What is Onboarding? Why is it important?

‍Onboarding begins immediately after the sales team closes a customer deal. It is essentially the process of making customers feel at ease with the product and providing value to them. It involves multiple activities including integrating with their data, understanding their specific use case to tune models, providing user training and support, change management, accommodating any custom requirements and finally going live. Essentially providing an overall solution planning that's best suited for the  customer operations.

When a customer chooses a product after careful consideration of multiple market solutions, it indicates that the product solves their pain points in the best possible way. As a result, the onboarding phase is the first opportunity to help them realize they've made the right decision. Onboarding also sets the tone for future developments and ensures the tool's smooth adoption.

‍Let’s dive deeper into the Kronoscope Onboarding Journey

Fountain9 offers a high touch onboarding experience and ongoing support with a dedicated Customer Success team. This helps us ensure a quicker onboarding and a smooth change management process.

Citing the Head of Inventory Planning at one of USA’s largest craft meat brands

The onboarding process happens in three phases:

Pre onboarding Kick off

The pre onboarding stage is after the sales team transfers the account to the Customer Success team. During his initial stage the client is introduced to their Account Managers, who will then prepare them for the onboarding process. They understand the use case specific to the client and their company specific operations. This helps to address their pain points more effectively. 

This stage essentially includes:

• Communicating Data Requirements and understanding where the different data sets reside at the clients’ end
• Exchanging data sets in the prescribed templates and solving for any data irregularities
• Ensuring the fulfillment of the Pre Onboarding Checklist
• Laying out an onboarding plan and establishing a timeline after identifying the data nuances on the client's side

By the end of this phase, the goal is to ensure that the shared data sets are valid and ready to be integrated.‍

Onboarding Phase

This is a critical stage of the onboarding journey where the team has regular interactions with the client, sometimes even on a daily basis.  The data structure is defined and then used to tune the models. They set up different modules like Demand Sensing, Scenario Planning, Promotions Planning and Inventory planning for consumption.  The team also ensures the availability of incremental data.

This stage essentially includes:

• Data Structure Definition
• Regular feed in of data through S3 buckets/ APIs / Databases / Delta sharing
• Ensuring Data Availability
• Data Integration
• Model Tuning & Validations

The onboarding phase ends successfully once the client is satisfied with the forecast numbers, availability impact and other desired outcomes. 

User Acceptance Test and training

In the last stage, the User Acceptance Testing is done and we make sure that the end user is comfortable with the tool and derives value. The goal here is to ensure that the tool meets the client requirements and to resolve product bugs, if any. This stage becomes very critical and helpful when there have been few adjustments in the initial requirements. 

Our Customer Success Managers play a pivotal role in this stage by:

• Evaluating outputs like demand forecasts, Procurement and replenishment recommendations
• Helping the customer understand the rationale behind each of these outputs
• Inspiring confidence in the tool and aiding a seamless change management process

We help the end users explore various functionalities and harness the tool to its full potential. This stage is also essential to get valuable insights and feedback from the end users of the software to continuously improve.

Going Live 

The accounts are considered live once the deployment is completed and incremental data begins to flow in. The prediction numbers are reviewed on a regular basis and any outliers are reviewed on a case by case basis. We also provide ongoing support through weekly syncs. Any changes to the master data, such as the addition of new SKUs, locations, or suppliers, are taken into account. We also troubleshoot and resolve any issues that prevent the tool from being used regularly.

Pilot

We also offer a Pilot version that supports a limited scope and then gradually the scope is increased when the demand and supply planning process stabilizes and desirable outcomes are achieved. 

Citing one of our Leading Retail customers from SEA who first signed up for a pilot version before deciding to go fully fledged after the pilot.

This doesn’t end with just a smooth and quicker onboarding process. Fountain9 continues to offer ongoing support and hand holding in the long run. We ensure that the customer gets the most out of the tool and keep them up to date on any new product developments.

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