Griffin Heroes: Fanny Vachet

Griffin Heroes is dedicated to celebrating the talented, diverse workforce Axway employs by recognizing exceptional employees and sharing stories about their roles, lives, and ongoing commitment to supporting Axway’s mission, vision, and values.

In the previous Griffin Heroes blog, we visited Axway’s Ireland office, where the entire team came together to build a beautiful garden for a girls’ school in their neighborhood. Today, we’re visiting Australia to meet Fanny Vachet, a 13-year Axway veteran who is taking on a new opportunity to make a difference in her local community.

Fanny Vachet’s job

At Axway, Fanny served as a Senior Services Consultant on the Professional Services Operations (PSO) team in Australia. “It’s a small team so you had to be able to do a bit of everything,” she says.

“I was a PSO but I helped demo for Pre-Sales sometimes, I helped Support sometimes. I was a Customer Success Manager for one customer. I’m a subject matter expert for B2Bi and data integration. I also did some project management for a few customers. A bit of everything! Mostly my customers were in Singapore, Asia, and New Zealand.”

Fanny joined Axway in 2010, where she started as an intern after graduating from university. “I started my internship working with B2Bi,” Fanny says. “I worked for four years in Paris and then in 2014, I asked if there was a possibility to go to Sydney. I was part of the Sydney office for six years, and then I moved two years ago to Adelaide.”

Now, Fanny is ending her incredible tenure at Axway to chase a desire to be closer to the customers she has loved to work with. “My new role is Service Design,” Fanny tells us. “It’s at a non-profit that helps people with mental disabilities gain better independence through employment, accommodations, and support. I’ll be coming in and bringing the information and communications technology so the company can deliver the best possible service to the people who rely on them to make navigating life easier.”

“I’ll still be using my technical side,” she continues. “I’ll be creating an architecture for software usage and helping to coordinate business improvement, so it’s not fully out of my comfort zone. But I won’t be the vendor, I’ll be the customer. I’ll have to figure out the rest of the people planning, service analysis, data analysis, business process organization, and all that.”

Commitment to customer experience

Reflecting on the last 13 years with Axway, Fanny feels that the relationships she built with her customers and the ways she has been there to support them in their time of need were critical to providing a world class customer experience.

She recalls once, early in her career, being called in to work with a customer needing urgent assistance during a holiday. “Since they didn’t know what was wrong, we decided to try everything,” she says. “I had a lot of help from R&D in the US. They were great. After two days we found what was wrong and fixed it.”

“I kind of like being the fireman,” she continues. “You have an issue? Figure it out. It’s interesting figuring out what happened and what’s wrong, but most of the time it’s about being sure the customer has what they want and making sure it aligns with what we can do.”

For Fanny, open communication with her customers helped to solidify their partnership and build trust between them, even when working on difficult projects.

“I’m a people person, so I try to have a good relationship with customers. I just talk to people and be honest—I try to be as honest as I can. When there’s an issue, you just tell your customers, ‘Sorry, it’s not working, I’ll figure it out.’ Then the next time something happens, they know they can trust whatever you say.

I think it’s a big part of the job, especially when you’re PSO, because there will be stuff that won’t work, so you have to have a nice atmosphere so you can get through messages that are hard to pass to the customer.”

As she transitions into a new role, Fanny is most excited to be closer to her customers than ever before. “Everyone who is actually using the resources the non-profit provides are on site,” she says, “I’ll get to see the final customer straight away. And because I’ll be in-between IT and the business, I’ll have to be able to talk in both languages. I can be the mediator and organize how we can proceed best.”

Advice for taking on a career change

Changing career paths is no small feat for anyone, but Fanny is embracing it with enthusiasm. “I’ve wanted to work for a not-for-profit for a while,” she says. “It’s not always easy to find a job. Non-profits generally don’t have money for IT staff. But you don’t go in there for money. You go in for helping—it’s to help people for the meaning of it.”

When asked about her advice for others who may also be thinking about taking their skills into a new role, especially in the non-profit sector, Fanny stresses the importance of both patience during the job seeking process as well as a readiness to learn and grow professionally.

“Just go for it! It takes time,” she says. “Once you find something you’re really interested in, just go for it. In my case, I’m lucky because I’m still bringing the technical part, but there’s half of the job I’ve never done, so I’ll learn. It’s a new challenge.”

Downtime

Since she was three years old, Fanny has been practicing ballet—something she still enjoys to this day. “I had a few breaks, obviously with kids and studies and all that,” she says, “but I do ballet once a week. I also do musical theater in the same school—I really like dancing. As an adult, you really don’t care, you just have fun. You make a mistake? Ah, who cares! You’re just having fun. I’m not a professional, I’m just an adult enjoying it. And it’s a good way to meet people because you share the same hobbies, so there’s something you can talk about.”

“I also like meeting with friends—playing board games and things like that. We have a really good neighborhood with neighbors who are really nice. The kids play together, we have barbecues together, we have dinners together. It’s really nice to have that community, especially now.”

As Fanny takes her technical expertise and honest customer communication skills into a new role helping to provide for people in need in her community, we’re excited to salute her as a Griffin Hero and a true inspiration to everyone at Axway. Thanks for all you have done for Axway, Fanny, and best of luck in your new role!