Every year, I wait with bated breath for the latest version of Onbase. Like a seven-year-old on Christmas Eve, I am expecting to receive more presents that I can possibly cope with, and maybe this year it will also be a new bike as well? OK, apart from a bit of oversharing of my clearly pampered upbringing, I am trying to get across the level of excitement I have every June when Hyland get ready to give us some new toys to play with.
So, this year, I ‘unwrapped’ all the 3,100 enhancements and looked for shiny newness. OK, we know we are going to get socks and jumpers which are boring and yep, in the release notes were lots of news about enhanced security, performance tweaks and stability fixes. I know, we need them but ….Yawn. Where is the robot? Surely this isn’t going to be the Christmas where I get a pack of batteries with a note saying, “Toy not included”.
I shouldn’t have worried, because the best was yet to be unwrapped. The clue was in the title of the release.
“Hyland’s OnBase 18 release focuses on building better user experiences”
OK, I like the sound of that, but what does it mean? Over to Bill Priemer, Hylands CEO to tell us.
Hmm, I’m getting this but a bit slower than usual ... then the light bulb moment.
In the past I could have Lego, Meccano and Scalextric, and play with each one at a time. Now, Hyland are allowing me to combine all the awesome power of these toys together, and create my own unique toy – the Leg-Mecc-Tric. Coooooool.
As Hyland puts it, “Create powerful, more tailored user experiences: A new combined viewer personalizes the display of content and data into a streamlined and consolidated view, tailoring experiences for a variety of user roles. This new, aggregated interface supports OnBase power users; and enhancements to several key integrations improve experiences for users who primarily access OnBase via other applications”.
So, to my mind Hyland have always had the best toys in the industry, but now I can use them to play in so many new ways.
For over a decade we have been building unique and crazy powerful solutions for different departments like Accounts Payable, HR, Legal, Contracts Management, Facilities Management. But this year I get a combined viewer (or toy connector) that means my customers can now choose how their applications look.
So now, I can rapidly build a solution at the speed of thought and make them look however I want them to. I am no longer forced to view things the way that Hyland wants me to. Double cool.
This seemingly so simple a thing to do, changes everything.
As a parent of a seven-year-old, I know that if you give your child a robot, they love it, but it only does what the manufacturer designed it to do. It isn’t a drone, or spaceship, or submarine. This is the same with enterprise software. Yes, you can buy off the shelf pre-made solutions for HR, Legal, AP, Insurance, etc but they only do what they do. Try changing them at your peril - or more realistically - cost. Sorry, massive cost. Sorry, massive cost and many months of waiting.
Perhaps if your organisation was given the gift of Leg-Mecc-Tric, you could think about the endless hours building wonderful toys for all your employees and customers.
Or even better, stop thinking and join 19,000 other companies using Hyland that are already enjoying this wonderful technology.
Tim Miller
Digital Transformation Expert