Technology Solutions & Support Specialist
2022 Summer Internship
Job Title: Technology Solutions & Support Specialist
Company: SEI Investments (SEI Private Trust Company (SPTC) unit) Oaks, PA
Job Term: June 6, 2022 – Aug 12, 2022 (10-week internship)
Job Description
Company Info: SEI is a financial service firm that delivers technology and investment solutions that connect the financial services industry. SEI manages 1.3T$ of assets and 10 of the top 20 US banks are their clients. SEI is an international company with locations across the world and they employ about 4,000 people. I worked a hybrid work schedule at their Head Quarters in Oaks, PA.
Job Function & Projects: My role as a Tech Specialist on the Technology Solutions & Support team (TSS) included diagnosing technical issues for SEI’s SPTC employees who submit requests through our CRM. The main project I worked on was re-writing the Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) code for essential macros that interacted with internet explorer (IE). The main purpose was to replace the use of IE as it is no longer being supported by Microsoft. Through this project I was able to meet with various teams across the SPTC unit documenting the functionality and requirements of their macros. I worked on about 15 macros, re-writing 5 of them using a program named Selenium Basic which allowed interaction with google chrome. My work allowed the macros to run without IE, still being something that can be depended on for important functions in the short-term. It also provided direction for TSS going forward as my documentations will be used to possibly re-write these macros on other platforms.
In addition to my work with TSS I led an intern case study group researching “Maintaining Morale Through Remote & Hybrid Work”. As the leader of my group I set up meetings, tracked progress, and drove our final presentation.
My Takeaways: Throughout this internship I learned about excel macros and Visual Basic Application (VBA) code that runs them. Prior to starting, I thought I would be using languages I learned throughout the MIS department like JavaScript, HTML, CSS or even SQL and Python. However, the corporate space is a multigenerational environment which consists of older platforms still being used. At one point, excel was the only tool available to businesses and it still used widely across companies. This experience taught me the capabilities of VBA and the various tasks that can be automated including the foundation of project management which is documentation.