What’s a solution health check, and why does your business need one? At Velocity 2019, we talked with ImageSoft’s David Officer about how he works with customers to review their software solutions and best practices to ensure they’re getting the most out of their technology systems (and their investment).
[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.
Okay well we’re here with David Officer, and he is going to talk about the Solution Health Checks paper that we have here. All of our attendees today at Velocity have gotten a really nice sheet about Solution Health Checks, so maybe you could tell us a little bit about this and what kind of a benefit it would have for people. |
| David Officer: | Yeah. So with the Solution Health Check, I’ll set up a time with the customer, introduce myself as their Solution Health Check. And we’ll get a GoToMeeting scheduled for about two to three hours, where they’ll be the guide that will kind of walk me through the different servers. Get me into the database server, the applications server, et cetera, where I will take some screenshots of their database, their server … the configuration that is running their OnBase solution.
And offline, after that GoToMeeting, I’ll review any reports that I generated. I also review, if we can record, the go-to meeting, and generate a report, about a 20 page report with recommendations on how to improve their solution. To increase their speed, to increase their security, their stability, and some customers will reach back out to me after giving them the report, and invite me in a meeting with their management to help guide them with following those recommendations. It’s an exciting thing that we get to offer to the customers. |
| Kate: | It sounds like it’s really hands-on, like you’re really digging into it. This is not just some general recommendations or anything like that, it’s really digging in and seeing okay, where are maybe some of the challenges we’re seeing. And then looking for specific ways to make improvements. |
| David: | Exactly. Each Solution Health Check is unique because their solutions are unique. So I take about two weeks after that initial GoToMeeting, where I will dive into ImageSoft, Hyland, Microsoft documentation on what the best practices are. Reach out to my team, bring it up the chain of command, all the way up to James or CTO for guidance on what would be their best recommendation here. And open up customer care cases on the high priority items that I find.
Recently we had a customer … this customer was excited to have the Solution Health Check, and we discovered a few things that became a high priority issue. For example, their database hadn’t been backed up for a while, and with the busyness of being an OnBase administrator/courts administrator … I used to be a customer of ImageSoft, so I understand how things get quite busy. So I got to meet that person here, at Velocity. And it was just a nice bonding moment that we had, over the GoToMeeting, because I got to help them out and get their management involved through what we found. And then get to smile here in person, like oh look at what we got to discover and solve together. |
| Kate: | How cool is that, that you’re able to follow up afterwards like that. That’s so great. You see, I could imagine when you can make that kind of a different, and help an organization to run more efficiently, you know everybody’s pretty happy. |
| David: | Absolutely. It makes me feel like I’m on their team. I’m part of that county or that company. I am their Solution Health Check specialist. |
| Kate: | That’s really cool. Which explains the stethoscope you’re wearing today. |
| David: | Yeah, I am wearing a stethoscope because I do all the support remotely, for the GoToMeeting as I mentioned, and I wanted some of my customers that I’ve already helped to be able to spot me out of the crowd. So I said I’ll wear my old stethoscope, because I used to be a health professional. |
| Kate: | Oh, okay. Okay. |
| David: | Assisting doctors with stuff in the clinic or driving the ambulance back when I was a firefighter. So I used to wear a stethoscope around the neck, so I thought well this will be perfect. |
| Kate: | I was going to say you seem very comfortable with it on, like it seems very natural to you. Yeah, yeah, oh that’s so funny. Okay. So what are some ways … how could a customer or how could an organization, what could they best start with, with the health check? What’s kind of an easy way for you to start when you do these health checks? Where’s a good, easy way to begin this and see how they’re operating? |
| David: | So how it all begins is, if they’re a new customer, we’ll get the Solution Health Check request in, and I’ll schedule a time with them. The best place to start is the database. Everything seems to rest on top of the database, so it’s a wonderful place to start there. While we’re looking at each server, we’re also looking at their anti-virus exclusions. Sometimes anti-virus software can be very aggressive, and it can slow down or stop some OnBase processes or to read a file, and that can sometimes, the worst case scenario, kick our customers off their clients during production hours. So there’s a lot of little things that maybe a customer, that even I didn’t know about when I was a customer that we could catch. So we get right into the database, then the application server. And I mention new customers, but also if a customer is going into a project, I want to get a baseline. So set up a time with them to capture everything, and after that project’s done, do another Solution Health Check to see if there’s anything that we need to just … any loose ends to tie up. We also do Solution Health Check similar to projects too for upgrades before and after. And also, when they request it. They feel something’s slow. Or one of our customer care tech support engineers said you know, we have this customer, and their Solution is slow, we tried XYZ, can you do a health check? And that can find some stuff too. |
| Kate: | Okay. Do you find that when you do that follow up check that you’re able to measure then, perhaps progress? In not only looking for issues, but are you able to see some of the progress that has been made as a result? |
| David: | Yeah, absolutely. It’s actually exciting to be able to look at what happened last year and the recommendations. And then we do our Solution Health Check, and I see that they did change that manager default password to something more secure. Or that they did put in a maintenance plan that is running now, et cetera, for their database. And I like to put that personally in the reports, like good job. You guys are fantastic. I want to encourage them, get them jazzed and excited that their keeping their Solution healthy. |
| Kate: | Absolutely. It’s important. Just like a regular physical health check. It’s important to do on a regular basis. |
| David: | Because our customer, ImageSoft, they are our heart. So we want to make sure our heart is healthy. |
| Kate: | I love it. Very nice. All right. So if people wanted to find out more about how they could get a health check done, any of our customers or anybody who’s just interested in learning more about how OnBase works, what would be a good place for them to learn how to do that? |
| David: | Wonderful place to start is go into our customer portal, sign up for an account if you don’t already have an account. If you are already a primary or alternate admin for your OnBase Solution, then your account will be created automatically after receiving an email. And you just click in, you’ll log in, you’re in there. And you can create not only a new case, but you can also create a Solution Health Check request, and that’s the way to get that rolling. That way. Or you can give us a call.
Once the Solution Health Check report has been sent via email to the customer and uploaded into our internal OnBase, they can also pull that up through that customer portal. So that’s a way to get it rolling. To really find out more what that entails, we’re going to be creating some webinar, some public facing videos, documentation that’s also going to be in the customer portal. So they’ll be coming down the road. Hopefully this next quarter, Q3 2019, we’ll have that stuff in the customer portal for them. So they’ll be able to see what they’re getting into. It’s a wonderful addition, it’s a wonderful added value for our customers, when they go with a customer care contract. |
| Kate: | Excellent. Well thank you so much David. That was a lot of really great information. |
| David: | It was my pleasure. |
| Kate: | So excellent, thank you so much. |
| David: | Thanks Kate. |
| 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 ImageSoft I-N-C .com. Join us next time, where you’ll learn how to harness the power of technology, supercharge efficiency, and accomplish your organization’s goals. |