Meet Jessica – She joined the Datamine team a year ago when Centric Mining Systems was acquired. Working with Centric, Jessica is the Client Success Manager. Get to know her a little better through the interview below:
Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
I was born in Brasilia, Brazil and spent most of my life there. I used to work for a multinational management consulting company which gave me the opportunity to travel around Brazil and the world. We would work with industries like hospitals, retail, government, airline companies, and eventually mining. It allowed me to explore diverse solutions such as process redesign, goal breakdowns, cost and expenses reduction, and project management.
The company sent me to Sudbury, Canada, to work on a nine-month cost reduction project with a mining company in 2019. That is how I fell in love with the mineral sector. I also met my husband in Sudbury, so to me, the city represents a perfect merge of my personal and professional life.
What is it like to work at Datamine?
I always like being a part of projects where I work with people of diverse nationalities and backgrounds, which I experience at Datamine and with our clients. Our clients come from all over the world, and all of them do mining differently. The types of ore and materials they’re mining, stakeholders, levels of engagement, and their objective with using Centric, are always unique to each client.
Things happen fast at Datamine, which I love. As a Client Success Manager, I’m always solving problems for clients, which is a significant source of what drives me. Every day has different challenges scaling from small to large, meaning I have no set routine. I am always learning new things our products can do for our customers.
What inspired your career in this industry?
I graduated with a Bachelor of Administration in Brazil, but I was always driven by problem-solving. I like having a variety of tasks in my day, and at the end of the week, to look back and see how much I accomplished. Not just internally but for the client as well. That is how I got into the consulting world.
I also always enjoyed working with data, making comparisons to find improvement opportunities, and implementing them. There are always better ways to do what we do, and data gives us the power to find out where and how we can improve. It is a challenge, but we make sure we do the best we can with our resources. The product that I work with, Centric, makes the life of a business analyst, a consultant, or a data scientist, much better.
What are some of the challenges you help your clients navigate during consulting sessions?
/ What are some of the challenges in your role?
It depends on what problem the client is trying to solve. Generally, my sessions with the clients are focused on finding ways to improve their processes, making them faster and more efficient.
Change management is also a challenge we frequently discuss. Ensuring we do everything we need to have a smooth transition between the status quo and an integrated data management system.
One of the main parts of being a Client Success Manager is to effectively communicate to a broad range of people involved in a project. From corporate stakeholders and managers to the users and technical team. Managing everyone’s expectations and mitigating risks is usually a challenge since the success of any project depends on all parties involved.
What is the most satisfying aspect of your role / the work you do?
It is great to see clients achieving outstanding results in their operations. When we provide the final training to a client after the implementation, and they realize everything they can do with all that data in one place, it is very satisfying!
One of the main challenges I had in my previous job as a consultant was to gather good data from the clients to define goals for each KPI. Now I am on the other side of things, where I am the one offering the solution to access correct data to clients. With Centric, they have access to all the numbers I used to gather as a consultant. They get clean, valid data and they can easily compare a site’s performance and define goals.
Having prior experience as a consultant has made what I do now a lot easier. I used to waste a lot of time cleaning and validating data, which also happens on the sites. When I advocate for Centric, it is not just because I work with them but also because I faced the same problems our clients are experiencing.
What are your best memories from your career?
It is great to look back and see how much I learned in the past three years. I remember the day I landed in Sudbury, January 11th; thermometers marked –30 degrees Celsius. I never felt something like that. A few days later, I went underground for the first time and saw all milling, smelting, and refining operations at the site. I have seen a lot of industries, from poultry to medicine production, but mining felt magical.
It was challenging at the time, but looking back, it was an outstanding experience. I even ended up doing a Polar Bear Dip with some colleagues from work!
What’s a fun fact about you?
In Brazil, I used to be a competitive swimmer for eight years. I have several gold and silver medals. When I was around seven years old, I swam an unusual amount– maybe two miles a day. I do not know if I can swim that much today, but I think the skills are hidden somewhere inside me.
I could swim in anything; Brazilian rivers, the ocean, and of course, I was happy to see all the lakes that Canada has here. I am looking forward to summer!
Connect with Jessica on LinkedIn here. For more information or to connect with our team, make sure to send us an enquiry.
