Archive Corporation: Twelve Years Away, and the Conversion Back

Originally published 2021. Company details and product names reflect the business and the O'Neil platform as of that date.

Most records centers change software once, if ever. Archive Corporation has done it four times — and one of those moves was back to a vendor they had already left.

What follows is not a story about a smooth first purchase. It is a story about leaving, spending more than a decade somewhere else, and deciding the return was worth the conversion risk a second time.

Archive Corporation is a large, commercial, family-owned records storage company, located in Tampa, Florida. The company has been in business for 32 years and started on the tape management side, later expanding into box storage, imaging, shredding, and cloud services. Marjorie Baker joined the family business in 1988 and is now Vice President of the company.

Originally, Archive Corporation started out using a DOS-based software, but found it very hard to use. So in 1996, the company decided to convert to O'Neil's Record Storage for Windows (aka RSWin), which provided functionality that helped the company during a period of considerable growth. An added bonus was the transition and data conversion to O'Neil was remarkably smooth. The level of satisfaction with O'Neil was high with the Archive Corporation employees as they liked the intuitive nature of the O'Neil solution.

However in 2003, Archive Corporation converted again to different software for what was a very good reason. As a founding member of National Record Centers (NRC), they wanted to show their support for this organization's technology choice for standardization purposes. Unfortunately, the benefits didn't materialize as expected so Archive Corporation decided to start exploring new solutions. This exploration lasted 12 years and culminated in the move back to O'Neil.

Choosing a platform that would still be right in ten years

Marjorie Baker wanted to ensure her company utilized the right technology for the future. Archive Corporation had been on a FoxPro dB platform and she was looking to enhance the performance of queries and better utilize wireless technologies. After some research, she felt a SQL based solution would be best for Archive Corporation.

As Marjorie pointed out: "Archive Corporation has found O'Neil's technology to be designed as a state of the art solution and much more intuitive than other software solutions, making our work a lot easier and more productive. Additionally, through the use of their wireless handhelds and O'Neil's RSMobile^® software, we've been able to improve a great many operational efficiencies.

Our staff can now accomplish tasks wirelessly such as downloading/uploading picklists and work orders, which previously required them to return to their workstations to complete. Tasks, that previously took a great deal of time, can now be performed directly from their handhelds, saving time and money. Using RSMobile has also helped us shorten our process implementation time, allowing our mobile staff to react immediately to customer demands and thus enhancing customer service levels."

What the conversion actually looked like

Fear of the unknown keeps many companies chained to their existing technology. Archive Corporation had an advantage: they had already been through an O'Neil conversion once, in 1996, and knew how it went. Marjorie recognized that the most knowledgeable source for conversion assistance was the O'Neil Technical Support team. With hundreds of conversions under their belt, O'Neil could provide invaluable guidance every step of the way, so the conversion would be smooth...and once again, it was. Marjorie was very impressed with the iterative process of the conversion which eliminated any requirement for duplicate systems and data entry. The O'Neil RS-SQL system came online and was functioning just as expected on day one.

During the import process, it was discovered that not all customer billings were 100% accurate due to limitations with the old system. Some customers were being incorrectly billed for storage and certain services provided by Archive Corporation. After moving to O'Neil's RS-SQL, Archive Corporation was able to appropriately bill for storage and services.

O'Neil's invoicing process will provide the tools and safeguards to keep customer invoices spot on going forward.

Support after go-live

A great vendor relationship does not end once the product is delivered, or the services are rendered. In fact, it may actually start there. Customers and their staff depend on their vendor's Technical Support team to keep their system available and operational.

When asked about O'Neil's Technical Support team, Marjorie Baker responded: "The response we've received has always been quick and thorough. Whenever we've called, a live person has answered and was ready to solve any problems we had and in a timeframe that worked for us. I recently placed a call at 7 am EST and to my satisfaction was helped immediately. This had to be one of the worldwide O'Neil support locations as the corporate office in California hadn't started work yet. Getting through to technical support anytime I need them is really nice."

She concludes: "So in the end, converting back to O'Neil was a good move all the way around for us. We got an exceptional and proven software solution, along with great technical support that we can count on. I'm very confident we are getting the return we expected from our technology investment."