We’re gearing up for Velocity 2019! This second annual customer conference, hosted by ImageSoft, is a high-energy mix of success stories, industry trend sharing and a sneak peek at new solutions to help courts, insurance organizations and government agencies more quickly achieve their business goals by adopting paperless processes.
Kevin Ledgister, marketing manager for ImageSoft, gives all the details in this episode about what to expect at this year’s Velocity conference, and why it’s a can’t-miss event for anyone looking to increase their organization’s productivity, efficiency and connectivity.
[expand title=”Read Transcript”]| Kate Storey: | Welcome to the Paperless Productivity Podcast, where we give you the tips, tricks, and know-how to solve your biggest workflow challenges and bring greater productivity into your workplace every day.
It’s an acceleration of education, the momentum of which is unstoppable. The swift pace in which attendees can adapt these learning techniques is quite impressive, but you better hurry or it’s going to pass you by. What do I mean by this rapid exchange of synonyms? Why it could only mean one thing. Velocity. For the uninitiated, Velocity is the name of ImageSoft’s annual customer conference. Where courts, insurance, and government organizations from across the country gather to learn how they can create a powerful paperless environment. It’s become a hub for information sharing and an opportunity for like-minded forward thinking leaders to envision an even more efficient organization for the people they serve. To tell us a bit more about Velocity and what attendees can gain from the event, I’m here with ImageSoft’s marketing manager Kevin Ledgister. Welcome back to the show, Kevin. |
| Kevin Ledgister: | Thanks for having me back again. |
| Kate: | So first things first. Why don’t you tell me, in your words, what Velocity is and what it means for attendees. |
| Kevin: | Sure. Velocity is ImageSoft’s customer conference where we bring in organizations from multiple industries to share their stories of success, discuss trends and developments and various disciplines, and to get a look at new releases in our solutions or sneak peek in what’s in our pipeline and we started this last year. We called it Velocity because we believe the solutions will help our customers achieve their business goals faster by adopting paperless processes.
So last year we held it in February, which in hindsight, probably not the best time to draw customers to Detroit and have to put up with some snow. Fortunately, the weather was really good but this year we’re holding in May on May 21st and 22nd, which is a great time actually to be in Michigan, so I’m looking forward to that. |
| Kate: | Yeah. That’s going to be beautiful. So how long have you guys been hosting the conference? |
| Kevin: | So Velocity’s somewhat new for us. We started with the conference last year calling it Velocity, but we used to have a government conference for years, which got narrowed to just a justice summit, but it left out many of our other customers and for those other customers that we left out, we’d have a separate conference around one of our solutions, OnBase, which is an Enterprise Contact Management System that we partner with Hyland software with, and we would have these other conferences and customers just loved what they learned from each other. They loved getting to know each other, and we thought, why not combine what we’ve done into one high energy conference and that’s what we did, and we called it Velocity. |
| Kate: | For those who have never attended, what’s it like? Can you give us a picture of what attendees are going to experience? |
| Kevin: | Well, besides snacks and food and a lot of fun, the conference is just a great experience. The first day we offer paid training options, for system admin and for people who want to brush up on their OnBase skills and learn different advanced features in terms of what they can do. And then for decision makers and higher level people, judges, and executives and VP’s, we’re offering a round of golf at The Inn of St. John’s, which is just a beautiful, beautiful spot to play golf. It’s in Plymouth, Michigan and it’s actually fairly close to the conference location is but then end the day with a reception, and we’ll get a chance to catch up and network at the conference.
So, that’s the preview day before the conference. Then in the afternoon, the next day, what we do is we have it packed full of sessions. So, we start off with a number of large group sessions where we’ll have the customer spotlight and a first for this year, actually a first for any conference that we’ve done, we’re actually going to have a session by our own internal staff to show how we use our solutions internally. So while we’ve always believed deeply in the value of what we do for our customers, it really said something when we follow our own advice and demonstrate the type of operational efficiency gains that we tend to advertise. So for instance, we just did a webinar on how we use the OnBase Solution, for instance, with our human resource departments and our human resource department’s really a two person team and a number of years ago, back when I started, I think we had 40 employees and we had a two person team and now we’ve got over triple the number of employees and we’re still at a two person team and it’s not a two person team that’s pulling their hair out. It’s a two person team that actually operates in a calm manner, and that’s because we implemented this system that provides them with a lot of operational efficiency gains, that’s automated manual processes so that they can really focus on the important task, that human relation task and that’s just a great example of how we benefited from what we tell our customers and how they can benefit from this system as well too. So, we think it’s just a great, all around, for customers to hear that we actually are using the system that we’re using. And then, we’re going to hear also sessions by Hyland in terms of what’s new and what’s coming down the pipeline; some of the changes that are happening with respect to the OnBase Enterprise Management Platform. Then in the afternoon, we’ve got a number of different breakout sessions where we’re going to have breakout sessions focused on courts, general government, prosecution, insurance, and also some general business back office solutions. These will include customer spotlights, solution demonstrations, industry discussions. So we’re pretty excited about this. Last year we only had eight or nine breakout sessions and this year, we’re hoping to have 12 to 14 sessions. So we’re really excited about it. |
| Kate: | Are there any special breakout sessions we should mention while we’re talking about it? |
| Kevin: | One of the ones that I’m really looking forward to is the session on multi-media evidence playback. Our prosecution customers have always struggled with this and if you think about it, whenever it comes to police work or prosecution, have to look at all the evidence, particularly video evidence, it can be coming from a variety of sources and also a variety of platforms so you might get phone that comes off the police body cam. It could be somebody’s cell phone. It could be CCTV recordings and those kind of multiple versions as well.
So to bring all that together in a way that makes sense and a way that can help people make sense in terms of what actually happens is extremely critical and then also making it work well in a courtroom and playing well in a courtroom is also a huge challenge as well, too. So it’s a huge deal for prosecutors and it’s a big deal. It’s amazing how some cases have turned because someone was able to look at video, and not just look at video the way that we look at it, but to look at it from pixel accurate translation and how they can see how very, very small details actually affect how things are actually going on. It’s really incredible. It’s a lot of fun. It’s a great session and we think that from our prosecution standpoint, anybody that’s really interested in video and just curious about what it all means and what it can all do, I think can have a lot of fun taking a look at that session. We should also mention that our spotlight by Cobb County and Cobb County is the fifth largest county in the state of Georgia and they became our customer a year ago and they’re using OnBase in 37 different departments, which is amazing. It’s phenomenal to think about someone that had that kind of vision that could really use that solution to help go paperless and become more efficient in their government services to the constituents and so it’s a pretty powerful story. We’re excited about it and I think a lot of our customers are going to have a lot to gain from hearing how they approached it, how they got other teams to buy in on the vision, and how they deployed it and what it’s done for them. So, we’re pretty pumped about that. |
| Kate: | Great. Yeah. Is there anything new or anything else we want to talk about that’s happening at the conference this year that’s going to be really cool for people to participate in? |
| Kevin: | Yes. The Genius Center actually is a spot that we’re really excited about. It worked really well last year so we’re bringing it back again this year and that’s just where we have just experts there that customers can talk to, whether it’s about an issue that they’re facing, whether it’s about a business process that they’re trying to solve or a functionality thing they’re trying to get their hands around. Or, maybe, they just want to bounce something off of us and just to hear what we think to make sure that they’re going down the right direction. So, that’s a pretty cool thing that we’re doing. |
| Kate: | Genius Center is a cool name. I like that. |
| Kevin: | Yeah. It is a cool name calling it Genius Center and we’re getting T-shirts this year and hopefully it’ll be a lot of fun for them. |
| Kate: | Nice. Are there going to be some partners that are part of the conference as well? Are they going to be there? |
| Kevin: | Yeah. We’re going to have a couple of our partners, Hyland Software, of course, is one of our big partners with their OnBase Solutions, they’re going to be there sponsoring an event. We also have Kodak that’s going to be coming there as well too, and they’ll get a chance to talk with customers, so that’s another one that’s there. So customers love Velocity because the interaction that they get. Sometimes, it’s just a lunchtime conversation that turns a light bulb on makes their conference worth it. So we’re really excited that our partners are coming and they’re going to be there with our customers and customers get a chance to interact with their customers as well. |
| Kate: | Do you ever have non customers that attend Velocity? |
| Kevin: | So one of the things that our customers are particular to ask us is, do you have a user conference that we can come to? Do you have a community of people that we can associate with and learn from and benefit from as well as share; have some sort of information sharing. So, we say that we do on paper, but when we invite them to the conference and cut them loose and say you can talk to anybody, ask anybody any question that you want. Enjoy the conference and we’ll follow up with you after the fact, it’s a pretty positive experience for our prospects that have come, our non-customers, and it’s one that we’re very confident about and I think on that score, I think every non-customer that has joined us at a conference has ended up being a customer because of what they see and what they’ve experienced. And so, we think that’s cool that after the conference, they see that we are really people of integrity, which is one of our core values. That what we say on paper and proposals, is really who we are in real life and that’s pretty awesome. |
| Kate: | It’s a pretty good track record. Is there a cost to attend Velocity? |
| Kevin: | There isn’t for the one day of sessions and all the meals and everything included. The only thing that we charge for is the first day of paid training sessions and that’s just because the cost with respect to computers and equipment and technology that we have to leverage beyond the cost of conference so we ask people to just pay toward the training sessions, but otherwise the evening reception the night before, the night of the 21st, and all the sessions on the 22nd, those are all free and no charge to our customers and those who are invited. |
| Kate: | That’s a pretty good value. So, where can people go for more information and perhaps register to attend Velocity? |
| Kevin: | Sure. Actually if you go to our ImageSoftinc.com/events website, you’ll just go down to events. You’ll see all of our events done by date. You can see Velocity in May, click on that, and it’ll take you right to the registration page where you can sign up for the event, select whatever sessions you want and also go through the process of registering for any training or golf, if you want to do that as well.
And one other thing that we want to encourage our attendees as well too, is that we’re going to be doing some video testimonials this year. So we hope to capture people on video just sharing their thoughts about the conference or thoughts about their experience with their software. If you’ve always wanted to appear in pictures and have a chance to tell your story, we’ll help you tell your story in a great way. |
| Kate: | Come camera ready then, huh? |
| Kevin: | Yeah. Come camera ready. |
| Kate: | There you go. Nice. All right, great. Well, I know that’s just one more thing to look forward to this spring, and we really hope you’ll join us for this year’s Velocity conference.
We really think you’re going to get a lot of value out of it. So for all the information on this episode and to learn more about Velocity, make sure you head over to ImageSoft’s website at ImageSoftInc.com. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today and if you haven’t already 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. Thanks again for joining us today for this episode of Paperless Productivity. This podcast is sponsored by ImageSoft, the paperless process people, which you can learn more about at ImageSoftInc.com. That’s ImageSoftInc.com. Join us next time where you’ll learn how to harness the power of technology, super charge efficiency, and accomplish your organizations goals. |