Nanci Dias Paschier de Castro, Systems Analyst, Coke Canada - Expert App Builder Interview

Nanci Dias Paschier de Castro, Coke Canada

Nanci Dias Paschier de Castro is a systems analyst for Coke Canada who started work there in October 2019. She has been using Softools for over a year now and has earned her advanced app builder badge.

KH: What do you currently do in your position?

ND: I am a systems analyst. I used to say, actually, that I am a systems analyst and managerial specialist because I have a lot of systems to take care of. And so I'm a systems analyst, and I'm working in the corporate area. We have a lot of systems to manage, so it's a challenge because when I started to work at Coca-Cola, we used to have only excel files. I'm working at quality, Health and Safety and Environment areas, so we call this QHSE. So when you talk about quality and safety and the environment, you can imagine how many KPIs you need to manage.

So we used to have everything in Excel files, and sometimes our Excel files were very simple, without even a drop-down list. So and we have shared files, we have a SharePoint, then we have all the files there. And everybody from all the plants has access to these files and everybody's inputting information there. So sometimes we have different information, and then we need to fix everything because we need to compile the results monthly. Because the quality managers are inputting their data from all the plants, they need to show the results of their KPIs to the leadership team. Yeah, so it was really, it's very interesting. I really like doing this, because I'm a food engineer and I am very familiar with everything. So it's interesting.

KH: Do you have any technical background in building apps before Softools and how long have you been building apps on soft tools? When did you start?

ND: No, this is my first time building apps. So I think my training started in 2021. So as we are in April, I have been an app builder for almost one year and I received my badge for expert app builder

KH: So tell us a bit about the applications you’ve built

ND: Yes, I'm very proud of myself, because I did a lot of it on my own, but I had support from Mercedes, my guru. She's with me all the time, so I'm very glad to have her. And not only Mercedes, but all of the Softools support staff, because they are fast and very effective.

Okay, so as I was telling you, we have a lot of KPIs for quality, environment and safety. So I think if I'm not wrong, we have more than 40 plants to manage all this information. And in an Excel file, you cannot have integrated information. Because sometimes people make mistakes, they type the wrong word or something, so the most important file was a shared file and everybody from all the plants can input their information and every month we compile and calculate all the KPIs. 

For a specific KPI that I was responsible for would come back with an issue or an error, and I was fixing everything. So something that I was planning to do in one hour was taking the entire day because my spreadsheet didn't work, and that was a big challenge. 

Every month my responsibility was to prepare the charts and reports for all the plants because they need to present these for the leadership team. So when I finished my app builder training, I suggested to my boss to use Softools for this, and she agreed. So these mistakes were prevented as there is no way to do this when you have your pre-selected lists in Softools.

KH: What was the user adoption like

ND: As always, you know, when you change something, there were doubts. So we had to convince everybody that using the app will be good for everyone. We prepared the demo for the users and for the quality managers as well as a training session. They made suggestions for some improvements. 

I think Softools is very user-friendly and easy to build, as well as being easy to the users in all of the plants to input their information there. So there are a lot of positive impacts on a daily basis, especially for me. 

KH: How often do you come to the events, read our newsletters, and visit the community site? Has it been helpful to you? 

ND: When I started to have governance meetings with Max, who is also amazing, he was showing me the Softools community and the YouTube channel. So I follow a lot of other app builders, and they have a lot of case studies. So sometimes I'm trying to discover how to do something, and then think, let me check on the Softools community, which has been amazing.