For this episode, we took Paperless Productivity on the road for a very special episode – ImageSoft’s annual user conference, Velocity 2019! In this episode, we speak with several of the special speakers and guests at Velocity about the insights they’ve learned and shared with the conference’s attendees.
[expand title=”Read the 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 great productivity into your workplace every day. All right, well we are here at Velocity 2019. This is Kate Story here with Kevin Ledgister and I think we are ready to kick off all of the sessions today. |
| Kevin Ledgister: | Yes, we are. Hi Kate, how are you? |
| Kate: | All right, thanks. As you can hear we have a lot of attendees here are just kind of getting settled for the day. They’re starting to pick up all their packets. We already had all the opening sessions. Can you tell us a little bit about what was discussed in those opening sessions, Kevin. |
| Kevin: | Yeah well first of all we were visited by Steve Jobs. |
| Kate: | Oh yes? ImageSoft’s version, right? |
| Kevin: | ImageSoft’s version of Steve Jobs. Actually, it was quite inspirational. We had the CEO present a lot of quotes from Steve Jobs, even dressed as Steve Jobs. |
| Kate: | Nice. |
| Kevin: | But, it was really cool to just hear just in terms of innovations and pursuing, doing things that makes things easy for a customer because we’ve done the hard work, you know, behind the scenes. So, that was pretty inspirational. That was really cool. Then our second session was actually done by our actual ImageSoft staff where we talked about all different ways were using the OnBase product whether it’s to onboard new applicants, where it’s tracking new applicants for HR, whether it’s doing the financial close in terms of AB processing every quarter, or whether it’s making our IT tickets or customer service. So, part of the reason we had this session that we wanted to share with our customers that in the sense we’ve eaten our own dog food. |
| Kate: | Right, right. |
| Kevin: | The things we tell them we believe in ourselves and I think a lot of our customers were excited to hear that. |
| Kate: | Yeah, that makes a difference. I think when you know people can really see how you know you’re able to use it in your own business it helps them to understand how they can perhaps leverage it in their own. I think that one of the areas that’s were really looking for too today the next session which is the Cobb County presentation. |
| Kevin: | Yes. |
| Kate: | So, tell us a little more about that. |
| Kevin: | So Cobb County is the fifth largest county in the state of Georgia. They recently became one of our customers, and they’re a huge OnBase user. They’re using in thirty-seven departments across the government organization and which is pretty wide ranging deployment. They had us, they brought us on as their partner to help them with some of their implementations, they’re current partner that they had was really going in a different direction, and so they put out their bid and they selected ImageSoft. And, one of the reasons they selected us was that we have a deep experience with helping government agencies leverage OnBase. One of the reason for that is in the government agency there is a lot of unique processes that you can’t go out to a store and download an application for or buy an off the shelf product. They’re really unique processes and so OnBase really is a great low code way for government agencies to either to do it themselves or help ImageSoft help them develop an application that meets a very specific need that’s very, very unique and do it in a way that’s very efficient and cost effective for governments. |
| Kate: | Excellent. I know that after that session we have, I think that’s lunch. |
| Kevin: | Yes. |
| Kate: | Everyone gets excited about that but then we have several tracks. Three different sessions across four or five different tracks today. |
| Kevin: | Yes, yes, we’ve got three timed segments with five different tracks and each I believe. We have a full schedule this afternoon. |
| Kate: | Yes, I know we’ll be able to track down a few people from each of those industries and hopefully have some good conversations today but we’re really looking forwards to a great day. I think there’s going to be a lot of really excellent information that’s being shared and looking forward to what the day will bring. |
| Kevin: | Yeah, I think it’s pretty exciting, the energy, the room is awesome. We’re looking forward to more great conversations with customers, so, thank you for being here today, Kate. |
| Kate: | All right! Thanks, Kevin. We’ll talk to everybody soon. |
| Kevin: | Yeah. |
| Kate: | All right, well we are here at Velocity with Leanne Eastman, the manager of Human Resources for ImageSoft, and she just finished her session with a panel of people, right? |
| Leanne Eastman: | Yeah! Our internal ImageSoft folks. |
| Kate: | Yeah, talking about, you were talking about how ImageSoft has been using OnBase for a variety of internal ways. |
| Leanne: | Yeah. |
| Kate: | You want to tell us a little about it? |
| Leanne: | Yeah, we had all different areas. We had someone from customer care doing a ticketing system, our applicant tracking, a lot of various HR applications that I use in OnBase, and our financial close process, and a lot of, and how we use it for our finance department as well. So, after this session it was great. So many came up and was interested and excited. Honestly, it gets you excited because you’re like ah I can finally share some of the good stuff that we’ve been doing and can hopefully help other people relieve some of the burdens and time consuming processes that they have. That’s really exciting. This is my first time at a Velocity so… |
| Kate: | Oh, very cool. |
| Leanne: | Yeah, it was really nice talking to our customers and they’re experiences the same things we experience. We now have the knowledge and we can help them out. So, that’s really exciting for me. |
| Kate: | Yeah, excellent. |
| Leanne: | In HR you don’t get to see that. |
| Kate: | Yeah. |
| Leanne: | You don’t get to see the sales side of things so yeah. |
| Kate: | Yeah that’s excellent. We’re there any experiences in particular that you were able to mentions or that perhaps a customer mentioned to you afterwards about how they’ve felt they’ve be able to benefit. Any good stories you’ve heard from it? |
| Leanne: | Yeah. You know I think it was very section. It was applicant tracking, it was HR instant management, our HR events application, those things seem to resonate really well with people and the ease of use, you know, it was nice that we had the genius center here. They can come and actually look at it and they can hear first hand how I use it. We’re all the same similar stories, you know. They just talked about their angst of systems that they’re using. Someone was telling me they were using a DOS system. I’m like that was 30 years ago. |
| Kate: | Oh wow! Right, right. |
| Leanne: | So, yeah that was really exciting. They had really great stories to tell the angst that they have, all their processes, the software they’re using. |
| Kate: | That’s one area that regardless of the industry every organization has. Everybody has human resources and has probably some sort of a challenge in one way or the other in managing all that information. So, regardless what the industry serve every organization has that same challenge it’s kinda of a connecting feature I would imagine. |
| Leanne: | Yeah and I think the way we have these applications set up there’s not a lot of, I guess you’d call it, programming. The geniuses can’t go do all writing and the coding or anything. It’s just you drop it in and you customize it to what your needs are. But, it’s all there, it’s all written, it’s all done. I think they like that. They know that they’ve been trying for years to get their organization to give the resources to do this and we have a really good solution for them. |
| Kate: | Yeah that’s excellent. Are there any sessions in particular you’re excited to be part of today or to hear? |
| Leanne: | I’m just absorbing the whole thing because in HR I don’t get to come to a lot of, you know, I should be back at the office. I’m just looking forward to meeting our customers and hearing about what other people are doing and especially the courts I think I’m interested I’d like to, we’re really good in the justice markets, I’m really interested in seeing that side of it but really all of it. The whole thing. |
| Kate: | Excellent. Well thanks for sharing with me today. And thanks for being part of it Have a great time today. |
| Leanne: | Thanks so much. |
| Kate: | All right, we are here now with Stephanie Taylor and Janet Jenkins of Cobb County who just finished their presentation during their morning session here. They did a really wonderful job explaining all the different ways and going through the timeline how Cobb County has implemented OnBase over the years and the different phases and I thought was really interesting. I love the way you guys phrased the different eras of using OnBase and the implementation I thought that was really insightful. We went thought that but one area I know really caught the audience’s attention, I noticed personally at my table that I was sitting at was when you guys talked about the comment fields for the contract management section of the OnBase. The people at my table immediately went whoa oh my gosh, you know, when you talked about using that for sharing knowledge for people that were retiring. I think with the baby boomers retiring and the turnover that’s starting to happen in a lot of these departments that is becoming so valuable. Could you tell us a little bit more about you guys used that function and how it’s worked for you? |
| Stefanie Taylor: | Sure. Thank you so much. In Cobb County because we have so many departments and they are decentralized when someone retires, we usually have one person who knows how to do something really well and they tend to that for a long time. When that person retires they take a lot of institutional knowledge with them. In creating the repository working with our OnBase team at Cobb County we needed to find a way to capture all that knowledge. To give end user a place to just do brain dump of all that information they know about that no one else has. One great example, we had a wonderful lady in IS who retired after being with the county, how long Janet? |
| Janet Jenkins: | Thirty-five years. |
| Stefanie: | Thirty-five years, yes. |
| Kate: | Oh wow. Yeah |
| Stefanie: | So she knew a lot about a lot. So when before she retired we just stayed with her, kind of it was like, okay can, and then she would just type in and she created detailed forms for the repository team which is type in information or she’d start telling us the story and we would start typing in information into the comment field. |
| Kate: | Oh wow. |
| Stefanie: | So she knew how many times a vendor had been acquired and what their original name was and their original person that Cobb county worked with and who to work with moving forward and who to avoid. So, we use those huge comment boxes just to put all that information in. So when her replacements took over they did not have to start at ground zero. |
| Kate: | Wow. |
| Stefanie: | They had that history about that particular agreement and they can just take the baton and keep running the relay race from there. |
| Kate: | And that’s so valuable so because like you said as soon as someone steps in they’re not starting from oh okay wait a second who is this vendor what has happened in the past, having that kind of knowledge is valuable. So, that’s really wonderful you’re able and everyone is able to access that as well if you needed to share that beyond just her direct replacement. |
| Stefanie: | Correct. |
| Kate: | That’s wonderful. Excellent. Well, are there any other ways you guys are looking forward to the future of how you’re going to be using OnBase in different ways, new projects you’re starting to implement? |
| Janet: | Well were currently working on our records management project right now that’s ongoing. One of my team members is leading that project and that is going really well. This is our second attempt at the project and so now we’re working with ImageSoft in actually getting some really good traction. |
| Kate: | Oh great. Okay. |
| Janet: | Yeah. |
| Kate: | What kind of traction are you starting to see? |
| Janet: | Well, We just have the departments are actually participating. |
| Kate: | Oh. |
| Janet: | So, we have this thing in the county where there’s this slight silent mutiny. Where you know, they’re meet with you, you’ll have project meetings and you’ll come with action items to do and then you meet with them again at the next appointed time and the action items didn’t actually get done. |
| Kate: | Oh, okay. |
| Janet: | You can’t, you don’t seem to get off the ground that way. That’s why part of my presentation was about leading with policy. So, we didn’t have a policy in place directly for records management, but we probably should because that helps to alleviate that, you know, churn I call it. |
| Kate: | Okay, okay. Very nice. Great. Well than you both so much for sharing this knowledge today and for being part of Velocity today. And, really look forward to hearing how you guys are seeing some success with this moving forward. |
| Janet: | Great, thanks for having us. |
| Kate: | Bye. Bye. |
| Janet: | Bye. |
| Kate: | Okay, we’re here with Sheniqua Williams who is with the Supreme Court of the Virgin Islands. Welcome today. Thanks for coming over to Michigan. |
| Sheniqua Williams: | Hi. |
| Kate: | All right. So we were talking about at the break that you have been a long time OnBase user. You and your team. You were talking about some of the ways you use OnBase in the Supreme Court there. So, can you give us a little more information. |
| Sheniqua: | Yes of course. I know one thing when I first started using OnBase with the court we mostly use it from, what I was using it for, was the leave request. So it made it easier for HR, for managers, and instead of them doing physical paper and you have to put it on someone’s desk and wait they can go into the system and Leave Request and automatically the supervisor will get a notification and boom it’s like our processes that would take a week could take like just few hours if everybody just, you know, goes look at it one time. |
| Kate: | Wow. Yeah |
| Sheniqua: | So, that’s a big help. A couple others thing we use it for, like the leave request, the travel request if you have to travel and also purchase request as well. |
| Kate: | Okay. |
| Sheniqua: | Yeah. |
| Kate: | Okay. |
| Sheniqua: | Yeah. |
| Kate: | And how many people do you have in your department? |
| Sheniqua: | In IT specifically? |
| Kate: | Yeah or that are part of the courts that use OnBase. |
| Sheniqua: | Okay. Right now I think maybe a little over one hundred. |
| Kate: | Oh wow okay. Okay that’s a sizable, successful group. |
| Sheniqua: | It use to be a lot less when it use to be the Supreme Court but it might have been like maybe fifty of us but we expanded to the Superior Court so now there’s about a hundred plus. |
| Kate: | Okay. |
| Sheniqua: | Maybe more. |
| Kate: | All right great. And then are there any specific ways you feel that you feel that OnBase has really helped to support the Supreme Court in particular that you could share with us? |
| Sheniqua: | Um, Let me think. Specifically that would help support it. I think procurement and probably the finance department get the most out of it to me. Because they could easily push stuff through quickly and see what’s pending what’s outstanding especially with payroll and things like that. With comp-time and things like that to get it done. |
| Kate: | Oh. Okay Very nice. And then do you find that it is something that you guys had to do like a training on, you know, for everybody that’s part of that user group and everything like that? Do you feel like that, it is something that everybody got on board with real quick? Or did they see the benefit right away? Or did it take a little while for them to start to realize how helpful? |
| Sheniqua: | I think, I think with procurement and finance they were doing it awhile before I got on board so they were long familiar with it. But, we did have to do training when we transitioned to the Superior Court with like the leave requests. We started small with them the leave request. It did take some training, I did some training with them like once a month just to get everybody up to speed on how to use it. A lot of people were hesitant cause it’s new. They’re use to their paper. |
| Kate: | Yeah. |
| Sheniqua: | A lot of people found it helpful cause it was like because they put in their request, their manager gets the notification, and if they’re there they can like approve it right there. |
| Kate: | Yeah. |
| Sheniqua: | And then they’ll get like a notification like hey you’re taking too long you got to look at this. |
| Kate: | Ah ha. Okay. |
| Sheniqua: | So it’s helpful. |
| Kate: | It kinda keeps everybody moving. |
| Sheniqua: | Yeah. |
| Kate: | Okay. And then you mentioned with the procurement and everything like that some of the transfer request is that something that would have typically taken a long time with that paper. Was it using up a lot of resources? |
| Sheniqua: | I think it was using a lot resources cause it would have to put everything in folders so now they have everything in OnBase and we’re also with procurements where were moving into doing the contract management. So the contracts we do with those vendors now instead them having a big folder we can just put it into the contract management system in OnBase. |
| Kate: | Okay. Yeah that sounds very similar to what we were hearing from Cobb County. |
| Sheniqua: | Yeah. |
| Kate: | I’m sure that sounded very familiar. |
| Sheniqua: | We just did that. |
| Kate: | Yeah exactly. Good. Well we appreciate you taking a few minutes to tell us about it and hopefully you guys continue to see some good success with that. Enjoy the rest of the conference. |
| Sheniqua: | Thank you. |
| Kate: | 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 nathana12.sg-host.com that’s nathana12.sg-host.com. Join us next time where you’ll learn to harness the power of technology, supercharge efficiency, and accomplish your organization’s goals. |