MIS full-time internship (UPDATED)
This past summer, I interned at Pfizer in Collegeville, PA. During my time there, I served as a developer/analyst in their Business Technology department on the Revenue Management team. This was an extremely beneficial internship, as I gained professional experience and further developed my technical skills. Throughout my time there, I worked on many collaborative and individual projects for my team, oftentimes utilizing technology and various programs to create analytical insights on company information.
One technology I became very proficient with over the duration of my internship was Tableau. Tableau is a data visualization tool that can be used to develop interactive dashboards and reports that allow users to easily process information. Since my team, Revenue Management, was primarily concerned with company sales data, I used this software to develop a dashboard that allowed my colleagues to easily access and visualize financial information sorted by different financial variables. Creating this final project also taught me the ins-and-outs of the pharmaceutical industry. For each drug Pfizer sells (Advil, Viagra, Robitussin, Emergen-C to name a few), there are many different rebates and chargebacks the company needs to pay in order to participate with different governmental programs. Given that Pfizer sells hundreds of drugs, there was an enormous amount of data included into this dashboard that appeared rather simple to the eye of a viewer. This led to many complications in developing this final project, but I received lots of praise from my peers and higher-ups once it was complete. Tableau is also very useful because there is an online feature that allows a user to share a dashboard with colleagues and also a server feature that allows a user to pull real-time data from a company server and update a dashboard effortlessly. This allowed the Revenue Management team to continue using my dashboard once my summer internship was completed.
Another technical skill I learned and developed over my internship was how to access and manipulate a database using SQL. To gather information for my Tableau project, I would write SQL queries on the Revenue Management production database to pull relevant information that I wanted to include in my dashboard. While I had a small SQL background from previous MIS courses, I learned an incredible amount once I was in a professional setting. This is an extremely important skill for my future career endeavors, and I’m glad I was able to use Pfizer’s resources to develop my knowledge.
Overall, my internship at Pfizer was incredible. Given that it was my first internship, it gave me excellent professional experience and gave me a great idea on how large companies utilize technology to make their jobs easier. Also, it allowed me to meet and network with many brilliant individuals that I will remain in contact with for a long time. I can honestly say that the classes I took at the Fox School of Business and within the MIS department left me very prepared for this internship.