Steve Palmer
Steve Palmer, Avanade’s Global Analytics Executive, spoke to ESTEEM students on Friday April 6, 2018 as part of ESTEEM’s Lunch & Learn series. Steve is responsible for guiding Avanade’s Data and Analytics vision, strategy, solutions and services. He gave students insight on how him and his team have industrialized data supply chain and analytics technology to provide a business outcome centric journey for their clients.
Steve walked ESTEEM students through his initial career path, including being an actor, working in banking, and being a salesperson on 100% commission. Besides this and prior to working at Avanade, Steve has also held executive positions with Business Objects, SAP, Oracle and Capgemini.
Steve credits part of his success to working in sales on 100% commission. This job forced him to become a great salesman and he carries that skill in each of his professional challenges. He also learned the importance of customer relationships and empathy from his father, a truck driver, who held close relationships to all the individuals and companies he delivered to. Another key to his success has been relying on his left brain (creative side) as much as he does on his right brain (logical side). He uses design thinking tools to get teams of computer scientists and engineers to think about problems creatively and he is known to not approve an idea unless someone can explain it with a drawing.
Steve ended his talk by advising students that successful companies are ones that can change the distance between the buyer and the value proposition, using Uber and Amazon as examples.