As Solventure continues to grow as a supply chain consultancy company, we want to take a moment to appreciate the colleagues who are making this growth possible by training and coaching our new teammembers intensively before sending them into the field.
That’s why we took the time to sit down with Solventure’s new colleagues, and with Andy Cole, Product & Knowledge Manager, to ask them how the onboarding process at Solventure takes place, what the eventual goal is for new consultants, and what kind of reactions this approach has received inside the company and from customers as well.
Hi Andy, in your own words, what would be the eventual goal of the onboarding process at Solventure?
Andy: “I would say that the goal behind our onboarding process is split into three main focus points. First, we want to make sure our new colleagues can feel confident to start their work for our customers with the right information and amount of training in their back pocket. Secondly, we also want them to feel at home at Solventure, knowing that they’re being taken care of and that they get the attention they deserve.
“There is a lot of variability in the assignments and you are able to challenge yourself quite a bit. Another thing that made me choose Solventure were the people. In short, I felt almost instantly at ease and knew I would be in great hands.” 
Thirdly, we’ve chosen this ‘softer’ approach instead of throwing them into the deep end immediately because we believe their eventual impact at a customer will be much higher if they had time to exercise and prepare for real-life projects. Often new consultants will be itching to get started on ‘real’ projects, so we have to explain the benefit of gathering as much info and experience as possible to get the bigger picture first. Once they know what to do in most cases and who to contact with questions if they don’t, only then we let them loose on the world 😉.”
“What attracted me the most to join Solventure was its strong focus on their employees' interests, development opportunities and well-being. Up until now, I'd experienced all these factors in many different projects/initiatives.”
That’s a very thorough preparation! What does the onboarding process look like in practice?
Andy: “During the first week, our new colleagues get their general information sessions with HR, IT, ... allowing them to get to know our business, our customers and their colleagues. In short: we make sure they feel at ease at Solventure.. Once these introductions have taken place and they have all their necessary hardware and software access, we start preparing them technically for their role as a supply chain consultant. The rest of their first month is dedicated to a lot of in-depth training, self-study and detailed exercises. During this time we also introduce them to our Advanced Planning and Scheduling tools so they can learn how to configure them for potential end-users and how to create detailed reporting. It’s a very busy month, as we also plan introductions with the colleagues from Sales and Marketing for instance, and with Bram Desmet, our CEO.
In the second month the real magic starts! At this moment, our new colleagues get presented with a mock-up project, meant to simulate a real customer assignment as truthfully as possible. During this exercise, our ‘newbies’ experience real-life project challenges in a simulated environment, which they have to solve themselves, or with help from more experienced colleagues.
This mock-up project has proven to be the most innovative part of our onboarding process and has had a lot of positive feedback from the participants, their colleagues, and their eventual customers as well! It does take up a lot of extra training time, but it has also leveraged the training program to a different level and makes our consultants ready to take on many of the challenges a supply chain project might offer them.”
“The mock-up project of one month was great for my self-development, getting to know the way of working and brushing up my SQL skills. During the mock-up project I was able to express the things that interest me the most, and this was taken into account when assigning me to customers.”
“Having a long onboarding process definitely helped with slowly rolling into my role. I have really learned a lot about supply chain and writing SQL code, which are valuable skills in my opinion. Another benefit is the conversations with my coach and my Solventure buddy, who make you feel heard and welcome!”
That’s a great investment! How would you say this onboarding fits into the overall culture at Solventure?
Andy: “I think our onboarding process reflects the Solventure culture very well, especially when you take into account how we successfully support our new colleagues to grow and prepare for their first real supply chain projects. We all do our part to offer them a safe space to learn and to create strong connections with colleagues. I’m personally very proud of the way we can form a tight group of people who trust and help each other through thick and thin.
For instance, we get more and more internal requests to train new colleagues, which is a clear sign that our whole organization wants to help out wherever it can. From my part, I get a lot of satisfaction seeing our new colleagues evolve to full-fledged consultants, able to analyse a problem, come up with a suitable answer, or know when to ask an experienced colleague for help. And it’s not only me, the newcomers themselves clearly enjoy learning new things, which in turn fuels my motivation to optimize the onboarding process and the mock-up project even further in the future!
“The second week after the mock-up project, I was able to join an on-site session with a Solventure customer in Versailles for 3 days. Together with the customer we cleared out the problems they were facing, we provided training to the key users and we defined points of improvement. During this project, I immediately got to know the customers for whom I’ll be working, and I was also able to better connect with my colleagues during the city visits after the working hours.”
“I think working with one of our customers is the most memorable experience I've had at Solventure so far, as we were faced with many challenges throughout the project. However, the satisfaction I felt in overcoming these challenges and the appreciation we received from our customer after successfully meeting these challenges was a very rewarding experience.”
The next class of Solventure consultants is hereby warned 😉 Thank you for taking time to talk to us, Andy, and we wish you all the best with the onboarding process at Solventure!