Customer story
How Rihm Family Companies onboarded 90 years of knowledge across 21 locations
Rihm Family Companies is a fourth-generation family-owned business in the heavy-duty truck industry, with more than 350 people across 21 locations. JB Rihm, COO at Rihm Kenworth, needed to turn years of accumulated SOPs into a centralized training system every team member could reach. Onboarding had been run through desks, binders, and emails, with no consistent platform.
- 4.8/5 on G2
- SOC 2 certified
Results at a glance
350 employees
Onboarded without the COO
21
Locations
90 yrs
Of company knowledge
The challenge
The team had been collecting and documenting SOPs for over two years, but sharing them with new hires and the onboarding team still ran through desks, binders, and emails. There was no cloud-based, centralized platform that every team member could access across the organization. Rihm was also looking for a partner, not just a product, a team they could trust, and that relationship mattered as much as the features.
“We just really felt that the whole team at Whale and the founders mirrored our core values, and were a really good partnership for us.”
JB Rihm · COO, Rihm Kenworth The solution
How Whale solved it
With Whale, every team member gets a login and permissions tied to the SOPs relevant to their role, so they see what applies to them without getting lost in all the company information. Every playbook has its own subject matter expert and a review interval, so processes are updated by the people who own them. Automated training flows deploy to new hires as soon as they join, so onboarding no longer depends on who is in the office, and training can be assigned and completed remotely.
The results
350 people trained from one platform
Every team member across 21 locations onboards and trains from the same centralized system.
Processes owned and updated
Named owners and review intervals mean playbooks get updated by the people closest to them, not left to go stale.
Onboarding from anywhere
Remote assignment lets a new or existing employee be onboarded from any location, at any time, without the COO in the room.
Before and after Whale
Before Whale: SOPs shared through desks, binders, and emails
After Whale: 90 years of knowledge centralized in one platform
Before Whale: No centralized, cloud-based platform for the org
After Whale: Role-based logins show each person only what applies
Before Whale: Onboarding depended on who was in the office
After Whale: Training flows deploy the moment a new hire joins
Before Whale: Two years of documentation with no home
After Whale: Onboarding works remotely, without the COO in the room
Customer proof
“Setting our team up for success is a part of Rihm's ethos. This is why we chose Whale as our SOP platform.”
Key features used
The parts of Whale doing the heavy lifting.
Training flows
Automated onboarding sequences deploy to new hires the moment they join, with role-based permissions so each person sees what applies to them.
Learn moreSubject matter expert ownership
Every playbook is assigned to a named owner with a review interval, so the people who know a process best keep it current.
Learn moreAlice AI
All 90 years of company knowledge is centralized in one platform, accessible to every team member across all 21 locations.
Learn more
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