A partnership with your solutions provider has a number of benefits. First and foremost, a partnership means your solutions provider has a vested interest in your success. You work together to problem solve proactively and create innovative solutions. Like any relationship, starting on the right foot helps build the foundation to grow from.
Onboarding is more than just a kick-off call. It means having a process in place for you to deeply understand the technology, cross-train throughout the organization, and have access to continued support via workshops, training, technical updates and, most importantly, a roadmap to growth. We’ll explore eight essential elements Viafoura has to create a successful onboarding process.
Eight essential elements to successfully onboard new technology
There is no one-size-fits-all technology onboarding process. It will vary based on the extent of the solution being implemented. Ultimately, we find the best onboarding process and experience is the one our partners need and want. Here are eight essential elements necessary for a seamless onboarding experience.
A kick-off call
This initial call involves the appropriate internal cross functional team members from both the partner and Viafoura. For our partners, this includes stakeholders from moderation, editorial, and data teams (i.e., the people who will be implementing, using, and extracting insights from our solution). At Viafoura, we also use this time to understand what you’re looking to achieve short term, and what long-term success looks like. This is the foundation building of the entire onboarding process. Without an understanding of the goals, how are we to keep track of our progress?
Change-management support
From the outset, we make sure to be a part of your change-management discussions to help promote organizational understanding of how the tools work and the overall value our solution brings. At Viafoura, we believe it’s imperative that cross functional teams understand the value the solution will bring to their day-to-day operations. Typically, we see this as multiple days of training for various departments to demonstrate the value through industry benchmarks, and case studies.
Weekly check-ins
Progress calls are an obvious part of onboarding, you need to have a consistent cadence of check-ins to understand how you’re tracking against your goals for implementation. At Viafoura, we call these discovery calls. We involve both a dedicated onboarder and a dedicated technical resource. This is the team who inspect the code, examine the development environment, work through integrations, and answer any questions. This ensures you have a seamless transition on go-live.
Technical audit
Before going live, we conduct a thorough technical audit and regression testing to make sure everything is working as it should. Once the audit is complete, everyone can feel confident to set the go-live date.
A comprehensive go-live strategy
We work closely with our partners to create an in-depth go-live strategy. This includes a deep understanding of the various stakeholders and their responsibilities for go-live, how to QA during the go-live and which resources are available in case of any bugs, issues or fixes. The reality is, no matter how in-depth implementation is, there are times when a very specific scenario is not considered and will need to be addressed on go-live day. Viafoura has dedicated resources available on go-live to act quickly in those situations.
Ongoing consultations with the moderation, editorial, and data teams
At Viafoura, part of our onboarding process includes meeting with the moderation, editorial and data teams before going live to understand daily operations, routines, and KPIs. We use this information to create customized engagement playbooks for each of the teams, with tailored tips and best practices. Once the software goes live, we work with the cross functional teams every week to ensure they are utilizing the solution in the best ways possible to reach their goals. User adoption with new technology is a serious hurdle in the onboarding process. We provide a path for user adoption that includes training, gamification and resource allocation so your team is covered and feels confident in learning to use the solution.
Feedback on the onboarding process
Once the onboarding process is complete, we want to know about your experience. We have a vested interest in our partners success and we want our partners to know early on that the lines of communication are open. We feel that building this into our onboarding process translates into our ongoing relationship with our partners.
Ongoing support
Once the software goes live, our responsibilities do not end there. The reality is that onboarding is an ongoing, iterative process. At Viafoura, our Customer Success Managers facilitate regular check-ins, executive business reviews, training sessions as needed and proactive notifications on new products and capabilities. The focus is to ensure ongoing customer technical and business success and the strength of our partnership.
Conclusion
To create engaging customer experiences and deliver business results, it’s important for media companies and their software partners’ strategic goals to be in lockstep. The solution provider you choose should actively build confidence and trust by focusing both on the human and technical aspects of adopting a new technology. They should listen to you, understand your objectives, and be invested in your success. At Viafoura, our customers’ business objectives are our business objectives. As a result, onboarding does not end when the software goes live. It’s the beginning of a long-term partnership.