Our conversation with Gale Snyder, MSCS Strategy & Onboarding Specialist
You know that Gale Snyder is a proud mother and grandmother when she claims her sons and grandsons have the deepest dimples on the planet. She is an avid fan of her beloved San Francisco Giants and the Golden State Warriors. And she has an amazing passion for her company, Almaden, and the remarkable onboarding support they offer clients. She has developed her expertise as an Onboarding Specialist and Marketing Supply Chain Strategist (MSCS) with the same energy that she supports her family. We asked her to share some insights on the current state of onboarding.
Can you explain the concept of a portal or storefront to manage digital content?
A portal allows a company to control their brand, centralize their content, manage access and thereby costs by setting up business rules that apply at the user/item/orderable quantity level.
Digital assets and print on demand allow for ease to information changes, such as revision management, to keep the content current, in real-time.
Can you share the greatest value to utilizing a portal for managing assets?
Physical and digital asset management is very time consuming. Setting up a portal with an expert MSCS team complimented by a warehouse management system allows the clients to focus on marketing and selling. A portal captures order activity report detail, and these analytics are the key to managing budgets. Let’s face it: it’s always about the bottom line.
What are some of the threats to a brand without efficiently managing their assets?
Every company invests time, money and resources to identify a unique design for their brand with the intent to stand alone and be successfully recognized. The threat to a brand inefficiently managed is to lose investment and can negatively affect your reputation.
What goes into the onboarding process for your client?
Successful onboarding to a marketing supply chain solution is rooted in collaboration with the key stakeholders to identify functional wants, needs and any timelines associated with getting content ready. It is a critical process that requires an outline of each phase, implementation steps for all users, SKUs, and business rules.
We spend a great deal of time educating clients with best practices and reiterate the simplicity with which they can scale and, ultimately, grow their business through our robust online solution.
”Successful onboarding to a portal solution is rooted in collaboration with the key stakeholders in order to identify functional wants, needs and any timelines associated with getting employees acclimated.
Why does efficient onboarding matter?
At Almaden, we see onboarding as the foundation of a program’s success. As an example, we have created a variety of programs and made enormous progress setting up portals that directly correlate to the user experience and overall success of the onboarding program.
What suggestions do you have to improve the onboarding process?
My advice is to create a dedicated resource—an onboarding specialist—that becomes an extension of the client’s team. I would invest in creating a shared environment where you can centralize data to make informed decisions.
Utilizing project management tools like Smartsheet and focusing on document workflow are great tactical ways to get the process started. The bottom line is that we like to keep it simple, and we always listen to learn.
