Marc Gibson has spent the summer at work for SAP Ariba, an international procurement and supply chain management company.
As the Cal U football team’s starting left tackle, Marc Gibson helps the Vulcans’ offense solve opposing defenses. As a summer intern with SAP Ariba Pittsburgh, he helps businesses move faster and spend better through digital collaborations.
Gibson, a business administration major with a concentration in economics and minor in computer science, is interning remotely with SAB Ariba in their critical incident engagement area.
SAP Ariba is a procurement and supply chain collaboration solution that connects suppliers and other trading partners around the world.
“It’s basically high-level customer support, where my team triages our clients’ very time-sensitive problems and gets them sent to the appropriate people to be solved,” Gibson said of his summer internship. “It’s an extensive process.
“This requires considerable knowledge, which is why I have been doing a lot of shadowing with coworkers on Skype, sharing the screen so I can watch them triage service requests and ask any questions that I might have,” Gibson said.
He also gained experience with Microsoft Power BI software, which can be used to generate reports to ensure teams meet performance goals.
“Once in there I need to analyze it and create visuals such as bar graphs, pie charts, and matrix tables that drill down on the data,” he explained. “After I do this my supervisor is going to have me present it to his boss along with other project leads, which is kind of a big deal because it will put me in front of some very high-level people at Ariba.”
Cal U connections at Ariba helped Gibson secure his internship — including supervisor Josh Dvorchak ’05, Alan Natali ’74, ’79 and Bob Buttermore ’89.
“There are several Cal U alumni at SAP Ariba who are very successful, which reflects on how the school prepares its students for successful careers,” he said. “I think that Cal U is a great school. Many of my professors have always gone out of their way to be helpful.
“Everyone has been extremely helpful and has gone above and beyond to make my experience with SAP Ariba a great one. I cannot say enough good things about the people I work with here.
“I have gained great knowledge on Excel as well as several other software while working at Ariba, some of which are sure to be very useful in classes and any future job I might hold.
“This internship will definitely positively impact me.”