Falesha Kidd is Syndex’s Customer Experience Specialist and has completed the platform’s onboarding process with over 10 companies. As each new company that joins Syndex has its differences, we spoke to Falesha about how she views this important part of welcoming our newest partners.
Onboarding with Syndex - what’s it like?
Each onboarding experience is different and is dependent on a number of factors. Firstly, companies take on different parts of the SaaS platform, tailoring the product to their specific needs. The components, and their preparation for use, differ greatly.
The registry management module is the biggest component. The aim of our onboarding process is to move through a number of roll-out phases ending with the customer being confident and comfortable with using the platform. We really believe in our product and want our users to get the most out of it, using all the functionalities and to appreciate the simplicity of what’s been built. Ultimately it’s the simplicity that will reduce their administrative time, and provide a great level of service to their investing customers.
“No two onboarding experiences have been the same.”
What are the phases?
We have 4 phases in the roll-out. Prior to these, contracts are signed and a new Salesforce environment unique to the new partner is created. This can take 2-3 weeks, inclusive of testing, and then the data-load can commence.
Phase 1: Introducing the data
Once we’ve discussed and gained a good understanding of the data and its sources, the crunching of data can commence. This is the most painful part of the process as data is recovered, reconciled, checked and double-checked. The timeline here depends on the number of Issues or schemes to be loaded, the quality of the data and the need for loading historical information and transactions.
Phase 2: Meet your new registry management system
At this stage, we get to introduce the user to their new unique space on the Syndex platform. We walk the user through the platform, pointing out basic navigation as well as some hidden gems. This session is easily done remotely and offers the opportunity for the user to ask questions and to some extent lead the ‘tour’ according to what is most important to them. There is an option to record this session so the user can refer back to it.
Phase 3: Productivity begins
This is an exciting stage where the user gets their hands onto the keyboard and the ownership journey begins. Reports can be run, new Issues loaded and business information and insights start to bubble to the surface. We might also be orchestrating the investor portal roll-out to investors. It’s a brave new world, but with Syndex there to hand-hold as required.
Phase 4: Independence gained
The final stage is where we witness our users taking full control of the system, with comfort and flair. We provide ongoing support so we are never too far away, but ultimately this is the time we see our users ‘go solo’.
“The data gathering and uploading can be painstaking, but by phase 3 I’m the office saviour - giving admin hours back with ‘click-of-a-button’ functionality.”
How long does the process take?
This is subject to a number of factors, but somewhere around 8-10 weeks. It’s obvious to state that the cleaner the data the quicker the upload, but bumps in the process are also ironed out quicker when the liaison person has a good knowledge of the data and their current business processes.
What ongoing support do you offer?
We are always available to our users for support. At any one time we could be helping newer users recalling how to send a report, to long time users who are interested to know what functionality they haven’t yet taken advantage of. We are always working on building new functions so we could be showing these off to our user community. On occasions, we could answer a query with a video demo that displays the relevant functionality, that you can save for reference. We’re busy building a library of content so users can search for answers or browse to see what else they could be accessing on the platform.
Do you have more questions? Please get in contact for more onboarding information, as well as info relating to contracts, pricing and demonstrations.
