Software for American Indian, Child, and Family Social Services
Fall 2010
 Preparing for Fall Conference Season! |
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Upcoming Events
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Conference: October 25-29: Mid-Western & Eastern Regional WIA INAP E&T Conference; Tulsa, OK |
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| Greetings! | |
Welcome to the President's Corner!
The Future is Now
I recently spoke at the annual Ways to Work Institute. The  theme this year was "The Future is Now" and the title of my talk was "Embrace the Future." In our industry change is the norm. At Handel we always look for the latest greatest technology so that we can evaluate trends and help predict where the technology industry will be moving next. At Handel it has always been our number-one mission to deliver the absolute best information solutions to our customers so that they can spend less time doing administrative work and more time helping their clients. We believe better tools equal less time spent doing "paperwork" (I used quotes because most RiteTrack users don't use much paper anymore) and more time spent delivering services. In preparing for my talk I decided to look back to see where we have come from. As I have often said before, the past is the best predictor of the future. If we look back to see where we are coming from, we will have a better chance at predicting where we are going. |
| RiteTrack at Work: Ways to Work Leverage RiteTrack 4 to Assist Their Clients |  When Georgina Castaneda tried to get a loan to purchase a car, several financial institutions turned her away. For Ms. Castaneda, having reliable transportation is the key to a higher standard of living. After discovering the Ways to Work program, Ms. Castaneda was able to get a car loan and she is now the proud owner of a mini-van. Buying a mini-van has improved her family's life tremendously and she has been inspired to tell others about the program. Now that she has a reliable car, she saves two hours on her daily commute time and has increased her income by finding full-time employment.
In Georgina's words, "Life has become a lot easier." She finds the people at San Mateo Credit Union (SMCU) very helpful and with her higher income has opened savings accounts there for herself and her daughter, as well as an IRA. Thanks to the money she saved in her account, this past Christmas Georgina took her children on their first vacation ever ... to Disneyland. According to Georgina, "I always dreamed of taking the kids there but never would have thought I could do it alone. Thank you SMCU and Ways to Work-you changed my life."
read more...
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| Challenges to Non-Profits Today: RiteTrack Can Help! |
Nonprofit agencies face a variety of challenges in today's world. Lester M. Salamon, in the book The State of Nonprofit America, identifies six of them: fiscal challenge, effectiveness challenge, technology challenge, legitimacy challenge, human resource challenge and competition challenge. Quite the list-and I would pick the competition challenge as the one with the greatest potential impact, as it is so inter-related to the other challenges.
The increase in government funding and pay-for-service models has brought an increase to for-profit agencies in sectors traditionally dominated or shared by nonprofits and this increase threatens nonprofits in each of the other areas Salamon identifies.
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| The Search for Software for your Tribe: 3 Key Elements to Consider before Beginning the Process | |
Beginning a search for any kind of software can be a daunting task. However, when looking for software to assist tribal governments, one has to be careful on how the task is approached because the initial way the search is approached can dictate the success of the whole process, including events as far out as implementation and use of the software. So before beginning a search, look through what I consider to be a set of key elements to keep in mind.
1. Understand that all Tribes do things in a very unique, specific way, and for very good reason. These processes work best for the tribe and are what all the employees are familiar with as well as most efficient at while working. The task of purchasing software and changing everyday business workflows can cripple your employees and bring your processes to a standstill. I have seen it happen.
Also follow @Software4Tribes on Twitter where Joe Nevshemal helps Tribes navigate the difficult waters of buying enterprise software.
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Custom Dashboards Developed for your Needs: Arkansas DYS Case Study
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Interested in developing custom dashboards for your RiteTrack project? Let us know! Call your Account Manager today and see how an Executive or Managerial Dashboard customized specifically for your organization can enhance your productivity today!
When we first started working with Arkansas Division of Youth Services in 2004 the primary goal was to replace an aging information system for managing their juvenile population. RiteTrack was chosen because of its flexible and easily modifiable platform and because of the Microsoft .NET-based architecture. DYS went live with RiteTrack in October 2004. Since then RiteTrack has evolved dramatically from its initial purpose. Today Arkansas DYS is near the completion of a major upgrade which involves a series of new solutions designed to serve additional needs as well as replacing a few other legacy applications. At the same time DYS will be upgraded to the latest version of the RiteTrack platform.  read more... |
Customer News!
| | Handel Welcomes the Ho-Chunk Nation Education Department
 Laramie, WY-July 12, 2010-Handel Information Technologies had the amazing opportunity to welcome another education department into the Handel family! Handel is pleased to welcome the Ho-Chuck Nation Education Department to our family of RiteTrack customers.
The Ho-Chuck Nation (HCN) has chosen to implement RiteTrack to manage their kindergarten through 12th grade education department. HCN chose RiteTrack because of its mix of out-of-the-box functionality combined with its customizable ability to accommodate their current processes instead of purchasing a system that would require them to learn new processes just to be able to use the software.
Ways to Work Wins 2010 TIGER Award
 Each year, Handel IT gives out the TIGER (Technology Innovator for Groundbreaking & Exceptional use of RiteTrack) Award to one of its customers. The purpose of this award is to highlight one customer's use of our flexible RiteTrack system which provides them with a huge benefit. This year, Ways to Work was presented with the Award at their 12th Annual Ways to Work Institute where our CEO and President, Even Brande, co-presented with Microsoft for the keynote.
Ways to Work won this award because of their unique and innovative use of our RiteTrack Information System for managing their complete loan process. Their RiteTrack solution allows thirty-five different locations to manage their loans through a secure interface, but also allows administrators of the program to report on all locations in real time.
We at Handel want to thank Ways to Work for being such an innovative and wonderful customer. The 2010 TIGER Award is well deserved. Congratulations! |
| Lets Get Technical: Handel IT's Developer Blogging! |
Our Development Team continues to make great improvements to both our software as well as the platform it is developed on. If you like technology and have a technical background, this is a great blog to follow as they talk about Silverlight, data frameworks, ReST, secret code-named projects, SQL, and much much more! Read the first installment here and get hooked into technology!
Bandicoot Caching / Syncing Engine
One of the premier features of RiteTrack 4.1 will be our new data framework called Bandicoot. Bandicoot is implemented with ReST and uses URI's to communicate from client->server. One premier feature is caching and our object merging system outlined below.
We have developed a system that runs either with LINQ or standard SQL where clauses. When using LINQ we can check our internal cache for the result first before making the request to the server. Once the request comes back, we check to see if our object has already been recovered.
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| New Employees at Handel Information Technologies, Inc. | |
Emil Backlund, Customer Support Specialist
 Emil was born and raised in Avesta, Sweden. In 2007 he went to Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg. In 2009 he joined a student internship program called CETAC, Chalmers Engineering Trainee Appointment Committee, which led to an internship at Handel. Before leaving Sweden to work for Handel, he completed his third and final year in the bachelor's program for software engineering. Emil wanted to join Handel to obtain practical experience by applying the knowledge he has obtained while earning his bachelor's degree.
After a year at Handel, Emil plans to return to Sweden to complete his education with a master's degree in software engineering and technology. In his spare time, Emil is one of the coordinators for a collaboration plug-in for Visual Studio which is an open source project hosted on codeplex.com. The plan is to make the plug-in fully functional for real-world projects. When Emil is out of the office and not contributing to some spare-time project, you will probably find him running or mountain biking.
Nate Wermers, Customer Support Specialist
 Nate was born and raised in Centennial, Colorado. He is attending the University of Wyoming and is working towards a bachelor's degree in Computer Science. He expects to graduate in 2012. He came to Handel to acquire real world experience in customer support and problemsolveing in a technical setting. In his free time he enjoys skiing, longboarding, and cooking. |
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We at Handel believe we can provide you with the best solution specifically for your organization. Call us today and we will provide you an hour long business analysis of our processes and show you how RiteTrack 4 Silverlight can work for you! Request a demonstration here or email us at info@handelit.com for more information.
Sincerely,
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Even Brande
President & CEO
Handel Information Technologies, Inc.
(307) 742-5555 ext. 101
even@handelit.com
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