What is our primary use case?
We use it for pretty much everything. We purchased it when we converted to Symitar and that was the primary reason for using it. But we use it for all different vendors, downloading files, and running Oracle queries and VB scripts, etc.
How has it helped my organization?
When we converted to Symitar in 2013, by getting OpCon we eliminated two of our operator positions because we automated everything with it. We repurposed both positions and assigned them more meaningful tasks to do.
We've automated several hundred processes and no longer have any manual processing. OpCon eliminates operator error by having it all automated. It gives us consistency.
What is most valuable?
The automation part of OpCon is the most valuable for us, with all the core processing. It's really mostly hands-off unless we have failures. In our old days, we'd spend a good part of the day doing processing via manual tasks. We don't have to do any of that any longer.
What needs improvement?
For how long have I used the solution?
We've been using OpCon for about six-and-a-half years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's definitely been pretty stable for us. We run things 24 hours a day, so sometimes we run into issues related to putting server patches on it. We have to find a time to stop everything to load Windows patches and the like.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability seems fine.
We always increase usage. We're always having new processes and adding new servers for different things. We definitely have plans for increasing usage, almost daily.
How are customer service and technical support?
We don't need to use technical support very often, but to begin with, it was really good.
I have noticed lately that their first answers tend to be, "Let's upgrade it to the latest and greatest first," without looking into anything. The last couple of times I've logged a ticket that's been the response, which is a little frustrating. We're not big on just upgrading on a whim. We do full testing.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We had a tool before OpCon, but it's been so many years that I can't remember the name of it. It was not nearly as robust as OpCon is. Implementing things is a lot easier with OpCon. Most things don't generally take that long to implement. The way you can calculate different dates, and all the different types of contingencies make OpCon a lot more flexible.
Also, OpCon was the preferred partner of Jack Henry, which we were converting to. That was our primary reason.
Another reason was that OpCon enables us to do all these other external processes, outside of the core, with other vendors, like downloading bond files. We did not have any of that before.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup seemed fairly straightforward to begin with, but we didn't get into a lot of the more complicated features. We've grown into those features over the years. It was just set up to do the basic processing in the beginning.
Jack Henry, the vendor of Symitar, came onsite when we converted and they were here for a week. At that point we had all of our main, "good night" tasks and the like in OpCon. Gradually, over time, we've added everything else, such as our mortgage processing, which is outside of Jack Henry software. We purchased an API and we were able to automate all of that processing with OpCon also.
The SMA techs were really good to work with. They're very responsive. We didn't have any complaints about them.
After OpCon was deployed we automated our first processes right away.
Our strategy was to make sure we had no manual processes by the end. And going forward, we wouldn't take on processes unless we were able to automate them with OpCon.
What was our ROI?
We have definitely seen a return on our investment by going with OpCon. With all of the automated processes, we eliminated two positions. We also have an initiative where we're going into other departments in the credit union and finding processes that they're doing manually which we're able to automate. Using OpCon helps reduce the time our staff works on manual processes and, instead, they can spend time working on things that directly affect our members.
What other advice do I have?
It's kind of hard, in the beginning, to picture it all until you start using it.
We don't roll it out to the whole company. It's centralized just within our IT department. We have three users who actually use it and manage the processes. Two of them are more primary, me and one other person, and the third person is a backup. We also have the ability to put an icon on a person's desktop and let them click the icon, and that will actually run a process in OpCon behind the scenes for them. We have about 10 of those.
I would rate it a nine out of 10. It's not a 10 because of some of the support responses recently.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
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