With the term consulting, many people think of 12-hour workdays and making PowerPoint presentations. Fortunately, these assumptions are often incorrect and do not hold true for Cmotions. In this article, we’ll tell you more about Cmotions’ culture and what to expect as a Data Science consultant (henceforth consultant).
Consultant assignment
There are different flavors in working with our clients. As a consultant, you often work for a client for an extended period of time, ranging between 4 and 12 months. However, some clients hire us on a project basis and these are usually shorter assignments. The starting point is to work with the client to find the best solution to add tangible value.
Challenging work and adding value are common desires of a consultant, but variety is also important. As a consultant, you work for many different companies, each using different (cloud) systems and tooling. The teams in which you will be working also differ from each other, so in time you will notice that you will find it easier and faster to get along in a new environment. To keep a good balance between variety and adding value, we regularly discuss progress with the client.
- Is the client satisfied?
- Are you satisfied?
- Do you challenge each other enough?
Based on the outcome of these conversations, your focus within an assignment may change or you may decide by mutual agreement to move forward with a new assignment.
Our clients
Cmotions was founded in 2001 and originally focused on marketing analytics in business. In recent years, the focus has broadened to include (semi) government and charities. Some of our clients:
For a comprehensive list of clients, please see the home page or check out our case studies.
In addition, Cmotions now operates abroad. The reason is that Cmotions has become part of The Digital Neighborhood, an internationally oriented IT & data organization that includes nine companies.
Three consultants have now started their first international assignment. Together with the Danish subsidiary Delegate, they are going to work for a major Danish client. Delegate’s colleagues provide the complete data infrastructure, and our consultants use that data to add value to the business through analytics, visualizations, machine learning and more. That they occasionally go to Copenhagen for team-building activities to do so is a nice extra.
Work of a consultant
But what does the work look like? To give you a good and honest picture of what you will be doing, we literally asked this question to some of our consultants, read their experiences below.
Ernst | 2 years with Cmotions
“In my first assignment at a large energy supplier, I joined a fun and knowledgeable team of data-driven marketing specialists, created specifically for medium-term projects.
Some of my work:
- Building and validating machine learning models for various energy products
- Close collaboration with Data Engineers to put these models into production
- Proactively promote the use of version control within the team and beyond
- Launching the “Python Ambassadors” to encourage the use of and sharing of knowledge about Python
- Fully automating a periodic customer survey process
During this assignment, I also found out that I find Data Engineering interesting. In consultation with Cmotions, I began a relevant 6-month training program while I was already on assignment. The knowledge and experience gained from this assignment and training I apply daily in my current assignments.”
Philip | 1 year at Cmotions
“Although a year ago I might not have expected to start working as a consultant, after more than six months I can take stock and say wholeheartedly that it has been a very good choice. I have since worked on several assignments, all in the field of data analytics and data science.
As a consultant at Cmotions, in addition to the assignments you work on, you will have plenty of opportunity to work with colleagues on internal projects to share knowledge you have gained with each other, or to learn new things that you do not always encounter in your work. You hear that more often, of course, but it’s really true in this case .
The assignments are always very diverse, and I experience a lot of freedom to be able to choose the tooling or programming languages I want to do the work in. Just can’t figure something out? Then there are always several colleagues ready and eager to give you a hand.”
Bert | 6 months employed by Cmotions
“I have been working for Cmotions for (over) six months now and I can’t help but be positive. I have already worked for 3 different clients in this short period of time and am now entering the fourth. Because of this variety, I feel like I learned a lot very quickly.
Within the projects you get the freedom to tackle them the way you think is right and should you unexpectedly run into something you don’t know, all colleagues are incredibly helpful and everyone is willing to share their knowledge.
In addition to client assignments, there are all kinds of initiatives internally that you can participate in to take on fun projects and learn new things together with your colleagues.”
Jeanine | 9 years with Cmotions
“Before I started at Cmotions, consulting didn’t appeal to me. It seemed inconvenient to me to work in different places each time, and to have no base anywhere. We are now nine years on and I am still enjoying it immensely. This is partly because clients give us space and responsibility to shape projects. On the other hand, there is room within Cmotions for interactive knowledge sharing, such as in the form of workshops. In this way, you not only have colleagues at the client, but precisely also within Cmotions.
In addition to my assignments, I work on several other initiatives:
- The Analytics Lab: our incubator playground where we aim to drive innovation.
- Project Friday: a project of several Friday afternoons focusing on knowledge development and fun.
- Creating and organizing Data Analysis Hackathons.
- Developing Data Science products.
The freedom, diversity, nice clients, but especially the work environment mean that I still really enjoy working at Cmotions.”
Our specialties
Mutual knowledge sharing is very important to us at Cmotions. Not only for our own development, but also to add more value faster for our clients. To emphasize the importance of this, we established specialty groups several years ago.
An important reason why clients work with us is because – in addition to our specific and often technical knowledge and experience – we are also able to communicate clearly about it. To ensure that our knowledge stays up-to-date, we work with colleagues on internal projects in the specialty groups. More information about the specialties can be found on our website. Since Cmotions is broadly oriented within the data field, we have several specialties:
- Advanced analytics
- Data governance
- Data science & data engineering
- Data visualization
- Omnichannel marketing
- Strategy & organization
To give you a better idea of what exactly we do within such a specialty, we explain an internal project of data science & data engineering.
