OpCon Reviews

We are using it to schedule work across different platforms, including Windows, Linux, and z/OS.

OpCon certainly costs us less than the product we were using before. So in practical, financial terms, it improved things. It has also improved the productivity of the administrators because it's much easier to use than a text-based product.

And when it comes to streamlining operations, with the flowcharting we can now visually see the flow of jobs going through our system and that has exposed some complexity that was unneeded. For example, we discovered processes that have been around for years and people realized that we didn't need to run those anymore. It helped us to improve our throughput by exposing inefficiencies.

It has also saved time for our IT team, particularly for our programmers who use the interface to monitor their systems and their jobs. They have found it easier and more reliable than what they were used to in the past. It has probably saved our developers 20 hours a month. And in our organization, overall, we have realized a 10 to 15 percent increase in productivity, thanks to OpCon.

We particularly like the fact that it's graphical because it is Windows-based. Before, we were text-based on the mainframe. You can also produce flow charts. Because it's point-and-click, its ease of use is very nice.

The learning curve was not very steep. When we converted to it, SMA held some classes, and they even held classes that were specific to our environment and where we were coming from. People were functional in it within a week.

The one area it needs some help in is the mainframe area because that is not its strength. They support the mainframe but it's not something that they are good at.

I have been using OpCon for about two years.

We haven't had any issues with its stability or performance. It has been perfectly stable so far.

It is easy to scale in that we can add agents very easily to it. When we get a new machine and we go into what's called Enterprise Manager, which is where we manage the system, we add the machine and off we go. We are not a huge shop, but we've been able to add systems to it very easily and have not felt any bad effects from that.

I'm very pleased and impressed with SMA's technical support for OpCon. They're responsive and they've done a very good job in fixing problems that we've reported.

Positive

We were using ASG-Zeke, which is now Rocket Software. We got away from them because we did not care for their support and they were, frankly, expensive.

The initial deployment was complex because we were migrating from our previous product and that's always going to be complex. But they did it almost seamlessly, in about six months, which was really impressive to us. We shut down the old system and turned on OpCon in one day and we were off.

The solution is used almost exclusively by the IS department to schedule our work and it's in one physical location.

The install/deploy time of our old solution and this one was pretty much the same. The process to install the software isn't much different from one product to another, generally.

As for maintenance, it is typical with any product to perform upgrades. In my role, I handle the mainframe piece, and that's pretty straightforward. We contracted with SMA to help us with maintaining the pieces that run on the other platforms, and it's all pretty straightforward and easy to do.

SMA worked with us directly. They came out to our site on cut-over week. Most of the deployment was done in the midst of COVID, so everything was remote. But they came out for the planned cut-over and were with us for the whole thing.

On our side, four employees were involved in the deployment, along with the two OpCon people.

ROI is hard to quantify, but we have increased our productivity by about 15 to 20 percent, as an estimate.

A primary factor for us was cost. Given what it's doing for us, versus the price that we're paying for OpCon, we feel that it's extremely beneficial to us in terms of the total cost of ownership. But quantifying that is somewhat difficult.

Within two months we were realizing the advantages that we had, with OpCon, over our old product. 

It was substantially less expensive than ASG-Zeke. We bought a five-year contract after the initial license fee, and then it's maintenance for five years.

I would suggest that someone who is only looking at price when evaluating workload automation tools take a very hard look at OpCon because it is well-priced. OpCon is in a market where there's a lot of competition and they're trying to really get a foothold in it. If price is one of your primary concerns, consider OpCon.

There were a number of vendors that we looked at but OpCon was the best fit for us.

I was that person who was researching workload automation tools but who had never heard of OpCon. I came across it somewhere on the web. I would recommend that someone like that reach out to SMA and ask for a demo. That's what we did. They even used a sample of our own data to show how they could convert it and what it would look like in their system.

We automate everything we can with our core banking software, including daily and nightly processing and any other recurring IT jobs that can be automated. A lot of our employees access OpCon via its self-service feature. We're a financial institution, so various business units use it, including some people in our mortgage or insurance department. It's mostly used to start processes or run reports on demand and that sort of thing. It's a set-it-and-forget-it solution. 

The most significant benefit is time savings, which translates into money savings. It's hard to quantify how much time we've saved. When we first installed it, we could maybe calculate that, but at this point, we rely on it so much that I have no idea how many person-hours it would take somebody to do these tasks anymore. 

With the processing time freed up, we could focus more on the other business units to implement what they need and work on other special projects. In general, it made us more productive while reducing calls to our IT help desk. The users can do what they need to do without opening a ticket with our IT department or waiting on IT resources to be available. They know they will use the same criteria, so there will be consistency in what they do.

The most valuable feature is the automation in general. We don't have to rely on somebody to manually do the same process over and over again, risking human error. We like the consistency. It's the same way every time. Moreover, it integrates well with our core software.

I'm sure there's plenty that could be improved, but some of the biggest pain points aren't necessarily a fault of OpCon itself. For example, the FICS integration is a little bit clunky. We've had some tickets with their support team, and sometimes they couldn't figure it out, but that probably has more to do with FICS than with OpCon. If there were room for improvement on the SMA side, it would probably be cross-training. They have a person, maybe two, who deals with FICS. Nobody else knows it.

I've been using OpCon for probably four or five years.

OpCon is stable. We've only had issues with problems we probably should've known how to prevent, so the solution itself is stable.

OpCon is highly scalable. We don't necessarily have a need to scale it beyond what we have now, but it's easy to see it scaling up. However, we don't have any plans to scale up significantly. We'll scale but not a massive amount.

I'd rate SMA support an eight out of 10. We haven't had to contact them much aside from FICS integration and support. If it's a simple issue, they can knock it out without any problem. However, when we've called with more complex problems, we haven't gotten those fully resolved. 

Positive

I think our previous solution was called AutoMate. It wasn't nearly as robust as this, and it relied on on-screen scrapes, etc. It was pretty dissimilar to this, and we retired it as soon as we had this in place. 

The setup was relatively straightforward, but we had someone from SMA on-site, so they walked us through it and showed us how to automate some of our more complex processes. I think the whole setup took two weeks. 

For maintenance, it only takes two or three people in IT. Everybody else has access to it, but we have a core group that maintains it, and then there are around half a dozen to a dozen self-service business users. But from a day-to-day perspective, it's low maintenance. If you're not changing anything, you don't have to do anything. If you're setting up new processes, that takes a little work, but you don't have to babysit the solution.

I'm certain we've seen an ROI. I haven't run the numbers myself, but I'm sure it's probably reduced the number of full-time employees we need by at least one person.

The licensing and pricing model changed this last year, so we're getting used to that. I think it's ultimately going to end up being more expensive. It depends on the scale of the business. It used to be per machine, so we had X number of devices licensed. Now it's not. If we had a lot of machines, the new license might have decreased the cost. Unfortunately, we didn't see the same gains. There wasn't any consolidation of licensing with the shift.

I rate OpCon eight out 10. If you're considering it, I don't think you'll regret it.

We have OpCon in our test environment, we're testing that right now and putting it into production next month.

Our primary use cases are for our core system that does batch processing for our core system, which is Symitar. We have automated about 90% of our daily processing. And we have started to branch out to utilize it more for Self Service where our other business units can automate some of their processing as well.

The fact that if you automate your core processing, in our case, alleviates the need to make sure that if somebody is running late or somebody calls in sick, your jobs are still going to run, they're still going to be on time. It has notifications built-in to let you know if something has failed or has missed the start time. It really keeps your business flowing and with proactivity. That's been the biggest example for my institution. It's the fact that we're a 24-hour shop. There's no downtime. It keeps us running and moving. We're about 90% automated if we look at our core processing. 

The automation of manual tasks has reduced human error by at least 40 hours a week. It's essentially saving another person. 

It has saved our IT team time by automating things a lot less wait time for people waiting for my team to actually run processes or transfer things. There's no delay in between the time when something is supposed to happen and when it happens.

We are able to move forward with business needs. My team is now able to learn, do additional training and other facets of IT. Rather than spending the time blending jobs, transferring, and doing things manually, they're now able to work on other projects within the organization. They're learning more about different areas of how other things function within IT. We become more project-oriented than process-oriented. We're able to identify things within the business that we can automate or that could be changed. We've gone from reactive to proactive

We are at least 80% more productive. 

There are a lot of valuable features. The version that we're currently casting, Self Service, is going to be the most valuable to us. It is going to allow us to open up the doors, broaden our automation capability and help other business units to be able to automate a lot of the little things that they do from day to day. I'm really looking forward to being able to help other areas with their automation needs. Self Service is really key.

OpCon is pretty easy to use. I'm not a programmer, I had no formal training. They offer some basic training courses. They also have a lot of documentation online and their support staff is super helpful. So it's pretty easy as long as you can take the time to familiarize yourself. It's a pretty easy application.

For the Enterprise Manager, the UI is okay. It puts your processing in alphabetical order instead of the actual processing order, but they are building a new UI. They really are on track to make it even more user-friendly. It's like they're listening to some of the common complaints from their customers, or they started to build out what we need or what we are looking for.

We are setting up the Self Service feature right now. That's going to be our biggest list in our organization. We just installed it and went through our training a few weeks ago. My team is building Self Service buttons in our testing environment right now.

Enterprise Manager is a little clunky which I know they're addressing in the solution's manager. 

It's annoying that our processes are listed alphabetically. It should be listed in dependency order or order of processing. That's one thing that drives me crazy. That's my biggest issue.

I have been using OpCon since October of 2010.

They've gone through some changes recently with the owner, but I know that they're on the right track. I feel that they're very stable.

They see that there are other competitors out in the market that do what they do. So they want to make sure that they stay relevant and are able to keep up with changing technology. They put a lot of stuff in the new release from 19 to 20. The team has been working really hard to take that stuff into account, like how to future-proof and make this more flexible. I think it's very scalable.

Currently, six of the admin users are me and my team. And we are primary users of OpCon, which means that we are monitoring and setting up. And then we have our Symitar administrative, our core host system administrative who's also involved. We also have our payments team who used to do ACH and draft returns. They are primary users as well.

For deployment, you really only need a couple of people, but I'd like to ensure that my entire team is well trained. You don't necessarily need seven people, if one or two people have a backup is plenty. My team's official title is Computer Operators. They're basically responsible for batch processing and file transfers within the credit union.

Right now 90% of the usage is my team with a small bit with our payments team. So one thing we've been able to do is learn more about the product, go out to our business and see what their needs are. With the new version and the Self Service features, we plan on branching out because Self Service allows business partners not to have to log in to either our core system or the OpCon system, it's through a UI or URL. And so the thought there is that we will be able to branch this out to accounting collections. The payments team has the other items and the card services team as well. There are certain processes in the run in our core and we would like to automate those so that they can just either run automatically or they control when they run them through.

We will start with Symitar and sometimes Symitar will refer us back to SMA. They work really well together and we're able to come to a resolution, but sometimes it's both systems in OpCon and Symitar that have an issue.

SMA support is super helpful. They're a great team.

We also looked at DMC. OpCon has a relationship with Symitar. That was a selling point for us because they have a close relationship and they already have several Symitar clients using OpCon and they came with great reviews. DMC had several other core systems that they were automating but Symitar wasn't the main system. So we just felt more comfortable going with SMA.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. We had a great team. We had both SMA and Jack Henry, which is our core vendor. They were both on-site. They worked really well together. They were very hands-on in training and had me and my team involved in the whole process.

The deployment took us two weeks. We wanted to implement it in the test first so that we could see how it interacted with our core and our other systems within our network. So that's where we first installed it so that we could do our basic setup and testing. And then once those testing passed, then we set aside some time to set it up in a production environment. Because we obviously didn't just didn't want to gung ho and go back into production.

We use Jack Henry. They are our Symitar, which is our core processor, our integrator.

They told us about SMA because SMA has a relationship with Jack Henry as a core processor. They did a lot of their automation. Jack Henry told us about SMA, which is how I came to bring them on board. Because they had already built a lot of automation for our core processing. They already had a business relationship. 

We currently renewed with one of their new technology bundles. It's around $36,000 annually. We run a query of our SQL in our SQL database to see how many jobs we run. They're charging us per usage and whatever add-ons you want to use with OpCon.

My advice would be to ask a lot of questions. Make sure that you involve your entire staff from beginning to end. OpCon was a really easy experience. Having them on-site, sitting next to you with hands-on experience, you can't beat it. They're not hiding anything. I really appreciated the amount of effort that they put into showing up, training, and following through as well. Whenever something did go wrong, they're always there to support you.

We consider OpCon to be one of our tier-one applications, meaning it's almost as critical and important as our core host system. We haven't done any vendor comparisons in ten years because we're very happy with them. 

Typing matters. A lot of what you enter is manually typed. So watch your spacing, watch your fat fingers and copy and paste or copy schedules wherever possible. And then the other trick is eventually you always have a frequency. Those are the few things that I mess up on that really make my whole deployment delayed because I can't find why it's not working and it's always usually because I have an extra space somewhere or character I didn't need. Watch your typing and have a second set of eyes.

I would rate OpCon a ten out of ten. 

We have a very small IT shop. I have two helpdesk people, and four functional analysts. We were running all of our jobs manually. I had a nighttime operator and a daytime person in the operations area, and we started getting into more integrations and it was taking a lot of time away from staff to upload data to other vendors.

We also use it for resource monitoring when we are waiting for files to come in from other departments. As soon as they come in, we pick them up and process them and that's been a lifesaver, as well, for both the user department and for our department. 

We also use it to monitor emails.

We have the dependency with the Unisys MCP product and two Windows boxes that we have the agent on. So it's for multi-platform dependencies. We're trying to use it to the hilt and get as much bang for the buck from it as we can.

We now run a dark data center. All of our processing is done at night without anybody there. The majority of our jobs are automated. We couldn't do without it.

We had a sister institution that is on the same platform, the Unisys platform for MCP. I tried to get them to understand the benefits of it because it was just so hard not to have it. If we were to do away with it, it would be crippling.

It has enabled us to do other things. By not having to run jobs and submit data to other vendors, it leaves us with all of that free time so we can work on other projects. For instance, a person who was an operator can now start helping us with developing forms online, with workflows, or with some other integrations. It has changed the nuances of people's jobs. And it really has benefited the college because we don't have to have a nighttime person. We can reallocate those resources in another area.

It has saved IT staff time. It's also monitoring if a job fails and we get notifications immediately so that we can react, rather than having somebody sitting here watching the machine run and worry, "Did I miss something? Did that job fail?" It's actually monitoring all of those jobs, and letting us know if they succeeded or failed. And if you think about the nighttime staff that we don't have anymore, and the other monitoring that we would be doing during the day, it's probably saving us a good eight hours a day.

The automation of manual tasks using the solution reduces human error. Nobody has to think about, "Oh, did I do this check?" It's all within the workflows that we created. If there's an error, it could cost two hours of time in the morning to research and correct the problem. There still are errors, but they're more along the lines of, "I forgot to put it in the correct date," or something like that in the parameters. In making sure that everything runs step by step by step, it probably saves a good two hours, as far as error checking goes.

The Self Service feature is used by the payroll department. When they're ready for a payroll, they have a product called SMA Selector, a little dashboard we created to run payroll proof, and run the final. They can run it themselves when they're ready. That has helped a lot because they don't have to call us up and say, "Okay, we're ready for payroll." 

We also have a document management system and the reports go right into it through OpCon, after they finish, because of the automation of moving files back and forth. It's really saved on the payroll process as well. In terms of the Self Service feature reducing the complexity of the technical aspects of the workload automation, we still had to set it up, although that was very simple. And it has eliminated that hand-holding with the payroll department. They have everything at their fingertips. They can create the payroll and then they can run the payroll. Having everything there, they're in total control. They're self-sufficient.

OpCon has increased my department's overall productivity because of all of the things that we're doing through automation, and with all of the integrations with our LMS, our learning management system. We would not have been able to do what we are doing today if it wasn't for OpCon because things were so manual. Users outside my department don't know that prior to having OpCon, back in 2002, I had to have an operator run a job and then submit a file or files to a company every two hours. And each time it would take 15 minutes of their time. The users just knew that we had a schedule of things we we're doing. Now, since 2004 or 2005 with OpCon, that schedule has been automated and they don't know the efficiencies that we had in the IT department. The productivity increase was a good 50 percent.

The whole product is valuable to us because of the integrations that it has with the MCP and the Windows environments. You have to have the agent on each one of them that you want to monitor. The integrations that we have created are along the lines of extracting files and sending them through SFTP to another vendor. Those are the things that were taking a lot of time away from my staff.

Also, being able to push files through in different ways to different vendors, including FTP, is helpful.

One of the other features that we have is a smart starter so that users can start their own jobs from a little GUI pad that we developed for them.

But really, the whole product is valuable. If it lost any of the functionality we're using it for, it would be sad. Everything is beneficial to us. Everything that we need is here. There's already functionality for the things that we've wanted to do.

All the features that we need are a part of the Opconxps solution.

We have been using OpCon since about 2004. We're a long-time customer.

Stability is an area for improvement. We just went to the new release. You have an agent that runs on the MCP, and you have an agent that runs on each Windows environment. You have SAM which is the manager of all of them, and it has to communicate with all of them.

There are FTP agents that run on the MCP and they are there so that we can transfer a file from the MCP to the Windows environment or vice versa. Sometimes, and nobody has been able to figure out why, it just goes down, and all of my jobs that need it are hanging or failing. It happens about once a week. They have not been able to resolve whatever the problem is. If we see that the job failed, we have to restart it. If it happens in the middle of the night, we're not going to know about it until the next morning. It would be very helpful if they could figure out what in the world is happening with that FTP client that's on the MCP.

Also, every now and again, the schedule builder, which builds out your schedule for the next day or however many days you're building it out for, fails. It has something to do with our virus protection. Because their customer service is so good, we're working with them and trying to figure out what the actual problem is, to get a resolution to that. They know about it and have been trying to figure it out, but it's been years and it's just one of those difficult things to troubleshoot.

We have not scaled it. We haven't needed to add anything to the system. But you can add multiple agents. You have one main server that's monitoring all these other servers. The scalability is there but, of course, it's going to cost you to get additional licenses and to have other servers being monitored.

Their customer service is really good. If we have any issues we can email them or we can call for support and they're there. They're our partner. They want us to be successful. Their turnaround time and knowledge are very good.

Positive

I was at a Unite Conference and SMA was there. I went over to their booth and started talking to them and learned that it was cross-platform, which I really liked. We gave it a trial for free for three months. They came out, they installed it, and they trained us. And we found that, wow, this is really great.

I report to the VP of finance. I don't even remember what the cost was back then, but I had to sell him on it. I was going to have to sell him on anything that was going to cost over $10,000. I told him about it and I told him what we were going to be doing with it and he said, "Yeah, let's do it. Let's see what it's like." After the initial three months I said to him, "We have to have this product because of all of the benefits that it has." I shared all of the benefits with him and that's when we purchased it. We were then able to move forward with automating all of our jobs on a daily and monthly schedule, or whatever schedule was needed.

The initial setup was a learning curve. We had that three month trial and SMA sent somebody for three days to come out and train us and to do our initial setup. We told him this is what we want to do and these are the jobs that we want to automate. He sat with us and mapped out a solution. We worked with him and got hands-on knowledge of it.

It was pretty straightforward after we got through the learning curve. I'm a mainframe person and I come from a world where there is a terminal emulator and you're setting up workflows that are writing code, and that's how you would set up your job. When you go to something where you can just point, click, point, click, and add a few lines, that's totally different. So we had to be retrained and retooled when we first went to this product.

They have extensive documentation and training materials, right down to error codes and troubleshooting.

Our initial deployment was a matter of a week and we were running automations. As we moved forward, after we purchased the product, we expanded it and put more automation into the tool.

Our implementation strategy was based on the use cases that we wanted to solve. I saw how bogged down the operations staff were. When we were looking at the strategy of what we were going to put in the automation for the trial period, we focused on our biggest jobs and the ones that were most time-consuming.

SMA provided a free evaluation period where the software was installed by SMA and we were trained by an SMA expert.  We saw, through the evaluation period, how the software would benefit us.  

We have definitely seen ROI. Being a dark data center, we don't have to have nighttime staff and we can reallocate our resources. That's significant, especially when you're talking about a small organization. Our organization has 500 permanent employees and we span five campuses spread out within a 30-mile radius. Running a multi-campus facility is very expensive. Over the past 25 years I have added two employees to the MIS staff. That's it. Having SMA, which costs me $10,000 a year, means I can shut down my nighttime staff and run that dark data center. Then, the people that were doing that night work can move to day and be more productive for me and do other things and improve their skill sets as well. The return on investment is definitely there.

And I had to prove it to my finance officers, too, before we purchased it.

In my last contract with Unisys, they tried to put SMA underneath my contract with them and I told them I do not want that. I want to deal with SMA by myself. I feel that I can negotiate better with them.

The price is the price. They offer architects and other people to come and install upgrades and such for you. What that has done for us is that it has helped us maintain a good relationship with them and also to get at their technical expertise and ask a lot of questions and such while they're on campus doing the installation and training.

The only cost beyond the standard licensing fees is when we need them to come out and do an install. We have to pay travel costs and for their technical expertise. But I do want that because we get their expertise.

Their pricing structure has changed since we became a customer.  It isn't a price per agent any longer.  It is a pricing based upon the companies workload/job scheduled.

I did evaluate another option. It was not at the scale of SMA because it was more of an automation tool for just the MCP environment. It didn't take into consideration cross-platform dependencies. OpCon was unique in that it not only worked on the MCP environment, but also on the Windows environments, which made it a much richer solution for us.

We haven't evaluated solutions since then. In Florida, you can stay with the same vendor. You don't have to go outside and look for other vendors. Just because the contract may end, say, every two years, you don't have to go out and search for another product. And there has been no reason for me to switch. I'm not unhappy.

Make sure that you know what you want and that you understand what the product does so that you don't purchase more agents than you need or, on the other hand, that you don't purchase fewer agents than you need. Understand what you're trying to solve before you purchase the solution. That way, you know what you want to do. And if they still offer the trial periods or the pilots, take them up on that offer.

The biggest take away from using the solution is, "Why didn't I do it sooner?" when I think about all the time that was wasted. If I had known about it sooner, I would have purchased it sooner and saved even more.

As for integrations with our own products, such as our ERP, those are with our ERP. They don't have to come out of SMA at all. One of the things that we're currently doing is extracting the enrollment information for our LMS and that's through flat CSV files. We create user files, enrollment files, and course files and send them up through SFTP or cURL. Now that we're moving to a new ERP, that integration is going to be more real-time, so we're not going to necessarily need those within the SMA product anymore. It's going to be real-time to the LMS. I'm not saying that OpCon is going away, because it's not. We're still going to need other things that it provides, that our new ERP is not going to provide for us.

What we're going to be using OpCon for will be a little bit different than what we're using it for now. Payroll won't be using the Self Service anymore, once we go live with the new HR payroll system. It's going to be totally different. What we're going to be using OpCon for is more the integrations with other vendors that are not going to be out-of-the-box with the ERP. We're going to be creating command jobs to extract data using their APIs to create CSV files to then send to the vendor through SFTP. It's not going to be as significant on the running of jobs. It's going to be more of an assistance with the integrations that we're going to be running through the new ERP.

Overall, I can't say enough about the company and the product. It's amazing.

We primarily use OpCon to manage daily activities, generate reports, and handle FTP jobs for our full-service credit union.

OpCon improves our daily operations by automating many manual functions. OpCon's ability to run jobs in our host system allows us to create simple, effective automation that requires minimal employee interaction - thus helping improve our efficiency and reducing errors. We also use it for many other systems and also to trigger various scripts such as PowerShell and Python.

The automation of manual tasks using OpCon has reduced human error. In any place that we implement OpCon Automation, it removes the ability for inputting something incorrectly, and/or it will throw out an error. If we are asking for input, if they put it in incorrectly, it doesn't then attempt to run the process. It stops and says, "You did this wrong." We have that ability to kind of put those parameters in there as opposed to entering something incorrectly and then not finding out about it until the next day like, "Oh shoot, we updated a parameter and we missed a zero." OpCon definitely gives us a better feel for that. We have on my self-service alone probably 40 jobs in here. Then in our daily list running, we have over a hundred schedules running different things on a day-to-day basis. So I don't know how I can quantify how much it's reduced but it's over 50%.

OpCon has saved time for our IT team overall. In just over the years that we've done it, we keep adding new things to it. As an example, we're getting better at writing scripts that we can then execute with OpCon to alert us to various things that might be happening either in a host system or something like that. Thereby that then reduces research time to try to figure out when something went wrong. You can get a little bit deeper into it if you start using the advanced failure criteria where you can then have it so that you can say, "Hey, if you see this exit code, do this." Doing a little job output parsing, finding some different ways to push out notifications that let us know that something's gone wrong well in advance of a department coming back to us and saying, "Hey, this report didn't print the way we wanted." Or, "This process seems to be off." It definitely reduces the time that we spend looking into these projects or into these problems.

With IT time freed up, our organization has been able to move forward with other business needs. The company is learning that the ability to automate some of these things is freeing up time. Even if we're doing short-term stuff, for example with the PPP loans, the loans that financial institutions were giving out to businesses during the pandemic to help out. There's a ton of work and paperwork that goes along with that. I've been working with them to help them build some automation so that to flag loans on particular loans for particular reasons, or to pull data to send to our main house, to send out letters. That's a small example of what we're working on there.

OpCon increased our organization's overall productivity. It's hard to quantify it from my position in a company of 758 people. I don't have the statistics for all the other departments.

Last year, we added a second environment and the OpCon Deploy product. This has allowed us to build a testing environment. This has been a great addition for us as we can work through our workflows without disrupting our production environment. 

Our users use the self-service features. We have a number of them set up and their self-services are actually called Solution Manager. My accounting group uses it and my payments group probably uses it the heaviest. A lot of times we use it for daily postings, either GL postings or we have various different payroll postings that the payments group has to process based on some accounting groups that we work with and things like that, that have to be done a little bit separately than the regular payroll postings that we do. That's just the tip of the iceberg, I do have it set up for a few other groups just to do things like upload or actually transfer files via FTP to other vendors. It's a one-step process where they've created a file and that file needs to be consumed in some way, either via our host system or sent out to a vendor.

The self-service feature reduces the complexity of the technical aspects of workload automation. We've been using OpCon since 2012. Being able to give somebody a self-service button that they can press to consume a file to run a process within our host system was a huge advantage. Before, somebody had to go into the host system, run a particular batch job, manually type some things in that could also then be typed in incorrectly and create problems. It's taken a lot of steps away from what used to be a very manual process. People in other departments are not always technically minded like we are in IT, it helps them to focus on what their job is as opposed to having to do their job and then understand how to run this whole major IT process.

The self-service feature definitely increased our user's productivity. I can remember when we had an eight-page checklist that we had to go down each item and run each of these, "Step one, do this. Step two, do that." And when we brought OpCon and that clearly reduced all of that daily having to go through a checklist. We actually had one person in IT, and their job for the day was to run the checklist. Once we went to OpCon automation, whether self-service or just fully automating some things, it reduced that checklist to basically nothing at this point.

Upgrading to newer versions remains complex. I am not sure if this can be streamlined however, as when the enterprise needs to be updated, typically, all associated agents throughout the environment also need to be updated. Also, all agents, connectors, etc. all need to be on the same version for compatibility. Good documentation of your environment as it grows is very important.

We've been using OpCon since 2012.

OpCon is a very stable enterprise. We have had very few downtime issues.

Due to the fact that OpCon works with Windows and UNIX commands, it can be expanded into many areas along with embedding PowerShell scripts, etc. We continue to find new ways to utilize OpCon.

I have worked closely with many technicians at SMA and all have been excellent and committed to finding solutions that work.

OpCon is an expensive and complex solution that will take time to learn. However, once it is in place, it removes many manual processes throughout the organization. It would be best to start small with the some of the main functions first and then build up from there.  

We do not currently use OpCon's Vision features. Mainly because I've been doing it for so long and I learned through the older enterprise manager, that's where I spend most of my time. I do know that SMA has made a point of really moving the operational side of OpCon to their URL and more into the Solution Manager, which would then force us to really start using the Vision more.

It's like any other enterprise system, as they grow and we move things more to a more visual GUI type interface, then you kind of have to just grow with however the vendor grows. I'm looking at Vision like, "Do I really look at this? No." I don't even know if this is connected. We're not really set up for Vision yet so it's probably a while. It's down the road before we start using this.

OpCon has primarily been used to automate our backend IBM and Windows processing. Largely, this involves file transfers, IBM i job submissions, Powershell scripts, and SQL queries. 

We use OpCon to build workflows of related processes to ensure that things are run in the correct sequence. Logic is in place to ensure errors are handled appropriately, and often automatically. OpCon's Solution Manager is also used to empower other users to initiate processes, where previously tech involvement was needed. 

OpCon is the glue that joins numerous processes and various systems into a single cohesive and centralized experience. 

In my department, OpCon has largely removed the human error from our nightly processing. Clicking or launching the wrong program is a thing of the past, now that OpCon has taken over the processing. When employee turnover occurs, items that have been handled by OpCon are no longer a concern, due to the fact that the process will continue to function as expected. 

Error handling and reporting have also been a great benefit. Often when things in our environment break, OpCon will generate a notification to us of the diagnosed problem. We also heavily use OpCon's IBM Message Management system to identify messages displayed on our i Series and respond appropriately. This ensures critical messages are seen as well as tracked when required. 

Self-service has also been a great benefit to us. We're able to build processes within OpCon and give the end-user the ability to initiate them with inputs. Where previously this couldn't be done due to the security concerns of giving the end user that capability, now we can grant a batch user used by OpCon those permissions. This enables us to keep tight control over permissions, but grant some extended functionality through Solution Manager. 

The self-service is great as it enables users to initiate processes within OpCon without giving them access to more functionality than required. It relieves stress off the technology department, as more users are able to facilitate their own processes without a call to tech.

IBM LSAM has a very robust set of tools to monitor and run the various processes on an IBM i mainframe. It has the functionality to mimic operator input and capture data off of the screen for evaluation. The two most heavily used features of the LSAM in our environment are the Message Management and Scan Spoolfile functions. These allow us to capture information from message logs as well as spool files and launch further processing through the LSAM or OpCon itself. 

The smart email allows us to retrieve emails from a specified account and triggers further processing. Again, it allows another avenue for external users to initiate processes without needing to contact us. 

The script repository enables us to hold "scripts" that can be run on various machines - Windows in our case. It supports versioning and documentation.

The end code response allows us to evaluate how a process finished, set the termination/end code appropriately, and then trigger further processing based on how it ended. 

It's a pricey product. The new license model gave us access to a lot of functionality that we're not likely to use any time soon. The cost of the product is now also determined by the number of jobs you run through the software. There are pros and cons to this method, but now I have to evaluate if a simple function is worth the cost to automate before doing so. 

More functionality within self-service would be greatly appreciated. We're needing to look at other solutions in conjunction with OpCon as the number of user inputs available within self-service doesn't always meet our needs. If self-service could be improved to pull information from OpCon to "pre-fill" inputs, that would also create a much more seamless and powerful experience. 

It would also be fantastic if we could create our own job subtypes. There are quite a few that come with the software, but being able to create your own would mean you could standardize how parameters are provided to executable programs/scripts. 

I've used the solution for more than 4 years.

Very rarely do we experience anything that would make me question OpCon's stability. 

It's very scalable, especially given the new license model which allows installation on "unlimited" Windows machines. However, detailed knowledge of the product may be required to make use of it properly. It takes time and experience to make great use of the software. 

Usually, this is a positive experience, however, occasionally I feel like we're getting the run-around or being offered solutions that don't appear to be applicable to the issue. Very rarely is an issue not resolved within a week. 

We did not look at anything else of this caliber. We made heavy use of Windows Task Scheduler and the IBM Job Scheduler. The process worked, but everything was scattered and we really needed a centralized point of contact for all our automation.

SMA was onsite to implement the software initially. Largely, this was straightforward and any bugs or issues that came up we were able to work through shortly after SMA left. 

We had an internal team that worked with our implementation team from SMA to set up the product. SMA was incredibly knowledgeable of the OpCon ins and outs. Particularly the IBM contact with SMA was extremely impressive in their ability to provide robust solutions and bug fixes to problems in a very quick manner (often within a few hours of reporting the issue). 

In our environment, OpCon is much more expensive than it used to be a year ago. Licensing changes no longer allow us to automate to our heart's content in our "small" environment. Now, the cost to automate needs to be evaluated as new items are put into the software because it's likely you will be charged for them. 

Getting a good handle as to what SMA charges can also be helpful so that new processes can be created in a way that incurs a smaller expense. As an example, using a single script to accomplish what multiple jobs could do otherwise. 

Yes. We looked at Help Systems Robot.

Overall, OpCon has been an amazing addition to our automation toolbelt. While current prices sting a little, given past pricing, it has been well worth the cost and peace of mind. 

Job automation is the primary use of this solution. Processing reports, running batch jobs, processing ACH, and all other daily operations are things we have automated using OpCon. 

Without this automation, I am not sure how possible it would be for the company to finish the nightly processing by doing it manually. Working 8 hours a day is not enough for us to complete our daily process. 

In addition, we are using OpCon for testing our Dev and QA environment.                                            

OpCon is automating everything for us. I cannot imagine working without OpCon to process our daily operations. 

With OpCon, we can still do other operational tasks, troubleshooting, projects, research, etc. Without OpCon, we will be up and working until the wee hours of the morning. We are only checking our OpCon if there is a failure. Without a failure notification, we are confident that OpCon is doing its job for the company in order to process our day-to-day operations.

Self-service is one of the features I like the most. The self-service feature allows us to give control to the users to execute the job we have set up for them. This eliminated the requests, either through a ticketing system or email, to run a specific schedule for the department. 

With a simple click of a button in self-service, the department or the user can complete his/her job. Users are loving this feature, too. They are liking the option that they have control over their process.        

I would like to see OpCon being accessible using a mobile app. This will increase the convenience for the administrator. Imagine it is a weekend and you are on call. A failure email was received. You will then need to grab your laptop, connect to VPN, and access the application to find out what is going on. If you are somewhere else, you will need to bring your laptop with you all the time. If the job can be fixed with few clicks, a mobile app will help the administrators to fix the job right away even if you do not have your laptop with you. 

I have been using OpCon Enterprise Manager since I joined the IT team last 2012. Even before I joined the team, the company was using OpCon Enterprise Manager.

If you set your schedule right, you do not have to think about it until a failure occurs. The stability is good. The failure occurs mostly because the file that is being expected is not yet ready from the Core side or from the vendor side. 

The stability of OpCon is 100% stable.

Any organization size can be managed by OpCon. Whether you have one product, one staging area, and one QA or multiple staging and multiple QAs, you can easily connect them and push anything into production with few simple clicks. 

I do not have anything negative to say about their customer service or technical support. So far, all of them are so helpful. They will even send a follow-up email before closing the ticket. 

This is my first job scheduler/job automation application.

When I started here, the OpCon was in production already. I am not sure about the complexity of the setup.

When I started here, the OpCon was in production already. I am not sure how the application got installed. 

I do not have the numbers, but definitely, our ROI for having OpCon is high. To give an example, we are only two personnel on a team. We can manage the daily operations, attend to any system issues, do projects, and manage the core system ourselves.

Their setup cost, pricing, and licensing are fair. SMA Technologies will not charge you too much. I have the experience that SMA tailored the licensing for us according to our average yearly usage. 

If you want to increase your daily efficiencies, consider OpCon. Give them a try and you will notice the difference from Day 1. Ther support is outstanding. You can call them 24/7/365. They value their SLAs. SMA staff are very friendly. 

The primary use case for us is automation. This platform has the ability to automate tasks between different operating systems (AIX, Linux, Windows, Apple). We use the products to automate tasks that interact with the Federal Reserve Bank, downloading files to be processed into our core banking solution, which is in an AIX-based environment. 

The system will also move human-readable report files to a Windows-based server, for reporting and historical-based purposes. The Self-Service Solution Manager allows users to initiate a task after other criteria are met even when that criteria cannot be determined by the automation system. 

Creating automation enables users to put their time and effort into areas more important than mundane tasks. In addition, automation reduces errors, by removing human mistakes. Automation tasks can be scheduled around the clock, so tasks can be set to run in the middle of the night (when system resources are more available or will less likely cause an impact to users). 

Errors can be reported in a variety of ways. We can set errors to be reported via text message (SMS) if the error is critically urgent or via email for errors less critical and time-sensitive. 

Self-Service Solution Manager enables automation to be triggered by a human, but still provides the benefits of reducing the workload of the user, and reducing the possibility of human error. 

Often times there are criteria that cannot be determined by the system, which allows a human to make the determination and use the Self-Service Solution Manager to trigger a job. 

This also helps restrict the permissions of the users that have Self-Service Solution Manager access to only areas or systems that they need. 

The products are extremely powerful and capable. Anytime you have such capability, the programming/configuration that goes into making it work can be complicated. 

Fortunately, the professionals at SMA Technologies are always willing to help. The technicians at SMA Technologies are available via telephone call or email for issues. Their response time is always in line with the critical nature of the issue. If I have a big project that needs dedicated support, I can request one of their consultants to provide assistance. 

I've been with my company since September 2015 and have been using the OpCon automation solution that whole time. 

We've never had an issue with the stability of the platform. For example the platform/server itself has never been the point of failure. The only issues we've experienced is when the in-house human created configurations were done with errors. Even when errors are identified, the system produces an error output that helps determine the point of failure, so it can be resolved. 

The server is based on a SQL database, so it has tremendous capabilities and the system can be scaled up by adding additional resources to the single server, or by setting up multiple servers to operate in unison. 

Technical support is the best! They always prioritize the urgency of our issue, with the impact it has to our production environment. Their top priority is not allow our production environment be be offline. 

When I came to the company, they were already using OpCon. I had used this solution in a previous job, so I was thrilled to see it being used. In my opinion, there's nothing better. 

The initial setup was complex, however, the SMA Technologies consultants are there the whole time, guiding the process, and making sure you'll have success. 

We worked directly with SMA Technologies. 

We've saved thousands of man-hours with automation and reduced errors significantly. It's been money well spent.

This tool, like any other quality product, fits the idea of "You get what you pay for." The SMA Technologies consultants will help you get your money's worth of the products. 

We did not evaluate other options.

SMA Technologies provides great products with extraordinarily great service.