Career Path of a Business Solutions Architect at Avanade
Meng Qi's career path began with industrial engineering and supply chain management, leading to internships at Rockwell Automation ("educating clients on products and selling them") and Toyota ("visiting suppliers and improving their manufacturing processes"). This experience, combined with four years in consulting, ultimately led to Meng Qi's current role as a Business Solution Architect at Avanade, where they leverage both technical and client-facing skills in large-scale Microsoft project implementations.
Supply Chain Management, Sales Engineering, Consulting, Project Management, Business Solution Architecture
Advizer Information
Name
Job Title
Company
Undergrad
Grad Programs
Majors
Industries
Job Functions
Traits
Meng Qi
Business Solutions Architect
Avanade
Georgia Tech, 2014
UCLA FEMBA
Engineering - Industrial
Consulting & Related Professional Services, Technology
Consulting
Honors Student, Scholarship Recipient, Took Out Loans, Greek Life Member
Video Highlights
1. Meng's career path showcases the value of internships in diverse fields. Starting with sales engineering at Rockwell Automation and supplier engineering at Toyota, she gained practical experience in supply chain, operations, and sales before transitioning to consulting.
2. Her experience highlights the benefit of building both functional (supply chain, operations) and technical (product knowledge) skills, which broadened her career opportunities and ultimately led to her current role as a Business Solutions Architect.
3. Meng's journey demonstrates that a career path isn't always linear. Starting in a smaller consulting firm allowed her to develop diverse consulting skills and eventually transition into a larger firm leveraging her broad expertise.
Transcript
Could you walk me through your career path, starting with your experiences in college? Please include any internships or jobs you had prior to your current role.
Specifically, I'm thinking about how you landed that first job.
My name is Ming Qi. I'm currently a Business Solution Architect at Avanade. When I went to university, I majored in Industrial Engineering with a focus on Supply Chain Management.
My first internship after college was focused on figuring out where I could go with that degree. There are many different paths, such as consulting, operations, or academia, where you can delve deep into areas like supply chain disruptions and operations management.
My first internship was through my university's career center. They host career fairs in September and October where companies recruit students for summer internships. I interned at Rockwell Automation as a sales engineering intern.
My task was to focus on an underutilized product family at Rockwell in terms of sales. I visited various accounts in the Houston area to educate clients about these products and try to sell them.
I tracked opportunities and was successful in selling a couple of these products. Rockwell is known for their PLM systems, which are programmable logic controllers. Think of them as the brains that control much of what runs manufacturing facilities.
That internship lasted three months, and I had a very supportive manager. I was 19 and nervous, trying to talk to people in the oil and gas industry who were often decades older than me.
My job was to connect with them personally, explain the product, and how it could help them. This experience really started my path into supply chain and manufacturing.
My next internship was at Toyota in Erlanger, Kentucky, where I did supplier engineering development. I visited Toyota's suppliers, especially those at risk of not meeting production numbers.
My role was to go through their manufacturing processes, identify gaps, and figure out how to help them improve so they could meet their quotas. This ensures Toyota can get cars to customers in a reasonable amount of time.
This experience continued to build upon itself. After visiting different people generally, my next co-op put me in the driver's seat. I got to dictate what they were doing, and I had a very supportive manager at that time.
Because of my combined experience in sales, supply chain, and operations, I made an interesting decision for my first job out of college. I decided to go into consulting for a smaller, UK-based company with 50 people in the US.
I was with that company for four years, doing everything from working with clients and helping with their projects to some project management and sales. From there, I continued down the consulting path.
Last year, because I kept building my functional and technical knowledge in the products we were selling, as well as my consulting skills, I returned to sales. I am now a Business Solution Architect at Avanade, a Microsoft shop for Accenture.
We work with Microsoft products like the Modern Workplace, Teams, and CRM business applications. We are the system integrators and consulting firm that implements these large, global-scale projects.