RGB Projects

BACKGROUND

Can you please provide a brief description of your company?

We are an online legal services company. We service the legal needs of small businesses and families via an online platform that leverages technology to automate a good part of the legal process, but also maintains a certain level of human element and fulfillment. The services include phone support and document review involving third-party attorneys. We’ve been around for 12 years, we have about 700 employees and $200 million in revenue. We have a website that’s launching in the U.K. shortly, but we are primarily U.S. based.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I’m the president and chief operating officer.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What were your company’s business goals for this project with RGB Projects?

Workflow automation was the main target. For instance, a lot of our legal processes involve a lot of steps, touch a lot of people, and involve a lot of labor. We mapped out the workflow, studied it, and determined which pieces can be automated. My company started with RGB Projects in 2006. They’ve partnered with us ever since to achieve the workflow automation that’s significantly reduced the labor requirements of our business, and improve the consistency and quality of work products.

SOLUTION

What was your process for selecting RGB Projects?

We had been looking for potential vendors for a long time. Even though our business is straightforward at a high level, when you get down to the nitty-gritty, it’s actually quite complicated. For example, starting an LLC has eight major steps. There are maybe four different variations that can happen in terms of how an order may need to be serviced. There are many variables that needed to be automated. We needed an IT vendor to go to that level of detail.

We were a very small company. Our operations were very iterative, meaning we were growing while building the operations at the same time. As an analogy, my company was building the car while driving it. We knew that a traditional, big IT support-consulting firm might not be the best fit.

We conducted some in-depth interviews. RGB Projects seemed to be the right firm for the job. They were introduced to us by a manager who knew their founder.

Can you please tell me what parts of the project RGB Projects was involved with?

It was huge. We had a very complicated business process that was highly manual, and involved touching eight different employees at various points in time. Even internally, we didn’t have a good grasp of what that process looked like. Employees just figured it out on a case-by-case basis.

RGB Projects served a few roles. They partnered with the business unit at the time as a business analyst to map out what our business process was. Once RGB Projects figured that out, they built the workflow automation to support it, and then oversaw us piloting that on a small scale in one process within one department. The initial piloting was successful.

 We continued to roll it out across all of our business units during a period of three years. In addition to automating the business processes through FileNet, they helped us build the underlying system architecture to enable us to do work on an increasingly larger scale.

What technologies were used?

I recall some Kofax, particularly with the printing elements of our business and IBM FileNet.

Why was IBM FileNet selected?

We needed a system that could operate on a very large scale for high volumes. Our finance department decided against other competitors because IBM was better for enterprise work.

My team built a virtual manufacturing environment. We mapped out workflows and applied manufacturing principles to how the work is done, separating it, and having teams and quality-control steps to get everyone more involved. We do 70,000 transactions monthly that need to go through this system. When we looked at the different offerings, FileNet appeared to be the most industrial strength and scalable of the potential solutions.

Can you give us a sense of the size of the initiative with RGB Projects either in dollar terms or personnel hours?

There’s been some ups and downs in the amount of work RGB Projects has done at any given time. Even though it wasn’t necessarily a cheap engagement, I’d say the pricing was quite reasonable. We received great value particularly given that we were asking them to work in an iterative fashion versus simply handing them a list of requirements. They often had four to six employees working full time for us. They still support the system, and are working with us on some new IT projects. They will continue to work with us for a while.

When was the initial system completed?

We started prototyping and piloting it in 2006. Most of the work was completed in 2007, but we are adding new things every year.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Do you have any statistics or metrics to track improvement within your company after you implemented the system?

It has cut labor in half at least.

How did RGB Projects perform during the project?

Their performance was definitely fantastic. RGB Projects is very client oriented, very flexible, and they quickly became part of our team. Their level of mastery of both FileNet, and our internal processes was quite impressive. They knew our stuff better than my own people.

What is unique or special about RGB Projects compared to some other vendors?

Their flexibility is great because it’s hard to find IT companies who are comfortable working in an iterative fashion. A lot of vendors want to be handed a clean set of requirements that they can build from. RGB Projects is unique because they partnered with us, and through their skill helped flesh out what needed to be built.

Looking back on the project, is there any area that you think RGB Projects could improve upon or maybe you would do differently?

No. Nothing I can think of.

BACKGROUND

Can you please provide a brief description of your company?

We are a utilities company that serves Los Angeles, and we have private customers. We focus on water and power.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I am a manager in the IT group. I only serve internal clients, which are our employees. We have 9,000 to 10,000 employees, and my job is to create tools and systems for them to serve our outside customers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your organization's goal for the project?

We needed to upgrade an old IBM ECM system to a newer version. We were using FileNet and other IBM ECM suites. We needed to improve employee productivity and collaboration as the overall goal.

SOLUTION

What was your process for selecting IBM ECM tools?

My organization has used IBM products for years, although we also use other vendors like Oracle. We felt that IBM offered the best products for our needs. We did a vendor comparison a few years ago, and we stuck with IBM. We had used an older version of FileNet and like version 5.1.

What was your process for selecting RGB Projects to work with?

RGB Projects won a bid competition to do the upgrade through a fresh install. They were selected because they offered the best price and experience with IBM products. They have also done other ECM projects for other departments before.

What parts of the project was RGB Projects involved with?

They were involved in installation, quality assurance, and testing. They also helped us install additional packages that we hadn't been utilizing although we had them for years on the shelves. They also migrated about 900 gigabytes of data successfully, and instituted great document and record management systems.

Can you give us a sense of the size of the dollar initiative in dollar terms or personnel hours?

We had several people from my IT team work on this project part time for six months.

When was the project completed?

In July of 2013.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the results of the project? Do you have any statistics or metrics to track improvement?

We don't have stats or metrics because the project was just completed, but it was successful overall. We have a much faster and more stable system with improved search results. We also have a single sign-on system now, which was a huge goal for us. Our users enjoy the new system more than the last.

How did RGB Projects perform?

They were great. RGB Projects is very professional with great technical knowledge and lots of experience with IBM products. They know what they are doing and performed well.

When working with RGB Projects, was anything unique or special about them compared to other vendors?

They are a smaller team, so their communication is much better than other vendors. It is easy to talk to their team, and their project manager is fantastic. I don't have to waste time to track down the right person unlike projects with larger consultants. RGB Project's technical skills and professionalism stand out. I couldn't be happier with them as a vendor and IBM expert.

When working with RGB Projects, was there anything that you think they could improve upon or you would do differently?

Nothing major to report, but we had some schedule delays because of my organization. There was also some minor miscommunication due to poorly written project guidelines. That is also more the fault of my organization.