Case Studies

Ms. Dickson: We’re still new to EnABLE but we’re already using it to process disbursements. We used to get them on paper, email, fax, or a combination. Sometimes they were sent directly to the staff engineer, or to a staff administrator—it was all over the place. EnABLE streamlines that process and keeps it consistent. It answers questions like, “How much money do I have left?” Recipients can see it as they're doing their disbursements and see where the funding is. That's changing our section and how we work smarter.

We are also working with our accounting staff to stop sending multiple documents to process. Now we can send a spreadsheet or a list from EnABLE. Those two things combined have completely changed the way we do things.

Ms. Dickson: Yes, it has. Our recipient’s staff includes an accounts payable clerk, a nonprofit organizer, and a community college program manager. Those are the three people that are doing data entry to request a disbursement out of the system. They’ve got it down. They don't even call us for help anymore. They just put their entry in, and they're done.

They get an email when it's approved, and they know the money will show up in three to five business days, which is exactly the way we wanted it.

Ms. Dickson: Number one, it puts the responsibility back on the recipient and their consulting engineer to enter the data and make sure it's correct. They're not dependent on us for everything. EnABLE gives them a single point of entry. They can check on it and see what's going on with it. If there's a problem, we actually send it back to them instead of us holding it and them calling and saying, “Hey, I have a problem. You need to fix that.” EnABLE solves all of that. EnABLE gives the process much more transparency, and it’s more streamlined all the way around.

Ms. Dickson: One of the things that I think is the most impressive is the reporting and the multitudes of different reports and report options. There's a search option in the SSRS reports and we can search for keywords in the report name, and that helps us find things. So that's the first one.

Another one is how we can run the disbursement report. When all the disbursements entered in the system, everybody's approved, and everything's ready to go, we do the post financials—the final step—and EnABLE generates a spreadsheet that we send to accounting. We’re done. We used to have to send a signed form, an email, all the backup documentation, a copy of the request with all the signatures—all of that used to have to get bundled up, scanned, and sent to fiscal. So, I love that feature!

The feature that I'm looking forward to fully utilizing—especially for the state revolving funds—is the project management. With the budgets and the contract management, we have a bit of a disconnect between our two sections. We have the engineering technical section and the project administrator section, which is primarily legal documents and budgets. They have to work hand in hand.

The engineer will get a request for a change order, but he doesn't know how much money is in the budget for that line item, or if they have additional money left in the contingencies for construction, or if they have extra money left over for engineering. They have to go talk to the project administrator to see if there is money available. EnABLE fixes that.

So having it all in one place, where everybody can see everything, is great. And if there is a change order, everybody sees it. Everybody knows if it affected the budget. EnABLE puts that at our fingertips. It's already there. It's kept updated because the system keeps our budget updated. You know what's available, if you can use it, and you're done. I'm excited about that.

Ms. Dickson: Having the ability to customize EnABLE to make it fit within our requirements is amazing. And TechPG’s support is the fastest, quickest, most accurate I've ever come across. You say, “Hey, could you do this?”, and before you blink, it's done. They always come through for us and figure out the easiest, simplest, best way to do something. They are always willing to help us figure out how to get something done that is the best and easiest way for us.

And their technology and data guys are extremely knowledgeable, but they have immense patience for the rest of us in the world that don't understand their language.