OpCon Reviews

I use OpCon to automate processes in a financial institution.

OpCon provides a single point of control to orchestrate workflows and file moments which is incredibly important.

With the implementation of OpCon, we require minimal to no staffing on weekends or nights. The automation enabled by OpCon has streamlined our operations, reducing the number of personnel required while simultaneously enhancing our operational capabilities.

OpCon has enabled us to manage more complex schedules. We have seen a mass reduction in error rates and a lot of time savings in the target business units and operations.

I don't have a dedicated staff. Instead, I collaborate closely with a wide range of individuals. OpCon has enabled us to accomplish more with a smaller team by empowering project management teams to direct the processes. Consequently, we prioritize tasks that they deem valuable.

In the rare instances where we utilize the self-service feature, it empowers our end-users to handle their tasks independently without the need to submit tickets or contact the operations team. They can complete their processes at their convenience, allowing for flexibility in their workflow. This flexibility ensures that they are not required to execute tasks at a specific, predetermined time point.

We use OpCon to manage legacy systems alongside modern systems, which has allowed us to maintain functionality and efficiency. While some legacy software can be cumbersome and we are unable to eliminate all of it, OpCon enables us to make the most of these systems. Integrating OpCon with new components has streamlined our operations, creating a cohesive and user-friendly system.

Our company has implemented OpCon for over a decade, and we currently execute more than 2,000 processes daily. Achieving this level of process automation was not a sudden accomplishment; it has been a steady and gradual growth process. Quantifying the precise impact of OpCon is challenging due to its long-term integration into our policies, procedures, and processes. However, we estimate that OpCon has saved us hundreds of hours per week.

OpCon minimizes errors regardless of the task's complexity or whether it's a repetitive task with a predictable outcome. Therefore, complexity is not the primary factor contributing to errors; repetitiveness is.

The time to value with OpCon is immediate because it instantly frees up one person's workload. That's a win right there. No matter how big or small the automated process, it's one less manual task that someone has to do. While we may not see an immediate return on investment at the corporate level that executives crave, the positive impact on employees is immediate and tangible.

I find OpCon's ability to monitor files and folders, and its integration with other software to be the most valuable.

The UI is very dated, click heavy, and has a very unintuitive layering with in some screens. It is often difficult to see all aspects of what is entered on a given screen. 

OpCon's pricing model has become increasingly à la carte, with numerous individual components available for purchase at varying price points. This fragmented approach could be improved by implementing either bundled pricing or a more streamlined pricing structure.

I have been using OpCon for ten years.

I would rate the stability of OpCon ten out of ten.

OpCon is scalable.

Unfortunately, we can no longer reach their technical support by phone. They now only assist through email or their ticketing system. While we miss the convenience of phone support, their email and ticketing system responses are notoriously slow. However, when we do connect with a representative, they are extremely knowledgeable and helpful. It's just that there's no sense of urgency, and we're left waiting for a response indefinitely.

Neutral

We utilized a significant amount of Azure's native functionality. Azure offers a wide range of services, with some having multiple designations. Primarily the Azure automation.

OpCon is far more functional for us because not all of our applications are hosted on Azure. Therefore, OpCon's cross-platform compatibility allows it to connect to our legacy system, while Azure automation is limited to the Azure environment.

The initial deployment was straightforward. I can complete the deployment myself.

OpCon's pricing is quite fair. The task-based model is appealing because it allows us to scale up or down as needed. We're primarily focused on scaling up, and the model has been working well in that regard for some time now. However, the introduction of à la carte offerings on top of the base price is becoming a concern. While the base pricing is reasonable, the à la carte options are making the overall cost more complicated and potentially problematic.

I would rate OpCon a nine out of ten.

Regular maintenance is necessary for OpCon, encompassing updates, patches, and server reboots. These activities are similar to the standard maintenance required for other software applications.

We have OpCon deployed within our production environment and development environment.

Before implementing OpCon, it is crucial to have a thorough understanding of our current processes. The processes we intend to automate must be well-defined and documented to ensure a successful automation endeavor. Additionally, a realistic commitment of time and resources is essential for automation projects. As we gain experience and expertise in automation, the process will become faster and simpler. However, allocating appropriate time and resources remains paramount throughout the entire automation lifecycle. This includes time for understanding the processes, integrating them into OpCon, and conducting thorough testing to validate the processes within OpCon.

We have a very small IT shop. I have two helpdesk people, and four functional analysts. We were running all of our jobs manually. I had a nighttime operator and a daytime person in the operations area, and we started getting into more integrations and it was taking a lot of time away from staff to upload data to other vendors.

We also use it for resource monitoring when we are waiting for files to come in from other departments. As soon as they come in, we pick them up and process them and that's been a lifesaver, as well, for both the user department and for our department. 

We also use it to monitor emails.

We have the dependency with the Unisys MCP product and two Windows boxes that we have the agent on. So it's for multi-platform dependencies. We're trying to use it to the hilt and get as much bang for the buck from it as we can.

We now run a dark data center. All of our processing is done at night without anybody there. The majority of our jobs are automated. We couldn't do without it.

We had a sister institution that is on the same platform, the Unisys platform for MCP. I tried to get them to understand the benefits of it because it was just so hard not to have it. If we were to do away with it, it would be crippling.

It has enabled us to do other things. By not having to run jobs and submit data to other vendors, it leaves us with all of that free time so we can work on other projects. For instance, a person who was an operator can now start helping us with developing forms online, with workflows, or with some other integrations. It has changed the nuances of people's jobs. And it really has benefited the college because we don't have to have a nighttime person. We can reallocate those resources in another area.

It has saved IT staff time. It's also monitoring if a job fails and we get notifications immediately so that we can react, rather than having somebody sitting here watching the machine run and worry, "Did I miss something? Did that job fail?" It's actually monitoring all of those jobs, and letting us know if they succeeded or failed. And if you think about the nighttime staff that we don't have anymore, and the other monitoring that we would be doing during the day, it's probably saving us a good eight hours a day.

The automation of manual tasks using the solution reduces human error. Nobody has to think about, "Oh, did I do this check?" It's all within the workflows that we created. If there's an error, it could cost two hours of time in the morning to research and correct the problem. There still are errors, but they're more along the lines of, "I forgot to put it in the correct date," or something like that in the parameters. In making sure that everything runs step by step by step, it probably saves a good two hours, as far as error checking goes.

The Self Service feature is used by the payroll department. When they're ready for a payroll, they have a product called SMA Selector, a little dashboard we created to run payroll proof, and run the final. They can run it themselves when they're ready. That has helped a lot because they don't have to call us up and say, "Okay, we're ready for payroll." 

We also have a document management system and the reports go right into it through OpCon, after they finish, because of the automation of moving files back and forth. It's really saved on the payroll process as well. In terms of the Self Service feature reducing the complexity of the technical aspects of the workload automation, we still had to set it up, although that was very simple. And it has eliminated that hand-holding with the payroll department. They have everything at their fingertips. They can create the payroll and then they can run the payroll. Having everything there, they're in total control. They're self-sufficient.

OpCon has increased my department's overall productivity because of all of the things that we're doing through automation, and with all of the integrations with our LMS, our learning management system. We would not have been able to do what we are doing today if it wasn't for OpCon because things were so manual. Users outside my department don't know that prior to having OpCon, back in 2002, I had to have an operator run a job and then submit a file or files to a company every two hours. And each time it would take 15 minutes of their time. The users just knew that we had a schedule of things we we're doing. Now, since 2004 or 2005 with OpCon, that schedule has been automated and they don't know the efficiencies that we had in the IT department. The productivity increase was a good 50 percent.

The whole product is valuable to us because of the integrations that it has with the MCP and the Windows environments. You have to have the agent on each one of them that you want to monitor. The integrations that we have created are along the lines of extracting files and sending them through SFTP to another vendor. Those are the things that were taking a lot of time away from my staff.

Also, being able to push files through in different ways to different vendors, including FTP, is helpful.

One of the other features that we have is a smart starter so that users can start their own jobs from a little GUI pad that we developed for them.

But really, the whole product is valuable. If it lost any of the functionality we're using it for, it would be sad. Everything is beneficial to us. Everything that we need is here. There's already functionality for the things that we've wanted to do.

All the features that we need are a part of the Opconxps solution.

We have been using OpCon since about 2004. We're a long-time customer.

Stability is an area for improvement. We just went to the new release. You have an agent that runs on the MCP, and you have an agent that runs on each Windows environment. You have SAM which is the manager of all of them, and it has to communicate with all of them.

There are FTP agents that run on the MCP and they are there so that we can transfer a file from the MCP to the Windows environment or vice versa. Sometimes, and nobody has been able to figure out why, it just goes down, and all of my jobs that need it are hanging or failing. It happens about once a week. They have not been able to resolve whatever the problem is. If we see that the job failed, we have to restart it. If it happens in the middle of the night, we're not going to know about it until the next morning. It would be very helpful if they could figure out what in the world is happening with that FTP client that's on the MCP.

Also, every now and again, the schedule builder, which builds out your schedule for the next day or however many days you're building it out for, fails. It has something to do with our virus protection. Because their customer service is so good, we're working with them and trying to figure out what the actual problem is, to get a resolution to that. They know about it and have been trying to figure it out, but it's been years and it's just one of those difficult things to troubleshoot.

We have not scaled it. We haven't needed to add anything to the system. But you can add multiple agents. You have one main server that's monitoring all these other servers. The scalability is there but, of course, it's going to cost you to get additional licenses and to have other servers being monitored.

Their customer service is really good. If we have any issues we can email them or we can call for support and they're there. They're our partner. They want us to be successful. Their turnaround time and knowledge are very good.

Positive

I was at a Unite Conference and SMA was there. I went over to their booth and started talking to them and learned that it was cross-platform, which I really liked. We gave it a trial for free for three months. They came out, they installed it, and they trained us. And we found that, wow, this is really great.

I report to the VP of finance. I don't even remember what the cost was back then, but I had to sell him on it. I was going to have to sell him on anything that was going to cost over $10,000. I told him about it and I told him what we were going to be doing with it and he said, "Yeah, let's do it. Let's see what it's like." After the initial three months I said to him, "We have to have this product because of all of the benefits that it has." I shared all of the benefits with him and that's when we purchased it. We were then able to move forward with automating all of our jobs on a daily and monthly schedule, or whatever schedule was needed.

The initial setup was a learning curve. We had that three month trial and SMA sent somebody for three days to come out and train us and to do our initial setup. We told him this is what we want to do and these are the jobs that we want to automate. He sat with us and mapped out a solution. We worked with him and got hands-on knowledge of it.

It was pretty straightforward after we got through the learning curve. I'm a mainframe person and I come from a world where there is a terminal emulator and you're setting up workflows that are writing code, and that's how you would set up your job. When you go to something where you can just point, click, point, click, and add a few lines, that's totally different. So we had to be retrained and retooled when we first went to this product.

They have extensive documentation and training materials, right down to error codes and troubleshooting.

Our initial deployment was a matter of a week and we were running automations. As we moved forward, after we purchased the product, we expanded it and put more automation into the tool.

Our implementation strategy was based on the use cases that we wanted to solve. I saw how bogged down the operations staff were. When we were looking at the strategy of what we were going to put in the automation for the trial period, we focused on our biggest jobs and the ones that were most time-consuming.

SMA provided a free evaluation period where the software was installed by SMA and we were trained by an SMA expert.  We saw, through the evaluation period, how the software would benefit us.  

We have definitely seen ROI. Being a dark data center, we don't have to have nighttime staff and we can reallocate our resources. That's significant, especially when you're talking about a small organization. Our organization has 500 permanent employees and we span five campuses spread out within a 30-mile radius. Running a multi-campus facility is very expensive. Over the past 25 years I have added two employees to the MIS staff. That's it. Having SMA, which costs me $10,000 a year, means I can shut down my nighttime staff and run that dark data center. Then, the people that were doing that night work can move to day and be more productive for me and do other things and improve their skill sets as well. The return on investment is definitely there.

And I had to prove it to my finance officers, too, before we purchased it.

In my last contract with Unisys, they tried to put SMA underneath my contract with them and I told them I do not want that. I want to deal with SMA by myself. I feel that I can negotiate better with them.

The price is the price. They offer architects and other people to come and install upgrades and such for you. What that has done for us is that it has helped us maintain a good relationship with them and also to get at their technical expertise and ask a lot of questions and such while they're on campus doing the installation and training.

The only cost beyond the standard licensing fees is when we need them to come out and do an install. We have to pay travel costs and for their technical expertise. But I do want that because we get their expertise.

I did evaluate another option. It was not at the scale of SMA because it was more of an automation tool for just the MCP environment. It didn't take into consideration cross-platform dependencies. OpCon was unique in that it not only worked on the MCP environment, but also on the Windows environments, which made it a much richer solution for us.

We haven't evaluated solutions since then. In Florida, you can stay with the same vendor. You don't have to go outside and look for other vendors. Just because the contract may end, say, every two years, you don't have to go out and search for another product. And there has been no reason for me to switch. I'm not unhappy.

Make sure that you know what you want and that you understand what the product does so that you don't purchase more agents than you need or, on the other hand, that you don't purchase fewer agents than you need. Understand what you're trying to solve before you purchase the solution. That way, you know what you want to do. And if they still offer the trial periods or the pilots, take them up on that offer.

The biggest take away from using the solution is, "Why didn't I do it sooner?" when I think about all the time that was wasted. If I had known about it sooner, I would have purchased it sooner and saved even more.

As for integrations with our own products, such as our ERP, those are with our ERP. They don't have to come out of SMA at all. One of the things that we're currently doing is extracting the enrollment information for our LMS and that's through flat CSV files. We create user files, enrollment files, and course files and send them up through SFTP or cURL. Now that we're moving to a new ERP, that integration is going to be more real-time, so we're not going to necessarily need those within the SMA product anymore. It's going to be real-time to the LMS. I'm not saying that OpCon is going away, because it's not. We're still going to need other things that it provides, that our new ERP is not going to provide for us.

What we're going to be using OpCon for will be a little bit different than what we're using it for now. Payroll won't be using the Self Service anymore, once we go live with the new HR payroll system. It's going to be totally different. What we're going to be using OpCon for is more the integrations with other vendors that are not going to be out-of-the-box with the ERP. We're going to be creating command jobs to extract data using their APIs to create CSV files to then send to the vendor through SFTP. It's not going to be as significant on the running of jobs. It's going to be more of an assistance with the integrations that we're going to be running through the new ERP.

Overall, I can't say enough about the company and the product. It's amazing.

We are using it to schedule work across different platforms, including Windows, Linux, and z/OS.

OpCon certainly costs us less than the product we were using before. So in practical, financial terms, it improved things. It has also improved the productivity of the administrators because it's much easier to use than a text-based product.

And when it comes to streamlining operations, with the flowcharting we can now visually see the flow of jobs going through our system and that has exposed some complexity that was unneeded. For example, we discovered processes that have been around for years and people realized that we didn't need to run those anymore. It helped us to improve our throughput by exposing inefficiencies.

It has also saved time for our IT team, particularly for our programmers who use the interface to monitor their systems and their jobs. They have found it easier and more reliable than what they were used to in the past. It has probably saved our developers 20 hours a month. And in our organization, overall, we have realized a 10 to 15 percent increase in productivity, thanks to OpCon.

We particularly like the fact that it's graphical because it is Windows-based. Before, we were text-based on the mainframe. You can also produce flow charts. Because it's point-and-click, its ease of use is very nice.

The learning curve was not very steep. When we converted to it, SMA held some classes, and they even held classes that were specific to our environment and where we were coming from. People were functional in it within a week.

The one area it needs some help in is the mainframe area because that is not its strength. They support the mainframe but it's not something that they are good at.

I have been using OpCon for about two years.

We haven't had any issues with its stability or performance. It has been perfectly stable so far.

It is easy to scale in that we can add agents very easily to it. When we get a new machine and we go into what's called Enterprise Manager, which is where we manage the system, we add the machine and off we go. We are not a huge shop, but we've been able to add systems to it very easily and have not felt any bad effects from that.

I'm very pleased and impressed with SMA's technical support for OpCon. They're responsive and they've done a very good job in fixing problems that we've reported.

Positive

We were using ASG-Zeke, which is now Rocket Software. We got away from them because we did not care for their support and they were, frankly, expensive.

The initial deployment was complex because we were migrating from our previous product and that's always going to be complex. But they did it almost seamlessly, in about six months, which was really impressive to us. We shut down the old system and turned on OpCon in one day and we were off.

The solution is used almost exclusively by the IS department to schedule our work and it's in one physical location.

The install/deploy time of our old solution and this one was pretty much the same. The process to install the software isn't much different from one product to another, generally.

As for maintenance, it is typical with any product to perform upgrades. In my role, I handle the mainframe piece, and that's pretty straightforward. We contracted with SMA to help us with maintaining the pieces that run on the other platforms, and it's all pretty straightforward and easy to do.

SMA worked with us directly. They came out to our site on cut-over week. Most of the deployment was done in the midst of COVID, so everything was remote. But they came out for the planned cut-over and were with us for the whole thing.

On our side, four employees were involved in the deployment, along with the two OpCon people.

ROI is hard to quantify, but we have increased our productivity by about 15 to 20 percent, as an estimate.

A primary factor for us was cost. Given what it's doing for us, versus the price that we're paying for OpCon, we feel that it's extremely beneficial to us in terms of the total cost of ownership. But quantifying that is somewhat difficult.

Within two months we were realizing the advantages that we had, with OpCon, over our old product. 

It was substantially less expensive than ASG-Zeke. We bought a five-year contract after the initial license fee, and then it's maintenance for five years.

I would suggest that someone who is only looking at price when evaluating workload automation tools take a very hard look at OpCon because it is well-priced. OpCon is in a market where there's a lot of competition and they're trying to really get a foothold in it. If price is one of your primary concerns, consider OpCon.

There were a number of vendors that we looked at but OpCon was the best fit for us.

I was that person who was researching workload automation tools but who had never heard of OpCon. I came across it somewhere on the web. I would recommend that someone like that reach out to SMA and ask for a demo. That's what we did. They even used a sample of our own data to show how they could convert it and what it would look like in their system.

In this credit union, we use OpCon for automation. That is the main use of it. We have over 3,000 jobs and schedules that process certain procedures that we have. These procedures touch our core system and other systems that integrate with it.

The biggest example is for our credit union ACH processing. We use OpCon to make sure that files are moved over automatically. We also use OpCon to connect with the Axway system, which is an application that the Fed uses to make sure that those files get over to them and are processed correctly. If there are any returns, we get those files back from the Fed through Axway, and OpCon helps us with that automation. So, we use OpCon very heavily here. 

We have over 3,000 processes. We do a lot here. We use our OpCon system to help us with our month-end processes. We make sure that our core system process gets automated in terms of a backup taking place, and then our month-end procedures happen. We make sure that there is an end-of-day procedure and postings and so forth to get us over.

We have the Solution Manager, and we use that a lot. It gives us a single point of control for orchestrating workflows and file movements.

Its benefits were immediate, and after some time, we saw even further benefits. Over ten years ago, this team used to manually run every single process. That meant that they were working 24 hours. They were working weekends. They were working through lunch. They were working dinner time, just to make sure that processes were running for the credit union. When OpCon came along and they started automating those processes, the team was able to have a work-life balance. That was a big benefit, and it happened immediately. We continue doing that so much that over 3,000 jobs are happening with OpCon.

OpCon in a way enables us to manage complex schedules that span disparate systems. We have a few other systems in which we have automated a file or process happening at one point in time and then moving on to being ingested by another system. We have processes where our core system may push out a report or something along the way. OpCon helps with the generation of that and also then pushes that report either to another system where that report needs to be generated, mailed, and printed out for someone or to another system where it needs to be held as a documentary repository system.

OpCon has freed up time for our staff to focus on higher-value projects. Using OpCon for ACH processes here at the credit union allows us to not only adhere to NACHA compliance and audit rules but also make sure that our membership is able to move their money and use their money as quickly as possible and as appropriately as possible with minimal impact to them and minimal impact to the organization. In terms of growing business on the vendor SMA side of things, there have been times when we have been asked to meet with other credit unions to share our thoughts and our experience with the product in itself and gain SMA more clients.

Using OpCon, we have automated 3,000 processes that were previously run manually. In terms of time savings, it is hard for me to put a number down, but per year, at a high level, it has probably saved us between 200 to 400 hours.

Using OpCon has helped to reduce errors when running complex processes. When we notice that there has been an issue, we ask questions about the process and find out if it is automated. We solutionize it with OpCon and have more controls and applications around it. It has been beneficial from that standpoint as well. A lot of times, one of the questions for a lot of our projects is whether there is anything that is happening manually that we could handle for them.

The biggest thing that we like about OpCon is how easy it is to trust it once we put the automation in place. Once we put whatever that job or schedule is, if we have the proper settings and conditions and we understand the components of OpCon in itself, we can go from a manual process to an automated process. We allow our team to get time to rest and have time to handle other things.

OpCon has benefited us a lot. We have a FICS process, which is First Mortgages, and we have used OpCon to automate all the manual processes there. That happened about two years ago, and we saved our organization well over 200 hours per month by the business units and allowed them to do other work as things were automated. Our favorite thing is just the ease of it. Once it is set up, we can trust it. We can move forward, and we can put our hands and our focus on something else.

The only thing that we have been talking about with the vendor is the Solution Manager tool that we have. It is a great tool. It is getting replaced by another tool that is probably called Enterprise Manager. We just had a few complaints about it. The navigation of that new tool is a little bit more arbitrary than what we have been used to. It may be because we need more training and more time and experience, but that has been the only issue recently. We have talked with our rep, and I am sure they are hearing us when we say it often.

It is my understanding that we have been using it for over a decade now. I joined my operations team in October 2022.

I have not seen issues on the OpCon side. We have seen a few failures that we cannot speak to. We do have a ticket open now, but it has not been impossible for our production system.

In terms of automation, it is quite scalable, and it allows us to touch other systems. There might be some more future integrations, but I am not sure what the vendor's roadmap is for the product in itself. For now, for our credit union's business needs, scalability is decent.

We have contacted tech support via phone and ticket. We mainly contact them via ticket. Our ticket management, from my experience so far, has been decently well. There have been some things where it could have been faster, but that is when I messaged our rep and got her attention. She then gets on it and makes sure that the ticket is addressed, but it has only been a few times when we had to open up a ticket for any issues that we could not understand ourselves.

Positive

I have not used a similar solution before.

It is deployed on-prem. Our OpCon upgrades have been very quick and easy for us. There is no hard burn there. We essentially start with our staging systems first. It takes us less than a day to get that working. We test it ourselves with a few automation processes, and then we coordinate production with our change management tier and get that going.

It does not require too much maintenance. Obviously, we have so many notifications put in place with the processing that helps us with the maintenance. We know if we have to go into the system or not. We have successful and failure notifications. If there is a delay and we know that by a certain time, something should have happened, we have notifications there to let us know to get in and either restart a job or pull something together within OpCon and get it fixed. The maintenance of it is on the easier side, especially when you put safety nets and notifications in place for you and your team.

In the past ten years, there has been one dedicated resource to this OpCon system with maybe a few knowing bits and parts of it. Since I took over the team in 2022, I have cross-trained my entire team on OpCon, so we have six individuals working with it.

It is at a decent price for the work that it does for us.

It is always wise to make sure that you talk with the vendor about what the proper training is for this product. It is also wise to talk with the vendor about BCP and DR procedures to understand what your failover capabilities are. It is also good to talk with the vendor about making sure that you have an understanding of what your costs are and if you have any fixed rates with the contract. These are the things that almost everybody does before they get committed to a product or service, but these are the high-level things you always want to make sure you do.

We have not necessarily used OpCon to manage legacy systems along with modern systems. Once a system here turns into a legacy system, it is a legacy. We are really tight with security, so if it is a legacy, we try to dismantle it and decommission it as quickly as possible and not have any ties or actions going on with it. Right now, everything that we have for our processes and connections is in active systems. There is nothing in older servers or anything like that.

We have not used OpCon Cloud. We are not there yet. We may be there in the future. Right now, we have been focusing on making sure that our OpCon continues to be healthy, and we continue leveraging the tools so that we can build more automation.

I would rate OpCon a nine out of ten.

We started using the OpCon product with a contract management application doing migration between Dollar Universe and the OpCon solution. The first time we used the OpCon product for scheduling programs we had around 7,000 jobs running on this application. Today, we have around 41,000 jobs per day. We have around 4,000 host computers in production and we have 618 applications running on the solution.

We have migrated about 90 percent of our information systems to OpCon. We have to finish the project and finalize the migration for the remaining 10 percent or less.

OpCon has streamlined our operations. With OpCon, we have reduced the number of jobs by about 17 percent and we have execution times running on a schedule. It's a good way for optimizing and automating the scheduling of our programs.

One of the advantages of OpCon is the ability to use the API and web services. We couldn't do that with our previous solution. We have been able to change our procedure for ticketing. When a job is down, we can immediately create a ticket from OpCon in our ticketing solution, which is ServiceNow, using the web services.

One of the valuable features is that we are able to automatically manage problems with jobs. The system automatically tries to restart jobs when things go down. That's a good way for us to quickly manage and resolve all problems automatically, without creating tickets.

It is really different than the product we used before, Dollar Universe. The interface of OpCon is really modern and fluid and simple to use. It's really a framework for the user who doesn't see all the complexity behind the product. We have a lot of functionality with the product that we didn't have before. All our users find it simple to use and, after working with it a few times, it does not take them long to know how to use it. We've had no difficulties using the product.

And the web solution, Solution Manager, enables easy access to the application to quickly see if we have problems with our programs. Immediately, with its color code, we know if all is okay or if we have a problem. The web interface is really simple to use and we can put it on a screen on our desks and look. It's really useful for us. When we click on the screen we can immediately see which job is the problem that we have to analyze or restart. It's really easy to identify that and to restart or go quickly to the problem, without having to find or analyze where the problem is. It's efficient for us.

I would like to see them improve the Solution Manager for the web application. It's the future for us. Our customers need a lot of functionality, but there isn't that functionality within Solution Manager. So they have to develop and improve it.

The visualization module needs to be more open for parameters, such as the color of the job status information. For example, when a job is canceled, the color on the visualization module appears as orange and we can't change that color with a parameter. We can't decide, for example, to display the jobs that were canceled in green. I'm expecting from SMA that they will create parameters and give us the opportunity to choose the colors we want for job statuses.

We've been using it for two years.

We didn't have any problems for the first few weeks. When we got to a big volume of jobs, we started to have some response delay. We called SMA's French support and U.S. support to analyze our problem. SMA's solution was that there was a difficulty with the large history. We hadn't deleted and had too many days in history. We had to purge some history and close some days. Today, we do that regularly and it's okay for us now. We have a good response time from the product.

Whenever we upgrade the solution we have support to help us, and we have never had great difficulty in upgrading the system. It is not a difficulty for us today. 

We have not hit the limits of the product. We have a lot of new projects starting on OpCon to develop new scheduling programs. We don't use OpCon for only part of our information system. We use OpCon for our entire information system. OpCon is used for all our scheduling jobs.

A really big change for us was that SMA has French support in Europe. That's a big advantage for us because we are not all fluent in English. And they are open night and day. Whenever we call, we always get support. Support is really good.

One of the good things we have found with SMA is that we have a partnership. They really help us and we are working with them. We really want to optimize the product and give them suggestions for new functionality that we need. We help them to develop it and to optimize the product. They work interactively with us and are quick to develop the functionality for developing our business.

We used Dollar Universe.

The initial setup is really easy. Installing the product is not really difficult.

For all our infrastructure development, integration, pre-production, production, training — for the whole environment — it took about six months, including specifying all the parameters and starting the product, doing the pilot migration, testing the application after migration, and moving it to production. The first migration started immediately after we finished configuring the product.

We had a contract with SMA for support and to help us do the first migration of the pilot application, which was contract management. After we finished configuring the product's parameters, testing the product, and doing the migration on this pilot application, we managed the migrations alone, with SMA's support if we had difficulties doing something or needed help to optimize the product.

We have seen ROI. In the first year, we paid less than the previous solution and, with OpCon, we have reduced the number of incidents and we have an improved quality of service for our customers.

There is also less cost for our teams to analyze and deal with program scheduling. We haven't needed more people to explore the solution. We can have fewer people and do other things. We can invest in projects and not just in running activities.

It costs less than our previous solution, Dollar Universe. We pay annual maintenance but we don't pay anything additional until we hit a certain number of jobs per day.

In 2016 we started to analyze different solutions in the marketplace. We had meetings with vendors of a lot of solutions, with demonstrations, and we evaluated every product. At the end of the analysis, we chose three solutions. We then met with customers using those solutions. Only then did we choose the SMA solution. It's a more complete solution for us and more open and scalable for our needs.

We evaluated the IBM solution, the Automic solution, a French product, and so on. There were other solutions too, but those were the main solutions we analyzed.

Start with a lot of training and develop a good familiarity with the functionality of the product. Do that before starting development on OpCon. Normalize the codification of the schedule of the jobs. Write that clearly and define the rules to develop the objects before starting with OpCon. That is very important because if you start to develop immediately in the product, without doing that phase of analysis and normalization of the codes, you will have difficulties.

We have a team of about 10 people whose job it is to create the scheduling programs. And we have another five external people to reinforce that team. For everyday exportation of the project and all our schedules, we have about 16 people. They schedule jobs and analyze issues or responses from our clients for building jobs.

The primary reason behind implementing it was its integration with our new core banking system, serving as the designated task scheduler. Our core system lacked this capability inherently, leading the core vendor to incorporate OpCon to address this gap. Initially introduced as part of the package to fulfill the role of a task scheduler, we subsequently embraced and significantly expanded its usage. It is now an integral component of our operations, seamlessly integrated into our core banking system. Its implementation coincided with our core banking system upgrade, and since then, it has been instrumental in managing a myriad of daily routines and schedules. 

Beyond its role in executing numerous jobs critical to our core operations, we leverage OpCon for broader infrastructure automation. Whether it's handling routine maintenance, conducting audits, or generating reports, the versatility of OpCon enables us to efficiently run thousands of diverse tasks across our organization.

OpCon plays a pivotal role in consolidating control for orchestration workflows and file movements into a centralized point, a critical aspect of our operations. This centralized control is immensely significant. 

When I initially joined the organization, the automation landscape was only a fraction of its current size, and it was scattered across our computing infrastructure. The challenge was identifying the location of actions like report generation or file movements. Now, we have achieved a transformative shift – everything is seamlessly managed through a unified interface, providing a comprehensive view of all automation control. 

It empowers us to handle intricate schedules that span disparate systems, and some of these schedules are exceptionally complex. It has liberated our staff's time, allowing them to concentrate on more high-value projects. It's important to acknowledge that automation involves an initial investment of effort in terms of building, implementing, and maintaining the system. Despite this upfront cost, the efficiency gains achieved after the automation is established are substantial and challenging to quantify. 

The time saved across multiple organizations through the presence of automation is significant. Monthly, across all organizations, it likely saves several hundred hours. The time savings facilitated by OpCon have enabled our Information Services department, despite our relatively modest staff size, to undertake a significantly increased workload. The automation seamlessly handles tasks in the background that would have otherwise required manual intervention. As a result, we've been able to successfully manage a multitude of additional projects on an annual basis. 

It has proven instrumental in managing a mix of legacy systems and modern platforms. As mentioned, we execute thousands of jobs across a diverse range of systems, encompassing both outdated and contemporary technologies. OpCon has transformed numerous manual processes into automated ones, totaling in the hundreds. We've systematically automated virtually every identifiable process, and the initiative is ongoing. 

Collaborating with various organizations within the credit union, we're methodically determining the daily, weekly, and monthly tasks that can be automated for each. While we've already automated thousands of jobs, the process of identification and automation is ongoing and requires time.

Among the numerous valuable features, one standout capability is the implementation of self-service buttons. This feature has proven immensely beneficial across the enterprise. 

Essentially, self-service buttons enable the integration of a website, allowing us to construct backend automation. Users throughout the credit union can then access this automation effortlessly through buttons on a web page. This functionality empowers users to initiate or kick off jobs with a simple button press, decentralizing automation control and mitigating the need for them to interact directly with our critical infrastructure. This not only enhances efficiency but also provides a powerful means of controlling user access to sensitive systems. 

The self-service feature is an incredibly powerful tool, and its significance cannot be overstated. This functionality allows us to empower various departments within the credit union by giving them control over their own tasks, schedules, and internal processes. 

With the automation seamlessly operating in the background, this feature extends OpCon's reach across the organization, providing everyone with the ability to manage their own work. It has been instrumental in minimizing errors during the execution of complex processes. The inherent strength of automation lies in delivering consistent results, ensuring that the process and its outcomes remain consistently accurate.

I believe there's room for improvement, and while I think it's something they are considering, I would welcome seeing OpCon integrate with a broader range of systems and third-party products.

We have been using it for the last five years.

In terms of reliability, it has performed exceptionally well. Rarely do we encounter issues—perhaps once or twice in a calendar year, and these are often minor and resolved with a simple reboot.

It handles thousands of jobs, demonstrating its excellent scalability. Even with the substantial workload, we haven't observed any negative impact, indicating that it scales very effectively.

Technical support has been consistently helpful, and I have no complaints. Their responsiveness and the ease of submitting tickets have been commendable. Unlike many organizations, OpCon keeps the process straightforward. I would rate it at least an eight out of ten.

Positive

Previously, we relied on native Windows job scheduling tools, but they pale in comparison to OpCon.

Deploying OpCon is relatively straightforward, but upgrades can pose some complexity. During upgrades, we opt for redeploying a new instance and migrating everything over instead of directly upgrading the existing product. This approach is taken to avoid any downtime during the upgrade process. While the deployment itself wasn't challenging, the more intricate task was establishing the initial automation, particularly constructing critical jobs to run against our core. OpCon provided on-site assistance for the initial wave of jobs related to our core, and from that point forward, we continued managing it independently. Initially, we had a team of four or five people working on it from our side, and from OpCon side, we had one person involved in the process. Regarding the maintenance part, aside from upgrades, there's not much else to attend to. OpCon is largely self-sufficient, operating reliably without frequent issues.

The time required to realize the value was not immediate in a substantial way, but rather, it unfolded gradually. Upon deployment alongside our new core system, we initially concentrated on building jobs specifically tailored for the core. This focused effort resulted in a relatively small-scale usage during the early stages as our priority was bringing the new core online. However, post that phase, OpCon's usage has significantly expanded and continues to grow consistently. We are continually engaged in building new automation with it.

Operating OpCon comes with a cost. While one could always argue that everything is expensive, especially given the array of products we use, I don't find any significant issue with it. The value proposition of OpCon, in my opinion, is tremendous. It is currently delivering value that justifies the cost.

Before integrating OpCon into your environment, it's crucial to ensure that your team receives training on the product. OpCon isn't a deploy-and-go type of solution that you can easily grasp on your own. Training is highly valuable for success with this product. Once you've acquired the necessary education and skills, using it becomes much easier. While it may not be the most intuitive product initially, it becomes user-friendly once you've gained familiarity and understanding through training. Overall, it is a game-changing platform and a critical tool within our infrastructure. It consistently performs as intended, and I would rate it a nine out of ten.

We use OpCon to automate tasks like moving files around, starting jobs on our mainframe, alerts, etc. 

OpCon's biggest benefit is cutting down on the workload. It reduces human interaction and the risk of human error. It has freed up employee time by automating some repetitive jobs. We save about 20 hours a week or roughly the equivalent of half a full-time employee. 

We use OpCon to automate stuff across the board, including some legacy solutions that vendors haven't quite been able to upgrade. We're currently running thousands of jobs. 

OpCon removes the human element from routine jobs, taking the potential for human error out of the equation. OpCon provides a single point of control for orchestrating workflows. There's a GUI to build and schedule jobs. You can set up your notifications, review error logs, and troubleshoot through there.

 The learning curve could be shorter. The problem is that it's difficult to simplify a product without taking away functionality. I would love to see OpCon become a little easier to grasp. However, my concern is that making things easier isn't always better for the product. If they can keep the integrity of the product while making it easier to learn, that would be an area of improvement.

I've only worked with OpCon for about nine months.

I haven't experienced any issues with stability.

OpCon is scalable enough for our purposes. We've got several thousand jobs running through it with no problems. 

I rate OpCon support 10 out of 10. I've never had a problem with them. I've always been able to get answers quickly and always seem to find a knowledgeable person to assist with any questions.

Positive

We previously had a solution just for moving files, but OpCon can do a wider range of things.  Both have their place. Our other solution was easier to use, but the capabilities were limited. 

I rate OpCon 10 out of 10. I recommend taking advantage of OpCon's training courses. They have two levels. The entry-level course is free with your license. You need to pay for the advanced course, but it's worth it. 

We initially used it for core job scheduling, but our focus shifted to managing file movements with vendors through FTP as tasks were outsourced. It now functions as a comprehensive server monitoring tool, overseeing file transfers, scheduling jobs based on received files and managing dependencies. OpCon facilitates efficient updating of our internal database with vendor files and plays a vital role in failure notifications, job holds during issues, and alerts via email or text. Currently, we handle around twelve hundred unique jobs, resulting in sixty to seventy thousand job runs monthly.

The primary advantage lies in labor savings and the capability to monitor and respond to task outcomes effectively. OpCon facilitates not only scheduling but also provides continuous communication through email or text notifications. This ensures real-time updates on the status of critical processes, whether they have run successfully, encountered failures, or require attention. 

The notification feature enhances control and allows prompt responses to operational events. 

OpCon has empowered us to handle more intricate schedules that span diverse systems, especially during our transition to a new platform. Some schedules are quite complex, involving sub-schedules within them. For instance, a single job for the data warehouse comprises around two hundred and fifty unique tasks. This flexibility allows us to break down jobs individually, making it easier to address failures at a granular level, simplifies troubleshooting, and facilitates more efficient processing by releasing the next job once an issue is resolved. 

It has freed up our staff's time, enabling them to engage in higher-value projects. While we still encounter occasional failures, their frequency has significantly reduced. Instead of the manual check-off sheet approach, where someone would meticulously oversee processes, we now have the freedom to work on diverse projects. 

We've successfully automated numerous processes that were previously carried out manually. While I can't provide an exact count, the estimate falls within the range of hundreds, potentially around a hundred and fifty to two hundred unique items. 

Quantifying the time saved by OpCon is challenging, but to justify its purchase and ongoing maintenance, I would estimate it frees up the equivalent of at least two full-time positions. 

The cost savings are significant, considering the annual hours and salaries involved. While the platform requires ongoing maintenance and updates, it has effectively replaced the need for two full-time staff members engaged in manual processes. 

Implementing OpCon has significantly reduced errors in executing complex processes. Previously, relying on manual checklists left room for typos, sequencing issues, or overlooked details. OpCon addresses this by allowing a one-time setup and comprehensive review, minimizing possible errors. 

The platform supports various actions, including job submissions, file copies, and native execution of PowerShell scripts, eliminating the need for manual intervention. As a result, failures are now less frequent, with most issues attributed to file-related issues or occasional user errors, rather than OpCon-based job errors. 

We observed benefits right from day one, especially in terms of scheduling automation. Upon going live, the advantages were significant due to the automated calendars and frequencies. 

The most impactful feature was the ability to handle dependencies. In cases where one element failed, others could proceed, minimizing disruptions.

The most valuable feature of OpCon is its scheduling capability, particularly for automating file transfers with vendors. Before OpCon, this process was manual, requiring someone to log in to vendor websites daily for file transfers. With OpCon, this task is automated based on specified frequencies and calendars, reducing the need for constant manual intervention. This scheduling feature has extended to other areas within the credit union, allowing staff members to trigger automated processes by submitting files or using a self-service feature. OpCon is a significant labor-saving tool by automating formerly manual functions and streamlining operations across the organization. It is a centralized control hub, managing operations and consolidating tasks across five instances, including two for production and others for documentation, service, and development. The organization plans to expand this centralization to involve additional IT areas and departments seeking to automate manual tasks. We utilize the self-service feature for specific IT tasks, and we've extended its use to several departments within the credit union. The impact of the self-service feature on our processing and business efficiency has been significant. Rather than manually scheduling or relying on complex processes tied to specific criteria, the self-service button is provided to departments. It offers the capability to support older systems if needed.

The only feature we're anticipating is the ability to access and control OpCon through devices like the iPhone or iPad. Currently, when a failure occurs, we receive an alert, but to take corrective action, the on-call person needs to remotely access the software. Looking ahead, we hope for the capability to initiate tasks remotely. It might be beneficial if OpCon offered a more streamlined version at a lower cost, focusing solely on core functionality. The current software is robust and powerful, but a lite version with essential features could be a cost-effective option for organizations that don't require the full range of functionalities provided by the comprehensive solution.

I have been using OpCon for fifteen years.

The software remains stable, effectively monitors servers, and executes jobs, and I can't recall the last instance of it encountering any significant issues. It's highly stable and reliable for the range of tasks it handles. Considering the volume of processes we run each month, the occurrences of failures or issues requiring attention are typically job-based or related to user errors from other departments. I would rate it ten out of ten.

OpCon is highly scalable, offering a wide range of capabilities. If they adopted a pricing model per module, it could further enhance scalability as numerous functions can be performed with the software. Its complexity is flexible, allowing users to customize it based on their specific needs, making it suitable for both simple and intricate tasks. I would rate it ten out of ten.

The customer service has always been excellent, and we recently added managed services to our contract, allowing OpCon to assist us remotely for up to fifteen hours a month. It consistently excels in customer support, standing out among the various vendors we interact with regularly. Their support team is knowledgeable, responsive, and provides accurate solutions. Even in cases where further assistance is required, the option to pay for additional support is available. I would rate it ten out of ten.

Positive

We conducted a review for purchase several years ago, initially opting for MOVEit as it aligned better with our older core system, which was more tech-focused rather than GUI-based. However, we soon identified a significant limitation with MOVEit—it lacked a dependency component. After six months of in-house use, we recognized the weakness and transitioned to OpCon. Since changing vendors in 2005, we have exclusively used MOVEit and transitioned to OpCon.

The deployment of OpCon has been straightforward, and we initially handled it internally for several years. Their server setup and configuration instructions are clear, contributing to a smooth implementation. Over the past four or five years, we've opted for their paid support for implementations and software updates. At the time of deployment, there were likely two individuals involved in the process.

The pricing is reasonable. Given our plan, which allows us to run two productions and multiple failovers and development boxes, we find it to be a fair investment. While it suits our needs well, I'm aware that smaller credit unions may have found the cost challenging in the past. However, if an organization processes enough jobs and can justify the cost by realizing savings in employee roles, OpCon pays for itself.

I advise others to consider the benefits in terms of failure reduction, dependency management, and labor savings. OpCon's value becomes evident in the streamlining of operations and the automation of tasks. While it can be as straightforward or intricate as needed, having individuals who truly understand it can unlock its full potential and enable credit unions to achieve more with the platform. Overall, I would rate it ten out of ten.