Meeting Title: Brainforge Operations Onboarding Sync Date: 2025-06-24 Meeting participants: Rico Rejoso, Uttam Kumaran
WEBVTT
1 00:01:32.430 ⇒ 00:01:33.320 Uttam Kumaran: There you go!
2 00:01:38.510 ⇒ 00:01:39.310 Rico Rejoso: Hello!
3 00:01:40.050 ⇒ 00:01:40.750 Uttam Kumaran: Hey?
4 00:01:42.350 ⇒ 00:01:43.220 Uttam Kumaran: Can you hear me?
5 00:01:43.770 ⇒ 00:01:45.659 Rico Rejoso: Yes, hey, RAM, how are you?
6 00:01:45.870 ⇒ 00:01:47.240 Uttam Kumaran: Hey? Good! How are you?
7 00:01:47.860 ⇒ 00:01:48.959 Rico Rejoso: I’m doing good.
8 00:01:49.770 ⇒ 00:01:52.079 Uttam Kumaran: How’s the day? Been sorry I couldn’t get a
9 00:01:52.230 ⇒ 00:01:55.060 Uttam Kumaran: get in touch until just now, or just busy day.
10 00:01:55.650 ⇒ 00:02:00.209 Rico Rejoso: No worries, I fully understand. Actually, I was just going with all the files in notion
11 00:02:00.730 ⇒ 00:02:04.029 Rico Rejoso: further going through it with what you’ve given to me just a while ago.
12 00:02:04.680 ⇒ 00:02:06.590 Uttam Kumaran: Nice. What do you think? So far.
13 00:02:07.812 ⇒ 00:02:13.560 Rico Rejoso: For me. I was a bit over overwhelmed to be honest, because you have like.
14 00:02:13.560 ⇒ 00:02:14.110 Uttam Kumaran: Sometime.
15 00:02:14.730 ⇒ 00:02:28.559 Rico Rejoso: Yeah. And I was so amazed as well. And how you know, organized you guys are, with all the information, all the documents that you have so far with all the clients that I work with. You guys are like, so organized with everything. So I was.
16 00:02:28.560 ⇒ 00:02:29.200 Uttam Kumaran: Appreciate it.
17 00:02:29.530 ⇒ 00:02:30.450 Rico Rejoso: All of it is like.
18 00:02:30.450 ⇒ 00:02:39.019 Uttam Kumaran: Is why we invested in this role, you know, because it matters a lot for everybody to know where to go to get stuff. You know.
19 00:02:40.570 ⇒ 00:02:41.400 Rico Rejoso: Yeah. And
20 00:02:41.530 ⇒ 00:02:51.409 Rico Rejoso: everything’s there. I was like looking for something, and, you know, just have to reorganize everything and just have it where everyone can see it, and I think everything’s good.
21 00:02:51.850 ⇒ 00:02:58.510 Rico Rejoso: especially with what you’ve given me just just now. I’m going through it since there was like some terms that I’m not familiar with
22 00:02:59.755 ⇒ 00:03:07.710 Rico Rejoso: like, let’s go with the Meta, the handbook metadata going there
23 00:03:08.385 ⇒ 00:03:15.169 Rico Rejoso: down from there. Do. I have like to copy just this this one? Is it like a I don’t know how to
24 00:03:15.340 ⇒ 00:03:17.370 Rico Rejoso: use this information. I’m sorry.
25 00:03:17.370 ⇒ 00:03:20.523 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so let me let me. Let’s talk through this.
26 00:03:21.200 ⇒ 00:03:22.060 Rico Rejoso: Okay. Now.
27 00:03:22.060 ⇒ 00:03:24.299 Uttam Kumaran: Let’s talk through this right now. So
28 00:03:24.670 ⇒ 00:03:31.040 Uttam Kumaran: basically, my goal with this document is to just start to understand everything that
29 00:03:31.220 ⇒ 00:03:33.969 Uttam Kumaran: sort of operations in our company does
30 00:03:34.524 ⇒ 00:03:37.670 Uttam Kumaran: right? And so I wanted to basically start with like.
31 00:03:38.140 ⇒ 00:03:41.450 Uttam Kumaran: this is like our operations playbook
32 00:03:43.680 ⇒ 00:04:00.330 Uttam Kumaran: and on how we basically run operations so that we can help deploy our resources for clients right? And so really, what this includes and sort of what is, gonna be part of your sort of workflow is like people operations, client operations, finance operations.
33 00:04:00.979 ⇒ 00:04:07.269 Uttam Kumaran: like, where necessary. And then tool and vendor management and knowledge management. And then.
34 00:04:07.420 ⇒ 00:04:12.889 Uttam Kumaran: really, we’re we’re you’re not going to be sort of on the hook for anything related to
35 00:04:14.930 ⇒ 00:04:17.200 Uttam Kumaran: to to these that are in the acts.
36 00:04:17.420 ⇒ 00:04:31.830 Uttam Kumaran: Right? So really, the goal is like, okay, really, I think you know, if you think about hey, what do I own operations gonna own people, operations, clients as well as tool and and knowledge management right? And so also, like our guiding principles, one is like.
37 00:04:32.000 ⇒ 00:04:35.709 Uttam Kumaran: if a step is repeated a bunch of times, we should find some way to automate it
38 00:04:36.990 ⇒ 00:04:41.729 Uttam Kumaran: right? So I I assume you. You’ve used Chat Gbt, and similar things.
39 00:04:41.970 ⇒ 00:04:42.680 Rico Rejoso: Yes.
40 00:04:43.370 ⇒ 00:04:50.939 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so ideally, we, you know, you use chat, Gpt as much as possible and working with our internal AI team to sort of build
41 00:04:51.415 ⇒ 00:05:04.550 Uttam Kumaran: build those automations. The other thing is like, we try to have single source of truth. So we don’t have multiple tools for different things. We have just a couple that that do sort of the core stuff.
42 00:05:04.870 ⇒ 00:05:09.840 Uttam Kumaran: And then we just be really mindful of privacy and sort of data access.
43 00:05:10.299 ⇒ 00:05:27.850 Uttam Kumaran: So one of the things that like, you know, we typically do. And we can sort of, we can sort of run through this later, which is like what’s called like a racy diagram. And really, this means like, who is who is responsible? Who is accountable? Who is contacted and who is like informed
44 00:05:28.020 ⇒ 00:05:31.049 Uttam Kumaran: right? And all this does, which is just say, like, Okay.
45 00:05:31.490 ⇒ 00:05:39.750 Uttam Kumaran: operations is on the hook to actually execute Xyz tasks. And then who needs to actually be informed? Once those things are done.
46 00:05:41.910 ⇒ 00:05:44.870 Uttam Kumaran: And then, as we sort of go down here, really, we’re.
47 00:05:44.870 ⇒ 00:05:51.639 Uttam Kumaran: we’ll start to work on this with each other, which is like, what are the processes that the operation team owns. And like.
48 00:05:51.740 ⇒ 00:06:04.329 Uttam Kumaran: sort of how do those actually like what? What actually happens? Right? So this is like, step by step, for example, example, could be here like how to add and how to add a contractor to ramp.
49 00:06:04.810 ⇒ 00:06:08.269 Uttam Kumaran: how to add someone to one password.
50 00:06:08.590 ⇒ 00:06:16.489 Uttam Kumaran: Right? So these are all tasks that currently I’m doing. And and really like, I would like to hand off to you sort of as operation lead to to own
51 00:06:18.150 ⇒ 00:06:39.899 Uttam Kumaran: And so that’s these are sort of the things that we’ll start to to work on. And then also, we have like cross domain things which is like this is just really within one domain, right? So this could be around payroll. But we also could have stuff around client onboarding tool management payroll like other sort of things. And so we can. We can start to to talk about these, and then
52 00:06:40.110 ⇒ 00:06:47.880 Uttam Kumaran: we also can list all of our documents. So as we have any documents. And then we can talk about, hey, okay, what do we want to accomplish in these next like 2 weeks?
53 00:06:48.413 ⇒ 00:06:53.479 Uttam Kumaran: And so really, this is like, I think, just gonna be sort of the Bible for operations at the company.
54 00:06:53.480 ⇒ 00:06:56.880 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, got it?
55 00:06:59.842 ⇒ 00:07:17.010 Uttam Kumaran: So really, where I wanted to sort of begin is just by talking through like what your onboarding process was like, right? So to give you a sense like. And maybe if you wanna also start to take notes, you can take notes, maybe here and incline onboarding, because ideally, this is where we wanna
56 00:07:17.120 ⇒ 00:07:19.310 Uttam Kumaran: just write. Start to write down.
57 00:07:19.420 ⇒ 00:07:21.840 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, what are the steps to onboard? A new
58 00:07:21.940 ⇒ 00:07:35.679 Uttam Kumaran: contractor? Right? So these are signing contracts. Inviting you to Google, inviting you to slack, inviting you to one password inviting you to notion, though. So we want to just document all these processes here.
59 00:07:36.383 ⇒ 00:07:37.789 Rico Rejoso: Got it?
60 00:07:38.620 ⇒ 00:07:39.800 Rico Rejoso: 58, 1, 9.
61 00:07:44.970 ⇒ 00:07:55.869 Rico Rejoso: So for me to like, you know? I also need to experience how you guys are at least observe how you guys do on boarding right? Or would it be possible.
62 00:07:56.786 ⇒ 00:08:01.979 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, so. But but this is like, but but I guess my question would be like, you just went through the onboarding.
63 00:08:02.340 ⇒ 00:08:02.890 Uttam Kumaran: Excellent.
64 00:08:03.900 ⇒ 00:08:08.519 Uttam Kumaran: Alright. So yeah, I think it’s helpful for you to say, Okay, what? What steps did I take?
65 00:08:08.870 ⇒ 00:08:09.900 Uttam Kumaran: And then.
66 00:08:10.050 ⇒ 00:08:21.569 Uttam Kumaran: okay, now that this is. And then, basically ideally. What it would be really helpful is to go through each of the core steps here and say, Okay, like, let’s start to document. What are the core onboarding steps.
67 00:08:22.038 ⇒ 00:08:29.149 Uttam Kumaran: For a new employee. That way we have the checklist of all the things that need to happen in one place.
68 00:08:29.620 ⇒ 00:08:30.310 Rico Rejoso: Got it.
69 00:08:31.900 ⇒ 00:08:36.089 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe this is one thing that you can start to do. And I can tag you here is like.
70 00:08:36.490 ⇒ 00:08:43.100 Uttam Kumaran: basically start to build. Look, what is the what is the contractor? Onboarding process.
71 00:08:45.750 ⇒ 00:08:47.710 Rico Rejoso: Got it. I’ll start on that as well.
72 00:08:55.790 ⇒ 00:08:58.109 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know, are you? I forgot what you’re
73 00:09:06.220 ⇒ 00:09:08.800 Uttam Kumaran: yeah, I mean, it’s you’re not here under
74 00:09:12.740 ⇒ 00:09:13.550 Uttam Kumaran: and.
75 00:09:21.670 ⇒ 00:09:22.959 Rico Rejoso: Wait! Let me see!
76 00:10:03.600 ⇒ 00:10:05.130 Uttam Kumaran: You’re just gonna tag here. So
77 00:10:15.510 ⇒ 00:10:16.450 Uttam Kumaran: right?
78 00:10:16.770 ⇒ 00:10:23.750 Uttam Kumaran: So maybe that’s 1 thing that you can start with is just to sort of start to map out like this client onboarding or this?
79 00:10:24.150 ⇒ 00:10:29.300 Uttam Kumaran: sorry this. Would this like, what is the contractor onboarding process?
80 00:10:38.190 ⇒ 00:10:39.850 Uttam Kumaran: And then I can review that.
81 00:10:43.950 ⇒ 00:10:44.660 Rico Rejoso: Got it.
82 00:10:50.240 ⇒ 00:11:02.069 Uttam Kumaran: cool. So then I think, basically, what we will start to do is like, I probably will either record like a loom or maybe record a video of sort of what are, what are the other tasks
83 00:11:02.420 ⇒ 00:11:06.260 Uttam Kumaran: that we want to start documenting here?
84 00:11:06.981 ⇒ 00:11:15.599 Uttam Kumaran: And then ideally, like you would work either directly with me or the relevant people within the business, whether it’s sales, marketing.
85 00:11:16.199 ⇒ 00:11:22.349 Uttam Kumaran: finance or project management to sort of start to build this sort of playbook out.
86 00:11:22.600 ⇒ 00:11:31.380 Uttam Kumaran: and then ideally, like as as we start to get more things coming in, I will. I’ll walk you through how I do it. And then the next time I can sort of hand it off.
87 00:11:31.910 ⇒ 00:11:38.039 Rico Rejoso: Yes, so I can, like, you know, create a flow chart and make sure that everything that you’re doing I can do it as well.
88 00:11:38.040 ⇒ 00:11:38.820 Uttam Kumaran: Exactly right.
89 00:11:38.820 ⇒ 00:11:40.889 Rico Rejoso: Have a check checklist.
90 00:11:40.890 ⇒ 00:11:50.070 Uttam Kumaran: Exactly right. I think probably the biggest difficulty is just gonna be my time, because I’m pretty busy. So what I’m gonna do is do my best to record looms.
91 00:11:50.320 ⇒ 00:11:55.880 Uttam Kumaran: because what you can do is you can take your loom, take the transcript put into chatgpt, and sort of build
92 00:11:56.010 ⇒ 00:11:58.190 Uttam Kumaran: the sops from there. Right?
93 00:11:58.550 ⇒ 00:12:08.229 Uttam Kumaran: So we do have a lot of we do have a lot of transcripts and looms that I’ll I’ll be able to share with you that you could walk through as well
94 00:12:08.480 ⇒ 00:12:12.250 Uttam Kumaran: on how to do certain things, and then we can start to add it to this document. So.
95 00:12:12.250 ⇒ 00:12:13.000 Rico Rejoso: Ideally.
96 00:12:13.000 ⇒ 00:12:19.252 Uttam Kumaran: Really one thing that would also be helpful if you could start working on the document and and starting to say,
97 00:12:20.450 ⇒ 00:12:30.470 Uttam Kumaran: split up each section by core business area and then start to tag.
98 00:12:36.240 ⇒ 00:12:38.790 Uttam Kumaran: So that would be that would be helpful.
99 00:12:39.450 ⇒ 00:12:40.080 Rico Rejoso: Got it.
100 00:12:40.350 ⇒ 00:12:46.320 Rico Rejoso: So with the interface, like, you know how we can present this one? It’s up to me, or do you have like a preference for it?
101 00:12:46.700 ⇒ 00:12:51.396 Uttam Kumaran: No, I don’t. I don’t. I don’t. Preference at all. Actually. So it’s sort of entirely
102 00:12:52.360 ⇒ 00:12:53.709 Uttam Kumaran: entirely up to you.
103 00:12:54.310 ⇒ 00:12:55.570 Rico Rejoso: Got it. No worries
104 00:13:04.640 ⇒ 00:13:05.410 Rico Rejoso: Surface.
105 00:13:07.520 ⇒ 00:13:10.350 Rico Rejoso: Sorry. I’m writing everything down as well, so that.
106 00:13:10.350 ⇒ 00:13:19.520 Uttam Kumaran: No, no problem. And then another thing is, so this meeting actually gets recorded and gets added to our Zoom Meeting platform.
107 00:13:20.121 ⇒ 00:13:26.158 Uttam Kumaran: So one thing that I will I wanted to share with you is and I can show it on
108 00:13:27.720 ⇒ 00:13:30.440 Uttam Kumaran: I can show it on my screen.
109 00:13:33.854 ⇒ 00:13:41.319 Uttam Kumaran: Is. If you go to demo.brainforge.ai slash internal
110 00:13:41.930 ⇒ 00:13:49.569 Uttam Kumaran: slash, zoom search. You’ll actually be able to get into this platform. Where you can
111 00:13:50.230 ⇒ 00:14:06.720 Uttam Kumaran: see all of the Zoom Meetings that that we’ve had, and that you know that you could have you potentially were a part of. So, for example, if I type in Rico, here’s your here’s the last meeting we had, and so you can actually go in here and and chat with this meeting.
112 00:14:06.990 ⇒ 00:14:10.119 Uttam Kumaran: Tell me what was discussed.
113 00:14:11.288 ⇒ 00:14:16.059 Uttam Kumaran: You can also go in here and get the transcript. If you need to actually go.
114 00:14:16.230 ⇒ 00:14:18.210 Uttam Kumaran: use this for AI.
115 00:14:18.520 ⇒ 00:14:23.599 Uttam Kumaran: So this is also what I recommend is like, after after
116 00:14:24.290 ⇒ 00:14:28.140 Uttam Kumaran: this meeting ends, you can go find this recording, and actually
117 00:14:28.260 ⇒ 00:14:32.520 Uttam Kumaran: rewatch it, or or use it to sort of plan out your day.
118 00:14:33.720 ⇒ 00:14:36.620 Uttam Kumaran: so I’ll send you this link as well. You can check it out.
119 00:14:36.980 ⇒ 00:14:39.129 Rico Rejoso: Got it. Thank you, please.
120 00:15:59.948 ⇒ 00:16:04.679 Rico Rejoso: I’ll review that one as well later on, and check all the stuff that you tagged in.
121 00:16:06.920 ⇒ 00:16:15.419 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I guess my last, my, my last piece of feedback is we can actually start to use this operations. Linear board.
122 00:16:16.098 ⇒ 00:16:22.580 Uttam Kumaran: You’ve used. Have you used like Jira by chance, or Asana.
123 00:16:23.590 ⇒ 00:16:24.860 Rico Rejoso: Asana, yes.
124 00:16:25.490 ⇒ 00:16:28.760 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. So we have a operation sort of board here.
125 00:16:29.478 ⇒ 00:16:32.349 Uttam Kumaran: A lot of it is assigned to our last.
126 00:16:34.020 ⇒ 00:16:37.570 Uttam Kumaran: Are the last operations person we had. So I’ll add you here.
127 00:16:40.490 ⇒ 00:16:44.390 Uttam Kumaran: That way I would. I would encourage you to take a look at everything in here as well.
128 00:16:45.930 ⇒ 00:16:47.890 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, yeah, you are in here. Okay. Great.
129 00:16:52.540 ⇒ 00:16:55.180 Rico Rejoso: You have figured joining it earlier.
130 00:16:56.020 ⇒ 00:17:04.369 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, nice. Okay? So yeah, I would take a look at all the tickets in here, and so we’ll we can start to track our work in here, actually, and start to use this a little bit more.
131 00:17:04.550 ⇒ 00:17:09.019 Uttam Kumaran: So we have okay. All the work that the operations team is doing is in one place.
132 00:17:12.890 ⇒ 00:17:19.440 Rico Rejoso: Okay, I’ll take a look at as well as well. I think I only have the operations for linear.
133 00:17:19.690 ⇒ 00:17:20.719 Rico Rejoso: That’d be fine.
134 00:17:22.585 ⇒ 00:17:31.730 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, that’s fine. I would also say, if you if you hook it up to your email and slack, you can get some notifications.
135 00:17:31.840 ⇒ 00:17:36.179 Uttam Kumaran: but I’m gonna send you a couple of things to take a look at here in slack
136 00:17:41.890 ⇒ 00:17:42.560 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, thank, you.
137 00:17:46.090 ⇒ 00:17:53.850 Uttam Kumaran: So it’s it’s helpful for you to take a look at. So because we have some work already done around our new new hire outline
138 00:17:54.160 ⇒ 00:17:59.179 Uttam Kumaran: new new client policy, things like that
139 00:18:03.980 ⇒ 00:18:06.880 Uttam Kumaran: which I I know you’ve you’ve probably started going through as well.
140 00:18:08.230 ⇒ 00:18:09.140 Rico Rejoso: Yes.
141 00:18:09.890 ⇒ 00:18:14.117 Uttam Kumaran: It’ll take some time, so don’t feel too overwhelmed. It’ll it’ll just be
142 00:18:14.570 ⇒ 00:18:17.599 Uttam Kumaran: something to to that. We’ll start to look at together.
143 00:18:18.360 ⇒ 00:18:20.690 Rico Rejoso: No worries. I’m actually excited for it.
144 00:18:34.980 ⇒ 00:18:35.630 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
145 00:18:35.780 ⇒ 00:18:41.699 Uttam Kumaran: cool. So then maybe you want to take a look and just keep slacking me. And I’ll be online and anything you need I can help with.
146 00:18:42.110 ⇒ 00:18:45.210 Uttam Kumaran: But then tomorrow let’s plan on, maybe reviewing
147 00:18:45.320 ⇒ 00:18:57.749 Uttam Kumaran: sort of any more questions you have beyond. And it’s after the contractor sort of onboarding work, and then let’s start to make sure your stuff is ticketed. And then in linear so that we can.
148 00:18:58.120 ⇒ 00:18:59.639 Uttam Kumaran: you know, we can review it.
149 00:19:00.650 ⇒ 00:19:07.349 Rico Rejoso: Okay, so I’ll check linear as well, and all the tickets and everything, and refer to if you have any questions.
150 00:19:07.540 ⇒ 00:19:08.210 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
151 00:19:08.210 ⇒ 00:19:16.019 Uttam Kumaran: okay, perfect. Yeah. And just slack slack me in the operations channel that way in case I don’t get to it. Someone else on the team, you know, should be able to answer.
152 00:19:16.490 ⇒ 00:19:18.440 Rico Rejoso: Got it. Thank you so much for that.
153 00:19:18.790 ⇒ 00:19:21.439 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Alright. Thank you. Talk to you soon.
154 00:19:21.440 ⇒ 00:19:23.210 Rico Rejoso: Alright! Alright. Thank you, Adam.
155 00:19:23.380 ⇒ 00:19:23.950 Rico Rejoso: Okay.