that either my wife or I can look after the children after picking them up from kindergarten and school. Usually, I’m in charge of dad duties on Monday and Friday and my wife looks after the kids on the other days.
The second thing is that although NTT DATA is a large, fast-moving company the people still maintain a closeness and friendliness about them. We coworkers check in on each other to see how we are doing and find ways to support each other. I believe that we can maintain this due to the culture that NTT DATA has encouraged, that of openness, supportiveness, and diversity.
