OpCon Reviews

We use it as an automation tool to send and receive files and process batch jobs on our core banking system. It can also archive files for us. We use OpCon to automate anything that we can automate.

If I did not have OpCon, I would have to hire full-time employee to do all of the work that OpCon does. We probably save about $40,000 to $50,000 a year by being able to schedule everything. Plus it's reliable. If an employee doesn't show up for work, someone else has to fill in, and things might be late. OpCon works. I wake up in the morning and the first thing I check is my text messages. I see a text message from OpCon that End-of-Day was successful the previous evening. That way I know people can come to work and everything is on schedule.

Another benefit is that, in the past, employees would have to call the IT department to run certain batch jobs in our core banking system. We don't want to give the privilege of running a batch job to an accounting clerk because they could accidentally run a batch job that they shouldn't and cause serious problems. We were able, with an additional piece that we purchased from OpCon called Self Service — a web-based platform — to create a button for the accounting department to click. 

As an example, we have to process ACH and when an ACH file comes in, the accounting department needs to look at it for certain exceptions. And then our support services department needs to look at it for certain exceptions. When each person is done with their job, they go to their Self Service page and push a button. When OpCon sees that two buttons have been pushed, it knows it can continue with the job. So the employees don't need to call IT. We've programmed OpCon to take over the job when it knows the employees have done their jobs.

We have about 40 schedules on an average day and, within some of those schedules, multiple jobs are done. When we moved to our new core banking system, we had to do everything manually. Once we put OpCon in place, it took over doing close to all of that; about 99 percent.

We continue to look for things that OpCon can do. There might be a scenario where an accounting clerk has to download a file and open it up and put files in certain places. When we find something like that, we see if we can work through the process and let OpCon do it for them, or do part of the job for them. I know there are still things out there that can be automated.

OpCon has definitely freed up some employees to do more meaningful work as a result of automation. During our first month on our core banking system, because I was responsible for that system, I or my systems administrator pretty much spent all day manually downloading files, running batch jobs, uploading files, processing things, and moving them to archives. That was good because it was a new system. Neither of us had done those kinds of tasks. So we now understand what's involved. When it came time to program OpCon, we knew exactly what we wanted done. It was very nice to move those jobs to OpCon, one-by-one, and free up our time to go back to our regular work.

We're a small organization, there are only 35 of us. OpCon freed up three people in IT and probably the equivalent of another FTE. Someone else had to deal with getting files from the Federal Reserve and sending files and they don't have to do that anymore. OpCon does it. We're now free to work on other projects or other problems. The things that OpCon does, they're routine; it's the same thing day in and out. Go to this credit card processor and get a file, bring it over here, upload it here, run a batch job, and send out an email. It gets very boring doing that every day. There's more interesting work we can do.

We also have some jobs that take a lot of network bandwidth and we use OpCon to schedule them to run at two in the morning and they're done by four. That way, people aren't affected during the day, so we've made better use of our bandwidth.

Finally, we're in Oregon, so about once a year we might have snow to the point that they shut the city down. My SA or I can remote into the credit union and check on OpCon and make sure that all the jobs are running. We have a couple of managers who can remote in and do their pieces and push the OpCon buttons to tell OpCon to finish up the job. In the past, we had to have at least two people come into the organization to process ACH or payrolls, etc. Now, we have the ability to work remotely if necessary.

The most valuable feature is being able to schedule tasks so that they reliably occur each day, each week, each month, or sometimes several times a day. We are a financial institution so we need to have our core banking system up to date. We also want to make sure that the work gets done. For example, we use it for ACH deposits and payments. So if you are depending on your paycheck to be there on a certain day of the month, OpCon makes sure it's done. The scheduler works as it should.

It is a complex product to use. Programming the schedules is complex. It does require training from OpCon. As an example, I went away for a week of training. The week after I came back from that, OpCon was onsite to set up our initial schedules. At that point, my systems administrator really took over. I should have sent him to the class, but it was good for me to learn the basics. A year later, my SA ended up going to an advanced class.

I haven't been on their website in a while, but I would like to see some online training, some videos. When I bring in a new employee — as an example, my helpdesk person is going to be moving into some network tasks, and she'll be working within OpCon down the road — it would be nice if there was some basic information for her to look at to understand this program. Even for my systems administrator, it would be helpful if there were tips and tricks available. We're always looking for more learning and more education on how we make the most out of this product. Whether it's online videos or periodic webinars that are accessible online at a later time if necessary, that would be great.

The only thing that OpCon cannot do is the following. OpCon runs a batch job on our core system that creates a file. That file needs to go to a third-party vendor. The only way to get it to that vendor is through their website which has a secure login. OpCon cannot log into a website. It only uses secure FTP. So every Wednesday morning, one of my employees has to take that file and manually log in to the website and upload it. We're waiting for that third-party company to come up with an SFTP solution. Once they do that, then things will be completely automated. I don't know how complex it would be for OpCon to log into a website, but pretty much everyone uses SFTP for file transfers these days.

We have been using OpCon for a little over three years.

It's a very stable product.

The only time we have to be careful of is if we have an extended power outage. We've learned that we have to bring our SQL database server up before we bring OpCon online. That's true for several other systems that we run. But otherwise, OpCon tends to work as expected.

I'm sure there's a lot of scalability, but as a small organization, we're using it as much as we can. We've not experienced any problems. 

Our company has about $130 million in assets. I know credit unions that are billion-dollar companies and they use OpCon. So I have no concerns, as we grow, that it will continue to meet our needs.

The support is good. When we run into issues, we can rely on SMA to walk us through how to correct any problems or do something in a more efficient way.

We did not have a previous solution. One of my requirements, when we decided to go with our new core banking system, was that I did not want to spend my time doing these routine jobs and tasks every day. So I went out to my colleagues at other credit unions and asked them how they were managing these things. Everyone said, "You must have OpCon." I researched a little on OpCon. Our core banking platform, Corelation Keystone, put me in touch with the OpCon salesperson. They did a demo for me and I was immediately sold.

Because we had an expert here from SMA, it was somewhat straightforward. He knew what he was doing and we had confidence in him. We didn't have any problems that I recall.

We started automating our first process on the second day of the deployment. We created some schedules and jobs that ran so that we could make sure that they worked.

An example is End-of-Day. That is a program that's done on the core banking system at the end of the day and it closes out a lot of information for accounting purposes and so forth, and then sets the date to the next day. For example, certain accounts might need dividends applied to them or loan interest charged on loans. Late notices and certificate notices need to be prepared. If it's the end of the month, there may be a statement file that goes to another vendor. We need to make sure that End-of-Day is successful. We could see the next day that yes, it was. We immediately kicked in and started getting things done.

After the OpCon person left, my systems administrator started to create new job schedules for some of the other processes that we did. One-by-one, we started moving our manual processes over to Keystone until they were all done.

OpCon assisted us in our initial setup. They were here for three for four days. That's how long it took us to deploy the solution.

OpCon is expensive for us as a small organization, but on the other hand, it's a lot less expensive than hiring another full-time employee.

We pay for licensing annually, including the Self Service module, a connector license to our Corelation Keystone banking platform, and for a license for each server that it's on. A lot of these are rolled up into one, but the initial implementation was a chunk of money. Now, we just pay annual maintenance.

I did not look into other products. The recommendation for OpCon came from most of my colleagues in my industry working at other credit unions. I did not find another solution. Everyone used OpCon, and everyone really liked it and highly recommended it. So it was an easy decision. 

And SMA has a good working relationship with Corelation. They worked with Corelation to write unique jobs that run in OpCon for credit unions. That was also a very good selling point.

The biggest lesson I have learned from using OpCon is that you really need an individual like my systems administrator who understands how a program like this works. Creating these schedules and working with the language that's required to get things done is very specialized. You have to have someone like that. Could I do it? I could, but it would take me 10 times the amount of time that it takes Sean. You do need someone on staff who understands systems, system deployment, systems operations. That's how you're able to make the most of it. The programming side of it is very basic. It's not that complex. But you have to understand how to tell it what you want to do.

Our primary user is our systems administrator; he programs everything in OpCon. I can access it when he goes on vacation and make sure that all of the jobs are working fine. At times there might be a job that failed. For example, a person is supposed to prepare a file from a third-party vendor but if they don't rename it appropriately, OpCon doesn't know what to do with it. Another example is that one of our third-party vendors will send us a file that is incorrectly prepared. OpCon won't process it. It will catch the problem and then we have to reach out to the vendor and ask for a new file. OpCon allows me to catch any mistakes that a human being makes.

We have two people using OpCon. Sean programs it and has overall responsibility for it, including deployment and maintenance. I fill in when he's not here. Luckily there aren't too many issues. I'm going to get my third IT employee involved with it more next year, to do what I do. And 10 or 12 other employees each have access to their department's site in the Self Service program. So if they're responsible for looking at the bounced-check file or ACH exceptions or paper payroll that we receive from small companies, they can do their work and push their button and that allows OpCon to finish the job.

We've been very happy with it. We're always looking for ways to use it more. We ask, "Could OpCon do that?"

I am always careful about giving someone a 10, because there's always room for improvement. But I hate to give OpCon a nine. I give them a 10.

I use it to monitor long-time events.

The solution enhances the organization as it safeguards against various types of malware through anti-malware, which we use once every few days. 

The image scanning and anti-malware features are really valuable.

The image-scanning features need improvement.

I have been working with SUSE NeuVector for two months. 

The solution is not that stable, so I would rate it a four out of ten.

The technical support is good. 

Positive

The initial setup is easy, and I would rate it a seven out of ten because there were some difficulties. It took 30 minutes to deploy the solution. It only required one person to deploy.

I would rate the solution a five out of ten.

The solution is for our core system processing, which runs our scheduled programs. We are a financial institution, so it does our postings, reporting, nightly processes, and file transfers for anything which needs to go in and out of the core going to designated places. OpCon now does any type of repetitious work that we would have an operator do.

I have it implemented in our accounting and card departments for their processes, our payment systems, and HR for the onboarding/offboarding of employees. We also have it in IT.

It improved our consistency on how batch jobs are run and their schedule. It used to be left up to me or another operator to do the postings of these jobs. They were not always done on time. If it was supposed to be done at 8:00, then it'd be done at 8:10 or 8:15. Now, 8:00 is 8:00. Jobs are more efficient, and with the schedule, there is no variation on the time. These things will be run.

The other part is some of these jobs have prompts in them. You had to answer those prompts and make sure you were consistent in your answers. If you rely on a person to do it, sometimes those answers are not done correctly. Whereas, with OpCon, it will always be a consistent response to those answers. There is no deviating whatsoever. This reduced the responsibility of another operator who can be moved over to do something else. It went from that person doing the job to monitoring what is going on in OpCon. It also has expanded their job responsibilities to other things that need to be done.

The solution has streamlined operations. E.g., we have at least 20 different jobs in our nightly process. These have been streamlined within OpCon using one master job that does each one of those different batch jobs for us.

It has freed up my time because the other operator and I use to tag team. It also helps because I don't have to come in for month-end or nighttime processing. We don't need a nighttime operator, which is nice.

You can sleep in and get notifications if something fails, which was a nice part of it. If something is processing, and you want to make sure that it processes okay, this is probably one of the best things about the scheduling and automation of the solution. It does free up your employees to do other things. You no longer have to worry about them missing a step or not posting on time.

It gives me more time to program. For others, they now work on other things that we have in our IT department. This goes to some of the networking things that we have going on, help desk situations, and looking at what is the latest and greatest in things out there that we can dive into in terms of home banking products, e.g., if we can add things to those features.

Being able to copy what we already have, then apply it to another task is one of the cool features. It saves time. When I know there is another new process coming up, I can copy an existing one and just change a couple of things in it that need to be changed for it to run the new job process. The nice part about the copy part is I don't have to go back and look at what I had to call it, put in those settings, etc. I already know what those settings are, which is great. I just need to tell it the new job has to run, then schedule a time, and if there is a different time for it.

I am getting into the self-service part of it, which means I can then assign users to kick off odd processes which are not on a true set schedule. They can pretty much initiate it themselves. That is one of the features that I really like. 

I like the notifications of when jobs have completed or failed. This is a big plus because you can either have an email or email and text sent to you. That is very helpful.

There is some difficulty with the ease of use when I don't have some of the templates that were already created. I know they have to make general templates across the board for everyone to use with different types of systems, but it is good to have the templates done. Then, the solution becomes very easy to figure out, and I know that I will always use OpCon in this way or in this different scenario, as it will work for me with these usages.

More templates would be great. Non-core featured templates are my biggest struggle. For example, the PowerShell functionality is really cool, so I dove into that a bit where I wrote scripts using PowerShell for our Active Directory.

We have been using it since 2013.

It's a stable solution.

We require one person and a backup for deploying and maintaining the solution.

It's capable of working with other system, which is very good. It is very scalable.

We have about 4,328 daily jobs with 897 daily scheduled. We probably had about a hundred jobs when we first started. We have been adding them here and there as we go along.

We have at least 15 employees using the solution, plus another employee and me.

OpCon has been implemented 100 percent for IT in what we do at our core. For the rest of the departments, this solution is around five to 10 percent of what they do.

Besides our core, we're trying to see if we can branch out to other types of things that can be automated. There is always room for growth. I think we have tapped out on what OpCon can do for our core. It is now what else can it do for us that is not core. That is why we are looking at our HR department and networking stuff, and being able to automate some of the system processes there. E.g., pinging network servers to make sure they are online, up, and available, and also scheduling any type of tasks that they might have.

They are average for technical support. I still have to do my own research on some things.

I have never used an automation system other than Windows Scheduler, which is probably the best way. You go into Windows, restart your computer every day or run updates at this time. Whereas, OpCon gives us more prompts and things to do where you can set up different PCs or servers to do certain things.

I was involved in the initial setup, but that was back in 2013. I was excited at the time, but wasn't sure what I was getting into. The initial setup was complex because it was something I knew I wanted, but didn't know what it was.

When we first set it up, we requested a book of jobs to be done for us. This was like a set standard of batch jobs that would need to be automated. I have been able to elaborate and expand on those.

It took us a week after deployment of OpCon to automate our first process.

Our implementation strategy was to first start simple, then go into our complex processes. 

Simple for us would be running a batch job that has maximum three or four prompts in it. Then, we go complex with the RACH process, where we receive files, process those files, and schedule times for them to post. Then, we run intermittent jobs in-between to produce a return file that goes back out. 

We had an onsite person come for a week from SMA. Our overall experience was great. He was a nice guy who handheld us through some of the processes, making sure that we were good and explaining everything to us. That was probably the best thing of having him here onsite, and not remotely, because he could see where our questions were stemming from and why we were asking certain things. He then helped us set up the different templates for our processes.

Manual processing has been automated 99 percent by OpCon. With new processes, we give it at least two weeks manual so we can write down the details of how to do the steps, then we automate it. Within a month, it has been automated, then it's no longer a manual process.

It has freed up my time. I don't have to stay late at night. We don't need a nighttime operator, which is one of the biggest things, at least for me. Some places I know, they need to have other employees besides the two basic ones during the day do operations. Now, we don't need an extra person for that. 

It has freed up our time for other things. We get to program a little more.

Our licensing is on a yearly basis.

We did not evaluate other vendors. 

I had seen OpCon a few years ago before at a conference for Coresystems and they were the only ones there. Jump to 2013, I find out that our executives had said, "Yes, we're going to go with them." I was very happy with this.

Have a list of items that they would like to have automated. That way they can sit there, and say, "Yes, I did accomplish what I wanted with the system." Then, what do I want to expand on afterwards? 

The work upfront is great. In the long run, it makes your life a lot easier. You will have to do some work upfront, which is knowing your manual processes, remembering them, and knowing what they are step-by-step. Once this is mapped out, it makes it easier to implement OpCon. You also have a template that tells you where you might have missed a step if something fails within OpCon.

It has made my life very easy. In a way to me, it is an AI. Though, we still have to tell it what to do, it is one step closer.

OpCon is probably about a nine (out of 10). There is always room to grow.

We are a mid-level financial institution. We specifically used OpCon to help schedule important tasks that could not be trusted to human error. We picked it up as a tool to make lives easier for all of our different departments. We began working with MAS a few months ago as our scheduled jobs became too much for a few people to handle while we were experiencing high turnover. We became bogged down with users who did not understand the system and did not have time to train them. MAS stepped in and made this transition a lot easier for us. 

OpCon has made our lives easier by taking out the guesswork and removing tedious activities from employee's workdays when their time is better spent elsewhere. OpCon also helps because it is easy to "read the job" to know what the job does, why, and how to do it manually if needed. 

Through the use of self-service buttons, we have been able to give the option to run jobs whenever the user needs without having to manually do an entire process. Many of our end users use this without any complaint. It is simple and easy to use. 

MAS is by far the best feature, although not a feature of the software specifically. MAS has more knowledge than our employees, so we have been able to develop schedules that are far beyond our own skillset. 

They have also helped with maintenance so we can be assured if something goes wrong, MAS is there to fix it. Our on-call schedules are easier and we get full nights of sleep. Our team morale has greatly increased since we began working with MAS. Another great feature is the exit codes which help us understand why things are failing so the jobs are easier to fix. 

The only downside to OpCon is that its features can be complicated and really must be taught. Most of our users don't have training beyond the free Basic Training that SMA provides, so for fresh eyes, it is kind of difficult to understand some of the language used. 

Another thing that is difficult to understand is that not all failures explain why they are failing. Some give generic exit codes. 

Otherwise, I have no complaints. Working with the MAS team has really simplified everything for us. They're easy to reach, knowledgeable, and quick.

Personally, I have been using the solution for two years, but our organization has been using it for five or more years.

The software has many features that are even beyond my knowledge, having worked with it for two years. Working with the MAS team, I have learned even more. 

You will often find that you speak to the same people over and over again so you develop a rapport. Everyone is always helpful and very nice.

We did not use a different solution. We were doing all of this manually. 

The initial setup can be complex, however, transitioning with the MAS team was very easy and straightforward. 

We used a vendor team. Our engineers developed a close relationship with them. 

It is not the cheapest solution on the market, but it is relatively easy to use. I absolutely recommend splurging to hire the MAS service to make the transition easier. They can help teach your users how to use the program and they are able to quickly build jobs so you see an immediate impact. 

I am not entirely sure if there was an evaluation as this was before my time, however, knowing management, I assume that they had many demos with other vendors as well but eventually chose SMA.

We use OpCon as our central scheduling system. It runs a bunch of automations for our core system as well as for any automated system that needs to be scheduled.

OpCon has eliminated man-hours spent doing repetitive things, and it's also made our execution much more reliable. To do what we are doing currently, it would take at least four or five people, full-time. Clearly, we've cut a bunch of FTEs out of the equation, so that has been a big deal. They have been reassigned to other things. Everybody loves it because they're able to now work on higher-value things.

It also allows us to see metrics of how long our automations take, and control or manage to that to those durations, so we're able to reorganize and rearrange things at a rapid pace to get them completed faster.

We have automated thousands of processes using OpCon. I believe we've automated 100 percent of our processing. I can't think of anything we're doing manually.

In addition, OpCon has reduced our data processing times by, as an estimate, 25 to 30 percent.

The most valuable features are 

• the ability to chain jobs together 
• the integration into Symitar. At the end of the day, that's what makes the big deal for us.

The ability to chain jobs together allows us to create complex interdependencies between our jobs, and the integration into our core system is important because it allows us, through an automated system, to do a huge number of things that used to be done manually.

It is as easy to use as it should be. There is a learning curve, but that's because it's a powerful system.

I'd like to see the product include a view where you can see everything about a specific job on a single screen.

We've been using OpCon for more than 10 years.

The stability of OpCon as a solution is excellent. We never have any issues with its stability.

We have had no issues with scalability. 

We have plans to increase our usage of it. It's primarily used in IT and programming, but it is automating jobs that are requested by, and the results are used by, everyone else in the company. We have automated processes for the lending department as well as branching, account services; everyone.

We have five to seven people who use it on a daily basis. They are either OpCon developers or programmers who are testing new deployments. We need less than one person for OpCon system administration.

SMA's technical support for this solution is excellent. They are responsive, they are knowledgeable, and they've always been able to address our questions, which is impressive.

We did not have a previous solution. Our company went with OpCon because it has a very tight integration to our core system.

I was not around for the setup and it's been so long since it was done that I don't think our experience would be indicative for anybody else.

For the most part, upgrades are pretty straightforward. And they've been pretty solid too. We generally do them with the help of SMA consultants.

We have absolutely seen return on investment with OpCon. We've eliminated the FTEs. We have increased the speed at which our automations run, so we're in nightly processing for a shorter period of time. We've been able to run more fraud tests and to run control reports on the nightly run than we would be able to run manually, so that we can identify problem areas or fraud and address them immediately. We use it for all sorts of things.

I believe our cost is about $150,000 annually.

There are add-ons you can buy, which have an additional cost, including products and Professional Services.

We really have not evaluated other options. It is the state of the art for our core system, and we have been happy with it.

The biggest lesson I have learned is that using an automation system like OpCon forces us to really understand the business object of a goal we are trying to accomplish and to be able to articulate it clearly and precisely.

Automating your operational tasks the way that OpCon does is absolutely a better way to do it than any manual system that you may have in place.

We use it for automation of our nightly workflows as well as automation of our internal processes that are happening all day, including moving files, and running jobs on our core system. We also interface it with a lot of the database servers. We use it for a lot. 

We automated our nightly update process and, in doing that, we freed up employees to be able to do something else and not have to worry about that. In my area, we have six or seven who have been freed up, and I've also expanded it out to more of our operations. For example, before, people would tell us that something was ready to be run and we would ask somebody to actually run that job on our core. By using the Solution Manager that OpCon provides, employees can kick that job off themselves. So it has freed up even more people. The employees involved have embraced the changes. They are happy to be able to focus their time on more meaningful tasks. Giving them that button via Solution Manager, they are happy to hit that button and that they don't have to wait on anybody else. It has saved us time. It's more efficient.

It's just streamlined our entire IT operations. Before, we had batch files running on certain servers and they were all over the place; this server did this, another server did that. But now, everything is streamlined into one. All the automation, processes and moving, is happening straight through OpCon. The run of a day is all happening through this one server. In the past, when an issue would arise, we'd have to troubleshoot and figure out where it was running, what's happening, why it was not working. Now we have a central point to focus on to be able to know what's happened and move forward.

We are running 13,935 daily jobs through OpCon, which represent approximately 1,200 daily schedules that we're running over the course of a month. We have automated about 75 to 80 percent of our manual processing. And we're still building and adding things to it every day.

In addition, if a process used to take 20 minutes to do, it may only take 10 minutes now because somebody has the whole process in their control. The nightly update process, that used to take at least a few hours, now that it runs automated, runs in an hour-and-a-half or so. So there are some significant gains. If I had to estimate, I'd say our data processing has improved by 70 percent.

The automation of processes is the most valuable feature. One of the major hurdles for us over the last few years, before we found OpCon, was to make our nightly process happen automatically. Being a bank, we have nightly update processes that have to happen for posting transactions, for example, and it was a huge load off our department to have that automated.

It's pretty easy to use. They have help information built right into the program so anytime you're trying to build something and you need help, you just hit F1 and there's documentation on what you're trying to do. OpCon does offer training, and I did attend both the basic and the advanced training, which were very helpful. But if you understand PowerShell and things like that, you could, potentially, build OpCon without going to formal training. I do think it is easy to use.

I think that they're working on this, but I wish that there was a more centralized area to be able to see what other people are doing and use the OpCon community, per se. I went to their annual conference and I gained a lot of contacts from that. I keep in touch with them and we talk, but it'd be nice to have more of that be more readily available. They have a community platform for OpCon users, but I want to see more of where somebody is doing this process in that way. They have a great community platform right now, but I feel that it could be developed.

We've been using OpCon for almost three years.

The solution is very stable. I haven't seen any stability issues with the product to date. They tell you what exactly what is to be expected. They provide documentation of updates and what you should do and what you shouldn't do. I feel that as long as I follow the guidance from them, I won't have any stability issues.

We started using it as well for running our database maintenance at night. We have multiple database servers running in-house and we were able to start doing that with OpCon. There are many solutions that it interfaces with and, while we're not leveraging all of them, we're using a good number of them.

Their technical support is very good. I called them more in the beginning when we were doing the implementation, but I'll call them anytime. For any of the processes that I'm trying to work with, they always have somebody who will help. It's been a very good experience using their support.

They have very knowledgeable resources. Everybody that I talk to over there has always been a big help. I went out to the conference and met a lot of people that I hadn't necessarily talked to on the phone and they all were very knowledgeable and helpful.

We did not previously use an automation solution. We had done things like using PowerShell and doing scripting on the servers, but we had not used those things exclusively as an automation platform.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. We knew what we were getting. When we finally made the decision to purchase it, our rep reached out to us and told us exactly what was going to be happening with the implementation and when he was going to show up. We got that all scheduled, he showed up, and everything took off from there.

Our experience with the SMA tech during implementation was awesome. He was very knowledgeable. He had years of experience in the field that we are in. The gentleman who came out to us had worked in IBM for many years as a programmer, so he knew what we were doing and how we were trying to do it. He was able to take the processes that we were already doing and develop them after we got OpCon in place. He came out for one week of just implementation of OpCon, and then he came out for a second week to develop these things. He was very resourceful and knowledgeable, and if he didn't know the answer, he found it within a reasonable amount time.

Technically, OpCon was up and running on the first day, but we were still moving things into it during that first week. Within a week we had processes that were being automated. It wasn't long at all. We already had a good understanding of what was happening. We just took what was happening and moved it into OpCon. As long as we had file permissions, it wasn't an issue.

Our major focus was on our core processing. Our core has numerous file moves and transfers and hundreds of jobs that run every day. We wanted to automate the nightly process and include the jobs that were running on the core all day. We took those processes and migrated them over from the IBM Advanced Job Scheduler into OpCon. That was our immediate focus. From there, we branched out and started doing the stuff that was happening on the Window Servers. We moved all of that over into OpCon, including FTP from our core vendor, as well as the moving and posting of files.

We have absolutely seen ROI in terms of having our update process automated. That was costing our IT department quite a bit of overtime, because employees were working their normal schedules and then they would have to be responsible for the nightly update process. They would be on a rotation of course, but overall, the overtime expenses have gone down as a result of installing OpCon. And the processes that we no longer have to focus on, on a daily basis, allow our employees to be more efficient in doing other things.

We looked at a couple of solutions a little bit before we found OpCon. We found OpCon at a user group meeting for our core provider. We had looked at others and we hadn't found one that was suitable for all the uses that we'd need it for.

One solution we looked at was iRobot, but that was strictly IBM-driven. It was just running on the core but it didn't have any logic within it. OpCon has the agent on the IBM that can look at like dates and interpret them and give it an answer based on whether things line up or not. And the iRobot program had the ability to kick off jobs, but it didn't have any logic built into it.

The biggest lesson I have learned from using OpCon is that anything is possible. There is literally nothing that I have found yet that it can't do. I've called support and shared with them what I think is a crazy idea, and they'll say, "Oh no, we can do that." We talk about it and figure out a solution and go from there.

When you first look at it and look at everything that has to be done, you need somebody who is going to be dedicated to the product. It looks like there is a lot to do, but the reward far outweighs what it looks like upfront.

There are about 10 users of OpCon in our company. Half of them are in IT and the other half are in operations. In terms of our frontline retail staff, only one person there is using it. The rest are the operations area. They're the ones who kick off the processes through Solution Manager. In terms of maintenance of OpCon, there are three of us who work together exclusively on OpCon.

I have to give it 10 out of 10. It's done great things for us and it continues to so every day.

We own the solution ourselves on-prem, but our core system is cloud-hosted.

It runs all types of jobs to make changes to our database. From our end, we primarily use it to pull and push information to our cloud-hosted system: moving files around, making changes to files, and those types of things.

People use the tool in every job role that we have. Our organization is a financial institution, so we have people in lending, people in member services, people in operations, risk, and marketing. 

Previously, we would receive a file from a vendor, then we would have to go through and make changes to individual accounts in our core system. There are probably between 10 to 20 accounts any given week. It probably took around five minutes for it to run through the report and make all the changes, and that was if there was nothing complicated with all very straightforward changes. Now, that is done in 30 seconds.

We receive a report once a month of bad email addresses. Someone would have to go through and search each one of those individually, and there was a time when there was 300 email addresses on that list as we were working through putting in tens of thousands of email addresses in our system. As we're working through those on marketing campaigns and getting bounce backs, we've been gradually removing them. That used to take an extremely long time for someone from marketing to go through, search each individual email address, and remove them from all instances and places where it resided in our system, where there could be 10 to 20 on any given account. Since implementing that process, it takes five minutes. Now, it does it all automatically. It looks at every possible location and removes it in all areas. We've been able to clear out that list and completely remove it from the vendor system, so we aren't getting charged for the bounce back.

This solution has freed up our employees to do more meaningful work. Some portion of everyone's job has been automated, and that's probably by two to three hours a week. So, that is 120 employees times two to three hours a week.

The change has all been positive. Employees don't have to do the simple busy work anymore. They are able to spend more time doing the stuff that impacts our members in a positive way.

IT is probably the biggest area of our organization that has seen incredible improvement, since we were the ones doing a lot of the batch jobs and running a lot of the group jobs that would impact multiple accounts. However, every department has had reports automated.

The most valuable feature and reason that we bought the solution is because of the RSJ connector, which we use to make changes to our database. 

After attending the pretraining as well as the advanced training that they offer, I would say that the product is very easy to use. What can get complicated is if you're doing anything more than just the built-in jobs. If you're using the more advanced features, troubleshooting becomes extremely complicated.

We converted in 2016, so we have been using it for about three years.

We have had it go down one time, which was not related to the system itself. The server went down, which was an issue on our end. That is not OpCon's fault. Now, the only issue with this, which is OpCon related, was that it didn't send any errors except for one alert, one time. Then, because the server was down, it was unable to send us anything ongoing.

If there was some way that we could set up monitoring on a separate server that would look for specifically OpCon related tasks, then that would be more helpful. But, as for the stability of the system, we have never had it go down that was its own fault.

We have automated hundreds of processes, if not thousands, since deploying this solution. We have 120 employees who are impacted by its use. They use the reports that it runs on a daily basis. 

In the terms of people administering it, I am the primary person responsible for setting up new jobs, making sure it's running, doing updates, etc. We also have five other people who may login to do basic troubleshooting on it. I am a systems developer, so I handle the development of OpCon as well as a couple of other systems. As for the other people who can login, we have four people on help desk along with our director of security.

We have not had to scale OpCon beyond the initial setup. We have the controlling server and two others that it is connected to setup. We previously had three, but we moved that third to a cloud-hosted solution. It doesn't matter how many people we have or how big our core system is, we don't need to scale it for that. 

We had some previously automated processes. In the sense, they had to be scheduled manually, but once scheduled, they would run through a list of things. So, that part was already partially automated. At this point, we probably still have 20 percent of our manual processes that cannot be automated because they require someone to go in and physically look at the information. We have maybe five to 10 percent left that can be automated or can be partially automated that haven't yet been.

If we wanted to move it to more servers, e.g. have multiple data centers, then I think it would scale excellently. However, we haven't had to deal with that yet.

The technical support is always excellent. Having a network which can help you troubleshoot and build the best possible system is probably the most valuable thing that I have learned:

• The value of a network of people working in the same system. E.g., being able to reach out to the support that they have as well as other credit unions, who use the same system.
• Being able to troubleshoot and discuss different ways to accomplish the same thing. E.g., the different options that they have for moving things around and running things in a different way with all of the different tools that they have to assist you. 
  

We used Windows Scheduler before to automate some general file movements and stuff, but we couldn't do anything within our core system with it.

We switched our core system. Originally, we were using a system provided by Pfizer. We switched to a system provided by Jack Henry & Associates, and they were not compatible with Windows Scheduler. So, we were doing everything manually for a while, until we adopted OpCon. This solution overcomes limitations from our previous automation tool.

The initial setup was straightforward. We set up the original server as well as the ones that we would need it connected to. The basic system has been in place since the initial setup.

We had folks onsite for two weeks, but we have been continuing to automate more new, existing processes over the last three years. So, we had the bulk of our official setup done within three months.

After deploying the solution, it took us 10 minutes to automate our first process. After we got it setup, creating a job is very simple.

In general, getting up and running is extremely easy. Once you get the basics installed, creating and running jobs is very easy. However, when you get into the more complicated, advanced features, then it becomes much more complicated.

We had someone from the SMA team come onsite to help us set up the server. We installed and connected it to the appropriate additional environments. Once we did that, it was completely straightforward. It did help that we had someone come onsite to help us set up some of our more complicated jobs while we were still very new with the system.

Our experience with the SMA team was excellent.

We have seen ROI. We are becoming an automation forward organization instead of just a financial institution that does everything manually. We have been able to move so much reporting from paper. We are digital because of OpCon.

We don't have people manually doing processing anymore. The fact that I can do five minutes to three hours of work in 30 seconds is a significant improvement.

OpCon was the only one that did exactly what we wanted. We needed something that integrated with Jack Henry's Symitar Episys solution. We wanted something that would be easy to set up and maintain, which offered a lot of training.

The biggest difference between OpCon and Windows Scheduler is that Windows Scheduler does not work with our core system. It didn't really work with the old one or the new one. Originally, we were only using it to move files around, so we could have continued to use it in that sense. But, when moving to a new system, we wanted to have something that would interact directly with that system.

OpCon offers a lot more complicated criteria when scheduling the types of jobs that you can run. OpCon is a complete automation solution, where Windows Scheduler is just a scheduler.

Pick the right team and send them to training. So, pick people who are going to invest in and use the system on a daily basis. They should also be curious and creative. Then, send all of them to training, both the free and advanced training. They also offer a certification now, which is also extremely useful.

I would rate the solution as a 10 out of 10.

We use OpCon to schedule three jobs, repeated ten times a day and five days a week.

This solution gives us the ability to look at each job's output online and determine whether it is ok or not. It can restart failed jobs when they are fixed, and it maintains a log history for statistics.

It was the right solution to industrialize public data processing that was still manual. Time savings were crucial in this choice and automation. This also contributed to the optimization of the work of several people, who were able to devote themselves to other more interesting tasks.

The most valuable feature is the self-service because it has made it possible to provide simple and quick solutions in the handling of certain tasks. Self-service is easy to use for people who are not in the IT department and who must act at any time for and with the customers.

I would like to see improvements with the graphical display during the execution of jobs with complex sequences, step-by-step, in self-service.

A much finer level of authorization for users, with a more direct job return, would be an improvement.

The ability to retrieve information from logs in variables to display relevant information would be helpful.

I have been using this solution for eleven years.

This solution is very stable and you can trust the software.

It responds very well to an increase in jobs and has no real limit.

Technical support is excellent. We felt that we were treated like family, not a number. They are very competent.

We did use another solution prior to this one, but we switched to OpCon because it's more user-friendly.

The initial setup is very simple. When we decided to install OpCon, this was done in two hours and two jobs could be executed directly afterward. For the other two solutions that we tried it was much more difficult, quite incomprehensible, and nothing worked as a result.

We implemented through a vendor team that I score ten out of ten.

This solution is certainly not the cheapest, but we win in time.

Prior to selecting OpCon, we evaluated UC4, Control-M, and APX.

OpCon is easy to access, very easy to use, very complete, and always active.