Engineers of Endava
Discover Teodora's Story
Teodora is an engineer with a human touch. She is a 'people' person, as she likes to make sure everyone in her team reaches their full potential and feels comfortable, as well as included. Teodora also helped pro-bono several NGOs on their paths to a digital experience.
She cares and believes in an open work environment where best practices are shared.
The Beginnings
Teodora graduated from the Academy of Economic Studies with a bachelor’s degree in Economics Informatics, Statistics, and Cybernetics and a master's degree in Database Business Support Systems.
She joined Endava through an integration process, and she is lucky to have been working with the same team for over 15 years.
If asked what the main factors that helped her succeed are, she will clearly say: “responsibility, seriousness, dedication, and my team.” “I like what I do because this career offers me the diversity, dynamism, and challenges that I need in a changing world.”
Shaping the path
Looking back, projects implementing CRM solutions remained a constant in her career. Teodora started working in this field in her 4th year of university when she was involved in a project for a partner company of Oracle. This project allowed her to draft her final thesis based on Oracle’s product called eBusiness Suite, the CRM module, of course. This was the steppingstone for 15 years of work with many CRM technologies (eBusiness Suite, Siebel, Oracle Right Now, Salesforce, and lately Microsoft Dynamics), changing trends, and working with diverse clients, industries and projects.
Theodora started as a Junior CRM Functional Consultant, which then developed in a role that enabled her to coordinate the implementation teams for smaller or bigger CRM projects, shift from simple to complex solutions, and train and nurture the juniors in her teams.
She then took on the team leading and project management responsibilities and, in the end, the CRM functional architect role.
Now her role involves her in all activities, starting from analysis, solution design, configuration, training, architecture, and project management, depending on the projects she is coordinating.
“The Career Coach, Line Manager, and Discipline Lead roles that I have in Endava, besides the role that I have in delivering the technical projects, complete my career”, Teodora says.
Although her career path constantly followed the CRM trail, the direction was also fully aligned with the market evolution. The rise in demand for cloud services made her move on from the previous “love” for Oracle Siebel, an on-premises CRM solution, towards Salesforce, about 7 years ago.
Besides the use of cloud technologies, which increased during the past years, the market has also been characterised by an increase in "off the shelf" app utilization (all kinds of apps with different purposes). Companies are now adopting what we call “digital transformation,” bringing revenue, growth, safe infrastructure, new services, and a better experience for the consumer. [AMS1]
This evolution also shaped Teodora’s role as CRM Consultant:
We must highlight the benefits brought to a company when using a top CRM application (Salesforce, Dynamics, etc.) with modern technology: more efficient processes, time and cost reduction, better services and products, more robust relationships between the provider and the beneficiary and many other examples. On top of that, if we add artificial intelligence and augmented reality components, we can predict future technologies. It’s also imperative that by using these technologies, we do not lose the human connection and try to adapt to them and use their impact in creating innovative solutions, especially during the latest global challenges that we are facing.
Teodora Gheorghias
Discipline Lead | Bucharest
Be the change!
Teodora also helped several pro-bono NGOs on their paths to a digital experience.
For Hope and Homes for Children Foundation and Magic Association, she helped integrate the diverse forms of income (SMS, credit and banking cards, social platforms, and e-shops) in one platform, based on the cloud functionalities provided by Salesforce. This helped the two NGOs to have easy access to information about the donors, the volunteers, and sponsors. Teo and her team helped configure the apps while the partners focused on maximizing the platforms' benefits.
Advice for other #TechEnthusiasts
“Don’t postpone searching for your passion, be curious and make it possible to get the job that you wish. Take advantage of your age, but at the same time, don’t be discouraged by it (if you’re not in your first years of university), and try something new or more complex. At the same time, avoid procrastinating when it comes to discovering your dream job if you’re just at the start of your career (a year in terms of technologies means a lot). Ask and give feedback, don’t give up if you stumble (I work with many juniors and many of them are giving up when it gets tougher without trying to overcome their limits or as we like to say, to get out of their comfort zone), and work on developing your logical thinking. And the most important thing - be genuine and responsible!”.