Partnering with your CMS vendor

When you go looking for a new case management solution, keep in mind that you’re not just purchasing software—you’re also choosing a vendor to partner with you as you go forward. So what should you look for in a partner? Just like a partner in any other business, you want to select a partner who is going to assist your business—your justice agency or court—in accomplishing its goals.

So what goals does your agency have? No doubt, you’re choosing your software to help you manage your daily tasks, your schedule, your data, in general—to make your life easier and help you better administer justice. The vendor you partner with should be able to meet your needs now and also help you meet your needs as you go forward in the future.

Some of the things we would suggest looking for in a partner include:

One that provides an excellent solution upfront: Naturally, you want a partner who provides an excellent solution upfront. Otherwise, why would you pick them? Evaluate your agency’s needs and figure out what problems you are experiencing with your current software (or your current lack of software) and what you need to fix those. Among other things, a quality solution will let you track any person, business, or entity you want. It will eliminate the need for duplicate data entry, give you detailed historical information for any person or case, let you automate redundant tasks, share data, report on key information, and much more.

One that helps you configure the software to your needs: Pick a partner who gives you an awesome solution up front, and then helps you make it even more awesome by tailoring it specifically to your needs. For example, if you like the reports the solution provides, but want a couple other pieces of information on that report, can they add that in? If you like the basic data entry screens, but won’t use certain fields, can they hide them? Or can they change some of the fields to track something else?

One you can rely on for support: When you have problems, you need a partner who will quickly respond.  You want a live person to answer the phone, without having to go through a long, overdrawn automated process first. You also want one who will help you work through whatever issues you’re experiencing without making you feel dumb, or worse, frustrated because of their inability to properly communicate with you.

One that continually improves their software: You don’t want a partner that contributes value one time and then never again. Pick a vendor that continually improves their software package, in the form of regular upgrades, and who provides those to you without additional charge. Ideally, your partner will be one who listens to your input regarding what improvements to make to the software, and makes those changes when possible and helpful to a large portion of their customer base.

At New Dawn, we pride ourselves in being an excellent partner, and we’re pretty sure that our excellence as a partner is one reason why we have such a high (98%) customer retention rate, not to mention still having our very first customers with us.

For more information about what things your partner should provide, check out our video, “Beware of Hidden Costs.”