Jim Thyer, Administrator/CFO
Legal Services of Southern Piedmont, Inc.
July 2007

We just completed a major upgrade of Kemp's Case Works, and all of our problems with the upgrade were small and quickly resolved. It was a pleasant surprise considering the number of things that changed. Certain members of our staff are exploring the new features and are pleased with how it helps their work. Also, when we advised John Kemp that the benefits information was inadequate for our need to report multiple benefits, he created a new input sheet that satisfies all of our needs. In summary, the upgrade has been a good experience.

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Dennis Holz, Managing Attorney
Legal Aid Society of San Diego, Inc.
June 2007

John's system cooked me breakfast last week. I was impressed. Actually: The Client's Case Management System allows non-technical staff to securely use advanced reporting and database management tools to extract specialized information and integrate all office functionality into one streamlined system. This maximizes efficiency, cost and programmatic reliability.

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James Spencer, Director of IT and Attorney at Law
Legal Services of Southern Missouri, Inc.
June 2006

Our program currently consists of seven offices across a very rural area of Southern Missouri. Travel time between our main office and the most distant, sub-office is about five hours one-way.

We currently use Kemp's PRIME Case Management System, and have been through two upgrades: from Kemp's 98 to Kemp's 2000, and ultimately to Kemp's PRIME. We selected this case management system for a number of reasons:

Scalability
Because of the size and geographical nature of our company, we needed a case management system that was going to be able to change and adapt to the continuing needs of our users. Kemp's can utilize the Microsoft SQL Server system to store data. The SQL Server can be set up in a number of ways, such that it can contain an unlimited amount of data, and provide that information to an unlimited number of people.

Flexibility
Kemp's uses standard programs and servers provided by Microsoft. Because the user interface utilizes Microsoft Access, anyone familiar with Access may change the operation of the program, including being able to customize it for just about any need. The program is not written like many case management systems, where if you need something new or different, or want to make the program operate differently, you must either contact the manufacturer to change it, or must live with the basic setup of the program.

Additionally, an organization using the SQL Server to store data can add fields, include additional routines desired, or perform a whole host of other procedures on the data and server.

Because this is a standard Microsoft product, just like Access, you are going to find wide support for it, and be able to locate people who are quite adept at being able to support it, modify it, etc.

You are limited, really, only by your imagination in what you want your system to do for you.

Dependability
Testing by other organizations prior to the final release of Kemp's helps alleviate problems in the case management system. As a result, what we have found is that you get a system that is robust and capable of dealing with most user errors, and that runs without much user intervention. Something that saves us time and money on a daily basis.

Support
Kemp's is backed by a great support team. Problems, when encountered, are usually dealt with in a very short period of time. Overall, we are quite happy that we chose Kemp's Case Works to provide our case management system. We have been pleased with its performance.

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Karen Marquez, Assistant to Executive Director (Technology)
New Mexico Legal Aid, Inc.
June 2006

New Mexico Legal Aid consists of 11 offices located throughout the State of New Mexico. The programs offices are all linked through T-1 or DSL lines using Citrix Servers.

The biggest challenge the program has faced is when 3 different programs were merged into one statewide program in 2003 with 3 different versions of Kemp's Case Management System running from Clients 3.2 to Clients 2000 to Clients 2000 SQL.

Kemp's Case Works has always provided us with the best of service so for this challenge, it was a no brainer. We called John Kemp and he converted all the data from the 3 programs and we were all on Clients 2000 SQL.

Later in the year, we were one of the first programs to convert to PRIME, which did not work for our purposes, but again John Kemp came through fixing the problems, and we have been on PRIME ever since. Every time someone mentions looking at other case management systems I cringe and quickly change the subject because I know and trust John Kemp to do what is right for our legal aid program.

New Mexico has been more than pleased with the case management system, training and all the help Kemp's Case Works has provided us.

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Chris Weygand, Database Coordinator
Prairie State Legal Services, Inc.
August 2005

I wanted to take a moment to say what a great job everyone at Venture & at Kemp’s Case Works has done in getting Prairie State set up on the ASP/Prime database. I recognize that it’s no small task in accommodating about 100 users, 30 or so printers and one huge file. It’s a great system, it’s working well and we’re getting more comfortable with it every day.

Thank you for your guidance and patience through this process. You’ve been quick to respond to our questions and to find solutions to our requests. It is a learning experience for us, and although I’m sure it has been frustrating for you at times, you’ve been courteous and helpful through it all. Thank you again for all you’ve done and continue to do.

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Jean Carter , Executive Director
Center for Arkansas Legal Services, Inc.
September 2005

Thank you for the information. With regard to Venture Tech and the ASP, amazingly there have been very little problems. Considering the power outages and damage in the Jackson, MS area, we saw very little disruption with the ASP. Over the last several days, we have gotten "kicked out" a few times, but were able to "log back in" within minutes. I would say Venture Tech's system is working very well. Both Lee Richardson and I would highly recommend the ASP. 

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Mary Parsons, Administrator
Southwest Virginia Legal Aid Society, Inc.
October 2004

My program has been using Clients 2000 since CY2001 and Clients 2000 on the ASP since early CY2002.  We extensively customized both our stand-alone Clients program and the ASP version. Our customizations include changes to the intake form, a highly customized intake sheet, new tables, and customized queries and reports.

We just upgraded to PRIME. My worries about how quickly and correctly my customizations would be done turned out to be groundless. I sent Mark Powell my list of customizations last Tuesday afternoon.  He had all the customizations done Thursday morning, converted our data that afternoon, and I was reviewing PRIME at mid-day on Friday. Our access to the database was down for slightly over one day.    Amazingly, once we started using PRIME, we discovered only a couple of minor problems - problems that Mark fixed as soon as we discovered them.

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Kelly Shuptrine, Deputy Director
Virginia Legal Aid Society, Inc.

In Virginia we have 4 LSC-funded programs who have moved to the ASP and 2 more moving in the next month. We started the move in December 2001. I believe overall we are all very pleased with it (although I encourage the other programs to write and give their own comments). Creating custom reports is the same as with the other programs as long as you have administrative rights (not runtime), which is a little more $ per month per user. It is stable although occasionally has been down for a little while. I'm not sure it's much worse than when we occasionally incurred problems in-house. I really don't see much difference between in-house versions and ASP for user friendliness - i.e. if you have Clients 2000, it's the same program and doesn't require new training.

My program (VLAS) had our data up on the ASP within a week of sending it to John, but we had not done many customizations to the program. If you have, it will take longer and you need to have them well documented. It also helps to make sure you have clean data.

Negatives?
* Right now we are all on Central time rather than EST. It's been this way since December although I've heard they expect to fix this problem now that Venture has become the new ASP. (This has been fixed)
* Also, I have heard that Arkansas uses the Intake module and it is too slow to use. You type much faster than it shows on the screen. I believe John Kemp is working with them to fix this issue. Many of us in VA are waiting for the fix before we start using it for this purpose. Typing of the case notes is also slow. (had to do with the ISP of the Arkansas program)
* Getting a good fast Internet connection has been an issue for some of our rural offices. One VLAS office is costing us $500/month for an ISDN line from Verizon (I kid you not - they are charging by the minute of use).
* Total reliance on the Internet - when they go down you are off so need a reliable connections and ISP - (should have backup routers, switches)

Positives?
* For those of us who didn't have a WAN before - we think we've died and gone to heaven! No more monthly or quarterly transfer headaches; no more lost data; real-time reports; better management review; cleaner data; when a new query is prepared it is available to everyone quickly (don't have to email something to the branch offices that needs imported into their workstations). I could go on and on. But I realize a lot of programs already
have a WAN so a few more...

* The LSC funded programs can email transfer referred case files from the ASP to the non-LSC funded programs in the state (John Kemp created something to do this). I believe it is only one way though (from ASP to non-ASP) although you would want to ask John Kemp about this. The receiving program can open it and it imports into the receiving programs Kemp program.
* When doing outreach the advocate can screen, conflict check and accept a client on the spot and print out an application for them to sign (requires laptop, phone line and printer)
* When traveling or at home, administrators can access the database and write queries, produce report - well anything they can do at the office. This has really benefited me as I like to write queries and reports at home where it is quiet and I can concentrate. This would be beneficial for those programs who want to let admin staff work at home part time. Also if manning
a hotline, an advocate could possibly do it from home.
* Less computer hardware problems - less stress on our workstations
* Less travel due to above (we're a rural program with offices up to 3.5 hours away); most issues with the program can now be handled from the central office
* Expertise available from Venture 24/7 to help troubleshoot

I'm sure I'm leaving some issues off so I invite others from my state to join in. For the record we have 5 other non-LSC funded programs in the state considering the ASP also.

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