One of RSI’s client’s main purpose is to assist individuals utilize state funds to pay employees who provide personal care assistance or similar services. The client assists individuals in managing paperwork, paying their staff, and other administrative functions they may not be able to handle easily on their own.
The client’s primary contact has graciously agreed to an interview about her experience with RSI!
How long have you worked for the client?
I’ve worked with the client for 17 years. It has been an adventure that I have worked my way up in. The position I hold now is not even close to the one I started in.
What matters the most to you when making a decision?
So many different factors go into the decisions I make daily. Since I oversee our general operations, my position encompasses A LOT of items that take place every day. Some decisions are very straightforward and easy to make while others are far more complicated. For complicated situations, I factor in a management member, department, or state’s request as well as the “big picture” impact it will have on our internal teams and overall operation. In this case, I communicate with a variety of people, collect/ compile data, and make an informed decision. A lot of time, I consult RSI as well to assist in making sure we aren’t overlooking any pieces.
What challenges did the client have prior to working with RSI?
Prior to RSI, we had a “one-man show” operation handling our IT needs along with an internal IT Manager. The challenges we faced were mainly not having a team of people with a broad working knowledge of how to get things done or even software options potentially available to help streamline some of the work we were doing. None of the work performed prior to RSI was done in a comprehensive manner. It was a lot of “patchwork” and band aids to fix areas that were creating significant issues for but nothing that was being looked at in a “big picture” format…which only led to more issues RSI has inadvertently found and updated over the years.
What inspired the client to partner with RSI?
We discovered RSI when I started to oversee operations and the IT Manager was still employed by us. Once we found RSI, we were drawn to the fact it was a small business (which has since grown significantly) that understood the importance of our work and having our systems being “up” 24/7 to effectively do the work we are contracted to do. The RSI admin team was SO personable and ensured we were taken care of and our business needs were met effectively and seamlessly as we transitioned from internal IT to external/vendor-based IT.
What problems have RSI helped the client resolve?
ALL OF THEM! RSI has pushed us forward in SO many ways that I had not previously imagined when we started our partnership. The RSI team we worked with treated us like family instead of “a business” and made sure our concerns were heard regarding the challenges we presented. RSI was transparent on what realistically could and couldn’t be done and within a certain timeframe. The RSI team were in our office for MONTHS, updating the things that needed attention immediately and getting us to a decent operational place. Over the years, RSI has worked extremely hard to uncover the system band aids and truly understand our operations to better assist in fixing and building a database and other systems that satisfy our needs. We have been able to make huge process changes with the system improvements RSI have completed, taking hours (if not days) off our processing times. This allows our employees to have a work/life balance and not have to put in overtime every single week just to complete our basic job functions. Ever since RSI came onboard, they have been there to tackle literally all problems we have brought up.
What aspects of the client and RSI’s partnership do you appreciate the most?
Both the RSI software and hardware teams have been amazing! The people we’ve had the pleasure of working with and the relationships we have built over the years are the things that I appreciate the most about RSI. I like that RSI is a local company who employs “real” people. By that, I mean people you can build a working relationship with, and we get to collaborate with each other all the time instead of getting a new person whenever we call or report a challenge. The fact that RSI employees are transparent and tell me they must research it more, which makes them relatable and honest, in my opinion. The honesty and transparency from RSI employees have been greatly appreciated.
What kind of improvements would you like to see the client accomplish with RSI’s assistance?
We are excited to work with the RSI team on building new things and improving overall system processes. The most exciting improvement in my opinion is the significant enhancements being made to our portal. I think this will push us significantly forward in resolving the shortcomings we have been aware of but never had a way to truly address. It will make us more competitive in the market, which will hopefully maintain or increase our ability to sustain and increase our contracts and revenue.
What RSI projects are you most excited about?
I am most excited about the portal work and the meetings that are taking place to understand the entirety of our operations and systems to best know where our gaps are and how to address/fix moving forward. I am looking forward to working with RSI on brainstorming how to best accomplish all these things and the proposed solutions the RSI comes up with. We are finally out of constant crisis mode and can be somewhat creative with projects that are on the table now. For us, that hasn’t happened in YEARS, so it is refreshing.
If you were to describe RSI to another company, what would you say?
I will discuss how we started with internal IT like most of these companies have when they call me. It has been so much better it has been having an entire team to brainstorm IT issues and solutions rather than relying on small internal groups. There is a benefit in knowing RSI employees stay up to date with the latest technologies available and will let us know when there are better options than what we are doing at any given time. Being able to work with a company that has transparency and honesty clearly shows how much they genuinely care about our business’ success. We’ve encountered issues in the past at the 11th hour and RSI has always stuck by us through the entire process (sometimes until 1 or 2 in the morning) to ensure everything is complete so we could do what we needed to do. Even when there were things outside of what RSI could do, RSI constantly checked on us to see how things were going and make sure everything was being done to help. You just don’t receive the kind of service anywhere else and there is a lot to be said for that. To us, RSI is seen as branch of our work family rather than just another “vendor” we work with.
