From Artificial Intelligence to the Information Security Audit

Insights of a Student Employee into the “INTARGIA way of life”

Andreas Kalapis reports on his work as a student employee in the Artificial Intelligence department and his subsequent start as a consultant. In the interview, he tells us why his gut feeling about INTARGIA, a valantic company, was spot-on from the very beginning.

CRM, ERP, KI, PRINCE2, ASAP, Big Data, COBIT, S4/HANA, DAM, DSGVO, eob, EAM, IOT, CJM, AS400, BPM, ITSM, ISO27001, PIM, E-Commerce, MDM, ITIL, DDBMI…and these are just a few of the abbreviations and topics that I encountered in my first two weeks at INTARGIA.

What appears to be mere “alphabet soup” at first glance is the stuff of my everyday life as an IT consultant at INTARGIA. Even though I have a background in business informatics thanks to my studies, in the beginning it was a challenge to learn to navigate this broad spectrum of topics. Of course this broad spectrum did not just arise in the first two weeks, but it represents a good summary of the topics, methods, and models I encountered during my first years at INTARGIA, a valantic company.

I got to know Steffen Weber, Managing Partner at INTARGIA, a valantic company, and remained in contact with him via XING. In 2018, I was looking for a student job in order to earn some money while I was writing my master’s thesis. After a brief telephone call, everything moved quite quickly; not even two weeks later, I set foot in the INTARGIA office in Dreieich for the first time. What surprised me then and still inspires me today is the trust that the company places in all of its employees, all the way down to interns. Surely everyone has heard the saying “students are regarded as full employees” and in the end, you usually end up doing the work that nobody else wants to do. In my time as a student employee, I was allowed to engage independently with the topic of artificial intelligence and develop product ideas for consulting. In addition, I was incorporated promptly into current projects, which gave me early insight into what consultants at INTARGIA actually do. As I neared the end of my studies, I received an offer to start as a consultant at INTARGIA. Despite receiving other offers from well-known consulting companies, it was an easy decision to accept INTARGIA’s offer since my gut feeling had always been good and I felt comfortable there. Thanks to my time as a student employee, I was already familiar with the “INTARGIA way of life.” Explaining this in detail would go beyond the scope of this interview, but in a nutshell, it’s about our company culture.

A team made up of very different people with very different backgrounds, which distinguishes itself through its performance and willingness to help, appreciates flat hierarchies, and thinks in an entrepreneurial manner. At the same time, this team encourages the further development of all employees, and you can work independently on future-oriented topics – insofar as the project load allows – and there are regular team events. The variety of topics and the steep learning curve in consulting had always interested me, and I was not disappointed. From software implementation to the information security audit, I was involved in a wide variety of projects. As I said in the beginning, this can also be very challenging and presented me with some hurdles in the first few months; however, the trust the company places in me and the support of my colleagues has helped and motivated me a great deal.

All in all, I can look back across three exciting year in which I have never regretted starting my career with INTARGIA.