Our VP of Partnerships Zak Pines recently interviewed Jared Milligan of Soliant Consulting as part of our ongoing Partner Interview Series. Zak and Jared had a conversation about Jared’s background in document management and a collaboration between Soliant Consulting and Formstack to digitize a referral and consent process in a HIPAA compliant manner. Here’s an abridged transcript of the chat.
Soliant Consulting Background
Zak: Can you start by telling us about Soliant Consulting?
Jared: Soliant is an almost 20-year-old consulting firm and has been in the Salesforce space for over 10 years now. We are about 70 people, half of which are Salesforce. Our Salesforce team includes myself in business development, business analysts, and solutions architects. We also have a team of custom developers who build applications from scratch with code.
Given our size, all customers are very meaningful to us. We work with companies ranging from small independent organizations, nonprofits, and Fortune 500 companies. We have the service of a boutique firm with the horsepower of a larger company. We’re actively working with our clients; 75% of our revenue comes from recurring clients and repeat business. And we’re steadily growing new business at a manageable pace of around 10% per year.
Zak: What types of companies do you typically work with?
Jared: Soliant has been a generalist for industry verticals. We have a strong footprint in financial services, and quite a few large projects in the lending industry. We also do a lot in the life sciences space, and with higher education, nonprofit technology, and software firms.
Zak: That maps incredibly well to some of Formstack’s top verticals—healthcare, financial services, technology. What makes a great Soliant customer?
Jared: We are a consultant, not just a developer. There’s a book, “The Trusted Advisor,” that Soliant lives by. Good customers for us are those who want to work with us on a strong planning and foundation phase.
We’ll look at the status quo—what systems are you integrated with? What functionality do you want to replicate and why? What do you want to modernize and why? We Look at a comprehensive plan and phased release approach based on time frame and budget.
We’ll perform a needs assessment and roadmapping phase, identify blind spots, and create a great plan.
Jared’s Background in Document Management
Zak: What is your history before Soliant?
Jared: I started a company in 2004 that did document management—primarily around document imaging. We scanned paper files and performed data extraction. We worked with law firms to start, and then expanded to financial services, insurance, and banking.
Later on—and you’ll like this—around 2010, I trademarked the phrase Powered by Paperless. I tried to package a subscription model of eForms, eSignature, and imaging—for something like a municipal government managing their application process. We were a little too early, but that background was one of the reasons I was so impressed with Formstack when I found out what you have been doing in bringing together digital forms, document automation, and digital signature.
Zak: Yes, that explains why things clicked so well when we met. You met Gabe on our team at Norcal Dreamin’ last year, and the relationship has evolved from there to multiple projects together.
Jared: That’s right. The document nerd in me had a dream come true with our joint project with our customer who provides mental health services to students. I did some initial business analysis for the project because it was such a familiar area to me. The only difference is now we can build it all on Salesforce so that it’s part of an integrated solution for our customer.
Integrated Process for Patient Referrals & Consent
Zak: Can you share the background on the project together?
Jared: Our customer provides academic and mental health services to students and their families, and they came to us to help them modernize their paper-based processes. Their referral process at that point involved referral forms getting scanned and then manually data entered into Salesforce and uploaded to various systems. The process was ripe for improvement.
They acquired a counseling service that was shifting to a telecounseling service, following treatment, during the pandemic. They needed to offer telecounseling through 80 different clinicians and move to a fully digital process, which needed to be HIPAA compliant. Referral forms, patient intake, consent forms, and billing—everything needed to be electronic. That’s where Formstack came in.
Zak: Did it start with your roadmapping process?
Jared: Yes, we spent 10–20 hours with the customer getting a great handle on the requirements so that we knew what we needed to build.
Zak: What does the solution look like?
Jared: Michelle Lavalette is our brilliant Solution Architect who built out the solution using Salesforce and Formstack. Michelle is quick to point out it’s a no-code solution—using Flows; Process Builder; and Formstack Forms, Documents, and Sign for Salesforce.
Zak: What does the new process look like?
Jared: It starts with a Formstack form. There are a number of rules because the flow will vary based on who is submitting the form. It may be a hospital or school staff member, it could be a parent, or it could be someone over 18—in which case, it’s handled differently.
If the form is submitted by a hospital or school staff member about a student, the form will then be sent as a pre-filled form to the parents. The parents can view the information, verify, and update.
Zak: That’s a great use case for using pre-filled forms. That way the parents are just reviewing the information with the ability to edit. That’s a far better experience for the parent and ideal in the COVID era.
Jared: Yes, that’s right. After the parent verifies the information, we use Formstack Documents to create a consent document, which is emailed to them. The parents will sign that document using Formstack Sign, and then the completed document with its stamp of certification will be uploaded back to Salesforce, and the record will be tagged to indicate that consent has been received and kick off the next process.
Zak: Very nice. So input from the parents turns into a document, and once that is digitally signed, it’s uploaded back to Salesforce.
Jared: Yes, and Michelle has the whole process run by Flows and Process Builder. There’s also another form later in the process—after the counseling session—whereby the counselor submits information back into the form, which kicks off a rules-based billing process.
Zak: Amazing. So from a business standpoint, they now have this new practice to provide ongoing counseling services to their patients. And they’ve been able to launch a fully digital process to manage referrals and consent—a far better experience for everyone involved than the previous paper-based processes.
Jared: Exactly. Education services and counseling services are now under one roof. And this is a benefit to the parents and families and patients themselves, as they have greater continuity around their care.
Zak: And this all happened really quickly—Michelle built this entire solution in a matter of weeks.
Jared: Yes, the deadlines were very tight, but the Soliant and Formstack teams worked incredibly well as partners. Everyone rose to the challenge, and Formstack proved to be a great partner. At that point we needed help, your team got us the resources we needed.
Zak: The bigger picture is there was a business imperative to get new processes launched quickly, and Soliant was able to build an incredible solution in a matter of weeks. Great team effort.
Jared: We’ll be continuing to extend this into other areas of their business. There are more processes that still need to be digitized. It will save them thousands of dollars with a quick ROI.
Lightning Round
Zak: What a story Jared. Let’s wind down here with the lightning round. What are some of your personal interests or hobbies?
Jared: For me, they change all the time. I’ve played guitar and drums for quite a while—alt rock bands. Lately, I’ve moved back to the mountains, so a lot of outdoor stuff. I grew up a lake rat with water skiing and wakeboarding.
Zak: Do you have a productivity tip you can share?
Jared: A colleague of mine, Aubrey, is a business analyst. She taught me Pomodoro time management—categorizing the day into fixed pockets of 25 minutes of time. I use that to schedule blocks of time for specific activities. I like to stay focused on specific activities for fixed amounts of time so as to not break up my concentration
Zak: Do you have a favorite TV show?
Jared: I’ve never been a big TV watcher, but recently I’ve re-watched “The Office” and have gotten a new appreciation for it. I also love “Peaky Blinders” on BBC.
Zak: What’s your go-to lunch during the workday?
Jared: A lot of rice and beans
Zak: And last question of every interview: Is a hot dog a sandwich?
Jared: No way. It’s in its own class of food. A good hot dog is in a league of its own.
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