25+ Years Building Solutions:
Why I Started CC Genuine Solutions
I have spent most of my working life as an engineer building real solutions for real businesses. The last (almost) decade of those years were deeply involved in innovating on a legal practice management solution which included knowledge management, time tracking, billing, accounting, integrations, data migrations, and ensuring data is accurate and kept in balance at all times.
Before I fully immersed myself in building legal software, I had already spent 20+ years as a senior software engineer. I was responsible for implementing the product ideas that later shipped in ZenCase (now SurePoint Pro), then stayed close enough to the code and the data to make sure they actually worked. When the company was acquired, I stayed on as Director of Engineering for the legal software. The job did not change much: figure out why the numbers did not match and champion a team of talented engineers to build the tools to fix it. There were many times where I had to step in myself and dig in to fix the tools as well.
As the company evolved, I decided it was time for me to explore opportunities for myself that get me back to what I enjoy. Helping small firms and small businesses that need this kind of work done accurately and carefully. They just rarely have a technical expert whom they can send the work. I started CC Genuine Solutions to be that place where businesses can come for guidance.
How I Got Here
I started as a graphic designer at a small non-profit many years ago. That is where I learned to make the things a growing company actually needs: conference banners, ads, pamphlets, booth and table setup, but most importantly, the website that held it all together. Design taught me to care about how a person uses an application, why they use it, and whether it is useful to them or not. Engineering taught me to care about whether it is true underneath.From there I worked at Optos, a medical device company, building and maintaining their patient portal and helping build their find-a-doctor map. At Accesso, I helped bring the website into ADA compliance against WCAG guidelines. At Ruzuku, I helped build solutions for custom course-creation software and troubleshooting the most trickiest of web conference issues. Different industries, same pattern: find the gap between what the product claims and what people actually need, then close it.
The last part of my journey, so far, allowed me to focus on building the best in class legal case management, billing, and accounting software. From startup to enterprise company, data migrations have forced me to look deeper into the details of the data. I have spent many hours reconciling and converting data the "right" way from other systems instead of just moving it. A lot of data migration specialists stop at "the records are transferred", however that is never enough. Especially in legal software, everything must balance from beginning to end - the legacy system and new system must match!
What I Actually Do
Three Things, Mostly:
Books Cleanup And Reconciliation. Bank reconciliation, client and matter reconciliation, and three-way trust reconciliation for law firms - something I am very familiar with these days. If your books no longer match your bank statements, or your trust accounts do not tie out the way your bar association expects, this is the kind of mess I have spent years untangling.
Data Migration. Moving data from one system to another, whether for a law practice management software to QuickBooks or any other software, the accounting balances must still match the legacy system. Many data migration specialists focus on transferring records, however I make sure records are transferred accurately and with integrity. I find discrepancies, review them with clients, and recommend solutions before go live.
Custom Reports And Project Tools. There are times when the fix is not a simple cleanup. It may be a tool that does not exist yet - a custom report, an integration, or a small piece of software built for how your business actually works, rather than an off-the-shelf product that assumes how things should work.
Why "Genuine"
I chose that word on purpose. A lot of the work I do - from reconciliations, custom verification reports, line-by-line tracing of where a number came from - that is all invisible when it is done right. Nobody sees the mess that did not happen. I wanted a name that reflected doing that type of work honestly, with integrity, and without cutting corners, even when no one is checking.
If your books need untangling, your systems need migrating, or you need something built that does not exist yet - that is what I am here for.