PerfectLaw Podcasts

Episode #12 - Today's Legal Billing Software

This is a continuation of our series on understanding billing software and other decisions being made today. Magali "Maggie" Behar is a licensed CPA who supports several law firms in South Florida and provides advice for many others, sometimes acting as firm administrator. Valerie Williams also adds her expertise and knowledge from the aspect of using both on-premises and SaaS (software as a service) systems.

Full Transcript

00:00:01 Anthony Beasley

OK, good afternoon everybody. This is Anthony Beasley, again with perfect law software and today we have a great roundtable of a couple of CPA's licensed Cpas who work with law firms. We also have on the phone one of our more experienced users who we've featured in.

00:00:20 Anthony Beasley

Other conversations who you know? She knows a lot about perfect law software, but a lot about the legal software industry as a whole.

00:00:28 Anthony Beasley

So on the call we have Maggie Behar. Maggie Behar is a CPA. She also does some law firm administration consulting works as an accountant, does a lot of things with law firms in South Florida and across Florida. We have Valerie Williams who is a newly retired perfect law user.

00:00:48 Anthony Beasley

Who always likes to provide some extra insight for folks who are using perfect law who are coming from high end systems like Elite, who she can definitely tell you about experiences and even firms who are considering the cloud because she worked with perfect law and implement.

00:01:06 Anthony Beasley

Our cloud software at her law firm and we also have the Tom Mullen who's a licensed CPA, is going to chime in on the tail end of the conversation based on some of the things that we discussed today.

00:01:17 Anthony Beasley

So what I'd like to do is Maggie and I have talked over quite a few opportunities and a lot of times with some of the vendors.

00:01:26 Anthony Beasley

That are out there in the industry when it comes to accounting.

00:01:30 Anthony Beasley

Uhm, sometimes law firms, you know you just don't have that same experience level as someone like a licensed CPA.

00:01:38 Anthony Beasley

You'll find that we have a lot of Cpas who use QuickBooks and other things and they have their reasons and some of them are very good. But in talking to Maggie you know you want it. You know I want to educate myself.

00:01:50 Anthony Beasley

So what's good things to remind? The small and medium sized law firms? Everybody based on the size of the law firm, the practice area and knowledge and experience.

00:02:00 Anthony Beasley

You know you're going to have different needs and different ones, so I thought it'd be good for Maggie to kind of talk to us about some of the things that she finds important.

00:02:11 Anthony Beasley

Is she speaks to law firms or she knows from her experience in providing at least some advice to different law firms in the industry. So Maggie, why don't you tell us a little bit about things from your your side of things?

00:02:25 Maggie Behar

Sure, thank you Anthony for.

00:02:28 Maggie Behar

Invited me to join you today.

00:02:32 Maggie Behar

Just for a little background, so you know my level of involvement and exposure to the perfect law product. I think I I was one of the original administrators, the firm that I was at 30 plus years ago was one of the first clients that perfect law had.

00:02:52 Maggie Behar

So I've been exposed to the perfect law product for a lot of years and various stages along the way.

00:02:59 Maggie Behar

For the last eight years or so, I've been doing consulting work.

00:03:05 Maggie Behar

In the South Florida market. So I've been working with different law firms. One of the things that I have found in in my experience is that.

00:03:15 Maggie Behar

Most administrators, particularly in the small to medium sized firms, they don't have the accounting background that is necessary to start with a good firm basis.

00:03:30 Maggie Behar

Including the chart of accounts. To me that's a very important aspect so that we're able to track expenditures and income and be able to report on them. So I found that the perfect law product gives us a lot of flexibility.

00:03:50 Maggie Behar

In comprising a chart of accounts that is actually.

00:03:52 Anthony Beasley

00:04:04 Anthony Beasley

Hope we lost Maggie there for a second.

00:04:06 Maggie Behar

Effective for being able to track profit centers, if that's what you'd like, to no fault of their own, that their strength maybe in administration and not so much accounting they don't think of some of the things that could happen down the road because today they may not be tracking profit centers, but maybe they will in the future. So one of the things I'm.

00:04:27 Maggie Behar

Important for me is to be able to establish a solid chart of accounts and move in a direction that will allow for growth so.

00:04:37 Maggie Behar

Do you want to track profit centers from an income perspective of?

00:04:43 Maggie Behar

Managing directors or partners or type of law or for those multi offices from the various offices. All those are things to consider and people that have a good accounting background that our accountants can help. Those law firms, even if it's only in the setup process.

00:05:04 Maggie Behar

In the mapping up of the old chart of accounts to the new start of accounts, I have found that that.

00:05:16 Maggie Behar

Very helpful.

00:05:19 Maggie Behar

Now then you can give your input in this, because I'm sure that.

00:05:24 Maggie Behar

You you found some of the same?

00:05:27 Maggie Behar

Video sequences.

00:05:30 Valerie Williams

Most definitely, uhm, although I'm not a CPA. When I first joined the firm I was working in the Accounting division and.

00:05:41 Valerie Williams

When we I gradually moved into it and when we get that we took a hard look at our general Ledger and and how our chart of accounts was set up because it had been the product of two or three prior administrators. Instead of cutting things.

00:06:01 Valerie Williams

Often, and replacing them with you accounts, they would just keep going. So everything was sort of scale.

00:06:07 Valerie Williams

Shattered, and so when we went into perfect, while we made a commitment that we were going to clean all that up and and get it straight, it was very helpful to have their staff working with us to help us make sure that we we got our mapping straight and everything was right from the day we started and just.

00:06:27 Valerie Williams

As Maggie said, as years go by.

00:06:30 Valerie Williams

Source discovering they tried different things, we were a single office of, I believe 14 attorneys when we started and today we're three offices with 40 attorneys.

00:06:44 Valerie Williams

So you tend to want to look at things a little bit differently as time goes on, and it's important to have the.

00:06:50 Valerie Williams

Flexibility that perfect law provides in order to achieve that.

00:06:55 Anthony Beasley

00:06:57 Anthony Beasley

OK.

00:06:57 Maggie Behar

Exactly, I think one of the important things to Anthony that that we seem to not not really think about because there's so much to cover, especially when you're starting a conversion is that.

00:07:12 Maggie Behar

The way you set things up, including.

00:07:16 Maggie Behar

Vendors and.

00:07:18 Maggie Behar

And the accounts payable process and the billing process. You have to think about the processes behind what you're doing in order to make your software work for you in the best possible way. So if you don't give good thought to.

00:07:37 Maggie Behar

OK, what is it that we do and how do we make the software work with us? I was involved with a client that against my recommendation, went with another software company.

00:07:52 Maggie Behar

And yeah, yeah, we can do this. So Oh yeah, we can do that. And when it came right down to it, the the most important thing.

00:08:01 Maggie Behar

Of course, from my perspective, being having an accounting background is the back office and reporting and being able to keep track of trust accounts and and bank reconciliations.

00:08:12 Maggie Behar

And all that good stuff.

00:08:15 Maggie Behar

One of the things was hey, if I update something right now, will I be able in real time to see the impact on my financial statements?

00:08:28 Maggie Behar

Oh yes, the answer was Oh yes, uh. The next day you'll be able to see it so pretty much real time.

00:08:34 Maggie Behar

No, you just redefined real time. That's not real time, and so you have to be really careful and and ask the right questions because.

00:08:44 Anthony Beasley

00:08:46 Maggie Behar

The answers to those questions have to you have to dig a little bit more. They'll tell you yes.

00:08:53 Maggie Behar

And then they find you find when you're actually in the middle of it, that that the answer is no. So that particular client wound up switching to perfect law after.

00:09:05 Maggie Behar

About nine months of trying to get converted and a lot of thousands of dollars in the process, they had to throw all that out the window and start fresh with perfect law.

00:09:18 Maggie Behar

So I'm sure Anthony you've had some of the same comments coming from other administrators that your firm has worked with when installing your product in their law firm.

00:09:31 Anthony Beasley

00:09:31 Anthony Beasley

00:09:31 Anthony Beasley

Yeah, and you know today we're faced with. Of course, the growing cloud vendors and and one of the things that.

00:09:39 Anthony Beasley

We're constantly reminding people our clients, as well as potential clients who are looking at us is, you know, perfectly well.

00:09:46 Anthony Beasley

Like you mentioned, Maggie, you've been, you know, 30 plus years ago you work with a law firm that implemented perfect law, so there's a longevity in the history.

00:09:55 Anthony Beasley

In a software that has a great foundation in that you know when it comes to the different types of billing scenarios that firms face, different practice areas and how they do things, you know you have, we have a history of being able to provide a quality product across all those means and I think what ends up happening in today's marketplace.

00:10:15 Anthony Beasley

Is you know, as as attorneys are younger and more tech savvy.

00:10:22 Anthony Beasley

You lose those folks like you Maggie, who, frankly, understand the impact from a business standpoint of bad reporting, and you know all the extra work.

00:10:31 Anthony Beasley

And of course, for the folks who are at the level of the administrator and working in the back office, you know how much do the attorneys actually touch our billing system?

00:10:41 Anthony Beasley

Well never and because of that.

00:10:44 Anthony Beasley

You know we're seeing more and more people make decisions on things like newer cloud software without asking the questions that go under the hood of the software.

00:10:52 Anthony Beasley

And I've not had another conversation with someone that's kind of in the same boat as you as a consultant, but I'd love to hear about your thoughts on some of the newer software.

00:11:04 Anthony Beasley

Vendors that are cloud providers that maybe don't have the longevity in the industry, but when it comes to.

00:11:10 Anthony Beasley

Having a quality billing product that's flexible that can handle multiple types of billing and having a quality single database accounting product that works with the billing so you don't have to do double entry and things of that nature what what's your thoughts on things based on what you're seeing?

00:11:26 Maggie Behar

Well, speak to that. I have to tell you that.

00:11:31 Maggie Behar

In my experience, the.

00:11:35 Maggie Behar

Perfect law product really does provide a cohesive.

00:11:41 Maggie Behar

All in one as you call it all in one solution to the law firm. I can't tell you how difficult it has been working with some law firms who don't have perfect law and have a variety of different programs. One that they use for the front office and one that they use.

00:12:01 Maggie Behar

For the back office and.

00:12:05 Maggie Behar

Then you try to join the two together and like you said.

00:12:09 Maggie Behar

The problems that are created with the double entry and double billing and the so-called flexibility that some of these programs have, which really all that serves for us to confuse and confound the the the data in the system, but.

00:12:29 Maggie Behar

I am terrified, quite frankly, at some of these.

00:12:34 Maggie Behar

Law firms that have that problem now as they are moving to the cloud.

00:12:39 Maggie Behar

It really becomes a bigger challenge because things don't translate and convert as easily.

00:12:45 Maggie Behar

Uhm, when you're in the cloud is when you're in a in a server based environment on site.

00:12:53 Maggie Behar

And so in. In looking at that scenario.

00:12:57 Maggie Behar

It really it really.

00:13:00 Maggie Behar

Creates a problem for the administrators, the accounting people, the consultants such as me who come in and try to solve it because sometimes transactions will just disappear.

00:13:12 Maggie Behar

In that conversion on other products that it doesn't happen in perfect law.

00:13:18 Maggie Behar

And I don't know about you, but I would really love to have.

00:13:23 Maggie Behar

A very few problems compared to.

00:13:26 Maggie Behar

A multitude of problems that you can't even audit or track because of things just falling off the face of the earth when you do conversions so.

00:13:38 Maggie Behar

The cloud issue is becoming a more relevant issue #1 because more and more and more people on a daily basis are realizing that that everybody wants to go to the cloud.

00:13:48 Maggie Behar

Everybody wants to be on the cloud and with this current COVID pandemic situation that we've just been through and are still going through.

00:13:56 Maggie Behar

Working remotely.

00:13:57 Maggie Behar

00:13:58 Maggie Behar

Is the thing.

00:13:59 Maggie Behar

Of the future, if not totally, at least mostly in some of these firms, particularly when you're in the support function and don't have to meet with clients and so on. So being in the cloud is critical, going with the software that can support you.

00:14:17 Maggie Behar

Not not just when you're converting to it, but also as you're working.

00:14:25 Maggie Behar

Throughout after your conversion is is really important and I've got to speak to something that that I don't know if people think about very much, but I certainly do and that is.

00:14:38 Maggie Behar

As I mentioned previously, I've been associated with executive data systems for many, many years. From the time that it was started in a small office in Coral Gables.

00:14:50 Maggie Behar

A lot of those same people that were there then are still there now.

00:14:55 Maggie Behar

And it has grown and and support personnel and service people they've been added to the core product, but it's the same base ownership. It's the same.

00:15:08 Maggie Behar

Unity in making the product better, growing the business.

00:15:12 Maggie Behar

It's not that way with a lot of other software. They start off with a strong foundation years ago, but then they got bought out by larger firms.

00:15:24 Maggie Behar

Like Lexus or or?

00:15:27 Maggie Behar

Some of the bigger companies and guys is just not the same. The service is not the same. They talk a bit, talk to get you to sign on the dotted line.

00:15:36 Maggie Behar

But once you do, the service is just not there, so support is just not there and the product the feeding, the product growing the product, you know.

00:15:47 Maggie Behar

Making sure that things are.

00:15:50 Maggie Behar

Current it doesn't work. It doesn't happen the way that the perfect law product has grown and developed so that I think is really important to look at when you're searching for companies not not just in the cloud, but in general. That's a comment that I'd like to to make in my experience.

00:16:10 Anthony Beasley

OK, now come.

00:16:11 Valerie Williams

Not yet heard with that.

00:16:12 Anthony Beasley

Right now I was going to say, you know you you you have some direct experience with it when it comes to.

00:16:19 Anthony Beasley

Uhm, the transition to the cloud. You know every but as Maggie mentioned, everybody wants to go to the cloud.

00:16:24 Anthony Beasley

The cloud is, you know, we just had a phone call today with someone and they are cloud focused but they also have looked at some systems and the funny comment from the person I was talking to was, well, the attorney looked at the time keeping system and they asked him a question about something.

00:16:39 Anthony Beasley

On accounting, they said, you know, we're cashbooks. If the company says, Oh well, we're we only do accrual and that was kind of the end of the conversation.

00:16:45 Anthony Beasley

Because they don't have the flexibility to handle, you know what you face on a day to day from a billing standpoint.

00:16:51 Anthony Beasley

What you face on day to day from an accounting standpoint and not having to rely on a third party system to do what they can't do, which is you know what goes back to what Maggie said about lost data and having to work with other systems.

00:17:06 Anthony Beasley

So with your experience, Val would love to hear you speak to some of her comments on the cloud and go into the cloud and the things that you know from being in the perfect law cloud.

00:17:18 Valerie Williams

Thanks Anthony and I concur. Maggie the the importance of having consistency in your support and your software office is key.

00:17:29 Valerie Williams

Not that I expect them every time that one of us would give them a call and ask the question to know exactly how our firm works.

00:17:38 Valerie Williams

But they have a good sense of what we're doing, and you know, if a year from now I come back and I want to change something. I can go back to the same person who?

00:17:48 Valerie Williams

You know, did this program for me or whatever a year ago and make the necessary changes when we converted to UM?

00:18:00 Valerie Williams

When we converted to perfect law, we had a lead and I'll call that our front office and and then we had a custom database that was used for the backup.

00:18:11 Valerie Williams

Office, primarily because of the way the attorneys wanted their reports and elite couldn't do that without a $10,000 programming charge every time you wanted to do something.

00:18:24 Valerie Williams

Perfect law, you you said of the firm that had just spent nine months and then ended up pitching the other software.

00:18:32 Valerie Williams

We spent nine months with perfect law, just talking about it, and you know our attorneys. We took the reports that our attorneys wanted to see and we sent them to perfect law and they we said.

00:18:44 Valerie Williams

Show me.

00:18:44 Valerie Williams

00:18:45 Valerie Williams

How you can do this for us and they get?

00:18:48 Valerie Williams

00:18:48 Valerie Williams

And uhm.

00:18:50 Valerie Williams

You know that to have that flexibility without having to program something every single time is is phenomenal. It really is.

00:18:59 Valerie Williams

Our support costs were through the roof with our prior vendor and that was one of the reasons we were driven away from them was because of that that along with the fact that.

00:19:12 Valerie Williams

They were starting to add third party applications to accomplish some of the things that perfect law is done all by themselves.

00:19:19 Valerie Williams

00:19:20 Valerie Williams

Document management is one of them.

00:19:24 Valerie Williams

Yeah, you know. And I had to question myself as to whether or not a year from now the relationship between Elite and their, then document management firm was still going to be solid.

00:19:35 Valerie Williams

Or if we were going to be left now with the elite product and having to go someplace else for the support on document management, we don't have to worry about that with perfect.

00:19:44 Valerie Williams

00:19:45 Maggie Behar

Exactly, agreed.

00:19:47 Anthony Beasley

Yeah, and you know, and I think you know you know valure transition you know. Last year as COVID hit and Full disclosure, we were already in the process of moving your firm to the cloud.

00:20:01 Anthony Beasley

Obviously for a lot of folks that was a scary transition to go from. Hey today we're working in the office.

00:20:03 Valerie Williams

00:20:05 Anthony Beasley

00:20:05 Anthony Beasley

00:20:08 Anthony Beasley

But tomorrow, out of no fault of our own out of you know, no real preparation. We have to get people working effectively from their home. The way they work in the office.

00:20:18 Anthony Beasley

Not, you know. Obviously we had some things in place, but tell us a little bit about your experience from that transition and what it's been like over the last year or so when you guys moved over to the cloud.

00:20:30 Valerie Williams

Certainly, thankfully I have a very knowledgeable and talented CFO that also had a background in.

00:20:41 Valerie Williams

IT so, as we were moving to the cloud with various applications he.

00:20:50 Valerie Williams

You know, made it a point that he wanted perfect law to be in the cloud for everybody. Prior to that, the only people that had remote access to the office were attorneys and senior management people.

00:21:04 Valerie Williams

So when COVID hit and we knew we had to get everybody up and running and everybody moved him.

00:21:11 Valerie Williams

Uhm, it was it really became.

00:21:15 Valerie Williams

Less, I think labor intensive to accomplish that because we were so far into the process. It was just a matter of getting them set up on their computers at home and jumping ahead, but we had perfect law there to support us as we started going through that, because, you know, we have we have.

00:21:35 Valerie Williams

85 people in the firm that we had to address and some users are more savvy than others and and they would be able to follow the instructions and get everything done on their home computers much.

00:21:47 Valerie Williams

Quicker than the the other people, so perfectly obvious there to help us address them along with our. We had outsourced our department the year before so our support people on that and we're also valuable to us as we as we move forward in that process and.

00:22:07 Valerie Williams

You know we managed and I think I think the last day everybody was in the office was March the 12th of 20.

00:22:16 Valerie Williams

00:22:17 Valerie Williams

And for the for the better part of 2020 there were maybe 15 people in in all three offices, so you know we were able to keep pace with what was going on. And everybody was up and running for the most part.

00:22:34 Valerie Williams

It was smooth sailing and and it was there. Was no worry about, you know if there was going to be a power issue at the office or any of that. Everything worked perfectly.

00:22:47 Anthony Beasley

Great now.

00:22:49 Anthony Beasley

For both of you, because this is, you know, it's a common thing that vendors of our type vendors who've been around for a long time and have had to make business decisions to go to the cloud. We have some vendors who are basically being handled by managed service providers who are installing.

00:23:10 Anthony Beasley

The system in either some sort of a you know.

00:23:13 Anthony Beasley

Set up that's an outside data center. Or maybe they're using for some they use a WS versus using.

00:23:26 Anthony Beasley

Versus using Microsoft Azure.

00:23:28 Anthony Beasley

00:23:30 Anthony Beasley

But what we're hearing a lot of, and it comes across. And it's one of those things you know, Maggie, you mentioned that we've been around for a while, and you know our product, and you've seen it.

00:23:38 Anthony Beasley

You've probably seen it transition and grow and change look and feel over the years since you were in some of the earlier renditions.

00:23:44 Anthony Beasley

And of course, value of seeing the product from the earlier renditions as well and have been involved with some.

00:23:50 Anthony Beasley

Upgrades to in look and feel and other things to make it more.

00:23:54 Anthony Beasley

User-friendly for the cloud, but from time to time we get the look and feel argument and what I'd like to do is just let you guys kind of speak to the look and feel argument that we that we hear because obviously you know we have hundreds of law firms throughout the United States across the Caribbean, and even folks who use us possibly in other countries.

00:24:13 Anthony Beasley

Because of the affiliation with there with law firms in the Patent and Trademark industry, but you know.

00:24:20 Anthony Beasley

It would love to hear your thoughts on look and feel versus quality of software. What's your thoughts on that? Let's start with Maggie.

00:24:29 Maggie Behar

You know, I, I guess I I I like to see beyond look and feel because the look and feel may be very pretty, but if it doesn't do what it's supposed to.

00:24:31 Tom Mullen

It's the God.

00:24:34 Tom Mullen

Have a spare?

00:24:43 Maggie Behar

Do who cared?

00:24:46 Maggie Behar

00:24:48 Maggie Behar

I like I do with with everything else. I look behind the look and feel. Yes, it's pretty yes it's nice.

00:24:56 Maggie Behar

Is it even a little bit easy to work with? Does it give me what I want? That's important stuff.

00:25:06 Maggie Behar

In my position now, what do you think?

00:25:10 Valerie Williams

I I was just thinking.

00:25:11 Valerie Williams

As we were going through.

00:25:12 Valerie Williams

This because this is the age old argument.

00:25:15 Valerie Williams

The look and feel versus the the.

00:25:19 Valerie Williams

In my opinion, the back office system I support.

00:25:22 Valerie Williams

But you know, I.

00:25:24 Valerie Williams

I think it's kind of like.

00:25:27 Valerie Williams

You wanna have a a Cadillac, but will the Honda get you there?

00:25:33 Valerie Williams

Uhm, you've got to. You've got to look at it from two different angles. Look isn't always the most important, and frankly, over the years I think we've seen more and more of our attorneys and staff to adapt to perfect law and the way that it works versus some of the older attorneys.

00:25:53 Valerie Williams

And and the fact of the matter is, they're just not as computer savvy and it works fine and it's easy for them to use.

00:26:03 Valerie Williams

But I do believe that.

00:26:06 Valerie Williams

Yeah, like I said.

00:26:07 Valerie Williams

Being able to get your reports and know that they're accurate. Being able to change something on the I'm gonna say on the fly as opposed to tomorrow morning after the system updates is critical. I I don't know about all firms, but I know our firm closes out.

00:26:25 Valerie Williams

At December 31st, so you can't be waiting till January 1st to see what happened with the last postings that you had, you have to know right now. So I come.

00:26:34 Valerie Williams

Things that you had.

00:26:34 Valerie Williams

00:26:42 Valerie Williams

Well, we look and feel you know it can be all bells and whistles and flashy lights and all that, but.

00:26:48 Valerie Williams

When it comes right down to it, it's the ease of use and the and the quality of the data on the back end.

00:26:56 Valerie Williams

That are most important.

00:26:58 Maggie Behar

Agree 100%.

00:27:00 Anthony Beasley

OK, well again the the good thing about this conversation is we've had Tom Mullen who works with us and who's a licensed CPA.

00:27:08 Anthony Beasley

And I thought it would be good to wrap things up, especially when we have someone at Maggie level as a CPA on with us and we've had a few other folks who are CPA's that we've talked to but also have a vowel on who I think that there's a. There's a lot of good things when a person knows the back office understands.

00:27:29 Anthony Beasley

What goes on at the attorney level and the front office as well as paralegals and legal assistance. People who have to get the work done.

00:27:35 Anthony Beasley

You know, having someone that that's that extensive in the product that can give us some good knowledge, but you know we have to help a lot of our clients in places with things that they may call us up about and.

00:27:47 Anthony Beasley

One of the things that we kind of hang our hat on is the quality of our software and the fact that when it comes down to something as simple as being able to adhere to just basic accounting principles and be able to say, yeah, we have a great accounting system to have someone like Tom who can add to that is always a great resource. So I wanted to at least have Tom step in and just make a couple of comments.

00:28:07 Anthony Beasley

On the things that we've talked about today.

00:28:10 Anthony Beasley

00:28:11 Tom Mullen

Thanks, appreciate it.

00:28:14 Tom Mullen

You know, sometimes we lose sight of the objective and that's the real problem on a setup of any system, whether it's an accounting system or time keeping system.

00:28:24 Tom Mullen

Manufacturing or production system. You need to start with the back end. Figure out where you need to be when you get finished and then work backwards from there.

00:28:34 Tom Mullen

To get to the beginning. So if you figure out the reports that you need the information that you need.

00:28:42 Tom Mullen

00:28:43 Tom Mullen

Your end product has to be. It makes it a lot easier to figure out what the components have to be. For instance, if you need reporting back end time keeping.

00:28:53 Tom Mullen

Attorney analysis all of those components have to be able to be gathered.

00:28:59 Tom Mullen

If you have to get them from multiple sources, you then have duplication of effort. By the way, if you have multiple suppliers, you have this. Well it's not working well. That's his problem. Not my problem, not your problem.

00:29:13 Tom Mullen

So having it all in one place, you reduce the duplication.

00:29:19 Tom Mullen

Which increases the efficiency. So starting from the back and working to the front to find out, figure out what you need is essential for creating any kind of an effective system.

00:29:32 Anthony Beasley

OK, so you know today has been really good.

00:29:37 Anthony Beasley

Yeah, you know, I know we we spent about 1/2 hour about 1/2 hour and you know the goal of these types of conversations is as much educational for folks who are logging along hearings and things. We have our own clients that are making decisions about a lot of different things. We just want to give people good information to go with and so it's.

00:29:58 Anthony Beasley

Always great to have outside sources who.

00:30:02 Anthony Beasley

Not just know perfect law but just know some of the most basic things in the industry to share with people. So Maggie, I really appreciate you taking the time out of your day.

00:30:12 Anthony Beasley

To provide some some good information for a lot of folks I, I would venture to say anyone who is considering a software change.

00:30:21 Anthony Beasley

They take the opportunity to just listen to the points that you've given them. They're going to be that much closer to making a smart decision.

00:30:27 Anthony Beasley

And not just a convenient decision and Val, of course, always a pleasure to have you spend some time with us and give us your point of view because of the different areas of the software that you've worked in, you know, and so it's great.

00:30:41 Anthony Beasley

And then the fact that you're in just two different physical locations you know wanted. You know, Maggie is here in South Florida where we're based.

00:30:48 Anthony Beasley

Val is in Virginia Beach, but it is, you know, seeing our system and talked to folks all from all around the country at any given time, so we definitely appreciate you guys.

00:30:58 Anthony Beasley

And you know when we talk about the transition of the company and and Maggie, you mentioned you know you've been around us for a lot of years and one of the things that I think will always set us apart.

00:31:08 Anthony Beasley

From any of our competitors was the move that was made about over 10 years ago when we became an ESOP.

00:31:14 Anthony Beasley

An employee on company and what that means is for folks who are looking at us and for our clients is when that phone call comes like some of the vendors that have been bought.

00:31:25 Anthony Beasley

Or some of the vendors that may be bought in the future because there's only one or two people or a few people who own the company.

00:31:33 Anthony Beasley

That decision to sell is a lot easier for them because they don't have to take their employees into consideration and other things.

00:31:40 Anthony Beasley

It's a it's a business venture and it's a business move in a lot of cases it may be a smart move.

00:31:46 Anthony Beasley

Being an ESOP, you know we have a vested interest in the product across the company because the folks who work here they are owners of the product not just in being employed, but their owners literally of the product so that Aesop was made as a hey, we're going to be around for a while and have someone Maggie who says.

00:32:05 Anthony Beasley

I remember perfectly when it was here to say wow, look at where they are now is always a great plus.

00:32:13 Anthony Beasley

And it speaks to who we are as a company. So again, we really appreciate you guys and giving us some time.

00:32:20 Anthony Beasley

We appreciate Tom for giving us a few minutes to be able to give his thoughts based on the things that we're set today.

00:32:25 Anthony Beasley

And we always look forward to another opportunity to share with folks. And I hope to have both of you back again soon.

00:32:32 Maggie Behar

Thank you for having me.