067: How Can OnBase Benefit Government Housing Authorities?

Steve Glisky:

Welcome to the Paperless Productivity Podcast, where we have experts give you the insights, know-how and resources to help you transform your workplace from paper to digital while making your work life better at the same time. 

Paul Gorman:

Hello, welcome to our Paperless Productivity Podcast. My name is Paul Gorman. I’m an account executive here at ImageSoft. ImageSoft is a platinum partner and a diamond support partner of the OnBase product. OnBase is manufactured by Hyland Software and is used for paperless solutions.

Joining us today, we have Rob and Rob is the Senior Industry Consultant for Government at Hyland Software. Today, we’re gonna be focusing on housing authorities. I’ve worked in housing authorities for many years before leaving the government service to start working, implementing paperless systems using OnBase.

And I’m sure you’re going to learn some valuable things today from Rob Johnson and from our conversation. Thanks for joining us.

Welcome, Rob.

Rob Johnson:

Paul. Thanks for having me, glad to be here.

Paul Gorman:

Fantastic. So, for our listeners, can you share with them a little bit about your background, and what you, what you do at Hyland?

Rob Johnson:

Absolutely. I’d be glad to Paul have 20 plus years’ experience working in the government space, held a lot of different roles selling into government.

I’ve been a lobbyist industry consultant with other organizations, and I’ve run political races and also ran for office myself in, in 2016. So, pretty diverse background as it relates to government and glad to be here today to visit with you and talk about Hyland and, and how we’re helping ImageSoft with the housing finance industry and, and how we’re able to kind of bridge that gap if you will in that area.

Paul Gorman:

Fantastic. Well, it’s great to have you here. So let’s start with can you share with our listeners share with us a few of the main areas of housing that benefit from an implementation of a OnBase digital solution?

Rob Johnson:

Sure. Well, when you think of housing authorities there’s a process where people are having to apply for services. That process alone could be very cumbersome when you’re having to manually enter that information in, and then manually process that through an approval, approval steps. So OnBase and our solutions just in that one area alone can really save an organization a lot of time and create a lot of value for the constituents.

Paul Gorman:

Fantastic. I mean, one of the things that we’ve talked about in the past, I know is the, the difference between a housing finance agency and a public housing authority both of them have, you know, fairly similar issues as it relates to making sure that the recipients of those programs qualify for, for, for the funding.

Can you break down for us a little bit, the kind of tasks or jobs that software. Can, can assist with, for housing finance agencies as opposed to public housing authorities?

Rob Johnson:

Sure. When you look at the finance authority, you’re looking at bringing in those funds. So you’re having to track a lot of different areas and a lot of different organizations where you’re pulling those dollars in from be they federal dollars that are coming into a community potentially state dollars that are coming in and, and tracking those dollars can be a bit of a challenge with our software we’re able to really streamline that process, Paul and, and have kind of a one stop shop with being able to, to really get your arms around those funding sources and, and truly where those dollars are going.

Paul Gorman:

Fantastic. Do you have any examples you can share with us about real live success with finance agencies? I know there’s a number of case studies out there. Can you share any of those with us here?

Rob Johnson:

So, we, we have quite a few Paul that we’ve, we’ve had success with. And, and I’ll, I’ll be, be candid with you having been here a short time at Hyland, those names don’t jump off the tip of my tongue, but what I can share with you is with our framework that we leverage at Hyland being able to go in and, and quickly execute within a finance housing, finance authority, or public housing authority. It, we we’re able to make very short work of that.

I know that we do have an example down in, in South Carolina. Where we’ve been able to leverage our solution and have had great success with capturing those tax dollars and with our, our new RPA solution. We were able to leverage that. And, and what we’re able to do is really track and, and get a better understanding of, [00:05:00] of those delinquent tax dollars and, and be able to help the county kind of bring some of that into light and it didn’t get away from them.

So just lots of examples of how we’ve been able to help with different housing component.

Paul Gorman:

I love hearing these customer success stories. One of my favorite ones relating to a public housing authority is the benefits that Cincinnati Metro Housing Authority achieved with their, with their OnBase solution. I know one of the one of the lines that sticks in my head was that they were able to pay for the entire OnBase implementation with savings for their staff time in, in less than a year, it was a huge return on investment. In government in general, do you, do you often see these kinds of high, high ROI returns?

Rob Johnson:

You know, we, we do see good ROIs with these types of solutions. But oftentimes that’s not the primary reason an agency’s looking for the solution. Oftentimes they’re looking to deal with either a, a staffing shortage that, that they’re dealing with, or the manual process has just kind of gotten away from them.

And so, what ends up happening is, is they implement the solution. They’re able to see that ROI and they’re able to reappropriate those dollars to more constituent facing activities and ends up being a win-win for not only the agency, but also the governing body.

Paul Gorman:

That’s fantastic. So, it’s like better customer service and you’re getting, you know you know, a, a more effective workforce.

Rob Johnson:

Absolutely.

Paul Gorman:

So, I’d like to finish up, we got 30 seconds here to pitch Hyland for housing. What, how would you summarize the benefits and the value that that Hyland can provide in this space?

Rob Johnson:

Well, I think Paul, the, the bottom line with that is we’ve been working with government for a long time, and we’ve been doing countless solutions in fact, over 170 different solutions around the United States.

And have had great success with them. When you look at housing some of those processes aren’t much different than many of the other agencies we’ve worked with. So, the success we’ve had, we just continue to build upon. So, we’ve just got a really strong track record in providing solutions to these agencies.

Paul Gorman:

Fantastic. You know, one of my favorite parts about implementing solutions in the housing, in the housing world is the fact that we can actually pyramid or add on to the Hyland solutions with our TrueSign product, our TrueSign product, basically at the end of almost every business process that we automate for a housing authority.

There’s they have to capture signatures. They gotta either capture approval signatures or in the case of landlords, when they’re, they’re doing landlord agreements or with tenants, when the tenants are signing off on their annual certifications, we’re capturing those signatures. You know, our signature product works directly with the Hyland workflow in OnBase to, to actually enable a completely paperless process.

Paul; Gorman:

Well, fantastic, Rob, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for your time today. I really, really am looking forward to our following up with you. We have future episodes planned and I hope everyone checks back for our continued discussion. If you have any questions about ImageSoft or about the OnBase product, I hope you guys can come out to our website www.imagesoftinc.com. Stop by and see us.

Steve Glisky:

Thanks again for joining us on this podcast. To learn more about ImageSoft, please visit imagesoftinc.com that’s ImageSoft I-N-C .com if you haven’t already done so, be sure to subscribe to Paperless Productivity, where we tackle some of the biggest paper-based pain points facing organizations today. We’ll see you next time.