In the third episode of our Candid Career Conversations series, ASUG Talks sits down with Allison Boutilier, project delivery manager at Marine Atlantic. She talks about her path to IT, her experiences working in the male-dominated IT field, and her work at Marine Atlantic.
Here is a transcript of our conversation:
Jim Lichtenwalter:
Hello and welcome to ASUG Talks, a podcast series featuring Candid Career Conversations with ASUG members who lead or work on SAP teams across the United States and Canada. My name is Jim Lichtenwalter. I am the ASUG content manager and the host of ASUG Talks host. In this episode, I’m joined by Allison Boutilier, project delivery manager for Marine Atlantic, which is a navy and ferry transportation organization. Allison thank you so much for being with me here today.
Allison Boutilier:
My pleasure.
Jim Lichtenwalter:
Allison, let's start things off, I'd love to know a little bit about what your current role is right now and what your day-to-day looks like.
Allison Boutilier:
Yeah, so my current role is... My title is manager of BPR Project Delivery, and BPR stands for Business Process Renewal, and that's a multiphase multiyear initiative that my organization Marine Atlantic has taken on, basically to redefine our business processes and implement SAP. So I have a number of projects that fall in that portfolio that we're working on, and those projects are basically, again, to reexamine our business processes and ultimately implement SAP technology across our landscape.
Jim Lichtenwalter:
Great. I want to talk about Marine Atlantic a little bit later, but let's take a step back, because I'm always interested in how professionals in the SAP ecosystem came to SAP and came to working in IT. Can you tell us a little bit about what you studied in college and what initially attracted you to studying that topic?
Allison Boutilier:
Yeah, absolutely. So, I graduated high school in 1997 and I started at St. Francis Xavier University here in Nova Scotia that September, so September of 1997. And I took a four year bachelor's degree called Bachelor of Information Systems. You don't see a lot of degrees with that name now, they tend to be like a Bachelor of Business Admin with a concentration in IT. But at that time, I guess it's almost 25 years ago, it was called Bachelor of Information Systems. And what drew me to that field, I guess, it was really unknown at the time, I can remember coming home and saying to my parents, "This is what I want to take." And the kind of the blank stares on their face because in 97, honestly, especially in my kind of blue collar household, nobody knew what information systems was.
Allison Boutilier:
One of the things they promoted with the program was the high job placement after university. I would've been going in with student loans and looking at student debt, so that was something that appealed to me. I was a real math geek in high school and there wasn't very many paths for somebody with that kind of aptitude to take back then. You could go the science, engineering route, which wasn't really my jam, or look for other opportunities. And so when I started to look into the courses that would come with a BIS degree, it seemed like it was all stuff that interested me. And it was a four year degree. And on the kind of immature high school side, we didn't have a lot of labs. And I had a lot of friends who were in science degrees and would do their classes and then spend every afternoon in the lab. And it just seemed like a whole other extra set of responsibility. So part of what appealed to me also was that we wouldn't have that extra burden.
Jim Lichtenwalter:
Yeah. In high school, were you interested in computers and in information systems in high school, or was that something that as you came into college, you developed an interest in>
Allison Boutilier:
I was not interested at all in high school. I definitely had to force myself, even through university, to dive into those programming-type courses. And one thing, I had the pleasure of going back to the university last year and teaching an IT course there as a part-time instructor for a term during COVID.
Jim Lichtenwalter:
Oh, very cool.
Allison Boutilier:
I tried to encourage a lot of the students in my class that there are many ways to succeed in the IT world without being that programmer that we kind of get labeled as. So I still call myself a non-techy techy person. I'm not afraid of technology, but I'm not the person that's going to jump in and start coding or building solutions. I'm not any kind of enterprise or solutions architect by any means.
Jim Lichtenwalter:
Yeah. The student becomes the teacher, literally.
Allison Boutilier:
Yeah. It was really interesting, yeah.
Jim Lichtenwalter:
How did that opportunity come about?
Allison Boutilier:
No, it was just a random posting that I saw there for one part-time course, for one term they were doing remotely because of COVID. And I threw my name in the hat and honestly didn't think anything of it and was presented with the opportunity to teach just one course for four months. And my boss and the management team at Marine Atlantic supported me, kind of stealing some hours during the day to do that. So it was really neat.
Allison Boutilier:
I thought of going to grad school the last few years and wondered like, "Am I ready to go back into academia?" And I looked at that as an opportunity to kind of get involved in the university atmosphere again and see if it was something that would appeal to me to go back and do grad school. Ultimately I've decided that an MBA isn't for me right now. I have two small children, and even just teaching the course took a lot of extra hours and extra time. So that was kind of a good wake up call for me to say, "At this phase of my life, my work-life balance is really important," and I like that time with my kids, my family.
I felt very obligated to the students. I found myself checking my university email 10 times a day because if there was an assignment due the next day and somebody needed help with it, I felt like I wanted to be there to constantly support. So it was a good experience and it's something I would do again, but I have a lot more appreciation for what it takes to be a full-time professor.
Jim Lichtenwalter:
That's so cool that you have that experience. Let's go back to, you're coming out of college, you're entering your first job. Tell us a little bit about your first job, how you got it and then what you started off doing.
Allison Boutilier:
Yeah, I would love to. So I was recruited out of university as a new grad for Shell Canada, which was a really great opportunity and one that I'm forever grateful for. What I will say is I think one of the things that helped me stand out in terms of being presented with that type of new grad opportunity was, while I was in university, I took any and every job I could on campus and a lot of them were tech-focused.
Allison Boutilier:
And again, even though I wasn't techy, I was a lab assistant for the distance nursing class. I developed a website for the human nutrition department. I worked the help desk every summer. So I was able to develop some kind of professional expertise and skills even while I was in school, just by doing some small student jobs. And looking back, I think when I went into interviews and recruitment for a global organization like Shell, it wasn't so much that I had the perfect GPA that made me stand out, but I was able to come across as somebody who was well rounded. And I had already been more working with professors and deans and all sorts of different people at all levels of the organization at the university. So that was a strength, I think, that I definitely carried into that recruitment process.
Allison Boutilier:
So as a fresh new grad, like a month after I graduated with my undergrad, I moved from Nova Scotia to Alberta. Started my career with Shell Canada and immediately started working in the ERP realm. At that point, Shell was operating a green screen AS/400 version of JD Edwards. And that's where I started my career, was as a system support analyst in that area. And I've spent my entire career working in ERP. So the first few years were supporting JD Edwards. And then as Shell Canada moved to the global Shell kind of conglomerate, we had a number of projects to migrate the Canadian data and the Canadian systems and processes onto the global SAP systems. And that was my first exposure to SAP.
Jim Lichtenwalter:
So this was your first exposure to SAP?
Allison Boutilier:
At Shell, yep.
Jim Lichtenwalter:
What solutions were you... Were you on R/3, R/2?
Allison Boutilier:
We were on R/3 at that point. I think they're still on R/3. I've followed some of their... We've seen a few ASUG articles. I believe they're still trying to figure out their migration path for S/4, but we were on R/3 at that point. And there was a number of global systems based on your line of business and where you worked. And again, we had just gone through a reorg, quite a bit of disruption in the organization, a lot of uncertainty within the IT division of where we would end up when you look at going from this nice small Canadian company. Not small, but small in terms of what global Shell represented. And I raised my hand and said, "I know there's going to be some global projects here. And I really want to participate with in those." I felt like it was better to get involved and be seen as the expert or the Canadian point of contact for this stuff than to wait and be tapped on the shoulder.
Allison Boutilier:
So I had the benefit of being assigned to three separate projects over five years, and they were all migrations to the global Shell. So we were taking people off of the JD Edwards ERP and moving them into the global SAP program. And those experiences, they still continue to provide benefits in my career today. I got to see what good project delivery looks like, I got to see what a sustainable ERP model looks like, I got to see how you can set up a center of excellence to really make things work for your business. And it really allowed me a lot of different insight into the SAP land and how to do it the right way.
Jim Lichtenwalter:
As you're working on these global projects, what would you say was an early SAP related hurdle that you had to overcome, and how did you go about overcoming it?
Allison Boutilier:
Oh, that's an interesting question. I honestly think the hurdles I overcame or had to look at in those big, huge Shell projects are very similar to the hurdles that we look at today when I might be working at Marine Atlantic with a team of five people instead of a project team of 120 people. Business process redesign, it tends to be the biggest challenge, asking people to do their jobs differently, challenging why we do things a certain way and moving people out of that status quo is always a challenge. So when I look back, I could give specific examples of there might be a global Shell policy or procedure, and we're trying to bring the Canadian Shell people onto that piece through the software. But I encounter those same challenges today in my job. It's all about getting people to change the way they work and accepting and adopting any process changes that are coming.
Jim Lichtenwalter:
Let's talk a little bit now about Marine Atlantic. I'd love to know about that transition, how you ended up there. And then tell us a bit about what the company is and what you all do, and the customers that you all are serving.
Allison Boutilier:
Yep. So I'll start off telling you a little bit about Marine Atlantic, because if I don't do it now, I'll forget. Marine Atlantic is a federal crown corporation in Canada, which means ultimately we report into the federal government if you think of them as our main shareholder. But we're not a public service company by the same token. Marine Atlantic is part of the... The service we provide is part of the constitution of Canada. So when the province of Newfoundland joined Canada, I think it was 1949, but you can fact check me there, they're an isolated island on the East Coast of Canada. One of the things that was written into that constitution and them coming in was that this ferry service would exist.
Allison Boutilier:
So Marine Atlantic provides a ferry service between two ports in Newfoundland and one port here in North Sydney and Nova Scotia, that's where I work, for both passenger and commercial services. And Marine Atlantic, the last I checked, again, we might need to fact check this, I think we provide about 60 to 70% of the commercial goods that arrive in the province of Newfoundland. So it really is a critical part of the Canadian infrastructure when you look at it as a whole. It's a company that's existed, I think, for 120 years. And then, like I said, came under the government oversight probably when they came into the constitution. So, that's what we do. We're a relatively small company. We've got anywhere from maybe 600 to 1200 employees depending on the season. We do provide a big part of the tourism component for the island of Newfoundland as well. So you'll see in summer months that our staff and our activity really ramps up versus the winter months when there's not a whole lot of people lined up to travel to the East Coast to Canada mid-February, that's mostly the commercial traffic at that point.
Allison Boutilier:
So for me, when I worked with Shell and got through these global projects and I was in more of an operational excellence role after the projects rolled out, I actually moved to Nova Scotia, my hometown. So I left Alberta, came back to my hometown and Shell let me take my job with me. So, that would've been in 2006, nobody was working remote then. Who knew where we'd end up 15 years later? I used to dial into our meetings and they'd have a speaker phone in the middle of a conference room. No screen sharing, no video, nothing. But they did let me... They said, "Let's give it a shot." So I wanted to move home. I was ready to quit. And we worked this out. And I think at the point, they guaranteed me two or three years, was what was written into the contract.
Allison Boutilier:
My career continued to progress with Shell and I stayed in that role for about 15 years, just doing various roles, again, in the SAP or the ERP realm, but working remotely and traveling back and forth a bit. Then I started to have my babies and kind of took a break from my career to focus on that part of my life. And when I was eight months pregnant with my son, my second child, I got a call for an interview at Marine Atlantic. And I actually turned it down and said, "I'm eight months pregnant. There's really no sense of me coming in," and the girl on the phone, I still thank her when I see her in the hallways, said, "No, we really want to talk to you. Please just come and chat with us."
Allison Boutilier:
So I went to that interview and walked out, thinking, "I really want to work for these guys. This job is close." I'd been doing remote for so long. The commute wasn't too bad. It was something local here in Nova Scotia. They were just starting on an SAP journey, so that was totally of interest to me. And it just felt like it would be a fit. And I still, again, owe a lot of people thanks for this. They did, they offered me the job. And in Canada, we get a year of maternity leave, so that was why I didn't think I'd ever get a job offer, but they did. They gave me the job offer at eight months pregnant and said, "Take as much time as you need and let us know when you want to start."
Jim Lichtenwalter:
That is incredible.
Allison Boutilier:
It's a really cool story. Yeah. I'm forever grateful for that. And our CIO, Colin, I'm sure it came across his desk and I still can't believe he took a chance on me like that, but I'm very, very grateful for it. I didn't take the full year, I took about 10 months. So I accepted a job and didn't start until about 10 months afterwards. And Marine Atlantic was just at the beginning of this BPR project then. I came into the job as a BPR project manager. Shortly after that, maybe a year or two after that, I moved into what they called a project lead role, where I was more leading the SAP program for them. And then I've just recently received a promotion into a manager of project delivery for the overall program.
Jim Lichtenwalter:
Congratulations.
Allison Boutilier:
Thank you.
Jim Lichtenwalter:
That's a very cool story. Did you intend to go back to work after you finished having children? Or had you not thought about it yet? Or what was your mindset like when you sort of picked up that call from Marine Atlantic?
Allison Boutilier:
Yeah, I intended to. I think there was a honeymoon phase as a new mother, maybe with my first child, where I thought, "Oh, I could do this, I could be a stay-at-home mom." And I did go back to Shell for a little while, I think between my children. But I quickly realized I have a passion for my career and it provides me some satisfaction in another way. So, while I did play with the idea and look, when you're on maternity leave for a year, it's a nice amount of time to be off and to be home snuggling with your babies and just being a mom. So it's tempting, but I'm very happy that I've been able to kind of keep that balance and have a career that really satisfies me and also be a mom that's present for my children.
Jim Lichtenwalter:
I want to talk a little bit about the IT environment, which is traditionally a male-dominated field. We'd love to know a little bit about your experiences working as a woman in such a male-dominated field.
Allison Boutilier:
Yeah. That's something I've given a lot of thought to the last few years, Jim. When I started at Shell, I can remember they had this Shell Women's Network, and there was all these forums for women in IT. And I was like, "Why do we need all of this?" It hadn't really ever occurred to me that I was entering into a field where it was really male-dominated. And at one point during my career with Shell, I reported to women all the way up the line. My boss was a woman who reported to a woman. The CFO was a woman, the CEO was a woman. So I think early on I had this really kind of unique experience where, to me, it was like, "What's the big deal?" And as my career grew, and maybe as I started to work on more of these global initiatives and get exposed to how things operated even in different countries and then, even more so, coming to Marine Atlantic, I have come to realize that women are definitely not as dominant in the IT field.
Allison Boutilier:
So it's something, I guess, I've become more conscious of as I've gotten older and a little bit more secure in my abilities, in my role as a woman in technology. I talked about teaching that course at the university I attended. I made a point of kind of making that part of our discussion points of, "I know there's people in this class, who are women, who might think you want to do an accounting major. Don't think you can't be successful in an IT career just because you're not that attracted to programming or you don't have that background. Women tend to be more empathetic, which is a skill that serves you really, really well in information technology, because a lot of it is about planning and problem solving and stuff. Women also, I think, tend to juggle many priorities at once, and I have yet to find an IT shop anywhere I've worked or been exposed to that doesn't have too many balls in the air that we're all trying to keep up with."
Allison Boutilier:
So I think there are a lot of strengths that women can offer in general. And I really hope to see that we start to promote more girls and women into these careers, not just even from the school age, because I think we do a great job at that. You see all these STEM and STEAM programs in the schools and the universities, but even tapping out to women at our own organizations and trying to see those aptitudes. I have a few people we've brought into our team who were not in technology careers. They were working in other supervisory roles in our organization or training departments. And we've just been able to kind of bring them into the fold and help them see that IT isn't just spreadsheets and data and stuff. There's lots of cool work you get to do within the IT department. So, that's one thing I've tried to do in this role that I'm in, is just kind of open people's eyes to all of the different activities that happen in information technology.
Jim Lichtenwalter:
That's great. Thanks for sharing your experience. I'm also interested in any advice you have for any young women who are, much like your students that you taught, are sort of sitting at the precipice either about ready to enter the IT space or sitting there thinking, "Hmm, is this the right space for me to pursue a career in?"
Allison Boutilier:
Yep. What I would say is, IT is a great place to start, so it doesn't have to be a lifelong commitment. If it's something you think you're interested in, I can guarantee you that you can find a spot in IT that will give you exposure to anywhere in the organization. So it is a great place to start if you want to be in a business role and you're not sure of where.
Allison Boutilier:
The other thing that I tell the women I work with a lot, is we undersell ourselves too much. Women have a tendency to not want to come across as aggressive or bossy or over confident, and while there is a place for humility in the workplace with men and women, I try to make sure that people understand the value that they bring to the table and that they're comfortable with that. So those would be my biggest two pieces, is if you think you want to try it, try it out. It won't be time wasted for your career. And then secondly, you have a seat at the table and don't be afraid to take it, and don't undersell yourself that you don't deserve that.
Jim Lichtenwalter:
Would love to know a little bit about your ASUG origin story, how it's helped your career, and how you participate in ASUG currently.
Allison Boutilier:
Yep. So, that's something I'm really happy to share with you. When I was in Alberta and working for Shell, I didn't have any exposure to ASUG and I didn't see... I guess when I think about it now, I didn't have a need because I was already plugged into this global network of SAP customers and countries. So I could call somebody who works somewhere else in Shell and say, "How did you guys configure your storage locations? What does that look like?" I had people to ask those questions too. When I started at Marine Atlantic, and we were just starting on the SAP journey, I kept asking, "Who are we going to talk to? What other customers are we going to reach out to? I want to have a little network out here."
Allison Boutilier:
We did plug into one network through the federal government of SAP Federal Government Users. But when I actually met with some of the folks in Ottawa, through the federal government, they pointed at me in the direction of ASUG. There was a woman there who was the chair of the Ottawa Chapter. And she said, "You should really get plugged into what's happening in Atlantic, Canada." So from there, I actually approached my boss at the time and said, "I really think we should look at this." And our company has become a part of the Atlantic Canada Chapter. I had the opportunity to present on our first project and share some of our challenges and lessons learned from our first initiative. And we continue to promote ASUG within our organization. I'm the chair of the Atlantic Canada Chapter right now, and we're looking to do some really cool things to reconnect customers in Atlantic, Canada.
Allison Boutilier:
And we continue to promote a lot of ASUG events within our organization, but there's a wealth of knowledge out there. And that's how I like to keep up to date on research trends, what's happening in the SAP world. We've met lots of people who are also SAP customers, shared a ton of knowledge. Even through COVID, I have to commend ASUG. Great job on just so many virtual events and Think Tanks and webinars. And we really did, our group and our company, attended a lot of those things. It felt good to reach out and see other people and have the ability to do that networking during the pandemic, which was a challenge. So ASUG continues to deliver that value for us. I also find there's a lot of opportunity with ASUG for two way communication, so the surveys send out. And, I see first hand that I can give this feedback in a survey and months later, see that somebody read it and has followed through on it. And even though ASUG is a large organization, I think that's something that really matters to folks like me.
Jim Lichtenwalter:
Well, thank you for the kind words we really do appreciate it. It's been an interesting time with COVID. It is cool too, for me, just being able to... I think some of the cool stuff we do is our research, which is how I initially got connected to you. You participated in our Pulse of the SAP Customer research. And it's amazing that we can take a snapshot of all of our customers and see where they are and what they're thinking on a variety of different topics. I think it gives a lot of our members a baseline too, for, "Where am I?" In terms of where it comes.
Allison Boutilier:
Exactly. Yeah. For us, we rely a lot on a systems integrator to do our SAP work. And I find that I often turn to ASUG as a point for my own independent research. So whether it's to validate what I'm being told by the SI or to challenge what I'm being told by the SI, but I guess what I mean is they're not now my only source of industry standard knowledge. I can go out there and look at the research on ASUG and say, "Well, they did a survey last year and 83% of customers aren't doing this. So we're not the only ones with this problem." So there's lots of valuable information there, all you have to was look for it.
Jim Lichtenwalter:
Well, great, Allison, thank you so much. Really enjoyed our conversation today. It was so nice talking with you.
Allison Boutilier:
Me too. Thanks for the opportunity to have me.
Jim Lichtenwalter:
Ok and that will bring this second episode of ASUG Talk to an end. I just want to put this out there, if you are an ASUG member and want to share your story with me on this podcast, talk a little bit about some of the hurdles you’ve overcome, how you got into your career, some of your early victories, we’d love to hear your story. So please reach out to me—again, Jim Lichtenwalter—or you can email us at asugnews@asug.com. Be sure to join me for the next ASUG Talks. And remember to generously share these compelling conversations with other ASUG members, your professional community and industry networks. And just a friendly reminder, you can also find this podcast series on both Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Simply search “ASUG Talks.”