At Tait, we take great pride in serving the organizations that are so integral to our way of life: they keep communities safe, our lights on, transport flowing, and provide the raw materials for modern life. To provide them with the great support Tait is renowned for, we have a dedicated team of individuals all over the world that work hard to deliver results. In this blog we meet Catherine Mammou, Pre-Sales Project Manager/Bid Manager at Tait.
Catherine works for Tait as the Pre-Sales Project Manager/Bid Manager for Europe, Middle East, Africa and the UK and Ireland, and is based in our UK office.
Want to get to know our team? You can find other Tait Staff Spotlight posts here.
Meet Catherine Mammou, Pre-Sales Project Manager/Bid Manager at Tait
Originally from France, Catherine started working in the radio communications industry for Motorola Solutions in Paris, and spent 36 years with the company holding various positions.
She then joined Tait in 2019 in her current role as Pre-Sales Project Manager/Bid Manager. Her day-to-day involves supporting the sales teams for all pre-sales activities and ensuring all the company’s internal procedures are followed, overseeing export control and making sure government regulations are met.
I am like the director of an orchestra: each team member knows what to do; part of my role is to bring them all together to deliver a masterpiece (a proposal of outstanding quality) within the right time frame.
To find out a little more about Catherine, we decided to ask her a few questions:
‘Director of an orchestra’ is an interesting description of your role, can you explain?
In any bid response, there are a lot of moving parts and a lot of people involved. You have to think about attending customer meetings, arranging road shows, ordering demo kits, pre-qualification (PQQ) responses, reviewing Statement of Works (SOWs), compliance responses and quotes before submitting to customers, defining bid strategies, full tender responses ensuring all deliverables requested are included in our bid response, producing some of the documentation, creating proposal request documents for any third party elements, submitting the proposal on time, and so much more!
To make all of this run smoothly, you need to bring all these different people working on all these different tasks into harmony – sort of like the director of an orchestra!
What did you do before joining Tait?
Like Obelix the Gaul who fell into a cauldron of the Gaul’s’ magic potion at an early age, I fell into the radio communications industry as soon as I started my professional career. Before joining Tait, I worked for Motorola Solutions, starting off in the Paris office.
Later, I was offered to relocate to the UK in 1997 to head the EMEA Order Management team. In the 36 years I spent with Motorola, I held various positions, the last one being the pre-sales project manager supporting the North Africa region.
What do you enjoy most about your job?
The interaction with so many people throughout the organization; the satisfaction when the team has worked well on a bid response and produced a good quality proposal, and, of course, then winning that bid is the cherry on the cake!
What is the biggest professional challenge you’ve faced this year? How did you overcome it?
It is not unusual for tenders to be released at a different date than originally planned. It is therefore very often that two or more are released at the same time. This is not specific to this year; I have experienced this ever since I have been in pre-sales. What made it a bit more challenging since last year is that it has been more difficult to go to the office to work all together (a few of us worked from home and with the hotels and B&Bs closed, it was impossible to be in the office).
With many video calls (way more than normal), a few long hours into the night, a great team spirit (and a fantastic sense of humor by all), we have managed to do it all on time!
How do you spend your time outside of work?
Spending time with family and friends, visiting places of interests, exhibitions, museums, cooking or watching football (especially during the European and World cups).
Do you have any skills or talents that most people don’t know about?
I do and they are only for my family and friends to know about 😊
What would the title of your autobiography be?
What a great journey so far; thank you! From my parents to the people I met throughout my professional career, I have had many wonderful adventures and great memories. And as Sir Angus Tait used to say “the best is yet to come”!
Favourite quote/saying or any parting words?
From Gone With the Wind, one of my favorite films: “After all, tomorrow is another day!”
Get in Touch with Tait
If there’s anything Catherine or the team at any of our regional offices can do to help you, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
