070: Utilizing OnBase in the Department of Revenue

Paul Gorman:  

Hello and welcome to the podcast. My name is Paul Gorman and I’m a Senior Account Executive here at ImageSoft. I have over 30 years’ experience working in all across the country, within and alongside government agencies. And I’m thrilled to be the moderator today as we discuss Departments of Revenue. I’m joined by Rob Johnson of Hyland Software, and we’ll be discussing how the OnBase system can benefit departments of revenue. 

OnBase is one of the most versatile tools on the market, and it’s highly configurable to help organizations fulfill industry specific needs. Rob has worked in government agencies in a career that has spanned over 20 years. We were talking ahead of time and we said between the two of us, we’re both are going to retire. 

Rob, it’s great to have you, man. 

Rob Johnson: 

Good day to you, sir. 

Paul Gorman:  

So, I, I got some questions for us to talk about today, and let me lead off with this. Can you discuss the multiple ways that states and governments raise revenue and how that affects their OnBase solution? 

Rob Johnson: 

Absolutely. Thanks for the question. So, states and local governments typically bring dollars in from just a few different ways. Taxes is the one that people are most common with, and that could be property taxes, sales tax, income tax, and then we also see fees and fines. And so, when you look at how those dollars come into an agency, they need to be processed, they need to be worked through, that process has always been long, been a manual process. 

Now OnBase can help with batching supporting documentation. With that information we can extract data quickly and we can automatically extract data. And then finally we have RPA that we can leverage for those repetitive manual tasks. 

Paul Gorman: 

Well, I’ll get to RPA in a little bit here. That’s pretty exciting. But can you talk a little bit about that extracting of the data? I know Hyland has a couple of tools for that one Advanced Capture the other Brainware. How do these two tools differ? When will we use one or the other? 

Rob Johnson:  

Absolutely. Good question, Paul. So, the tools themselves are actually fairly similar in terms of what they’re able to do. Our Advanced Capture tool is really designed for smaller volume applications, and our Brainware tool is meant for large more robust volumes.  

Paul Gorman: 

Gotcha. So, in Advanced Capture, there’s that form recognition. And then there’s the extraction. So, the document comes in, you figure out what form it is, and then you do the extraction from it. And Brainware, that isn’t necessarily part of what is required. Brainware has an artificial intelligence that recognizes what type of form it is. Is that accurate? 

Rob Johnson:  

It does, it does. But when you think of Brainware and Advanced Capture in a Department of Revenue application, a lot of those fields are fairly static. And so, the Brainware tool is really able to handle those larger volumes much better. And then our Advanced Capture tool is, is really dealing with those smaller, smaller volumes. So, it’s, it really depends upon the department or agency and the scope of the project.  

Paul Gorman: 

Great answer. So that forms processing technology and Advanced Capture technology both of which a apply in this case. Which one in your opinion, is more effective tool in helping departments of revenue address their mission? 

Rob Johnson:  

Sure. Well, not to give a political answer, Paul, but you know, my, my response is both are, are, are, are effective. And the reason I say that is it really depends upon the application. It depends upon what the agency’s wanting to achieve. And it also depends upon how the constituents engaging that agency. We’re seeing a huge rise in, in mobile technology and have for a long time, and having that good user experience with the form on a mobile device is, is really important to make sure that we have a, a, a good, steady product for, for government agencies to leverage. 

Paul Gorman: 

So, the value in capturing the form data can, can be varied. I mean, it’s, it’s using the data from capture or forms, to drive workflows and increase the processing capacity. Really shortening the process timelines. 

Rob Johnson:  

Absolutely. The other piece to that is reduction in errors. And if people have handwriting like I do much cleaner input.  

Paul Gorman: 

So how many revenue agencies currently are using Hyland software solutions? 

Rob Johnson:  

So nearly 200 across the US and Canada, Paul.  

Paul Gorman:  

200. 

Rob Johnson:  

Yes, sir.  

Paul Gorman: 

That’s, that’s amazing. Is there a breakdown in terms of level of government? 

Rob Johnson:  

Sure. So, between federal, state and then local government it’s about a third a piece. States a little heavier, but we really see equal representation amongst the, the three levels of government.  

Paul Gorman: 

Fantastic. ImageSoft has some revenue experience as well. We, we do some work with a large southern state, it has to remain nameless. We’re, we’re doing records retention and records management on the back end of a capture system for them. 

But in North Carolina, they had a very interesting requirement and it kind of gets to the heart of what happens when you start peeling back the onion as to what these revenue agencies do. They needed a solution to allow, allow them to send notices out to people who are, have the power of attorney for, for other taxpayers. So, their system uses the OnBase system, leverages the OnBase solution to actually allow them to transmit those notices out to POAs. Can you share with us maybe a local government example of where… 

Rob Jonson: 

Absolutely. 

Paul Gorman:  

Hyland Software has done some work there?  

Rob Johnson: 

Absolutely. Again, in the, the southern of the United States a county Paul, that has leveraged us to help with taxes and process around a hundred thousand returns annually. And, what was happening is it was just a very manual process. It was taking about six months to get those fully processed from, from start to finish. We brought in some automation technology as it relates to capture and workflow, and significantly reduced that number. I’m gonna speak just a little bit later about our, an RPA tool. And they were leveraging RPA and I’ll get into more detail then, but they’re now leveraging our RPA tool as well. So really exciting to see the technology grow and expand within our existing customer base. 

Paul Gorman:  

That’s fantastic. One of the areas that, that, that, that, that I’ve recently noticed is the use of case management technologies and it’s less common in departments of revenue than the, the electronic forms capture and workflow. How do you see and these many advances there’s been a lot of them recently in Hyland CMS technology affecting revenue solutions in the future?  

Rob Johnson: 

Absolutely. And I answer that two ways if I could, Paul. I think first is Hyland has done a tremendous job integrating with a number of, of, of case management systems and ERP systems that could be leveraged by local governments or state governments. And, and, and that’s proved to be very helpful as counties are going through that, that journey. But the second piece to that, leveraging Hyland’s case management tool. In the event that someone doesn’t have a, a robust system already in place, we have a system that really will come in and fill in the gaps for them. It’ll, it’ll help them check a lot of boxes as it relates to audit constituent inquiries and collections. And those are some of the key drivers that departments of revenue especially are looking for in a case management system. 

Paul Gorman: 

It’s interesting when we start talking about case management, we, we lose people. Really, it’s a term of art now. When people, when people hear case management, I think in some cases they’re thinking, like a, like a law firm managing their cases or a court managing a case. But, but a CMS is, is really built around a knowledge worker. It’s an empowering that knowledge worker who solves cases or issues without necessarily following a repeatable process. So usually, the specific issues on the case are gonna dictate what process the knowledge worker is gonna follow. 

Rob Johnson:  

Absolutely.  

Paul Gorman: 

We’ve seen, we’ve, we’ve seen them as varied as investigative audit collection, constituent inquiry. Each of them winds up collectively being referred to as a case. And it’s interesting to me to, to think about the OnBase CMS as being a gap filler for, for aging ERP systems because there are an awful lot of these aging ERP systems and CMS systems that are currently out there in place. OnBase really acts like a life extender, if you will, providing value to the agency by extending the life of an existing investment. 

Rob Johnson:  

Well, Paul, if you think about it from the standpoint of a constituent and, and when we go to market, that’s what our thinking is, is how does this benefit the constituent? And if someone calls into a Department of Revenue with an inquiry, and the case worker takes a lot of information, if that’s jotted down on a piece of paper and possibly filed. I’m throwing out a lot of possibles there. The chances of them going and being able to retrieve that file, then being able to read the handwriting of the notes that were taken, and their notes may be different than the notes someone else would’ve taken. It’s a challenge. If you look at a CMS system where someone’s able to go in and have a template, collect key data and have that at the fingertips of another knowledge worker who could access it very easily six months or five years down the road. It provides such a better constituent experience than what we see out there today with, with manual processes. So, I’m glad you brought up the case component, Paul. It’s, I think, sometimes lost when we talk about these types of solutions, but it’s, it really is important.  

Paul Gorman: 

Yeah, absolutely. Can you speak now about the RPA technology? RPA robotic process automation how can it provide a productivity boost to departments of revenue? They’re looking to address their ability to process, I dunno, returns, correspondence, forms. How would they use it? 

Rob Johnson:  

Paul, think about it this way. RPA is, is designed to automatically process very repetitive, repeatable tasks. And so, when you think about a Department of Revenue there’s a lot of repetitive tasks. So, if you’re able to implement an RPA solution to do a number of those different activities, that frees up your knowledge workers to spend more constituent facing time and do other tasks to make that department much more efficient. The other component is we’re able to not only reduce errors through those tasks being done through RPA, we’re also to able to put some really good reporting metrics around that. So, as we’re doing analysis on ways we can improve, we have some really solid numbers there to help with that. 

Paul Gorman: 

Fantastic. So, with, with, with RPA do you have some additional use cases you can share with us? 

Rob Johnson:  

Sure.  

Paul Gorman: 

How RPA has been used in revenue? 

Rob Johnson:  

Absolutely. So, I, I mentioned the county in the, in the southeastern United States that is leveraging us within their Department of Revenue. From an RPA perspective, what they were able to do is shrink the amount of time it was taking to process returns from days, weeks and just work on those exceptions. So mainly they were being processed through the RPA tool, and we saw a lot of those repetitive pieces just happen so quickly that they were ahead of, of the folks doing the, the manual processing. So, they’re now in a position where they’re looking to see what are some other use cases even outside of the Department of Revenue where RPA could be a benefit to the county. So, it really has been a success story, and not only for the county itself, but also for the end users, the constituents.  

Paul Gorman: 

Absolutely. If the constituents are getting returns processed faster, that that’s all, all to the good. So, well, thank you for your time, Rob. I think this was a wonderful discussion and I hope we’ve uncovered some of the mysteries surrounding OnBase for Departments of Revenue. 

Rob Johnson: 

Paul, thank you. 

Paul Gorman:  

Thanks to everyone for tuning in today. If you have questions or you’re looking to learn more about OnBase feel free to visit us at www.imagesoftinc.com. Reach out to the team and schedule a demo or chat about what we can do for your organization. Thank you and have a great day.