The Dayhuff Group

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are one of the largest homebuilders in the United States, building single and multi-family homes in 15 different markets in the United States. I’m VP and CIO, and I’m primarily responsible for the technology and strategic direction of the organization.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with The Dayhuff Group?

UI is part of our solution. The Dayhuff Group came into help implement a process that we’re working on automating.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We have HUD statements that are part of the mortgage process. Once a home closes, we complete the mortgage and have to enter all the HUD information into our ERP system.

This year, we’ll probably close in excess of 7,000 homes. That means we have to key in the information into our ERP 7,000 times across 15 markets. They’ve fully automated that process to eliminate the human element by having a robot log in, enter the information, do our checking in our ERP, and notify people of work completion or errors.

What is the team composition?

In total, we worked with three people. Primarily one developer did the bulk of the work.

How did you come to work with The Dayhuff Group?

We had worked with them previously, so we knew they did good work. We weren’t aware of their capability in this field, so when we brought it up we were excited to know they could assist us with this project.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent a little over $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started in March 2020 and wrapped up in June 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

They did an excellent job at automating the entire process from start to finish. We are now successfully taking the data out of one system and putting it into another system, eliminating a significant amount of human time and monotony. Their work is allowing our people to do other more rewarding tasks that benefit the business.

How did The Dayhuff Group perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re good at project management, although we took on the role of project management by directing their work.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their vision on how to complete things and how to leverage other technologies sets them apart. Their president constantly brings new ideas to me and my team on how to automate our business more. I really appreciate how they ask questions as they work to discover our needs and challenges as they seek to find technology initiatives to improve our business operations. That provides a lot of value to our organization that many companies do not provide. They earned my trust and I really respect and appreciate the work that went into doing that.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It wasn’t significant, but they went a little bit over on their schedule and estimates. It wasn’t a concern to us, however.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would say be clear and share your business objectives, making sure that they understand what the business needs are. Clearly articulate that and listen to their suggestions and recommendations, because I think they've seen things from other companies that may be worthwhile to explore with your organization. Their experience is deep and they bring good solutions to the table.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the program administrator for the Ohio Environmental Review Appeals Commission. We’re an administrative court that hears appeals from final actions for the Ohio EPA, State Fire Marshal’s Office, Department of Agriculture, and other smaller agencies.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with The Dayhuff Group?

We wanted to implement an electronic case management (ECM) and electronic filing system similar to what other courts use. We also needed a high-value solution to accommodate our smaller budget.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Their team met us a few different times to talk through the process and determine the specific requirements. We required a system from the ground up because our office had been using paper records exclusively. They then produced a functional specification before initiating the development phase.

We looked at popular technologies such as CourtView, but they exceeded our budget. To resolve this issue, The Dayhuff Group built a custom solution using IBM FileNet and Case Foundation. The resulting ECM, launched a month ago, tracks all active cases and allows attorneys and the public to file documents for those cases.

What is the team composition?

I communicate mostly with the project manager.

How did you come to work with The Dayhuff Group?

Another government agency referred them to us after they built a similar system. We chose them because they could provide value within our budget.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent approximately $120,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Work started in February 2014 and is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

There’s no tracking data because the ECM just launched, but it’s made life much easier. Several colleagues were very excited about the electronic filing feature.

How did The Dayhuff Group perform from a project management standpoint?

They created a smooth process; the delays were more on our end. We gave their team a workstation in our office with access to the appropriate servers. Otherwise, we communicated via email.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Post-launch support has been outstanding. For example, we accidentally let an IBM license expire over Christmas. A senior Dayhuff Group employee renewed it and checked the system was fully functional over the holiday. They have yet to charge us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. We’ve been happy with their performance. There are a few changes we want to make this year, but those aren’t their fault. We didn’t anticipate needing additional features when they first built the system.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They’re a great group to work with; they make excellent intermediaries between technical and business teams. As a small agency, we needed that help to coordinate with other government offices and the state’s technicians.

BACKGROUND

Can you please provide a brief description of your company?

We are a telecommunications company. We do international voice traffic. We’re a wholesaler between other retail telephone companies. We are maybe the fourth largest company that transmits voice internationally. We also do text messaging or SMS and signaling services.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I’m the Director of information systems. I support all of the administrative and billing type operations and software development and the operation of these systems.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What were your company’s business goals for this particular project?

Our process for creating legal documents or contracts and approving them was very inefficient because we had a repository to store these documents that wasn’t well organized. We needed a way of organizing the storage of these documents and also organizing the way documents are created and approved. We were looking for a contract life cycle management system, something that would augment our process.

SOLUTION

Could you talk in brief detail about what IBM FileNet does for your organization and why you chose it?

Well, we looked at several other solutions, some of popular brands. We were looking for basic document management, a storage facility. The other requirement we were looking for was a business process engine that would manage workflows. We needed to be able to have flexibility to define the workflows exactly the way our process works. In our particular process, the documents are routed through several administrative, technical and financial groups before they’re approved. Each type of contract has different requirements.

We looked at several solutions. IBM FileNet gave us the most flexibility in defining the workflow process. We could customize the solutions, so the forms that people are asked to complete and fill in are all customized. Some of the other solutions out there, are not as flexible.

What was your process for selecting The Dayhuff Group to work with?

They were recommended by IBM for integration work. We had no knowledge of doing that, so we had to hire implementation resources. I suppose we could have gone to training and learned it, but it would have taken us twice as long to learn.

Can you describe the scope of work that Dayhuff Group performed?

We defined our business requirements but they defined the functional requirements, specifically what it needed to do. They helped facilitate creating individual workflows and specific steps that needed to be automated.

They configured FileNet to build the workflows. They also wrote some JavaScript in order to do some macros behind the forms, because what we added needed to relate the specific documents to our reference information for customers and vendors. It would fly back to our financial systems. Some of these developments have forms behind the forms, which required some customization on their end. They did the technical design and then the development of the workflows, forms and code behind the forms.

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

It’s approximately a $500,000 project. Hardware and software cost $312,000 and the labor cost about $190,000.

When was the project completed?

The main project was completed in September, 2012.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We had margin assurance in working capital improvements. Before, we had loss of margins for not quickly taking advantage of opportunities and that was estimated to be worth $800,000. We estimate operating effectiveness as having sales be able to work with the contracts more effectively, we estimate that to be $50,000.

The improvement in sales effectiveness, we estimate at $300,000. There are other benefits for compliance that our auditors had found. Before, our team could not put our hands on specific documents or contracts. We had missed dates for renewals. We had incorrect financial terms in some cases. Those were the benefits that we meant to achieve.

How did The Dayhuff Group perform during that project?

They met all the deliverables. They stood by their work. There were some cases where the scope changed a little bit. The scope can be well known in a general case, but when you get into the details of how forms need to behave or how workflows need to behave, you can change the actual complexity of what needs to be done. They acted like a partner to figure out what needed to be done and try to define it and go forward as effectively as possible.

When working with The Dayhuff Group, what is unique or special about them compared to othercompanies you may have worked with before?

They’re a small company. Normally, I’m not involved in the management team. The president of the company, Corey Dayhuff, called me to give advice on what to expect on a project like this. I have never had that type of experience with an integrator before. I never had advice from the executive management team. I like the personal attention from their top people.

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

I think that they had some problems with resource management. When things came up, they had to move resources around. The changes did affect our schedule a bit. Once they become more mature, they will be able to manage that better.

BACKGROUND

Can you please provide a brief description of your company?

We are a state agency. We regulate the industries the utility industries in Ohio such as gas, electric, telephone, water, and sewer. 

What is your role and responsibilities?

I am an IT manager. My department’s role is to try to make everybody else’s job easier, be able to manipulate and understand data, and process it in a meaningful manner.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What were your organization’s business goals for that particular project?

This project involved our case management system or what we call our documenting information system. That system is for formal cases that could come before the Commission that we track and maintain.

This docketing system has been up about 10 years. We wanted to make it easier for our customer-based citizens from Ohio, and external people outside the state to be able to access the case-management system easily, documenting information system, see cases, see documents, be able to file and have an e-filing process where they can e-file their documents instead of coming to our office to have to file a document. It’s basically our formal case system and documenting system.

SOLUTION

What was the process for selecting The Dayhuff Group?

The Dayhuff Group came in with a good bid compared to three other firms. The Dayhuff Group wanted to use IBM Lotus Notes for their backend database, and we required SQL server. We did a quasi workaround where they loaded the data into SQL server for us from Lotus Notes, and we were able to have that connection.

We had The Dayhuff Group come back in because they did such a good job for us. They helped us improve our processes and database.

Can you please describe the scope of the project in terms of The Dayhuff Group’s role?

We needed to get documents out to individuals on the Web. Sometimes, we get documents that are 4,000 pages long and, if they had pictures and graphs, it became a challenge on how to break up these documents in usable sizes that our customers could be able to read using the Web. 

We used IBM Content Manager as a document repository database. This system has worked wonderfully for more than a decade. We’ve only had one problem so far.

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

It was between $800,000 and $1 million for all of the work and fees.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Was the project successful?

The Dayhuff Group did a great job creating our e-filing portion of this application.  This saved all of our staff a lot of time and stress. If the document is e-filed it took a lot of man hours dealing with that document. There is now close to a 95 percent e-filing rate, which alleviates a ton of man hours of us having to process documents. Now, we can get a document out to the Web very quickly when it’s been e-filed.  We verify the indexing that’s been done to it and send it to supervisor approval. Technically, we could have a document that has been e-filed out to the Web within five minutes if need be, and there’s times when we’ve had these types of rush jobs where we need to get this document out quickly.   

I’ll give you another visual measurement. We used to have tons of lawyers standing at the front desk waiting for a hard copy image.  One of the things that we built now is a subscription system where you can subscribe and get the documents emailed automatically to users. We have close to 15,000 subscriptions just for the data activity report. That subscription system helps a lot. We no longer have anybody coming in and looking for a document. Everything is out there on the Web for stakeholders to be able to access.

How did The Dayhuff Group perform?

Great. Their team built one of the best applications I’ve ever dealt with. I wish they could come in and do other projects for me.

What is unique or special about The Dayhuff Group compared to other vendors?

The Dayhuff Group really has good quality employees. Corey [Dayhuff, the president at The Dayhuff Group] was always involved, and always wanted to make sure meetings and everything was progressing in the right way. We could understand what they were saying, where they were going, and what they were trying to build. They have a low turnover ratio and very smart developers. Their communication and openness is better than other vendors.

Is there any area you think they could improve upon or maybe you would do differently?

One of the biggest challenges we have here is getting staff to understand that when you bring in a developer you better understand exactly what you want. Our team needed to communicate our needs to The Dayhuff Group better, but that’s more our fault.