News and Blog
January 2008

Hawthorne School District!
Dateline: Roseville - January 2008 - Gayle Lucas

January brings yet another purchasing customer live on Online 5! 

I recently spent a day with the Hawthorne School District’s core users in a Train the Trainer session, and I just can’t brag enough about this group.  We must have the best user base in California!  They are both intelligent and fun. 

Shannon Hagerty will be doing most of the training of their site users with the rest of the group available to help individual users.  Live date is scheduled for January 30th.   Hawthorne Rocks!



Back row, left to right: Gil Mara, Technology Coordinator; Suzanne Launius, Technology Support Specialist; Ines Kekula, Purchasing Assistant; David Walker, Purchasing Clerk.

Front row, left to right: Gioconda Padilla, Purchasing Director; Shannon Hagerty, Business Technology Specialist.

Missing from picture: Roger Leonard, Senior Warehouse Coordinator (you left too soon Roger!)

 

Another customer live on Online 5 Departmental!
Dateline: Roseville - January 2008 - Gayle Lucas

2008 couldn’t have started out any better with Santa Maria Joint Union High School District going live on January 7th!

I spent the first week training the purchasing and warehouse staff and fine-tuning the setup. I always enjoy working with our end users but I have to say that this group was just wonderful. They all had that ‘can do’ positive attitude and a great sense of humor on top of it.

So a big WELCOME to SMJUHSD to our ever growing Escape Online 5 family!


From left to right: Brenda Hoff, Fiscal Services Director; Les Wood, Information Services / Technology Coordinator; Debra Tromp, Buyer; Steve Moody, Warehouse; Gayle Lucas, Escape Technology; Kelly Gilbertson, Purchasing Technician. Missing from the picture are Patty Blythe, Buyer and John Sisson, Warehouse Lead.

Escape loses a friend
Dateline: Roseville - January 2008 - Bob Towery

Everyone here at Escape Technology was saddened to learn that our friend Tom Hippie, Purchasing Director at Citrus College, passed away in his sleep on December 27th. 

Tom was an early supporter of Escape, and he was forever a positive influence.  He always showed up at our CASBO booth several times each year, giving us a few "attaboys."  Over the years where we struggled to get our Escape Online 5 software running, Tom both encouraged us and gently reminded us that we needed to get "our stuff" together.  No doubt several organizations that are now long term Escape customers were influenced by his positive reviews of our system and services.

He hosted numerous user conferences for us and our many Purchasing module customers in the Los Angeles area.  He was a friend to many, and we surely appreciate all his help over the years.

Tom, you were a great man, a true friend, and you will be missed.

What a Difference a Year Makes!
Dateline: Roseville - January 2008 - Bob Towery

2008 is shaping up to be one of the most exciting in our history – we have more implementations underway than at any previous time, and our Escape Online 5 system is really performing well. I cannot get over what a difference a year makes.

Thinking back to January 2007, here was our status:

  • We had not taken anyone live on Escape Online 5 since our two county credential implementations in 2003.
  • Payroll was not ready to pay people yet.
  • We had not actually signed any new customers; we had a couple of conversions of Escape Classic customers we were working on.
  • There were several hundred known issues to be resolved, and a list of a dozen or so major items yet to be developed.
  • We had not hired any new employees to help meet the (hopefully) upcoming demand.
  • We had placed “third” in a large COE’s RFP, and they did not plan to further evaluate our system.
  • We did not yet know of a couple of .Net issues that would soon surface and screw up a portion of our development plan for the year.

Of course we were optimistic about what we would accomplish during 2007!

So what happened during 2007?

  • We got our first district live on Finance/HR/Payroll in March! Thanks again to the staff at Dublin USD for all their efforts and patience with our maiden launch.
  • Two of our LA County Community College customers, Citrus and Pasadena City, went live on the Purchasing Department functionality in the Spring.
  • Placer COE signed on in January and began their 24 organization implementation immediately. They were live in HR by May and worked the remainder of the year in preparation for going live on Payroll.
  • Three direct service districts went live at Ventura COE in July, with two more following in October.
  • Lake COE also signed on and began their implementation last Fall.
  • We hired several great new people, in positions that were not previously established at Escape, including Project Office, QA and Business Analyst.
  • We significantly beefed up our implementations group with a professional project management regimen.
  • We added Escape Customer Care staff, including one of our former employees that had left due to relocation, what a bonus!
  • We also hired an Implementation/Project Manager who is a former CBO, significantly adding to our school business expertise.
  • Placer COE staff was kind enough to help us diagnose a significant technical issue affecting workstation performance. This turned out to be yet another deficiency in our Microsoft .Net development environment. Resolving this and other similar issues took one of our developers most of the year to conquer, but the end results were really great – real performance gains for our end users.
  • Alameda COE went live on Escape Online 5 Retirement.
  • We completed nearly 1,000 individual programming/reporting tasks.
  • We finished the year with over 35 organization using Escape Online 5 in live operations.
  • Also of great importance to our company was the ongoing discussion with several important COE prospective customers. Their continued belief in us and their assistance with feature sets and processes is highly valued.
  • We did a fair amount of development on Ad Hoc reporting, that will pay off in 2008.
  • We converted our customer release process to a monthly release schedule, so customers would get new software and fixes more quickly.
  • We delivered several remaining important pieces of functionality like 1099’s and W2’s on time, and with numerous improvements from our Escape Classic system.
  • And the large COE RFP where we placed third? In early 2007 they had determined that numbers 1 and 2 were not measuring up and Escape deserved an intense set of demos, evaluations and customer visits. By the end of the year, Escape was #1, whereas #2 and #3 were history.

So 2007 was really a spectacular year, very successful for us and our customers.

2008 Forecast!

We expect 2008 to be one of our best years, and a very busy one:

  • Ay carumba! We currently have implementations scheduled and underway for over 75 organizations across 12 different counties. This includes many Escape Classic customers and several new ones.
  • Our system conversion from .Net 1.1 to .Net 2.0 and .Net 3.5 is underway with dedicated development resources.
  • We have some exciting UI enhancements already completed and in testing that customers will see very soon.
  • In July, Placer County districts will be going live on the Finance module. This will bring us to our first county-wide, Finance/HR/Payroll/COE implementation with Escape Online 5 – quite a feat!
  • We plan to add more implementation staff.
  • We have acquired a Knowledge Base system and are in the process of building this up, which will be available to users directly in our system.
  • Look for an exciting redesign and expansion of content at www.escapetech.com.
  • We have also acquired a new incident tracking system, and will be integrating this with our application, so that users can electronically request assistance, and view the status of outstanding incidents.
  • We expect to announce the addition of several COE’s to the Escape family this year.

So we have our work cut out for us with lots of implementations. I believe we are up to the challenge, and we really look forward to working with our customers this year, both Classic conversions as well as new ones.