"Internships are generally a glimpse of your future"
Preparation:
The preparation started months before the actual process happened, as a Business Analyst it was necessary to understand the basics of statistics, data engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and various algorithms but not limited to this, there is a need to clearly understand the different aspects of the supply chain, marketing, finance, HR because you never know what you might face. Also do read about the company and the sector and create an important point as you may need them during the process
Interview:
Ecolab is a global leader in water, hygiene, and infection prevention solution and services that protect people and resources. During my various interview, there were interviewers from different departments who are Lead Data Analyst in the company, the questions where related to business acumen from my previous work experience and related to the application of analytics in my previous organization and in theirs.
10 weeks of striking learning and experience:
The excitement was limitless as to when the internship is going to start but then due to COVID-19, the entire process took a toll and everything went virtual but nevertheless, it was equivalent to the conventional process, this virtual internship did give us a better chance to connect with the global stakeholders and top management with ease. We had a pretty good experience right from onboarding till the exit, thanks to digital transformation.
I was a Supply Chain Data Analyst at Ecolab, where my work revolved around improving the business through various insights, from the data. The first step /project was to get the data in the cloud database for which I developed a process/ pipeline which is automated and required understanding of the data with respect to the business and the knowledge of some tools, I learned during the course of the internship, which was the important part of the internship (learn as much as you can and do it fast).
The second was the project which needs to be a complete and daily tracking of the customer experience and especially at times like this. The projects had a slight variation in them than what would have been at the normal times, they have a touch of the COVID factor where all the measures and tracking was to toggle between a COVID scenario and a normal scenario. The third project was related to the gain insights from different measures related to forecasting accuracy, bias, inventory, and planning. For the above projects, the experience from my previous organization where I was a procurement engineer helped me a lot and the knowledge from the management studies in supply chain and various concepts of Business Analytics eased the learning process and helped in applying them in a real business case. Not only this I also got a chance to do a cross-functional project working for the Human Resource Department.
The experience, learning, and mentorship which I received during the internship were at different levels starting from the manager, colleagues, global head. A piece of personal advice that I received and would like to share the same is that "Learning or understanding the business is important when compared with the others".