Podcasts

Today we are excited to speak with Randy Cole with NeoSystems and Greg Dorr with TIP Technologies on the new relationship and training of NeoSystems staff to better serve the implementation of TIP Technologies software.

Transcript

Erin Keating:
Hello, everybody, and welcome back to season six of NeoCast, brought to you by NeoSystems. This is our third episode in a series we’re doing with TIP Technologies, a brand-new partner for NeoSystems. Even though we’ve been doing business together for quite some time, we’ve announced a new relationship between TIP Technologies and NeoSystems. I’m so glad that we’ve been able to talk with Ron and Matt about that situation and the partnership and all the benefits.

Today, we’re going to be talking a little bit more about the consultancy that’s looking to be developed out of this. Today we’re excited to have two new members to this podcast series. We’ve got Randy Cole with NeoSystems. He serves as a senior vice president of professional services and product sales. We’ve got Greg Dorr, who is the senior project manager with TIP Technologies. Randy, Greg, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for joining us today.

Randy Cole:
Thank you. Glad to be here.

Greg Dorr:
Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

Erin Keating:
Greg, in our last episode, Ron spoke to the work that TIP Technologies is doing to train up NeoSystems consultants for this all-important role of really extending your team. We know that that’s a big benefit to this partnership. This is a really critical step in order to build the business for mutual benefit. I’m just wondering, from your perspective, why is it necessary to extend your capabilities through NeoSystems personnel? Can you paint a little bit of a picture of how this will look?

Greg Dorr:
Yes, I can. There’s a growing need for hosted solutions in our marketplace, and we have enlisted the help of NeoSystems for implementation and services to effectively balance workload and help customers comply with the emerging government security client requirements.

Also, in the mid-sized markets, a lot of times they need additional IT support. Additionally, TIP Technologies and I personally have worked with NeoSystems’ technical team on TIP QA system implementations and ERP integrations for over six years. The results have been impressive. There’s immediate value and work balancing that will occur in the technical support, software installation and ERP integration areas of our partnered implementations.

The Neo team is currently going through a mentoring, consulting certification process with TIP Technologies that will give them firsthand experience with customer implementations and business process consulting, which will help balance spikes in our workload going forward. This will include customer shadowing visits with TIP Technologies consultants and joining joint webinars as well. We’re looking forward to the future partnership.

Erin Keating:
That’s great. Greg, when you’re talking to some of these customers, especially even if you’re doing a shadowing circumstance, you might be needing to explain, “Hey, this is why these guys are joining us.” If someone looks at you and says, “Well, why NeoSystems, why’d you partner with them,” what are some of your top reasons? Why were you excited about this partnership?

Greg Dorr:
Yeah. Some of these have come up very recently on some sales demos we’ve already been doing, but TIP Technologies trusts the experience of NeoSystems, who has hosted our application and our ERP interface platforms for over six years. Additionally, NeoSystems has helped implement several TIP Technologies customers recently and simplified the overall implementation. There’s a proven record of implementations with highly regulated manufacturers, which is the marketplace TIP Technologies is a leader in.

We also add speed and agility to our mutual implementations by eliminating hardware and software purchases and learning curve times for customer IT organizations. By engaging the NeoSystems team, implementations can be more efficient, with a single vendor for hosting solutions, application installation, host system integration and IT support. Also, scalability is a key factor in our industry, in our marketplace. This will allow customers to scale up or down easily and at a reduced cost.

Erin Keating:
That’s a great point. We talked a lot about that with Ron and Matt, and just I think it was Ron who made the really good point of Northrop Grumman or Lockheed Martin or some of these massive companies weren’t built in a day. The idea that you all are bringing the scalability to these different organizations and companies … especially, as you mentioned, in any regulated environment, which NeoSystems is very up to speed on … it must just really be a comfort to be extending the team in this way.

Randy, in thinking about this partnership and consultancy role your team will now take on, what do you believe are some of the differentiators for NeoSystems?

Randy Cole:
Thank you, Erin. As I look back at the relationship we’ve had with TIP Technologies over the years, we’ve had it in multiple areas. We mentioned earlier, the past six years we’ve been hosting the environments. We’ve also, from our technology consulting perspective, integrated that with Costpoint and other ERP systems.

I think as we bring our own consultants in and get trained on the TIP technology, that brings us a unique perspective because we’ll know both sides of the coin. We’ll know the Costpoint and the other ERP systems and how they work and their expectations, as well as understanding TIP Technologies products and how they work and their expectations, and be able to really better integrate those two systems together.

In addition to that, Greg touched on the point that is it critical that we maintain high-quality compliance, and our knowledge in those areas around CMMC and things along those lines will add to that functionality as well.

Erin Keating:
I think that’s a good point. Randy, as you know, NeoSystems has been a pretty big leader in content out there that’s available around CMMC, and knowing a little bit about cybersecurity integrations of systems, I think you raise a really good point that when you have multiple systems that you’re trying to integrate, that is where holes can be left, gaps can be left, for any kind of breaches and things like this. I know that Ron and Matt really talked about this, but can you maybe just briefly bring the audience up to speed on NeoCloud and what its certifications and security are?

Randy Cole:
We’ve purposely built a system that is FedRAMP-ready. That was our goal going into that. We didn’t rush into it. We took our time to do it right, because we wanted it to be right when we got there. We don’t have to go through hoops and iterations to get there. Doing that, however, we learned a lot.

We’re able to now take that knowledge that we gained through our own experiences getting to FedRAMP, and we’re able to turn around that and do some consulting support around CMMC and other security requirements, cybersecurity, things along those lines. We’ve also worked very closely with industry experts who are really the thought leaders in the industry to develop relationships where we can work hand in hand with them to roll this out.

Erin Keating:
That’s great. Well, so in considering the fact that you are training up your team right now, Randy, could you maybe paint a picture for us of what this work is going to look like for your consultants?

Randy Cole:
Certainly. As Greg mentioned, we’re going through shadowing some of their consultants now, as well as some training. As part of that, we want to be able to go in and really be an extension of the TIP Technologies professional services group, and do implementations just as if they were doing them themselves. We want to make sure that high quality remains the same and there’s no drop-off between their staff and our staff. Types of implementations, we’ll also get involved with installing patches, fixes, critical updates, things like that from our hosting side.

Additionally, we do have other back-office services that we provide. We’re partners with multiple companies. We really look to do a best-of-breed approach. We don’t lock into any particular technology. We figure out what is the best for our clients and build around that. We’re able to bring that additional knowledge for other areas that may help with making clients successful.

Erin Keating:
That’s great. I did have the pleasure of actually interviewing and doing several episodes with Marty Herbert, the head of the change management. I imagine that that probably comes in handy too sometimes, because this may be new technology or new processes for some of your clients, either on your end or on TIP Technologies’ end. Just a very well-rounded solution to be able to help the implementation and the adjustment and acceptance of any new technology and software. I think that’s really great.

Randy Cole:
Thank you. Yes, Marty is actually on my team, and I’m excited to have him on there. We initially focused more on business process improvement. We’ve more recently started really focusing on change management. I’ve been doing implementations now for well over 20 years. What I’ve really found is that it’s not implementing the software that makes it successful. It’s really the change management and the adoption and the training and all around that, and getting people to own the system, not just teaching them your software.

Erin Keating:
Greg, that leads me into my last question for you, because I think we’ve covered a few bases on why NeoSystems is such a great partner, but if you really just had to tie a bow on it, what’s the key takeaway in evaluating this partnership?

Greg Dorr:
I think one of the key things is that we’ve been very successful in the past. We have a fairly long-term relationship that has been very successful. Also, the cloud solution is designed to be turnkey for customers who are looking for an integrated quality and MES solution with reduced IT complexity. NeoSystems brings the right hosting environment for our unique set of software solutions to our mutual marketplace to deliver on this market desire. We’re looking forward to the future in this relationship.

Erin Keating:
Great. Any closing thoughts, gentlemen?

Greg Dorr:
I don’t have a particular closing thought, but I am looking forward to the future relationship. I’m working on some current projects now. We’re already in progress.

Erin Keating:
That’s great. Randy?

Randy Cole:
Like I said earlier, we’re very excited about this partnership. I think over the years, we’ve had an informal relationship, and being able to take that next to the next level and formalize it, I think it’s going to be great for all of our clients.

Erin Keating:
That’s fantastic. Well, thank you, gentlemen, both for joining us today. We really appreciate you helping our audience better understand not just the TIP Technologies and NeoSystems relationship, but how you are expanding this team and really being able to help your customers alike to adapt and accept any kind of software transition that you’re having. I appreciate you both being here. Thanks, Randy. Thanks, Greg.

Greg Dorr:
Thank you.

Randy Cole:
Thank you. Have a great day.

Erin Keating:
You too.