Product News:
New eREET (Electronic Real Estate Excise Tax)
Product in Washington!
Manatron's eREET (Electronic Real Estate Excise Tax) product allows approved adopters to transmit Real Estate Excise Tax Affidavits (REETA) within an eRecording batch for subsequent processing, registration and payment collection through county agencies.
eREET is a web-based application that utilizes some features of the existing Anthem, Ascend and Ascend Web products for processing, fee calculation, receipting and records management. The application also provides functionality for upload of a portion of the Excise Tax data to the State of Washington Department of Revenue (WADOR) and is designed to be independent of existing Manatron products so it can be implemented for REETA processing in any county with only the need to build the appropriate integrations.
This product is in production in Snohomish County and in testing at Pierce and Yakima counties. Manatron is in the process of kicking off a project with Lewis County for implementation, and negotiations are underway with several additional counties
Redaction Software Released with GRM Recorder
Version 2.5
GRM Recorder (A2) now includes an integrated redaction product to assist you on redacting documents. For GRM Recorder customers, this functionality adds no additional Manatron software charge, only a nominal fee per redaction station for third party Lead Tools OCR plug in licenses. The GRM Recorder redaction functionality is a Manatron product , developed and configured in house- not outsourced to a third party vendor, which helps reduce cost passed on to customers.
We have already hosted online webinars to showcase this new feature, and it was also demonstrated at the User Group last year. Please contact your Account Manager or Sales Rep for more information on deploying this feature or scheduling another demonstration.
We have also completed webinars for our GRM Recorder customers so that they may review all of the new and improved functionality in 2.5.1. Webinars are a great way to learn more about what is in a release and provides you the opportunity to ask questions about specific changes noted in the release notes. Don't miss out!
Anthem 6.10 Release
Getting Ready for Deployment!
We are finalizing our plans for the release of Anthem version 6.10 in the upcoming month. The first round of webinar invitations will be sent to you shortly thereafter, and we encourage you to join in to learn more about what is in this release.
Some of you have already been contacted by your Account Manager to begin tentatively scheduling this release deployment, with more firm dates to be confirmed once it is certified by our internal testing teams. You will also be receiving release notes and notification of any issues specific to your site that were addressed in this release. This large release includes significant changes and improvements in eRecording and other areas, plus over one hundred support tickets addressed and 16 updated or new reports. While this is Anthem's last major functionality release, the product is still fully supported.
Manatron will continue to take calls and provide legislative changes and defect corrections as always.
Please contact your Account Manager if you have questions regarding this release.
For Our Customers:
Updated Customer Service Support tool -Microsoft CRM
We've heard your feedback regarding ConnectCare, and we've faced our own internal challenges with this tool as well. As a result, Manatron has approved a companywide implementation of Microsoft's CRM product for replacing ConnectCare/Connexion (Manatron's internal tracking tool and on-line support site respectively).
This will greatly enhance our abilities to submit, track, and update support and change request tickets in a more user friendly application. Our Records Management department is currently working with our internal project team and is the first Manatron division to make the move.
Look for more information on this in the upcoming months as we begin to convert, configure, test and install this exciting new tool!
Welcome New Customers to GRM Recorder:
Tarrant, Texas
Santa Cruz, California
Waukesha, Wisconsin
Leelanau, Michigan
Carteret, North Carolina
Beaufort, North Carolina
Doniphan, Kansas
Alachua, Florida
Logan, Ohio
Victoria, Texas
It has been a busy year as the momentum of moving from legacy products to GRM Recorder has hit full steam. Please join us as we welcome our newest customers to the Records Management family!
Tarrant County, Texas migrated from Anthem to GRM Recorder as our largest implementation in Texas to date.
Santa Cruz County, California is a new customer who went live on GRM Recorder in July 2009, and has really grasped the new system quite well within this first year.
We've also completed upgrade projects for Leelanau County, Michigan, Carteret County, North Carolina and Doniphan County, Kansas to migrate from the older Manatron MIRRS/DMS products to GRM Recorder. They are the first in those states to move from the legacy Manatron system to GRM Recorder. Beaufort, North Carolina also migrated to GRM Recorder from Anthem, as the third site in North Carolina now live on GRM Recorder.
Waukesha County, Wisconsin is a new customer and also went live on GRM Recorder several months back as our first install in that state. We are also underway with upgrading Alachua County, Florida from Anthem to GRM Recorder as well as migrating Logan County, Ohio from MIRRS to GRM Recorder. Each will be going live in August and September, respectively. Victoria County, Texas is also in line for an upgrade from the older Anthem product version to GRM Recorder later this year as well.
Records Management Office News:
Movin' and Shakin'
Larry Mitchell, who served as our Michigan based Account Manager for the past several years, has recently been promoted to our Backfile Services & Support Manager position. That's right, he has just moved the family to Austin! Larry is now managing the Backfile Services team responsible for all of the indexing and redaction services projects and continues his role as the Customer Support Center manager. Congratulations to Larry on this promotion, as it is well deserved!
Eric Northrop has taken Larry's place as the Michigan based Account Manager,supporting our customers in that region. Eric has an extensive governmental background,including working most recently at ACS. Eric has already hit the ground running and working very hard to learn all of the Manatron Records Management products and customer support requirements.
Welcome to the team Eric!
Welcome Diane Mickunas-Ries to the Manatron team!
Many of you know Diane as the Recording Manager with Snohomish County (Everett, Washington) Auditor's Office. She recently accepted an offer to become a Product Marketing Director 
with Manatron and started the first week of May.
Diane's background includes 19 years of experience working in the Seattle, Washington area for King County and Snohomish County in their Recorder's offices as a Recording Administrator and Manager/Superintendent. This experience gave her a wealth of knowledge to add to our Records Management team.
Diane's responsibilities will include support for the GRM Recorder (A2) product line and product direction. She will be based in Seattle and work with sales, support, and management teams nationwide. In addition, Diane will be responsible for introducing new functionality for the benefit of Manatron clients and new prospects.
Welcome Diane!
New Sales Positions
Manatron is expanding our commitment to the Records Management product line, and is looking to add a few good salespeople to our team.
These positions can be filled across the nation and are specifically focused toward Records Management. The positions require regional travel and extensive sales background, preferably in the County Clerk and Recorder arenas. If you know of anyone interested in these positions or know of someone we should pursue, please call Greg Effrein at 866.917.4354 x7070.
Recent Projects & Geography 101!
Tarrant Backfile Indexing Project
The Manatron Records Management team recently kicked off a newly contracted backfile project for Tarrant County, Texas. The county is sending approximately 4,700 volumes of scanned Photostat documents (estimated at 3 million pages) to Manatron for indexing. Our backfile services teams in Texas and Michigan of over 50 staffers has been very busy indexing these documents. On a monthly basis, our development team then imports all of the data and images into a test environment for review. Upon final acceptance this fall, the images will be loaded into the live and newly upgraded GRM Recorder system. This project has received very positive feedback from Tarrant County’s team members, and we look forward to completing it later this year. Contact your Account Manager or Sales Rep for more information on our services for backfile and indexing services.
Do you know where Trinidad and Tobago is?
If your answer is “somewhere in the Caribbean”, you’d be close! Trinidad is actually located near the border of Venezuela. Some of you may already know that we wrapped up an indexing project for Trinidad and Tobago in the past year. This was an interesting project for sure. Cultural differences and accents aside, this is the first time the island nation has ever tried to institute a property tax system. Our Conversion Services team kicked off the project by indexing over 200K appraisal cards that were converted into the Tax/CAMA system, also installed by Manatron. We employed a team of over 60 people working two shifts to index all this appraisal data so that the County could send out tax bills on time.
It was a fascinating project and just one area where Manatron is reaching out to international countries.
User Group Bulletin:
2010 User Group
The Records Management team showcased our latest product enhancements, future roadmap plans, and quite a few demonstrations at the User Group in September 2009. For those of you who were not able to attend, you missed a fun filled week in Miami! However, you still have the opportunity to view the presentation slides on our customer Connexion site, so please feel free to download that helpful information.
We're planning the agenda for this year's upcoming User Group that will be held in Seattle, Washington in September. If you have any thoughts or suggestions regarding content, please don't hesitate to contact your Account Manager. All ideas are welcome! We look forward to having a great event this year focusing on updated usability enhancements in our GRM Recorder platform.
https://connexion.manatron.com/RecordsManagement/tabid/249/afgroup/38/Default.aspx
More information on the 2010 User Group Conference:
http://manatron.biz/UGC-2010.aspx
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