My first year at Avinode Group

Last Tuesday marked my first year anniversary working for Avinode, and I could not have been happier with the decision to join such an amazing team. There are many lessons I learned these past twelve months and I wanted to reflect on a few of them.

"First Impressions are Lasting Impressions"

I still remember my first day at Avinode, especially how I was greeted and treated by my new colleagues. The one thing I remember the most is that everyone was welcoming and going out of their way to make sure I had a great first day. The company even catered a lunch for the whole office so I could meet everyone in a more informal setting.

At Avinode we also try to make these lasting impressions with our customers. When we on-board our customers we make sure they have the right training and resources so they can be successful using our system. We provide a personal touch by coaching our customers on how to navigate our system, but we also augment this with a tech-touch where our members have access to webinars, how to videos, FAQs, and training.

Relationships matter

At Avinode building relationships (both internal and with our customers) is one of the most important things. Building strong relationship is what will make a colleague go out of their way when they need to work a little extra harder on a project you are working on together, or what may be the difference when a customer has to decide whether to continue doing business with you.

Some things we do at Avinode to build strong internal relationships are:

• We have an office breakfast every Tuesday at 8:00 AM where each head of department provides an update on how the team is doing. We also have FIKA, a traditional Swedish coffer break, every Thursday afternoon were we take some time off to socialize as a team and provide any key company updates.
• We have kitchen duty with a colleague from a different department once a quarter - this not only enables everyone to value and take better care of the office and cleanliness as a whole, but it also allows each one of us to branch out and work with members of other teams to plan the menu for breakfast and FIKA during the week.
• We also have a company "Noder Day" or team building activity once every quarter. These activities typically involve the team participating in a community service event, or team building activity.

Retaining and growing talent is much cheaper than acquiring new

There is a famous exchange between the CFO and CEO of a company:

At Avinode there is a core belief in being the best at what we do, and the only way to achieve it is by constantly investing and developing our talent. I have been with Avinode for just over a year and already the company has expended considerable resources in training me and improving my skill set:

• I spent the first 30 days at the job learning and shadowing different members of our team (Support, Sales, Marketing, Product, Tech) to have a better understanding of our products and each person's role within the organization.
• I attended industry trade-shows such as NBAA to learn about the commercial aviation industry and our customers.
• I attended SaaS business seminars like RECUR where I learned best in class pricing and subscription management capabilities to implement at the company. Some of these include Van Westendorp pricing analysis and Cojoint analysis.

Conclusion

Though I previously spent many years working at fast-paced global technology companies - Capgemini and Sonder - I still had a learning curve when I joined Avinode last year. Specifically, I had to learn how the business aviation industry works, and the intricacies of this technology marketplace (Product, Marketing, Sales, Support, Customer Success, Tech).

Now that I have established strong relationships, developed new SaaS capabilities, and worked on cross functional team projects, I look forward to another year full of professional development, learning, and building relationships.

If you would like to know more about my experience at Avinode, or the technology industry as a whole (in particular about SaaS type of businesses or online marketplaces), feel free to reach out.