Eventually his career path led to Bart & Partners and he has been part of the team for quite some time. How did Gerrit end up in the EPM world? What attracted him to EPM? And how do you like it now at Bart & Partners? We found out for you.

Meet Gerrit Haan, Oracle EPM consultant at Bart & Partners

The love for IT was in him from an early age. As a 6-year-old boy he was already programming away. Not surprisingly, Gerrit Haan opted for a job in IT after graduating in Communications. When he got the chance to enter the EPM world, Gerrit did not hesitate for a moment.

Eventually his career path led to Bart & Partners and he has been part of the team for quite some time. How did Gerrit end up in the EPM world? What attracted him to EPM? And how do you like it now at Bart & Partners? We found out for you.

You studied Communications, but went into IT. Why that choice?

IT has always been a hobby of mine. When I was only six years old, I was already programming games in QBasic. Thus began my love of IT.

After studying Communication, I was able to start working at Ordina as a functional consultant Oracle EBS, an ERP system. I had different roles there, initially in the maintenance team and later in the project team that did the implementations.

Eventually you ended up in the EPM world. How did that go?

After several years at Ordina, I was given the opportunity to do functional management of Hyperion Planning at Schiphol. That was being implemented there at the time. That's how I got from the ERP world into the EPM world.

Thanks to my functional background, I knew well how to manage solutions in a general sense. But EPM was new to me at that time. So I learned that on the job.

Did you like the switch from ERP to EPM?

Absolutely. ERP is very transactional and operational. EPM is concerned with how well the company is doing. EPM is much more directive. So more focused on providing information to the boards and management of companies. I noticed that I got more energy from these kinds of issues. To be able to really mean something for a company in that area. So that they can start working, planning, forecasting and consolidating more efficiently.

What is your specialty within the EPM?

The funny thing is that I actually have very broad knowledge. After my EPM role at Schiphol, I worked at Oracle for 10 years. Here I broadened my knowledge in the EPM field enormously.

I first did implementations there, consulting. Then I started doing pre-sales, giving product demonstrations of the solutions within Oracle EPM Cloud in the broadest sense of the word. In addition to consolidation, planning and forecasting, the Oracle EPM Cloud also includes support for business processes such as tax reporting, profitability and cost management, master data management, account reconciliation and narrative reporting. At Oracle, you were not responsible for one business process, but for the entire EPM Cloud suite.

What do you find most appealing about the EPM profession?

That you can help a customer move forward with an issue or challenge. The trick to that is to use as many of the standard solutions in EPM Cloud as possible, configure them to fit, and then automate the whole piece as much as possible.

Making EPM processes more efficient, better and automated. That's usually what it's all about. And that's what I find interesting.

You were at Oracle for 10 years. Why did you switch to Bart & Partners?

Oracle was a great employer and I'm still very happy that I learned a tremendous amount there. But it was just time for something else. So then I started looking around. What would be an interesting company for me? Where else would I possibly want to work besides Oracle?

Soon Bart & Partners came into the picture. I was given the opportunity to pick up different things there. Project management, lead consultancy and also a bit of pre-sales, but as part of a broader picture. So really a nice, broad, ambitious role. That really appealed to me.

In addition, Bart & Partners is obviously a club with an enormous amount of knowledge and expertise if you look at the people who work there. They are all professionals and people who have been in EPM for years, much longer than me. So for me it is also a place to gain new knowledge and learn from each other.

Knowledge sharing is important to you?

Sure. It's one of the reasons I made the switch. I think it's important that you can contribute, that you can teach other people something. But more importantly, that other people can teach you something.

And this is really the case within Bart & Partners?

Absolutely. I just have to pick up the phone, call three, four colleagues and I have all the answers I need.

We are just a very close club of people who know how to find each other easily. A club also that likes to stay on top of the game. Who closely follow new developments within the profession. Everyone here has the drive to increase their knowledge even further. That is great.