How To Avoid a Costly Onboarding Meltdown - A CEO Perspective

Speaker A: Foreign. Welcome to Smart Supply Chain, a podcast for supply chain professionals who think and work smarter. I'm your host, Shereen Garrison, and I'm here with my sister and supply chain, Sarah Garrison. Hey, Sarah.

Speaker B: Hi, Shereen. While we're at our third installment in our, um, onboarding series, in our first session we talked about the importance of relationships and planning and onboarding.

Speaker A: Yes. And then in our second session, we met with some experts on our teams. They talked about things like meeting customers where they are, about the expertise that we can provide them to guide our customers to go the right direction and also supporting them to meet their goals. So while we're making sure that the quality assurance is there throughout, we're also really trying to position our customers and our clients for success.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's all been really interesting. So how are we going to round out our series on onboarding?

Speaker A: Well, I'm going to chat with Hannah Kane, who is our founder and CEO at Alum, and I'm going to ask her about her guiding vision for the company and what she thinks about onboarding. What's her philosophy, what's her approach? Why is it important? So let's jump in. I am here now with Hannah Kane, our CEO and president of Alamo. Hannah, welcome.

Speaker C: Thank you. I'm glad to be here.

Speaker A: We are glad you are here as well. I have been talking to everybody on your teams about what we do at ALAM around onboarding and what roles do people play, what roles do the different groups play in terms of bringing on new clients and what we do? I mean, since I've been at Alam, um, you are very involved in everything that's happening with all of our new client onboarding. So tell me a little bit about, you know, your philosophy and what makes Alum a little bit different than, um, other examples that you've seen in terms of new client onboarding.

Speaker C: Well, it really starts with my personal experience and commitment. Right. So when you go into a shop and you've probably tried that, we have all tried this, right. Going to a shop and there's somebody who doesn't know how to operate cash register and they don't know anything about anything, it's really irritating. And as I've been standing there in line steaming, as we sort of gradually do when we get bad service, Ryan, uh, I decided that we were never going to experiment on the customers. But the idea is that the customers have a great experience from day one. And, you know, one big area of concern for me and also Joy for me, is that all customers place so much faith in us. So we touch their customers. And in order for us to do that uh, we cannot fail. We need to deliver perfectly from day one. And so uh, that has been my commitment and that's why we have so much focus on the onboarding. And I think when you look at our methodology it really starts with uh, uh, strategic account managers and the sales group. And uh, so the strategic account managers as you well know as the leader of the group, ah, have a tremendous background and they sit down and try to understand all the stakeholders and what really needs, what each stakeholder within a company needs. And you know one differentiator is um, most. When most companies are being onboarded with uh, um, a company that's a competitor to alum, very few would ask what does your accounting uh, uh, people need? What do they need in finance? Which type of reporting do they need? What's the output that you need? Seeing from a sustainability standpoint, those type of things where we know that there are stakeholders. In most corporations you have got stakeholders, people are very focused on safety of suppliers, people who are very focused on sustainability or in other areas. But also for financial reporting, as we are building inventory for our supplier, for our customers, or as we are uh, certainly uh, keeping track of revenue generating activities, it's super important for the finance group to know what we are doing and have accurate reporting. And so we ask those questions upfront. And so that alignment between Elam and the uh, new customer I think is very critical. And uh, understanding uh, each of those aspects and then getting them documented.

Speaker A: I think it's so important at the beginning to just really understand what all those requirements are for sure and then putting together a plan to be able to address those. Although we were talking earlier, I was talking with Taylor Brown who is leading our onboarding activities and she came up with an analogy after we were done recording that she said, you know, onboarding can sometimes be like um, a kitchen with everybody where everybody wants to be the head chef and they want to bring their own recipe and do it their own way. And I thought that's, yeah, that's very accurate that each group, you know, within a client's space definitely wants to have their voices heard and make sure that it's happening the way that they want it to happen. But you know, you have to boil that all down and get everybody on the same page so that we're successful

Speaker C: together in partnership and it's perfectly possible to satisfy everybody. And I think it's uh, it really starts with understanding what they need. So there's a Lot of fear in getting a new supplier on board and, and that's understandable. Right? Again we are holding the key to the kingdom in the sense that if we don't ship and if we don't ship uh, time, uh, not only is there no revenue being generated, but there can also be significant dissatisfaction coming out of that. And so for uh, us it's very important that we really perform but it's certainly extremely important for our customers. Right. And so that fear comes up I think uh, throughout onboarding and it may feel like everybody's pulling in the same direction. And this is where your team is so brilliant in the way they make everybody uh, aligned around. Okay, what is it really we want? You know one of my favorite stories, uh, uh, because we've onboarded of course a lot of customers over 28 years. Right. Ah, so one of my favorite stories was the fear that was within a public company. We were onboarding and uh, the person who is the head person in charge of uh, the relationship said I am going to be there all day on the quarter end and you know, I want to see what's going on, I want to understand and you know, and you need to ship on time. And she was very excited about uh, you know, being really in control. So but I understand that fear. And so that's also part of the onboarding is understanding that, that there's some concern and fear and uh, certainly I mean you know, if there's success and that's what we always work towards and fortunately achieve and um, if there's a, when there's success then uh, the thing just goes away. But when there's a failure and you know that's where you have a big, big issue. Right. Because of the impact uh, uh, it has and the visibility, the organization. And so it's very critical to drive towards uh, that success and do the planning as you spoke about it, maybe sometimes do a multi phased approach. And then the other area I believe is key to success is also understand the stakeholders outside the company. So that could be the end users, it could be the people receiving the shipments. So let's say we ship into a trade show, it's ah, a totally different experience than if we ship to a home. Um, what is the fear, you know, the criticality of the shipments, etc. We had another customer, we onboarded and that big issue was said. Um, the salespeople really didn't trust that the packages would arrive in time and they went out and did big training sessions and the training materials and everything needed to be there on time, and they would travel for this. And then they got concerned that the shipment would not be there. They would show up and they would have traveled, and people would sit there in the classroom, but the materials were not that. So they had decided that they wanted to ship everything FedEx overnight. Now, this was severely expensive, right? We're big shipments here. And so we went in and we said, okay, let's not change anything. So we were running for a couple of weeks, and of course, we shipped everything 100%, uh, on time. And in fact, some of the shipments got lost within the recipient, because now the stuff was sitting there for a very long time waiting for the trainer to show up. And then we started saying, okay, now you can no longer place an order that goes overnight except in extraordinary circumstances. And we, we cut the freight down tremendously, right? So we went from FedEx overnight to, uh, all of a sudden being able to ship ground and get everything out and get it situated real time and ship based on delivery day. And so, so understanding that there was that fear, working around that fear, creating that confidence, and then, uh, going to that next step was just critical.

Speaker A: Stepping ahead of the problem and trying to figure out what things we can avoid, what things we can change, I think is absolutely critical. Uh, Hannah, in your many, many years of supply chain experience, what do you think is the greatest success in terms of onboarding, and why is it so important to you?

Speaker C: It's so important to me because I'm thinking about the end user, not just our customer, not just the stakeholders within the customer, uh, or outside the customer, but also the person receiving the shipment critical that we perform flawlessly over to them. Um, I'm a firm believer in collaboration. Collaboration is one of Elam's core values, and it is because we know that in order to create success, we need to get everybody to work together, and we need to stand like a conductor with an orchestra that's never worked to play the piece of music together before. Because when we onboard, we have not played with the other players within our, uh, customer. And as I said, they're internal and external stakeholders. And so we are orchestrating all of this. And we are, uh, live from day one. So sometimes we can do some testing, and we certainly do what we can, but it's not always possible. And so, uh, that's really, uh, uh, uh, important to get everybody aligned and get everybody positioned and playing from the same sheet of music. Right? And, um, also to understand how excited the AAM team is about performing for our customers. So, uh, within, uh, the team, there's also fear of failure and joy of success. And so, uh, understanding that and getting that orchestrated internally such that everybody goes to the task with, uh, how do we plan for success and how do we do risk mitigation such that we take into account all the things that could go wrong and we mitigate for them. Either eliminate them or we have a plan for fast stepping in if something happens last minute. Thinking through the entire process is critical and, uh, it's fortunate that we've done it so many times because we have a lot of muscle in this area,

Speaker A: a lot of experience. And one of my favorite things about the ALAM team is collaboration amongst the team is so strong. And we're all here to make sure that things are successful. And it shows every day that the culture that you've driven through the team is very, very strong. It's one of the greatest things about our company, I think. Hannah, thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate you, uh, coming up to my, um, onboarding podcast and uh, closing us out. So we'll, uh, see you at the next onboarding.

Speaker C: Sounds good. Happy onboarding.

Speaker A: Thanks Hannah. That was a great discussion with Hannah Kane. I loved hearing about her philosophy of onboarding in particular, just, you know, the importance of building a great relationship with your clients and also thinking about their clients, uh, that end customer who's being impacted by the work that we do and that we set up with our clients and very important to get it right, to make sure that we're really good partners with our clientele.

Speaker B: Yeah. And the other thing that made me think about is really making sure that we know how we're defining success. So what does success look like for the client and how are we measuring and making sure that we're all aligned to those goals? I mean, at the end of the day, onboarding is something new and it's change and that is always scary. The focus and the disciplines that's required to do that onboarding is really important. And then having the flexibility to expect the unexpected and work together to create solutions. I really enjoyed these conversations and I'm ready for a new client on board. Absolutely.

Speaker A: We're all ready when you are. Thanks everyone. We're the Garrison sisters. Catch you next time on Smart Supply Chain or check us out anytime@alam.com MHM.