By Cathlene Silha

Nov 02, 2022

Name: Cathlene SilhaScreen Shot 2022-11-03 at 9.22.48 AM

Title: Technical Lead, Implementation

What’s your role at Aclaimant?

As the Technical Lead within the Implementation team (under the larger umbrella of Customer Onboarding) I run point on Enterprise customer implementations, act as backup support on all implementation projects, and spearhead communication between customer-facing teams and Product to ensure we are requesting product enhancements based on both internal teams and customer feedback.

What do you do beyond work?

I try to travel any chance I get - fortunately, Aclaimant’s flexible PTO policy allows for more traveling than I’ve been able to do at any other company I’ve worked with. I recently just returned from a month-long vacation in Europe with absolutely zero expectations of me working remotely during that time. I love that I work for a company that truly allows for PTO time, whether it’s for vacations or just needing to take a mental health or errand day.

What’s it like to work on your team?

I may be biased but Implementation is one of the best teams to work on in order to really put your skills to the test and gain skills across the board. We work directly with customers as well as every single team within Aclaimant. Additionally, since Implementation is one-half of the larger Customer Onboarding department we work intimately with our Data Services team members and I truly feel we have some of the best collaboration I’ve ever seen. We’re constantly brainstorming together or lending a hand as bandwidth allows - no one is ever implementing alone!

What about your work inspires you?

I love problem-solving! Each new problem or puzzle allows me to put my creative problem-solving to the test. I also love bringing ideas to life - I’ve worked in SaaS Implementations for most of my career and there’s no better feeling than taking endless hours of discovery sessions with a customer and then delivering them their SaaS platform and seeing the excitement from the customer teams the first time they see it in action - or taking a small product request and working with the product and development teams to take an idea from a 2D drawing or write up to a built-out solution within the platform. Being able to point to something in Aclaimant and say “I helped design that” is so cool!

Do you have any favorite company traditions or things you enjoy about the culture?

While our Talent Engagement Team has put together some amazing events for us, I think the truly collaborative environment is one of my favorite aspects of Aclaimant culture. Everyone is truly in it together and it’s so nice to be able to send a quick zoom to a coworker when you just can’t figure something out and know that they are honestly happy to help, no one ever makes you feel like you’re bothering them.

How is Aclaimant’s culture different from previous companies you’ve worked for?

Micromanaging is not in our vocabulary! We’re all adults that were chosen for our roles because we’re good at what we do and the managers/leadership team treats us as such. It’s so refreshing to have leadership that truly trusts us to do our jobs effectively without breathing down our necks.

How do you encourage and support remote culture?

We utilize countless tools to collaborate all over the US - Slack and Zoom are our go-to tools for communicating. Whenever you need a quick brainstorming session or an “I’m not crazy, righttttt?!” pulse check on something you have numerous avenues via our slack channels to talk directly with members of relevant teams. When something is too hard to explain over Slack, not to worry - send a quick zoom link directly within slack and talk with the team member you need, then stay on for a few minutes after and have some personal chat time to simply catch up!

What’s the biggest technical challenge you’ve faced recently in your work, and what made this particular challenge so tricky?

We recently moved to a new version of Aclaimant that is drastically different under the hood than the previous version. While it’s still in its infancy stages we don’t have as robust UIs as we’re used to in the older version so I’ve definitely learned more about coding languages in the past few months than I thought I would in my lifetime - but hey, add it to my learned skills list 🙌

What is the most underrated Aclaimant feature?

It’s so simple, but TAGS! Maybe this comes from my overly organized self but the ability to add tags to inbox messages, notes, and files seem like a godsend to someone like me. I’ve seen customers have multiple team members working within a single incident, all adding their own notes and files along the way and the ability to tag either of them as ‘Legal’, ‘Medical’ ‘Carrier Correspondence” etc etc can save sooooooo much time when you have to dig through an Incident down the road. Tags are 100% able to be managed by users with Settings permissions (or your amazing Implementation Manager is able to help you get started with some simple tags right out of the gate 😉), they can even be color coded - check out our help center article to start making tags today!

What advice would you give someone looking to move to an implementation team?

Ensure your Collaboration and Organization skills are on point! Implementation is one of those roles that wears many hats. You’re Customer Facing; meaning you’re setting agendas, running discovery sessions, sending recaps, organizing action items, etc. You’re also working with almost every internal team imaginable to deliver on those action items so you need to ensure you’re a rockstar at organizing and are able to truly collaborate with all levels of an organization. Implementation is a team effort and you’re the captain of that team

What is the key difference between implementation and customer success?

While everything starts with a signed contract, Implementation is the team that delivers on that contract's scope of work. We become subject matter experts simply by doing our job and are the ones who need to ensure the customer is set up for success before handing off to the customer success team. Additionally, we don’t just peace out once the implementation project is completed, rather we step back to a behind-the-scenes role, allowing customer success to become the new point of contact for customers but still work internally with implementation should customer needs/configurations change so customer success can focus on more long term goals and relationship building.

Any parting words for an inspiring Aclaimer?

If you’re looking for a role that will challenge you at a company that will allow you to be your most authentic self then Aclaimant is the place for you!

 

 

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