background
As Lead Project Coordinator at Google, I supported vendor teams across multiple product areas. A recurring pain point was onboarding—new vendors would join the program and then... sit idle. For weeks. Sometimes over a month.
There was no single source of truth. Tribal knowledge lived in people's heads. New vendors were left to figure things out on their own, and experienced team members spent hours answering the same questions repeatedly. The full ramp-up to productivity took approximately three months.
the problem
When I mapped out the existing onboarding workflow, I found:
- 30+ days of idle time — New vendors had no clear tasks or direction for their first month
- 3-month ramp to productivity — It took a full quarter before vendors were fully effective
- No standardized materials — Onboarding varied wildly depending on who was running it
- Wasted senior time — Experienced team members were constantly pulled into ad-hoc training
- No visibility — Leadership had no way to track onboarding progress or identify bottlenecks
The result: slow ramp-up times, frustrated vendors, wasted budget on idle resources, and operational inefficiency that compounded with every new cohort.
discovery & analysis
I started by interviewing stakeholders across the program—vendor managers, experienced vendors, and leadership—to understand what was working and what wasn't.
Key findings:
- Vendors wanted clear expectations and a structured path to proficiency from Day 1
- Managers wanted to spend less time on repetitive training
- Leadership wanted metrics to track onboarding effectiveness—and to stop paying for idle time
I conducted a content audit of existing documentation and found it scattered across multiple platforms, outdated, and incomplete. The gap wasn't just process—it was infrastructure.
the solution
I designed and built a comprehensive vendor onboarding toolkit:
- Day 1 action plan — Clear tasks and expectations starting immediately, eliminating idle time
- Structured 30-day ramp — Week-by-week milestones with defined deliverables
- Templates and guides — Standardized materials for common tasks and workflows
- Knowledge base — A centralized repository with version control and clear ownership
- Metrics dashboard — Real-time tracking of onboarding progress and time-to-productivity
I piloted the toolkit with two vendor cohorts, gathered feedback, and iterated before the full rollout. I also trained staff on the new process and documented maintenance guidelines to ensure the toolkit stayed current.
results
Onboarding time dropped from 3 months to 1 month—a 67% reduction in time-to-value. New vendors had meaningful work from Day 1 instead of sitting idle for 30+ days. The toolkit became the standard for vendor onboarding across the program and was adopted as a repeatable model for future initiatives.
lessons learned
Pilot before you scale. Testing with two cohorts allowed me to catch gaps and refine the materials before rolling out to the entire program. The feedback loop was essential.
Documentation is a product. I treated the knowledge base like a product—with versioning, ownership, and maintenance guidelines. Without that, it would have become stale within months.
Metrics create accountability. The dashboard wasn't just for leadership—it helped vendors track their own progress and gave managers early warning when someone was falling behind.