A Project Coordinator’s Role at Storage Solutions
Angie Rajski (Senior Project Coordinator) reflects on over 2 decades of experience and how the project coordinator role is crucial in helping Storage Solutions provide a seamless experience for our customers.
Introduction
“My name is Angie Rajski, and I’ve been with the company for 26 years. I don’t know how much time we have to talk today, but I have held almost every title in the company. I started out as Craig McElheny’s personal assistant, who owned our company, and have held many different hats since.”
What is your role now after two decades with SSI?
“Right now, out of all the titles that I’ve had, working with Craig as his personal assistant over all these years, he found my niche for me. I’m still a senior project coordinator, and that’s what I love doing. So, I kind of put off to the side all the other positions that I held because we grew so rapidly that it was hard to juggle so many different positions.
Eventually, at the end of a project, I audit the final project before it’s turned in for invoicing to our accounting department, making sure that all of the costs are accurate, the invoicing comments are correct for our customer, and making it seem seamless behind the scenes. We do all the freight auditing and just make sure that our customers are satisfied with the experience that they’ve had with our projects.”
How does the project coordinator’s role affect a project with Storage Solutions?
“As a sales coordinator, I always reference it this way, we’re the nucleus of the customer experience. So, we take the project from the beginning. Once it becomes a project, it’s quoted by the salesperson. And then, once it becomes a project, we take over from there, so we order all the material, we do all the customer service to make sure that it’s kind of like an Amazon experience.
And that’s how I’ve always tried to do all of my service to our long-standing customers. Is that when you place an Amazon order, you say, hey, I got your order, thank you. And then the next process is your order is ready to ship and then it’s going to ship. And then it’s in, you know, it’s in process. So, it’ll be here on this day. It’s a continual communication with the customer to make sure that they know what’s happening with their order through the life cycle, and they love that. They might not always respond to what we’re communicating to them, but it’s always a finger on the pulse of every phase of the cycle. We make sure that the coordinators make sure that the material is ordered correctly and all the colors are right on the orders. We make sure it is a seamless process.”
Who do you work with as a project coordinator?
“As a sales coordinator, being the nucleus of a life cycle of a project, we interact with every division within our company. We communicate with our warehouse team. We make sure that they have the right ship dates and the right material ordered, and they know how many trucks we need on certain days.
We also communicate very closely with our installation team, so we find out all the details for when the install is going to happen, who’s going to be on site, what time they’re going to be there, how many trucks we’re going to have for that day. So that communication with the installer is critical. If we don’t have the right material on day one of an installation, you can have people dead in the water, which costs our company time and money, and it’s just not a good experience for them.
We also do project launches for our customers so that we flesh out exactly all the details of what they can expect with the experience that’s going to be coming forth with their project, who’s coming, and what time they’re going to be on site. Along with that, we deal with our vendors, the partners that we have outside of Storage Solutions.
We have developed many relationships with several vendors who are our partners, such as Nashville Wire and Speedrack Products Group. They are also part of the coordination cycle with our customers to make sure that we have everything we need from day one of the installation.
We are also involved with our accounting team. We audit that project so that everything all the costs are analyzed and detailed out before we turn that in for the customer to receive an invoice.”
After 25+ years, what do you appreciate about Storage Solutions and the role you play on the team?
“Craig McElheny and Dick McElheny were the beginning of this company. They founded this company on honesty and integrity, and I feel for me, I want to carry that tradition on.
Even though we’ve grown into this huge company, the relationships that we have with our customers, our vendors, and people internally, this is my family. I’ve been here this long because I love what I do. And Craig, who was the owner, I was his personal assistant for many years before he retired. He used to say, “You know, Angie, you have to love what you do and do what you love.” And that’s why I’ve been here this long. I continue to enjoy what I do, servicing our customers. We have so many repeat customers. And that’s because of the people. It’s because of the experience that we provide them; it’s seamless, and we make it look easy. There might be days when it’s really tough behind the scenes.
But to the customer and the experience, it’s a piece of cake, and that’s why I’m here, because of the people.”
