Every month, invenioLSI celebrates our hardworking employees with “Champagne Awards,” a token of appreciation for those who go above and beyond to support their colleagues. Max Gluck, an Associate Consultant, recently received an unparalleled number of nominations. As someone who has dedicated his career and personal time to serving others, Max epitomizes a model Champagne Award recipient.
Ever since his childhood, Max has dreamed of serving his community. He bears the same dedication to service as his parents, whose heavy involvement in their community inspired him to join local law enforcement after he graduated college. After three years on the job, he recognized an opportunity to make an even greater impact on his community through other means. Max reveals, “I enjoyed policing a lot, but there were a lot of things I was hoping to change at a local level that are easier to change outside of policing.”
Accordingly, Max pivoted into nonprofit accounting at the Boys & Girls Club. Soon, he found himself amid technology projects, including various process improvement initiatives. Thinking back, he states, “Nonprofits sometimes lack in the technology space, similar to the public sector. I realized that if I really wanted to work with technology, I needed to learn best practices.”
In the hopes of more effectively advising nonprofit or public sector customers on where to allocate their money, Max pursued his master’s degree at Georgia State University. There, he propelled his education with an SAP course that taught him about business processes and configuration. He recalls his professor intentionally misconfiguring the system and instructing the class to identify the incorrect configuration; practicing complex problem-solving in SAP inspired Max to “keep learning how the systems work.” Max states, “Coming from an accounting background, I used software like SAP before, but I had never had the opportunity to see behind the scenes. I enjoy exploring the complexities of how systems work.”
As he launched his SAP career, he explains that working at invenioLSI was “a way to continue working with the clients that have a big impact in the community.” Joining invenioLSI not only allowed him to stay true to his passion for serving his community but also allowed him to apply his policing experience to SAP consulting.
De-escalating situations, counseling citizens, and making them feel heard are skills that translate well from policing to consulting. Max shares, “successful policing relationships are all built on communication.” He continues to explain that communication and problem-solving go hand-in-hand. He elaborates, “People call you because there’s some level of need, so communication helps to understand what the need is and how they want you to help.” To be an effective police officer, “You have to learn to adjust and solve whatever problem comes your way,” regardless of the problem’s severity. He continues, “Most of the time that’s all the citizens want.”
As Max adjusts to life as an SAP consultant, he appreciates having built these skills early on in his career. He explains, “When you’re seeing a situation that is new to you, you can draw on prior experiences to come up with a creative solution.”
Max’s approach to problem-solving is a key part of what makes him an asset to the Budget Practice and invenioLSI. His solution-oriented mindset allows him to “face the problem head-on and not be intimidated by the fact that there is a problem. In addition, he advises others to “put yourself out there and try to solve things,” which proves useful in alleviating coworkers’ workload. When those coworkers are just as willing to help others succeed, lending a hand to them is especially compelling. Max reveals that “the best thing here at invenioLSI so far is the people and the budget team. Working with good people makes the biggest difference.”
Charlie Collins, Budgeting Practice Director, recently offered Max an opportunity to draw upon his policing experience and put himself out there. Charlie discovered that Max did field training in an area with a large Hispanic population, where he was able to practice speaking Spanish. When invenioLSI needed to put together a demonstration for a prospective client in Costa Rica, Charlie called upon Max to translate the slides and the script. invenioLSI always prioritizes customers, and Max pulled through in delivering the flexibility needed to accommodate them.
His efforts impressed his elder coworkers, earning him a total of five nominations for the Champagne Awards. Charlie raves, “Max Gluck performed well beyond the call of duty. His presentation was well prepared and rehearsed, reflecting a level of professionalism and accomplishment well beyond his current position.” Another coworker, Kaushal Kurasa, adds, “Max is always eager to help wherever he can, whether it is taking meeting minutes, helping with analyzing and cleansing master data loads, or looking at automating the process so it can be done iteratively much quicker.”
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Six months into his career at invenioLSI, Max is still absorbing a lot, keeping an open mind, and trusting the guidance of his mentors. One of his mentors advised him to “‘Try everything out. Don’t close any doors for yourself until you try it and know if you like it or not.’”
Max has been quickly learning the budgeting systems by sitting in on both technical and functional knowledge transfer sessions. He shares, “My biggest goal is to try to figure out which area interests me the most. I feel like every day I’m learning new parts of SAP Business Warehouse or SBP (SAP budgeting and Planning for Public Sector) that I haven’t really seen yet.” Matthew Tripp agrees, exclaiming, “His knowledge of consulting and SAP are growing by the day!”
To unwind from long days of learning, Max spends time with his girlfriend and their three rescue dogs. He shares, “we like to take them on a walk after work to keep them a little calmer and wear them out.” Max first began fostering strays while on the police force, frequently coming across animals in need of an overnight stay in a warm home. Last year, he put food out for a cat that had been eating from a nearby dumpster, and eventually brought him inside. He recalls, “I got him a heated box on our porch and then he started coming in more.” Soon enough, Max found a permanent owner to adopt the cat. Although he finds it difficult to part with the animals that he fosters, he always finds more to help.
Coming from working inside the public sector, Max has a firsthand understanding of our customers’ challenges, and brings to invenioLSI an admirable enthusiasm to learn and help others. invenioLSI celebrates Max’s spirit of generosity and strives to reflect his service-oriented attitude in all aspects of the company.
Cheers to Max!
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