Category: Jenna

Spending about two months interning at Baya, the leading furniture company in Vietnam, I have gained a lot of professional experience. I have learned my strengths and weaknesses while working these two months and can use this to help me in future job settings. Something I did well is adjusting to life in Vietnam and adjusting to working at Baya. I quickly got into an everyday routine making working at this company easier and giving it structure. I believe that I am a good working who gets my tasks done in a timely fashion and does my best during each task. However, of course, there is always room for growth. Sitting in an office all day everyday during the week is exhausting so I think I need to work on dealing with that. I get bored and distracted very easily. I think that in the future I need to work on my ability to focus for extended periods of time and not lose motivation for what I am working on. I am also a big procrastinator which is something else I will need to work on and try to fix.

This experience has contributed to my professional development because it was my first internship. I learned a lot and gained experience in the workplace working a full-time job. I will be able to use all my skills in my future jobs and future career. This experience has contributed to my career aspirations because I know in the future I do not want to work in a similar setting to where I am working now and this will help guide me to doing what I want and figuring out what jobs I would not be happy with. Some key takeaways I got from this experience are being able to see what the workplace is like in another country. I have also learned new skills that I will be able to use in the future. For example, I have learned how to make a dashboard in Excel and on Tableau. I am very grateful for my time and internship in Vietnam and cannot believe it is almost time to leave.

In the past eight weeks, there has been a lot that has happened during my internship at Baya. I have undergone a few accomplishments to be proud of. For the past few weeks I have been working on making a dashboard on revenue for my company. My supervisor would like the dashboard to contain monthly sales (target vs actual), UPT, ASP, and APT by month, items bought by store code, and quantity of items sold by month. This dashboard is also updatable and contains different charts and graph relating to data that people in the office has sent to me. Since making the dashboard was one of my main objectives throughout this internship, I would say that completing the dashboard has been the time I felt most proud of during my internship. I finished this dashboard a couple days ago and think that I am completely done, my supervisor just needs to check it over. The dashboard that I have made is connected to some of my biggest professional accomplishments during the internship. I have had the privilege of learning a lot in order to make this dashboard. I gained a lot of knowledge about the supply chain and how a business works. In addition, learning how to make a dashboard is also a professional accomplishment. I learned how to create a dashboard on both excel and Tableau, two different computer programs. I would say learning all these things are big professional accomplishments that I do not know if I could have learned without this internship.

Living in Ho Chi Minh City, I have also learned a lot and have began to look at life differently. In Vietnam I have learned a lot about different cultures and foods, and I have seen how different life is outside of the United States. One of the biggest things I will look at differently is language barriers. Living in Vietnam for two months, I have begun to relate to people in the United States who have trouble speaking English. I never understood the struggles of being in a country where you do not speak the native language. I often feel very bad not being able to communicate with people and now I know how people who do not speak English in the United States feel. Something I will also look at differently is what I want for my future and the type of job I would like. I have been very confused about what I want to do once I graduate and this job has given me some guidance about what I would like to do and what I do not want to do. Below is a picture from Halong Bay:

During my internship, I have learned a lot about the supply industry by working in the supply chain department. One thing I have learned is the different steps that go into putting out a product and that the idea to the actual execution can take three to six months. In a business there are different departments and subsections within that department. For example, at Baya, there is a planning, execution, and control department. In the planning department there is product, purchase, and supply. These departments have key potential indications to measure their performance in quality, revenue, delivery, inventory, and cost. My focus has been on revenue. Aside from revenue by product line or by shops and the web, there are different key potential indicators to measure revenue and the company’s success. Some more measurements are if the total revenue matches the target revenue or APT which is the average per each transaction. There is a lot that goes behind the scenes of a business that I had no idea about. Learning about a business is very new and interesting to me, I think I have gained skills and knowledge that will be useful in the future that I would not have gained if I were not working at Baya this summer.

Some strengths that my company has is everyone is very nice and likeable. All the workers are friendly and approachable which is a good quality for a company to have. Another strength is that everyone I have spoken to is bilingual, a very useful skill to have in the workplace. One weakness I can think of is that a lot of the furniture is low quality. There are many Facebook reviews about furniture becoming damaged even though it was owned in a short period of time. Also, one of the first days working here we were told about a defect in a chair and about how the company did not even recall the chair. I think that this company needs much better quality control and to not ignore problems that arise with their products. Baya has a lot of opportunities to grow bigger and become more well known throughout the world since it is the largest furniture supplier in Vietnam. One threat the company has is its poor customer reviews. After reading the reviews on Facebook, I saw that many reviews are negative and talk about bad customer service or damaged items.

                An amazing moment in my HCMC life was the view from the top of Black Lady mountain. This was my first time hiking up a mountain and being on the top of a mountain. Seeing the view was beautiful and a very cool experience.  I had never seen anything like it. Below is a picture I took from the top of the mountain.

There are many challenging aspects of my internship at Baya. These challenging aspects provide new opportunities and chances for me to learn a lot. At my internship, I think that the most challenging part of my internship is learning business skills that I had no knowledge of before. I have learned about key potential indicators and how to determine them, this was difficult because I have never heard pf them before. Researching and trying to understand the supply chain was difficult as well. I have been learning so much information and although sometimes it is difficult to research, it is very useful to read about. Also, I have learned about a software called Tableau to make graphs and charts from data. I have also learned to how interpret data by making graphs, pivot tables, and turning that into a dashboard on excel. I am currently making a dashboard on revenue using excel. I have been gaining a lot of new skills from the challenges of my internship.

The best feature of my internship are the new skills I am learning. I think that these are very important things to know that I would have never learned before. I appreciate all the new things I have learned, and it is all very different from what I have experienced before. I have never worked with the Tableau software before and have never tried interpreting data on excel. I have also never learned about the supply chain and how products are made and sold. I have enjoyed all the food I have tried in Ho Chi Minh City. All the different foods like ramen and pho are new to me and unlike things I have tried before. I come from an Italian family and we usually do not try many new foods. However, I have really been enjoying the different Vietnamese and other types of cuisines that Ho Chi Minh City has to offer. My favorite dish I have discovered is Kimchee fried rice. I have started to really enjoy kimchee after trying it at a place across from my work. Now, I have tried many foods that incorporate kimchee in it, but my favorite is with rice. I am excited to have my friends and family back home try some of these new foods. Below is a picture I took while on a walk outside my workplace.

For the past couple weeks, I have been learning a lot about key potential indicators, the supply chain, and production of products. I condensed my focus down to revenue and will focus on these aspects for the remainder of my time with Baya Furniture. After studying multiple categories of the supply chain and learning about them all, this week I have only been studying revenue because it the most interesting to me. Some new terms I came across this week is APT which stands for average per transaction and conversation rate, both relating to revenue. The APT is self-explanatory, the average amount a customer spends during a transaction. Conversation rate is how many visitors complete a transaction. This week I have also been studying a software called Tableau and created a few charts on revenue. In addition, I have begun studying what a dashboard is and how to make one from both Tableau and Excel. In the last four weeks I hope to gain more skills in this area and create an actual dashboard with data. I also plan to meet with the retail manager and discuss what she would like to see on a dashboard and talk about increasing conversion rates and APT for better sales.

                My supervisor is very nice and helpful when I ask him questions. He gives us goals each week which is a good guide on what I need to achieve. My supervisor gave some good tips on how to interact with people in the office. He mentioned how they are all a little shy and said that saying hello will help them become comfortable with you. I took his advice and started saying hi to people in the workplace, everyone is very nice. Additionally, I have noticed that just by saying a simple Vietnamese phrase like “Xin chao,” they will become very happy that I am using Vietnamese and trying to connect with them.

                I have learned many things from living and working in HCMC. One important thing I have learned is to try new things and explore out of my comfort zone while adapting to a new country. I have tried so many new foods that I did not even know existed. I even tried fish one day even though I do not eat any kind of seafood at all. I have made many friends too due to this. I have learned so much more and will continue to learn more while being in HCMC.

My supervisor is the manager in the Baya office. He was very nice and welcoming upon meeting him and I can also tell that he is very intelligent. He introduced us to everyone else in the office, who were also all very friendly. My supervisor took us out to lunch the first day and introduced us to the company. Then he went over their mission statement, values, why the company name was changed, and any other information we should know about Baya. Also, he let us explore the retail store for two hours and gave us each a desk. Everyone in my team/department is also nice, asking us if we need any help and making us feel welcomed in the office. I am not sure what my supervisor does day to day, but he goes back and forth between Saigon and Hanoi a lot, he has been in Hanoi all week.

I am working in the supply department of the Baya office. I have learned a lot about the product development while being here. I been researching key performance indicators for the company to strengthen product development in different categories and different departments. Key performance indicators are measures to evaluate the success of a company. After looking at many different aspects, I chose to mainly focus on revenue. Studying how to enhance the process will ultimately help the brand and the customers. Every day I get to work at 8 am and stay until 5 pm and usually take about an hour break for lunch. There is always free fruit at the end of the day.

An interesting personal experience I had in HCMC that surprised me was visiting the orphanage last week. I did not really want to go volunteer especially since it was so early in the morning, but I went anyway because I signed up. However, I am happy that I went and would go again because it was a very rewarding experience and I genuinely enjoyed visiting the people in the orphanage. Although communication was difficult, we were still able to connect with the kids by playing board games and puzzles with them. It was amazing how kind and happy the kids in the orphanage were towards us despite their less than ideal living situations. I have volunteered many different places in my life and have always enjoyed helping with different organizations, but this experience was one of my favorites and was unique from the others.

Below is a picture of fruit and a picture from a restaurant by my workplace.

                I am working for Baya, a furniture company in Vietnam that just recently changed their name from Uma. Baya is a chain retail company established in 2006 with different stores in multiple locations throughout Vietnam and a website for online purchases. They develop and design products for a household influenced by Vietnamese culture and are the largest furniture and interior decoration company in Vietnam. I am working in the Baya office, which is right across from one of their furniture retail stores. In the office I have my own desk and I am working in the supply department.

The first few days of my internship were difficult because it was hard adjusting to a new job some where I was not familiar with yet and I do not think I adjust to new situations easily. There were a lot of new concepts, ideas, and vocabulary words I had to learn which was difficult at first because it was overwhelming and a lot of these concepts I had never heard of before. After a few days, I can already tell that I have learned a lot and working is beginning to get easier as I get into a daily routine. I also now know much more about the supply industry and know how to determine and calculate key performance indicators in different categories for a business.

The office I work in is very nice and in a nice area as well with restaurants and shops around us. In addition, the commute to and from work is great and very convenient, only about 15 minutes and there is not much traffic. I enjoy having a coworker from UF working with me who is also mechanical engineering because I have someone I know at the office and someone to ride to and from work with. I would guess that there is about 30 people in the workplace with me. Everyone has their own desk and each cluster of desks is a different department. During work orientation I was introduced to everyone in the office and went out to lunch with my coworker, boss, and another worker in the office. Everyone here is extremely nice and friendly and everyone that I have encountered so far speaks English. Everyday there is free water, coffee, tea, and fruit. There is a good dynamic in the office because everyone was so welcoming from the moment that I met them.

Throughout the past week in Vietnam, I have learned so much about Vietnamese culture and have seen so many new things. One event that was culturally informative that I enjoyed a lot was visiting different temples. Being raised into a Catholic family and going to a Catholic high school, I have never been exposed to any other types of religion or visited any place of worship besides the Catholic Church. It was interesting comparing a Buddhist temple to the Catholic Church and each religions’ beliefs. For example, in these temples I learned about enlightenment and reincarnation which are two things not embedded into Catholic faith. However, although very different, Buddhist temples and the Catholic Church both emphasize religious props and places of worship are very decorative. Although the two religions are very different, at the end of the day, they are both are a place that anyone is welcome to enter and pray, join a service, and learn more about the religion. Today I am going to a Catholic mass in the afternoon and I am excited to see how this church will compare to ones I have visited in the United States and if it will be any different.

            Vietnam is different than the expectations I had. I expected to have a huge culture shock, however, having an apartment in the area of a large city makes it seem like I have not even left the United States sometimes. Although a part of me expected the city to be less developed, I was still a surprised that a lot of areas do not have air conditioning, especially since this country is so hot and humid. Vietnam is not as different from the United States as I imagined, and I think that the biggest thing that has surprised me is that many restrooms have no toilet paper or soap. Lastly, I think it is extremely impressive how many Vietnamese people can speak English and it makes me wish that more people in the United States, including myself, were able to speak another language besides English

Each day I grow to enjoy being in Vietnam more and I know there is still so much more to explore regarding culture. During my time here I would like to learn more about manners and if I am acting properly since there are some things considered rude in this country that are not considered rude in the United States, like crossing your fingers. I am also looking forward to seeing what other cultural foods Vietnamese people eat. Lastly, I am into history and I want to read more and learn more about the history of Vietnam leading up to present day Vietnam.