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Brett Corbin is a Product Lead at Journal Technologies.
Q: Customers often have ideas for improving our eSeries platform to better meet their needs, wants, and vision. How do we ensure their feedback reaches the right people at Journal Technologies?
BC: Well, it depends on the customer’s stage in their journey with us. Customers in implementation typically route feedback through their project managers, while those already live on eSeries tend to share suggestions with Support or Customer Engagement. We work to ensure each idea, request, or suggestion makes its way to our centralized Idea Register so it can be effectively assessed and/or prioritized.
We also actively add our own requests and ideas based on internal improvement proposals, employee or partner ideas, shifting trends in RFPs, and changes in legislation – all of which all help inform where our focus should be applied. Across all sources, we received about 350 ideas last year, and everything flows through the same intake process to ensure nothing gets lost in the shuffle.
Q: That’s a lot of ideas to consider; how do you make sure each idea gets a fair hearing?
BC: The early stages of our review process are designed to fully understand the reasoning for and urgency of new ideas. The Product team reviews new entries during our weekly meeting and determines whether each one embodies new/modified functionality or is simply an incomplete picture of what eSeries already offers.
We also make sure the description is clear, tag the idea by product and functional area, and flag any time-sensitive issues, such as upcoming legislative requirements. The goal is to prepare each idea for the next stage of review by giving it proper context.
Q: And once that context is established, how do you evaluate whether an idea should be acted upon?
BC: Ideas that pass initial review move into an exploration phase. We assess feasibility, potential risks to existing customers, and whether the idea aligns with JTI’s broader strategic priorities. We also evaluate broadness of applicability and if others have requested it as well, or will likely be interested!
As part of this process, we consult with other internal teams – Support, Customer Engagement, Professional Services, Sales, and others – to make sure we’re not missing important context. Their insights help ensure that our assessment reflects what’s really happening across the customer base.
Q: What’s the process for prioritizing ideas and getting them onto the roadmap?
BC: Once exploration is complete, we prioritize potential new features or modifications based on both impact and effort. Some enhancements would provide widespread benefits across large swaths of our user base, while others are small but meaningful improvements for specific courts or agencies. We try to strike a balance.
For each idea, we build an estimate that includes design, development, quality assurance, and documentation. We also consider the downstream load on Sales, Support, and Professional Services. That estimate is measured against our team’s available capacity, which helps determine where it fits in our broader delivery schedule.
Q: How often is the roadmap updated, and what does it include?
BC: We publish three product roadmaps: one for the core eSeries platform (which includes eCourt, eProsecutor, eDefender, and eSupervision), one for the Public Portal, and one for eProsecutor Online. Each roadmap is updated quarterly and shared through our documentation site, regional user groups, and Road Ahead webinars.
Our public roadmap highlights major initiatives, but there are always many ongoing smaller enhancements.
Q: It can’t be easy to determine what gets added to the roadmap and what doesn’t. What’s the biggest challenge in acting on customer feedback?
BC: Capacity! We receive more ideas than we can realistically deliver, and every approved feature requires effort from multiple teams, including Product, Engineering, QA, Customer Engagement, Support, and more.
It’s not just about having time to build the feature. It’s about ensuring we have the resources in place across the company to support a successful rollout. That’s the biggest balancing act. We need to deliver an airline, not just an airplane.
Q: Can you give an example of customer feedback that directly led to a new feature?
BC: A great example is the recent addition of Case Bundles and Quick Notes. A judge working with one of our implementation teams raised concerns about courtroom efficiency. We partnered with them to better understand the workflow and identify its inefficiencies.
We created visual mockups and met with the judge to validate our thinking. During that process, we realized that while Case Bundles would certainly help, pairing it with Quick Notes would make an even bigger impact. Both features were delivered in a recent release.
Q: And for these kinds of changes, do we involve customers in early testing to ensure we’re properly resolving their issues?
BC: Absolutely. We often rely on mockups or prototypes to gather feedback before development begins, especially when a feature stems from a specific customer request or vision. For larger enhancements, like EFM Auto-Assist and our SMS feature, we’ve worked with pilot customers to refine functionality in real-world settings.
These early checkpoints help us build the right solution the first time. Making changes after building a feature is costly, so we seek input early and often.
Q: How do you follow up with customers?
BC: For in-flight projects, the implementation team communicates directly with the customer when the new feature is ready for testing. For customers already using eSeries, our Customer Engagement team follows up with the original submitter. In all cases, the enhancement is documented in the release notes.
We love hearing ideas for improvement, so please keep them coming!