Exploring Mars at #CommunityLIVE

by Scoop Skupien · Published 09/12/2018 · Updated 03/07/2022

We did it! We made it to Mars!

One year ago, Brenda Kirk, Hyland’s executive vice president and chief product and strategy officer, took the stage at CommunityLIVE to share our product vision. We wanted to modernize our platform – a goal that was as challenging as a mission to Mars.

We wanted to go to an entirely new world and create the best customer experience possible. A world where users have rich, intuitive interfaces they can use on any browser or device. A world where administrators will continue to have simple, configurable tools. A world featuring the latest cloud innovations.

But, as you know, Hylanders are motivated people. So now that we’ve accomplished our goal, we’re taking another cue from NASA and setting up a colony for the next wave of travelers. To do so, we need to:

Make meaningful priorities
Anticipate possibilities
Research, research, research

Let’s take a closer look at each of these steps.

Meaningful priorities

The first thing to do after landing on Mars, according to NASA, is to establish safe and secure base. We accomplished this with our product vision, which focuses on the user experience. After all, if you get to Mars and find that your tools are difficult to use, you might not last very long.

To get the user experience right, we really listen to our customers. Many companies say this, but we walk the walk. For example, customers drove 3,100 of the 10,000 updates we made to OnBase 18. Tell us what you need, and if it makes sense, we’ll do it.

We’re listening.

Kirk shared a personal story about listening. Her mother has been deaf most of her life, so taking care of her means that Kirk has to employ innovative listening strategies – things like learning sign language, translating healthcare terminology, and even reading lips from across a room.

So she knows the value of listening. And she keeps it at the forefront of our strategy.

And what we’re hearing is that you want us to keep our focus on the user experience and easy configurability. Fine by us.

In fact, in 1991, we established our core values. One of which states: We deliver configurable business solutions that are intuitive to use. Our customers are confident when navigating our solutions. They don’t require significant training on the user interface because it flows naturally. Our customers are able to configure a robust, rapidly deployable solution without programming

To continually deliver on this promise, we’ve been modernizing our solutions and establishing a solid, secure platform that allows us to connect content, features, and functionality from every product in our portfolio. One of the ways we do that is by delivering a common identity provider for use across all our applications. Whether you’re using Hyland or third-party products, our identity solution has you covered.

Another way we help you connect is by standardizing on REST APIs, which give your organization accessibility from all platforms. Whether you’re using .NET, Java, PHP, or Python, building our APIs on standards delivers easy integrations and interoperability.

But again, it’s all about the user experience – accessing applications from anywhere on your phone, tablet, or laptop.

We also retooled Hyland to deliver services on a much more frequent basis. Now we can deliver services and components independently of one another using technologies that make them easy to deploy, maintain, and monitor.

It’s a whole new world. And a brand new platform layer. And we call it The Hyland Experience Platform.

This is our base on Mars.

Now that we have our meaningful priorities in place, we can star envisioning what life will be like in the future, on this new terrain. Which takes us to our second point.

Anticipate possibilities

It’s time to enjoy the view and start discovering.

Did you know a day on Mars is 40 minutes longer than a day on Earth? What would you do with 40 more minutes every day?

If you were my backyard neighbor, that would mean 243 more hours a year to disturb the peace – and my sanity – with his chainsaw.

No matter what you would do with more time, this new platform delivers it by reducing and in some cases, eliminating deployment and upgrade periods.

“Upon grasping this vision,” said Kirk, “one of our customers said, ‘It’s not so much a matter of a conversion to a new platform, but a story of convergence with the new platform.’”

That’s exactly what it is, a merging of technology into a unified whole. Which is great, but what does it mean to you?

“Convergence is a strategy which allows you to keep the solutions and repositories you have in place while giving you the ability to seamlessly include other content services capabilities,” said Kirk.

These capabilities include things like intelligent capture, case management, and robotic process automation – a very hot topic these days. Robotic process automation facilitates integration and the automation of tasks between multiple applications, with no customer development or integration. It’s an amazing tool to automate repetitive tasks, increase accuracy, and free people to tackle higher-value tasks.

Now that we’ve built a stable base and anticipated possibilities, it’s time to …

Research, research, research

As I mentioned before, we take customer feedback very seriously. So we base much of our research on the business issues you bring to us.

To facilitate this, we rolled out Community 2.0, an improvement on our networking site where customers, partners, and Hyland employees share points of views, ask questions, and get answers. The enhancements allow a higher level of engagement between you, your peers, and Hyland.

While we connect in person every year at CommunityLIVE, Community is an extension of this concept, keeping you in touch with subject matter experts year-round.

We also just introduced our new Hyland Labs – dedicated spaces where we innovate, research, and experiment with new ideas and technology like Blockchain, RPA, and artificial intelligence as well as virtual and augmented reality for interacting with content.

It’s been an amazing journey. But in many respects, we’ve just begun. And together, we’re going to discover some incredible things.

To infinity, and beyond, my friends.

Author
Recent Posts

Scoop Skupien

Scoop Skupien is a former radio station mascot. A rabbit, if you really want to know. These days, he's a content marketing manager at Hyland. The author of three books, he’s been writing about tech at Hyland for more than a decade. His industry certifications include CDIA, ecmp, and an MBA.