Americas Summit 2022

At Slimstock, we are known for the five pillars that make up our DNA: Passion, Entrepreneurship, Family, Customer Oriented and Experience. We believe these five things are essential to sustain Slimstock’s growth and to deliver the best service and long-term support to our customers.

For this very reason this June 2022, the Americas Summit was held at Muskoka, Canada. Where all the team members from the Americas (Canada, Brazil, Colombia, Chile and the United States) met for over a week to carry out a series of training sessions and to strengthen ties between colleagues from different regions. A total of 35 people attended this event over the week.

These sessions were further strengthened by the gracious attendance of Slimstock’s Co-Founder, Eric Van Dijk, as well as some important representatives from HQ in the Netherlands, such as Rob Van Der Heiden, International Business Development Director at Slimstock, Jorinde Timmerman, Managing Director at Slimstock, Jeroen Hertgers, Support Manager at Slimstock, Lianne Kloppenburg, Commercial delivery, internal product support & Consultant at Slimstock and Wesley van Kemenade, Integrated S&OP/IBP Supply Chain Consultant at Slimstock.

Training Week

The Summit was welcomed by Rob Van Der Heiden, where he spoke about the goal of the Americas summit and gave an inspiring speech on the importance of finding opportunity within Slimstock and motivating team members to feel confident. Then, Eric Van Dijk presented, an update on Slimstock, position of Americas region within Slimstock, ambitions for 2023, recommendations to reach those objectives and some new developments of our Inventory Management and Optimization Software: Slim4.

Objectives of the Training

For over a period of five days, training sessions and presentation were given by both Slimstock’s top managers and collaborators from different areas: consulting, marketing, administration, young professionals, sales and pre-sales.

The idea here is that each one gets an opportunity to share their knowledge to all other members.

Session Theme

The topics of these sessions ranged from technical updates of Slim4, to brainstorming ideas to tackle some common challenges in all aspects faced by our colleagues .

Some of the strong points that were discussed during the training week are: Functionalities of the platform, Importance of using CRM, Machine Learning and AI adoption, Software security process, Effective Communication and some opportunities to work together as a single unit within Americas.

Slim4 Topic Training

One of the program for the week was “Slim4 Topic Training” were different colleagues from different regions collaborated to present on functionalities of Slim4 software. Many group of 3 to 4 people presented this a series of Slim4 topic Trainings. These presentations lasted one hour and all had the opportunity to present a quick Demo of that functionality as well.

The interesting thing about these sessions is that each group had the opportunity to share their knowledge and teach more about the functionality with creative freedom. In this sense, there were presentations that included games, prizes and even trivia that could be played over mobile. Each team put in a lot of effort to learn about the platform, as well as make it a pleasant moment for all participants.

Team Building

After the intense training, we had several Team Building sessions.  Also, during the Americas Summit week, three of our colleagues celebrated their birthday in Muskoka, Maria Alejandra García, Christian Martin and Jack Inglis. The celebrations included food, beer, pool and music, we consider this as well to be part of Team Building.

 

For the summit we were at the Rocky Crest Resort, which is located close to few lakes, so during free time and in the afternoons, team had time to enjoy the wonders of Muskoka. This, together with a few beers and light conversation with colleagues from other region, made team building stronger, learn without obstacle and enjoy nature .

Towards the end of the week, we took a boat ride around Armishaw Lake, with a spectacular sunset, beers, music and good conversations. On the last day, the weather allowed the teams to enjoy a bonfire and  to say goodbye to a fun filled intense week of training and teambuilding.

Thank You

We would like to give huge a shoutout to María Alejandra García and Luanna Lohmann, from Slimstock’s Finance and Admin department and to our colleagues from Brazil, Chile, Columbia and the USA for making this summit a hugely successful event and making way for yearly America’s Summit.

Further we also like to thank, Eric Van Dijk, Co-founder, Rob Van Der Heiden, International Business Development Director, Jorinde Timmerman, Managing Director, Jeroen Hertgers, Support Manager, Lianne Kloppenburg, Commercial delivery, internal product support & Consultant and Wesley van Kemenade, Integrated S&OP/IBP Supply Chain Consultant from Slimstock  for traveling all the way from the Netherlands to participate in this week long summit.

Finally, to our Canadian colleagues and other colleagues who participated online, Rocky Crest Resort’s staff members and our customers for understanding and working with limited support for the whole week of the summit.

See you at an upcoming Summit!