Post #10
May 30th, 2018
Today I had a pretty impactful day at First Solar. As usual, I sat in some interesting meetings with Sheila. I watched her continue the interview process for a new candidate for that HR job that I talked about in a previous entry. That was pretty interesting to see her compare that candidate to the other, but the most exciting part of the day was probably talking to the warranty department. I talked to Rick and Raj of the warranty department, Raj actually being Sheila's spouse. In order to give me the context of what warranty and global sales do, they broke down to me the sales cycle of a plant. Between business development and contract negotiation, the "sales" portion of the cycle can take between 1-2 years. This is the time when the client and First Solar come to an agreement on what they're building, when they're building it, and how much it's going to cost. The next major portion of the sales cycle is actually building the plant. This can also take up to 1-2 year. As I've said in previous entries, it's more than just shipping the modules. It's installing them, it's powering the plant, adding battery storage etc. These are all important parts of the building process, so it's easy to see why it can take that long. So it's usually up to 4 years before the product is actually installed. From then on, we're talking post-sales, and that's when warranty comes in. This group is compromised of around 25 people, including Raj and Rick. There are a lot of specifics and examples we got into, but there are two main rules that they have to comply with. First Solar provides defect-related warranty for 10 years, and guarantee "quality production" for up to 25 years. They define quality production as not dropping below .7% of the initial efficiency of the product. So technically if there's a crack in the module after 10 years and it doesn't affect their production, First Solar has no legal obligation to fix the product at all. Now, if there's a crack after 12 years and it affects performance, then First Solar is going to do their very best to send people down there and make sure that it wasn't caused by outside sources. Because if the error is caused by outside sources, then it's not their issue. They can only control what happens to the panel on its own, they can't be liable for anything else. As you can tell, there are a lot of intricacies to this, so Raj and Rick often get into a lot of negotiating about this. It's a small group of people too; the entire company only dedicates 25 people to this. Knowing this I was obviously curious about the roles of Raj and Rick specifically, and they told me both their roles. Basically, Raj is in charge of all post-sales endeavors in Africa, Asia, and Australia. Rick, on the other hand, is in charge of all matters that happen in the western hemisphere. Obviously, these are pretty loaded jobs, but they definitely seemed very interesting. This job definitely requires a lot of communication skills. You need to know what customers are more uptight than others, and who to butter up to. A lot of the companies money is at stake in these situations, so there's a lot of pressure as well. I think this might've been my favorite group to work with so far.
Today I had a pretty impactful day at First Solar. As usual, I sat in some interesting meetings with Sheila. I watched her continue the interview process for a new candidate for that HR job that I talked about in a previous entry. That was pretty interesting to see her compare that candidate to the other, but the most exciting part of the day was probably talking to the warranty department. I talked to Rick and Raj of the warranty department, Raj actually being Sheila's spouse. In order to give me the context of what warranty and global sales do, they broke down to me the sales cycle of a plant. Between business development and contract negotiation, the "sales" portion of the cycle can take between 1-2 years. This is the time when the client and First Solar come to an agreement on what they're building, when they're building it, and how much it's going to cost. The next major portion of the sales cycle is actually building the plant. This can also take up to 1-2 year. As I've said in previous entries, it's more than just shipping the modules. It's installing them, it's powering the plant, adding battery storage etc. These are all important parts of the building process, so it's easy to see why it can take that long. So it's usually up to 4 years before the product is actually installed. From then on, we're talking post-sales, and that's when warranty comes in. This group is compromised of around 25 people, including Raj and Rick. There are a lot of specifics and examples we got into, but there are two main rules that they have to comply with. First Solar provides defect-related warranty for 10 years, and guarantee "quality production" for up to 25 years. They define quality production as not dropping below .7% of the initial efficiency of the product. So technically if there's a crack in the module after 10 years and it doesn't affect their production, First Solar has no legal obligation to fix the product at all. Now, if there's a crack after 12 years and it affects performance, then First Solar is going to do their very best to send people down there and make sure that it wasn't caused by outside sources. Because if the error is caused by outside sources, then it's not their issue. They can only control what happens to the panel on its own, they can't be liable for anything else. As you can tell, there are a lot of intricacies to this, so Raj and Rick often get into a lot of negotiating about this. It's a small group of people too; the entire company only dedicates 25 people to this. Knowing this I was obviously curious about the roles of Raj and Rick specifically, and they told me both their roles. Basically, Raj is in charge of all post-sales endeavors in Africa, Asia, and Australia. Rick, on the other hand, is in charge of all matters that happen in the western hemisphere. Obviously, these are pretty loaded jobs, but they definitely seemed very interesting. This job definitely requires a lot of communication skills. You need to know what customers are more uptight than others, and who to butter up to. A lot of the companies money is at stake in these situations, so there's a lot of pressure as well. I think this might've been my favorite group to work with so far.
Comments
Post a Comment