An Intern’s Day 1 at Vatico

1. What are my thoughts?

My first day at Vatico was both exciting and eye-opening. One of the initial challenges was adapting to unfamiliar tools and platforms such as Trello and Zoho. Without prior exposure to these systems, it initially felt slightly overwhelming trying to understand the workflows and available functions. However, I also recognised that becoming comfortable with such tools is part of adapting to a professional working environment.

One important takeaway from the first day was the emphasis on approaching problems from a “big picture” perspective. Instead of immediately diving into technical implementation, there was a strong focus on understanding the broader idea, visualising the data flow, and identifying the business problem first. This was particularly meaningful to me because similar concepts had previously been introduced in school. During my Data Structures and Algorithms classes, there was also a focus on understanding the “big picture”, the high-level idea, before even thinking about the solution to the problem. We would also often break the problem down into smaller problems and draw the data structure, be it an array or a binary tree, to visualise it. It was interesting to see how these ideas are applied directly in a real workplace setting.

Another area that stood out to me was learning about the operations and policy in Vietnam, especially regarding sales transactions and taxation. As a consumer in Singapore, I rarely think about reporting sales taxes myself. However, working in a company in Vietnam, Value Added Tax (VAT) declarations have to be considered as an important part of the transaction process. Vatico has sales channels across different countries. Thus, in Vietnam, the company separately issues the VAT invoice. This introduces additional considerations when designing PostgreSQL scripts and handling transaction data.

I was also introduced to the concept of Cash-On-Delivery (COD) transactions. One interesting challenge is ensuring that such payments are accurately reflected in the company’s systems. My understanding is that when couriers successfully deliver products, payment confirmation is recorded either through cash collection or QR code payment systems such as Viettel. Vatico then needs to reconcile these payments by comparing the statements provided by the courier companies against the company’s own bank statements to confirm that the collected funds have been transferred correctly.

2. What I’d like about my first day?

One thing I appreciated was the company’s emphasis on understanding the “why” behind problems before jumping into solutions. The discussions were not purely technical, but also focused on understanding business operations and how data supports decision-making.

I also enjoyed being exposed to real-world operational challenges, especially regarding taxation systems, payment tracking, and transaction workflows. These were areas that I had not deeply considered before, and it was interesting to see how technical systems must align closely with business processes.

Additionally, I appreciated the welcoming environment and the opportunity to learn about tools and workflows commonly used within the company.

3. What can be improved when it comes to the onboarding process?

One possible improvement would be providing earlier access to Trello, on top of the training and onboarding slides provided on the first day. For someone unfamiliar with this platform, having early access could help reduce the initial learning curve and make it easier to navigate the workflow independently.

Another possible improvement could be having a clearer overview of the overall system architecture and operational flow during onboarding. This would help interns better understand how the various business processes, databases, payment systems, and reporting pipelines connect from the beginning.