IMIS Community

Introduce yourself briefly please (also specify your graduation year)
My name is Flavio Pane and I came from Naples (Italy) to Soest in October 2015. After having finished BBA I concluded IMIS in March 2020. Since the summer of 2017 I am working in a company from Dortmund where I wrote both thesis and where I originally started as a student.

How did you find the IMIS program? And why did you decide to apply?
I got to know the program during BBA, as initially I had no idea of the possibility to pursue a consecutive master. After having analyzed the content and the benefits, I decided to confirm my original idea of doing a Master's degree as well. Indeed, such a qualification helps increasing the possibilities of further advancements during your career.

What do you think of the program now, as compared with the time when you were just admitted? What was the experience like during the studies?
I am not able to tell the differences as I relatively finished recently. On the other hand, even though it was a short experience, during the on-campus semester I met quite some nice students with whom I am still in contact. Being an ex-BBA eased the study process, as I was used to the adopted methods.

What are the most valuable takeaways/classes/aspects present in the program that have helped you in your post-university professional life and what makes you think so?
I had the chance to further increase my academical experience by touching topics which are closer to the real work experience than in the Bachelor's degree. Thus, I value most of the time spent during the courses, though with some exceptions.

What are you doing at the current stage of your life?
I am working as a full time IT consultant for internal topics and customer projects.

Which advice would you give now to your younger self who would be still studying in IMIS or is about to start the program?
Make a treasure out of the class time and be assured that a solid formal education helps increasing the chances in the "outside world", but this needs to be accompanied by practical experiences.

From the standpoint of a person who is already active in the real business world, which extra course/subject do you think would be helpful to increase program's value and relevance?
IT Project management, IT strategy, human resource management.

Text by Oleksandr Prokhorov (IMIS Summer Semester 2019)

How did IMIS help you in perusing your career?
IMIS can change the lifestyle of a person and I am one of the lucky persons to experience that. Having a previous master’s degree in marketing management; I felt the urge to push it to the next level and I was able to do that with the help of IMIS. Moreover, I was working as “Marketing manager” in Bangladesh, whereas now I am working as a “Digital Analytics Manager”. This jump was only possible because of the guidance of my faculty members at the university and the learnings from IMIS.

What would you say about your life after IMIS Life after IMIS?
Life after IMIS came in different phases to me. Immediately, after finishing my studies, I started as a full-time employee at METRONOM GmbH in Düsseldorf which was a mega step forward for me. One important factor here to mention is that, having a degree from FH Soest played an important role during my interview where I explained what I learned during my study. Moreover, because of my work, I moved to Düsseldorf, a beautiful city that has a lot to offer. Last but not the least, as a proud Alumni, I receive invitation for different events / programs which still keep me in touch with overall IMIS community.

Can you describe a day, you will never forget in FH-SWF?
The most memorable day in FH-SWF was the convocation day when I was awarded the certificate and I was able to throw my graduation cap in the air. Although, I got my certificate before, the respect that was given to me in front of a large number of audiences and presence of my family and friends, made the day extra special and unforgettable.

Keeping in view the practical world, do you suggest any new course/skills which should be taught to the IMIS students?
Based on my real-life experiences in a corporate environment, I think following courses could be introduced to the IMIS course structure: Logistics – Supply Chain Management, Human Resource Management

Do you want to give any advice or suggestion for the current/future IMIS students?
My suggestion for the current / future IMIS students would be to focus more on the IS (Information System) part of the course as in Germany the value of Information System is quite high and there is a list of “High Qualification Job” and most of the jobs in that list belong to Information System

Which advice would you give now to your younger self who would be still studying in IMIS or is about to start the program?
Make a treasure out of the class time and be assured that a solid formal education helps increasing the chances in the "outside world", but this needs to be accompanied by practical experiences.

Text by Marzia Marzia (IMIS Summer Semester 2017)

Why did you choose the IMIS PROGRAM?
I chose the IMIS program due to its very balanced mixture of practice and theory in Business and IT

What was your previous education?
I started my studies at the same university with the bachelor’s program Business Administration with Informatics (B.A.)

Can you describe your favourite course in IMIS?
I am more of an IT person, I like the degree of IT subjects in the IMIS program, therefore, among my favourites definitely were Business Intelligence and ERP

What was your toughest course?
Like I said, I am more of an IT person, so I had some struggles with subjects like Marketing, which I, however, successfully passed

Do you plan on doing PhD?
I know that after the IMIS program it is possible to start a PhD, however, not in this university, because it is the university of applied sciences. In general, in accordance with me career plans, I decided to stop after the master’s degree

How did the programme change you personally?
It made me self-responsible and taught me to independently take over a task and complete it

What would you like to change about the course?
Maybe in the future students could have the ability to prioritize the importance of the courses by themselves

How would you describe the ideal job for this programme?
In my opinion, the ideal job after completing this program is related to the Business Intelligence

What is the best thing about programme?
Apart from the amazing international experience that we all get here, I enjoyed working in small study groups and competitive environment

Which subjects have helped the most in your day-to-day work?
Since I work as a Senior Analytics Consultant at Swisscom, I would say Business Intelligence, ERP, Java, Finance and Accounting

Interview by Maria Shiganian (IMIS Winter Semester 2016/2017)

Samiur, I know you are married. How did you manage everything like family, study simultaneously?
Yes, I am married and father of a child. It was very difficult to decide for moving abroad alone. However, I made it (I am very grateful to my family) and started studying in FH. From the very first day I find the experience good to meet classmates from different countries and learning from them.

Did you find the program effective?
I found the course very effective and very well designed. I chose more IT related courses where I had a choice, which was very helpful in future. I should acknowledge one thing. During the course I had to fly back to Bangladesh for family reasons without any notice. I missed the final presentation for a course from Professor Andreas Gerlach. but I found my classmates by my side being very supportive. They described my situation to the professor, and he considered my situation without any hesitation. This was very humane and kind and made me more optimistic towards my future life in Germany.

Could you please share us your professional experience?
Although I was very much focused, but I failed to manage mandatory internship during my study. I didn’t lose hope and took my optional courses and kept looking for internships. My efforts paid off and I got an opportunity to join as an intern at Fresenius AG in Bad Homburg in the Global IT department. My topic was strategic IT project management. The good thing was before starting the internship I had completed all my course works along with the optional.

At the Global headquarter I have worked with teams from 72 other countries and learned practically about how to manage international businesses and international Projects. It was indeed a great experience. Later, I got opportunity to write my master’s thesis within the company and I asked for the permission to my Professor Dr. Peter Weber. He was very kind to Grant me the permission. He and another supervisor Mr. Asif Shahriar guided and supported me throughout the whole way of my research. With their help, I was able to blend my theoretical knowledge of business with the practical IT experiences during internship and successfully wrote it.

I also continued the effort to achieve my goal which is a job in Germany. I kept looking for it and finally I got the position as a Junior Project Manager — Transition in “ISS Deutschland” which is a global company headquartered in Denmark. Here I am now the part of the core transition team for the largest ever project happened in the ISS history, the Deutsche Telekom AG transition. ISS is supposed to maintain all the facility management for DT 1st July 2019 onwards. It is a 500 million Euro transition project and requires huge efforts and coordination in the transition level and I am working on its heart. Here I am partially responsible for the transition project plan, its quality, reporting, critical path and for the high-level presentation. It’s absolutely learning by doing and my study from the FH helping me a lot to get a better understanding for it. It’s a global platform where I should be able to flourish my carrier.

As an alumnus, what kind of advice would you want to give to your fellow IMIS mate?
As an alumnus I would say to my new friends in IMIS, please believe in the program. It’s a very effective program with the proper mix of business and IT. Learn carefully all the topics, listen to the professors and you will be ready. Moreover, to get a job, it requires huge effort from your side, and you should pay this as ‘priority one’. Lastly, I always miss Soest. This beautiful town was a fantastic part of my life. Thank you.

Text by Masud Rana (IMIS Winter Semester 2016/2017)

How did you find the IMIS program? And why did you decide to apply?
During my BBA, I got to know IMIS and knew this was what I wanted. And I planned my masters during BBA on how I could complete it successfully with sufficient practice at companies. It offered me the freedom I needed to individualize my own study plan filled with plenty of working experiences. Since I started studying there, I enjoyed my everyday life surrounded by multicultural study colleagues and lecturers. Whenever I needed support from the faculty including staff, they always tried their very best to help me, which I count priceless. So, the study program and the heart-warming faculty and staff attracted me to continue with IMIS.

What do you think of the program now, as compared with the time when you were just admitted? What was the experience like during the studies?
Actually, I was not surprised by the admission of IMIS, because before I ever applied for it, I knew how my study plan would be, as if I was an IMIS student already. As usual, I enjoyed my study/working life a lot. What I liked especially about the program was the freedom it gave me to tailor and freestyle the program to fit best to my own plan and goals. The international component of the learning environment had enriched my study experience a lot. Working together with multinational students on various projects for some years trained me well to better perform and cooperate with colleagues in multicultural teams during my professional life. have started my professional life. Thanks to that I can understand people better and our professional communication is very efficient.

What are the most valuable takeaways/classes/aspects present in the program that have helped you in your post-university professional life and what makes you think so?
It is hard to pick some from the many valuable takeaways that helped me in my professional life. In my opinion, what is good for finding jobs after graduation was that the ERP systems-related courses. Because a rising number of companies in Germany have been replacing their legacy systems by ERP modules. More and more workforce is needed to support this vital switch. With an entry-level qualification that the study program offers, it is attractive in the job market. Better would be that we build a stronger foundation by receiving more extra training courses by interests and/or taking internships in this field. What I also find quite valuable are the finance and accounting related topics, especially for our investments in the stock and fund markets. The Corporate Entrepreneurship & Innovation course taught me the very important elevator speech, brain storming, thinking out of the box, and to conduct some work innovatively.

What are you doing at the current stage of your life?
I am currently working on autonomous driving R&D projects.

Which advice would you give now to your younger self who would be still studying in IMIS or is about to start the program?
If I were given another chance, I would try applying internships at companies I dreamed of earlier than I actually did, regardless how scary the job advertisements look like. Also, I would visit more universities from bigger cities and communicate with the students there to exchange ideas and share resources. Plus, I would make better use of my time and the resources I have or provided by our universities. Such as improving my Germany language intensively. If I knew that I would need to work in German starting from 2018, improving my communication incl. presentation skills in German would definitely be one of my priorities at the time.

From the standpoint of a person who is already active in the real business world, which extra course/subject do you think would be helpful to increase program's value and relevance?
It is hard to suggest something that would not disbalance a current well-balanced course. I think this program gives the options that can fit one's interests in both IT and Business domains. Introducing too much of extra courses could make it a bit messy. Besides that, the course duration is not that long, so having an overly amount of the courses available can distort the focus. Although, if there were some more options for practical experience in the IT field offered - that would be definitely of more advantage.

Text by Oleksandr Prokhorov (IMIS Summer Semester 2019)

Hi Anh, could you share a bit about your career background and what motivated you to make a switch in your career path?
Hi Van, thank you for the invitation for the interview. The topic sounds great and I am so glad to have this chance to share my experience to IMIS students.

Before coming to Germany in the end of 2018 for the Master, I had 3 years working in Brand Management in Nestle Vietnam. So, I would say I had zero technical background before IMIS. During the first and the third semesters with all the courses conducted online, I utilized the time to do two internships in Henkel, also in Marketing, simply because that is what I am experienced in and easy to be selected for the position.

One-year internships in Henkel in the field of Marketing gave me great opportunities to strengthen my communication skills, adapt to the German working culture, and equip myself with market knowledge. However, the more I worked in Marketing, the more I realized that my highest interest was not in creating a creative advertisement or coming up with a new product concept, but more in analyzing market data to get valuable insight for business.

My managers also noticed that I was good in creativity works but I was much stronger in analytic areas. After understanding better my passion, I started to learn more about data analytics, especially utilizing self-service BI tools such as Power BI to transform, visualize, and analyze data. I then got a chance to do an internship in Qontigo where I was taking the lead of a project of transforming the recurring Excel-based reports into Power BI dashboards. After the internship with great result, I was promoted to be a full-time employee in the Market Intelligence Department.

Changing careers can be very challenging, especially when you make an unconventional move. Did you face many challenges, and how did you overcome those?
Changing careers is challenging, yes, but exciting at the same time. So, the challenges themselves became the motivation for me to strive further in this area. The biggest challenge for me in this movement was learning a wide range of new concepts and tools in a short period of time. I had six- month internship to learn about the Financial Services industry, sharpen my knowledge in the field of data analytics, and excel at the required tools like SQL and Power BI. However, the pressure of learning many new things as fast as I can always kept me excited every day, since everyday was a new day full of interesting things to learn. So, I would say, I overcame the challenges by keeping a constant thirst for new knowledge.

How IMIS program helped you to make the move?
IMIS helped me in many different ways in this career move. First, the knowledge I got in those subjects such as Business Intelligence, Information Management, gave me a good overview about the data field which served as a strong base for me to learn further myself. Second, it sounds too practical, but it is true, that the diploma in Information Systems increased greatly the chance for me to get into the eye of technical recruiters. Last but not least, friends from IMIS are treasure to me, who supported me with knowledge in the field, job opportunities sharing, and many more.

Do you have any advice for IMIS students who also want to change their career into a more technical field?
Start small, think big. This is my advice. Don’t be afraid of challenges ahead, start learning, take a course, connect with people in the field, join workshops, many things you can start with. But at the same time, keep in mind what and where you would like to become.

Thank you for your inspiring sharing and wish you all the best in your professional and personal life!

Text by Thi Bich Van Hoang (IMIS Summer Semester 2020)

With a master’s degree in Business Management and a founded experience in SAP, I had a strong ardour for Business Intelligence (BI) that could compliment my past academics and professional competency. This was the very reason to choose IMIS as another feather to my cap. IMIS is a perfect blend of Business Management together with IT. It provides you the flexibility to choose a career in the area of your interested domain, and I chose BI as my pathway ahead.

Well, to mend a machine you must grease your hands; and to learn to swim, you must jump into the well. I did both at Robert Bosch GmbH. I greased my hands on Tableau, a BI dashboarding tool and jumped into the project deliverables within a twinkling time.

I had to create a standard Tableau dashboard for Bosch’s European sales organizations to measure order-to-cash lead time. This is where I again jumped into the cold waters by travelling to various countries within Europe.

I had to conduct user workshops as a part of my Design Thinking methodology to create the standard Tableau dashboard. The working paper prototypes which were the result of these workshops were then consumed for standard dashboard development.

The practical experience earned at Bosch along with the academic accomplishment helped me to get some interview invites. I had a tale to narrate and my paper prototypes to demonstrate. Interestingly, few of these interviews turned out to be intriguing workshops.

The email which bought me a ticket to Soest is now taking me to places in various leadership positions. The resilient times that I faced as a student was worth every minute and every hour. Those were the goosebumps then and again today when I pen my words. Very little did I think then of today, but take it or leave it, IMIS turned out to be my gospel truth.”

Text by Marzia Marzia (IMIS Summer Semester 2017)

The lectures themselves were luckily rather practical, as they are at FH SWF. This means that we also had to do group works and actively participate in class. Moreover, the number of students per class was very low. Even compared to some courses at FH SWF, where we sometimes have classes of approximately 10 students. The average size of a course at SGU was about 5 students, which could be also due to the fact that I only studied with full time working fellows. And obviously not many people are willing to spend their Saturdays at university after a stressful week in the office.

The daily life in the metropolitan area of Jakarta, which is one of the most populated in the world, was quite different from my German environment. Especially the traffic was just insane, there is no other way to describe it. Due to a lack of decent public transport – the first metro in Jakarta is just in its construction phase – there are massive traffic jams at about any time of the day. Once, I took the bus to get to a table tennis club and it took me more than 5 and a half hours to get there and back, although I expected only about 2 hours. Therefore, motorbike taxis are a way to get through the traffic faster, but this is only an option for dauntless commuters, as they mostly drive pretty crazy.

Apart from that struggle, the Indonesian people are very friendly and relaxed. What really surprised me was the fact that many Indonesians are not used to see western people. It happened frequently that I had to take pictures with strangers on the street, which would then show those pictures to their family and friends to impress them. This felt very weird for me at first, but I got used to it after a while.

Due to the comfortable situation that I only had classes on Saturdays, I had also quite a lot of time for traveling Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries. It’s hard to give recommendations for the best destinations, as most of them are very different from each other. But up to now, my favourite trip is clearly the experience in Labuan Bajo, Indonesia. It is located on the western tip of the island Flores and directly borders on the world famous Komodo National Park.

But I have to warn you in two ways: Firstly, the Komodo Dragon can kill you easily with one bite and there is no antidote. Moreover, it runs faster than Usain Bolt and also an escape to the water or trees is not an option. Secondly, the provincial government plans to increase the national park entrance fee to about US$500 from currently about US$15, so you better hurry up!

It was a really unique experience to see the dragons in their natural habitat and the Komodo National Park is the only one worldwide. Also, for those of you, who are interested in marine life, Komodo is a must see as the sea around Komodo offers one of the best diving and snorkelling in Indonesia and also in the world. I pursued my beginner diving license there and didn’t know where to look first underwater, as there was so much biodiversity, that it was simply overwhelming. In only five dives I was able to see majestic manta rays, lots of (huge) turtles, reef sharks and many more mesmerizing creatures, as well as the most beautiful corals I have ever seen.

Lastly, also the picturesque landscapes and views at many spots of the area are just epic, so I highly recommend a trip to Labuan Bajo and the Komodo National Park! It is not as touristy as other places like Bali, but this will change for sure in the near future and first developments in that direction can already be recognized. That is why I encourage you to go there as soon as possible.

Text by Dominik Henne (IMIS Winter Semester 2017/2018)

Landed Germany on 5th October 2016. It was Autumn, and everything was seemed so beautiful. My friend received me from the bus station. I was so excited to see him after a long time. Having childhood friend here did not let me miss my family. Visiting here and there, the first couple of weeks were so amazing. It was online semester and almost I spent my whole semester with my friend. But later, before starting summer semester I moved to Soest where I knew nobody. I started feeling empty inside. That time I felt how lonely I am! Before starting the first class of summer semester I had many confusions like adjusting with new people, new environment, new systems and so on. Later I understood it was nothing but just overthinking.

The orientation of summer semester (I missed the orientation of winter semester and whole week class because of my visa issue), Prof Peter Weber started the orientation program, and it was continued until the lunch break. During lunch break and campus tour met with few new people. Started talking with them about their country, previous degree, their culture etc. Day by day we got to know each other very well, and few people became my good friends. Whole day class, presentation, assignments, and projects made me so monotonous.

Even it was difficult to cook foods. It was a very harsh situation for me not having my favourite dishes as I consider myself as a food lover. I started missing my family very badly especially my mother. I was missing different kinds of delicious foods she used to cook for us. Still, I miss my family most. On the other hand, I spent some of the most beautiful days in my life. Every weekend we arranged party in different places. All friends were gathered together and enjoyed the moments. In addition, I must say about Soest, very beautiful and charming city. After class, almost every evening, I went for bicycle riding with my friends. A couple of times went to Möhnesee from my place. It was just astonishing. Now I can feel how beautiful days I spent in Soest. Still, those days are very fresh in my memory. I stayed in many cities in Germany, but I feel like Soest is my home.

Currently, I am doing my internship in Berlin, one of the coolest cities in the world. But life is different here, early get up in the morning, office, then again preparing foods. Sometimes attend on weekend party with my office colleagues like my university days. But among all this thing I find myself very alone. Here in Germany, I got many things, many memorable days but in return, I had to leave my family, friends, my known environment, and a lot of things. My situation is like half empty or half full glass. I don’t know what portion I should look at!

Text by Masud Rana (IMIS Winter Semester 2016/2017)