Customer Onboarding @ Metalshub: A Pathway to Success

At Metalshub, we understand that the onboarding process is just the beginning of a long and valuable partnership with our customers. That's why we place great importance on providing an effective and personalized onboarding experience that enables our customers to unlock maximum value using our supply chain solutions. We recognize that each customer has different needs and expectations when it comes to implementing our solution, which is why we tailor our onboarding process to meet those unique requirements. Our goal is to provide a clear roadmap for a smooth and successful onboarding journey, with our industry experts in the team available at every step of the way and ensuring an exceptionally fast time-to-value.

In this article, we will walk you through the steps we took to successfully onboard Metso Outotec China to use Metalshub as their procurement solution:

1) Kick off meeting

After closing the contract, our Customer Success Manager,, contacted Zhenxing Wan, Procurement Manager at Metso Outotec China, to arrange a personal introduction and jointly develop a project roadmap together. This step ensured that our customer received a comprehensive overview of the onboarding experience and was able to adjust it to the company’s needs - a crucial step on the way to project success.

2) Onboarding session

Binghui Xing and Zhenxing Wan then met with the entire Purchasing team from Metso Outotec China to present the project goals and the final onboarding roadmap, clarify any questions, define clear responsibilities, and schedule individual training sessions for each team member. We also pre-framed the expectations of the entire Purchasing team to gain a better understanding of their goals and how we could best support them.

3) Training sessions

Our team personalised a one-to-one live demonstration of our procurement solution for each member of the Purchasing team at Metso Outotec China. During these sessions, Binghui Xing gained valuable insights into Metso's procurement practices and showed them how they can optimise their operations on Metalshub.

4) Product creation

Metso Outotec China enquiries a broad product portfolio on a regular basis. Our implementation team created all products based on their product specifications in the customer’s account. 

5) SRM set-up

Metalshub’s SRM (Supplier Relationship Management) allows to link product categories to relevant suppliers. This way, our customer can precisely target the right suppliers for their individual enquiries. Together with the responsible buyers, the Customer Success team created the product to supplier links in Metso’s SRM system.

6) Supplier onboarding

After all of Metso’s suppliers had received an invitation link, our Customer Success team acted as the main contact for Metso's suppliers. Suppliers could choose to go through a detailed one-to-one live training session to get used to the new process of participating in tenders and enquiries or make use of our step-by-step including video training.

7) First listing

Only three weeks after the project kick-off, all the preparation work was completed and Metso Outotec China published their first enquiry on Metalshub for high carbon ferromanganese. They received offers from all relevant suppliers and were able to compare all offer terms directly in Metalshub.

8) First deal 

Our onboarding process was considered complete after Metso Outotec China closed their first successful order on Metalshub. “Metalshub can effectively and systematically help us to analyse our procurement data, which saves us a lot of tedious documentation work. The analysis of procurement data is of great help to our annual or quarterly summary, and it also guides us for our following procurement activities” - Shengnan Wu, Procurement Specialist, Metso Outotec China.

9) Onboarding satisfaction survey

We constantly try to improve the onboarding experience for both our customers using Metalshub for their procurement operations and their suppliers. This is why we explicitly ask for feedback from both sides after an onboarding process is completed.

By the end of 2022, visited Metso Outotec China in their plant in Quzhou. They had a good conversation about the usage experience and collected valuable suggestions. “Metalshub is a professional procurement system in this industry. It brings transparency and efficiency to the industry which helps us mitigate many risks in procurement” - Zhenxing Wan, Procurement Manager, Metso Outotec China.

Shengnan Wu, Procurement Specialist, Metso Outotec China, added “I do hope we could explore more functions together in the future with Metalshub, for example an integration into our ERP system. I believe it would significantly reduce our manual work and cost, which can leave us more time for strategic analysis and planning.”

Would you like to discover how Metalshub can be implemented in your procurement process?