In spite of many challenges in the national and global economy, 2011 has been a great year here at Handel. Our growth has continued with more customers and more employees. We have built a stronger team and our sales have continued to grow. We have deployed RiteTrack with several new customers and we have continued to foster and grow stronger relationship with our existing customers. As we near the end of this year, I want to thank all current and prospective customers for working with us. Without you, there would be no Handel and no RiteTrack.
In a few years from now, I believe the evolution of our RiteTrack platform will stand out as our greatest accomplishment in 2011. At the beginning of the year, our Product Development team had just started development on our new RiteTrack platform, RiteTrack 5. As we finish the year, we have several customers ready to go live on this platform. So what is it about RiteTrack 5 that is so special? Yes, like its pre-decessor it is completely web-based. Probably a given at this point. Yes, it can run both on-the premises on your servers, and in our data center, whatever works best for you. Like previous versions of RiteTrack, it is completely customizable. Again, a given. The real revolution with RiteTrack 5 is that is is completely modular. So what exactly does that mean?
Let's look at a common challenge in the field of social services and IT: When an agency look to implement a new software for managing their clients, they are usually faced with two choices: Buy an off-the-shelf solution or build your own custom solution. Neither approach is optimal. Traditionally, off-the-shelf solutions, while usually proven and less expensive, are limited in how much they can be customized. Custom solutions typically have a high failure rate and an ever higher price-tag. RiteTrack 5 delivers a very happy medium. In essence, think of RiteTrack 5 as an off-the-shelf solution where we have broken down every component to the smallest common denominator. Every object in RiteTrack is its own module that can be assembled together in any fashion. While the analogy may be a bit tired, think of RiteTrack 5 as the software equivalent to Lego®
You can buy a complete solution in a box. This solution has a lot of different pieces that you can assemble together just like it is shown on the box, or, you can assemble it in a way that may fit your needs better. It can be easily integrated with any other RiteTrack 5 solution, or if you just need a few pieces from another solution, you can do that as well. Lastly, if there just happens to be that one piece missing that you really need, we can customize that piece for you. So how is the RiteTrack 5 approach different from other solutions in the market? It is different in that you can pick and choose different pieces from different systems and re-assemble them into a new solution for your agency, and everything just works. As more and more customers go live with RiteTrack 5 we will be building up a huge selection of RiteTrack 5 modules that you can mix and match into completely new systems that may not have been envisioned when the individual modules were originally built. As of this writing, we have three RiteTrack 5 solutions ready:
- RiteTrack 5 Residential Treatment
These individual solutions each consist of several modules, some of which are shared across all (client addresses, documents, notes, etc,), others that are specific to one solution (TANF calculations for the TANF solution, Family Tree for Tribal Enrollment, or Intake Assessment for Residential Treatment). To prove a point, Joe Nevshemal, our Vice President of Product Development recently did an experiment. What would happen if we took every RiteTrack 5 module and threw them together into one giant solution? While such a solution most likely would not have a market, it would be final proof that the modular model embraced in RiteTrack 5 actually work, right? Dubbed the RiteTrack Kitchen Sink (everything but), the solution actually compiled without a hiccup, and better yet, after logging in, everything worked.
So, the lesson learned is that you can now easily mix and match components from individual RiteTrack 5 solutions to build entirely new solutions not yet imagined. With most other solutions out in the marketplace and with prior versions of RiteTrack it becomes very difficult to integrate other solutions once the system has been tailor-made specifically for your needs. With RiteTrack 5 this is not the case. We can still build your own custom functionality (think of the equivalent of having Lego custom mold your own Lego pieces, something they actually do) which can live happily side-by-side with existing RiteTrack 5 modules. Better yet, if somebody else wants to use a custom module that you have built, it will integrate seamlessly into other RiteTrack 5 solutions. In essence, RiteTrack 5 modules can behave very much like the Apple or Android App stores in that different apps co-exist on one platform, in this case, the RiteTrack 5 platform.
We are excited about taking RiteTrack 5 to market in 2012. We are confident that the modular approach will provide our customers with the best of both worlds: The reliability, low-cost, and implementation speed of an off-the-shelf solution with the flexibility of a custom solution. If you are interested in learning more about how RiteTrack 5 can help your agency, please do not hesitate to contact us today. Meanwhile, I want to wish you a Happy New Year and a prosperous 2012.
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