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Over 300 specialists supplied in a partnership spanning a decade

SOLA's history of developing innovative bespoke solutions for Hitachi's unique requirements

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Total placements (permanent and contract) over 11 years

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2.88 weeks - average onboarding time for of contract resources

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Academy Programme - established to develop Hitachi specialists

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Associate Catalogue - a virtual bench of candidates for fast onboarding

An 11-year partnership

Hitachi Vantara and SOLA had a longstanding relationship spanning over a decade, throughout which Hitachi trusted SOLA to consistently deliver permanent and contract talent. During the height of the partnership, as many as 75 SOLA-provided people worked for Hitachi at any one time.

Enterprise transformation – a critical time

SOLA worked closely with Hitachi as the company underwent an enterprise-wide transformation from storage vendor to major IoT player. This project meant a significant change in the skills required, so Hitachi entrusted SOLA to identify many high-level positions to lead the organisation through this pivotal moment.

 

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Solving talent skill shortages in a finite market

Hitachi had a specific problem—a serious shortage of talent who could work with their proprietary technology. So SOLA designed and implemented an Academy Programme, a tailored training programme designed to nurture sales and technology specialists.

An experienced SOLA manager implemented the Academy Programme for Hitachi, developing promising junior staff into key resources.

The result—Hitachi has a constant stream of highly-qualified, committed, loyal employees who were engaged with the company's culture and mission.

As such, SOLA alleviated the pressures of continuously recruiting experienced staff with highly specific skills. The Acadamy Programme created a constant pipeline of next-generation employees whose skills were fostered in key areas for the company.

A virtual bench of candidates

Hitachi constantly needed new talent with diverse technical skills—and it wanted to onboard the employees in tight timeframes. So SOLA devised a system to support this requirement, providing Hitachi management with an Associate Catalogue or “virtual bench” of niche, pre-screened consultants. 

By evaluating the specific technology and skill requirements Hitachi repeatedly sought, SOLA mapped the market to create a virtual team of pre-qualified and pre-screened candidates. The Associate Catalogue provided key information on candidates, including rates, skills, availability, and geographic location.

This solution allowed Hitachi to plan for their growth without reliance on a fixed bench and eliminated a significant amount of time that would previously have been spent on the onboarding process. Meanwhile, SOLA nimbly provided excellent candidates within tight timeframes to ensure productivity. 

Using this methodology, SOLA and Hitachi worked together to create an entirely new team of 40 consultants across 3 countries within 14 months.

Resolving SOW bottlenecks

Working together so closely, Hitachi and SOLA realised that there was a pattern of bottlenecks around creating statements of work (SOW) for the projects they won. This directly impacted the time salespeople spent with customers and, consequently, the volume, accuracy, and speed of requirements fed to SOLA and the contractor workforce. What's more, inefficiently administering and organising resourcing projects caused a second bottleneck around customer needs and capacity issues.

SOLA spent time understanding the problem and then worked closely with Hitachi to create a  bespoke solution to solve both problems. Experienced members of SOLA's operations team spent time at Hitachi to absorb the work processes and assist in administering their resource pool.

This experience was so successful in streamlining processes that SOLA appointed a full-time, SOLA-employed liaison between themselves, the contractor workforce, and Hitachi. 

SOLA then addressed the SOW bottlenecks by appointing a full-time, SOLA-employed SOW writer to assist the sales team produce work statements in a vastly reduced time. The average time to create a SOW was reduced from one week to 48 hours.

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