Regpack streamlines registration, payments, and onboarding into one seamless, automated platform that helps you boost revenue and increase sign-ups effortlessly. With powerful tools for custom workflows, recurring billing, storefront creation, and data-driven insights, Regpack gives organizations everything they need to grow—without added complexity.
In this episode, we speak with Asaf Darash, the Founder and CEO of Regpack. The discussion centers around the evolution and impact of Regpack, a platform designed to modernize registration and payment processes for service-based businesses. Asaf shares insights into the platform’s origin, highlighting its flexibility and automation capabilities, which allow organizations to streamline onboarding and payment processes. The conversation also touches on the importance of personalization, the role of AI in enhancing user experience, and the future direction of Regpack in the service industry. Asaf emphasizes the need for businesses to embrace technology to reduce workload and focus on human-centric tasks.
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Show Notes
Takeaways
- Regpack aims to modernize the registration and payment space.
- The platform adapts to the needs of various organizations.
- Onboarding processes are often rigid and require flexibility.
- AI enhances user experience by personalizing questions.
- Automation can significantly reduce administrative burdens.
- Installment plans can increase revenue for service-based businesses.
- Regpack allows organizations to scale efficiently.
- Customer feedback shapes the development of new features.
- Many organizations still rely on outdated systems.
- The future of Regpack includes more AI integration.
Chapters
00:00 – Introduction to Regpack and Its Vision
01:36 – The Origin Story of Regpack
07:30 – Identifying the Gap in Onboarding Processes
09:45 – Standout Features of Regpack
13:37 – The Role of AI in Automating Processes
18:41 – Maintaining Human Connection in Automation
21:44 – Impact on Account Receivables and Organizational Efficiency
23:59 – The Power of Automated Payment Systems
27:48 – Innovative Installment Plans for Service-Based Businesses
29:17 – Balancing Automation and Personalization in Growth
30:56 – Understanding Client Needs for Effective Solutions
35:48 – Tailoring Solutions to Diverse Organizational Goals
40:04 – The Future of Regpack: AI and Centralized Systems
45:30 – Misconceptions in the Registration Software Industry
47:39 -Embracing Tools for Efficiency
Transcript
Beau Hamilton (00:00.888)
Hello everyone and welcome to the SourceForge Podcast. Thank you for joining us today. I’m your host, Beau Hamilton, senior editor and multimedia producer here at SourceForge, the world’s most visited software comparison site where B2B software buyers compare and find business software solutions. Today I’m joined by someone who’s been working to, I would say modernize the registration and payment space for the better half of the last decade plus. We have Asaf Daraash, founder and CEO of Regpack.
And if you’re not familiar, Regpack is the platform behind thousands of onboarding and payment experiences across all kinds of membership driven organizations that includes, you know, nonprofits, have schools, events, training programs, and much more. And the idea behind the company is that the software should really adapt to people, right? Not the other way around. And I think that vision goes all the way back to when Asaf was studying human behavior and data over at UC Berkeley before launching Regpack.
And I would say what’s interesting about the platform today is how it’s evolved from being just a registration tool. Like nowadays it has all sorts of features like the ability to embed installment plans, handle auto billing, dynamic payment rules, create really flexible checkout options. And it’s also leaned heavily into automation to help organizations handle all sorts of onboarding and compliance needs.
So, we have a lot to talk about today about Regpack and the platform, as well as just more broadly about what’s next for digital onboarding and this embedded finance space we find it in. So let me introduce Asaf Darash. Asaf, welcome to the podcast. Glad you could join us.
Asaf (01:36.043)
Thank you for having me.
Beau Hamilton (01:37.814)
Now, I wanted to start at the beginning. Regpack has a pretty unique origin story, I would say. And I know your background in understanding behavior and data played a really big role. So what originally sparked the idea, would you say? What were you kind of seeing that made you think there has to be a better way to go about doing this?
Asaf (01:58.337)
Well, Regpack basically originated when I was doing my PhD. I did my PhD at UC Berkeley. I focused on computer languages and how they affect human action. Then in the process, as part of the research project, I try to build a system that has no constants in them. All computerized systems have some kind of constant in them. And if at the highest level, a computerized system, the only thing that it really does demand is consistency. Nothing more than that. It doesn’t need to be logical. It doesn’t need to do anything. Just be consistent.
So, I said, OK, can you create a system that has no constants in them, that everything’s variable, everything is flexible, everything can be changed? So basically, I managed to show that that is possible. And not only that, but it can be also embedded and built like a metaprogramming system. Now, all these terms might be very technical, very computer science-based, and all that. But the idea is, can you create a system that you don’t need to be a programmer and basically is totally flexible? Think of it like that.
Initially, I remember my professor was from the HI Lab in MIT. He told me like, there’s no way you can do that. And eventually after many months of building the prototype, I showed him it’s possible. And then he was a character, right? So he was like, okay, so what? Who needs it? And that really sparked me like, you know, to find who actually needs this. Like why would someone actually need something like this? And then at the time I was also working the administration of office in Berkeley. And I noticed that anything connected to onboarding is very versatile. It’s very different from one organization to the other. And I said to myself, wait a second, this is like a great use case. Let’s try to see if the onboarding experience that is required for service-based organizations or businesses can be automated through this. Can a system like this solve the problem?
As I was starting to dig in more to that, I noticed that something that a lot of today investors or even tech people take pride in, where there’s a lot of vertical based software. There’s different software for events and there’s different software for camps and there’s different software for courses. And as a computer scientist, I was like, why? Why does that need to be? There’s no reason.
Basically, they need to onboard people, get their information, allow them to select their selections, and pay. There’s no reason for it to be vertical specific. And that’s when I understood basically what is the prototype that I built.
I built a situation for the first time, service-based businesses or any business that has an onboarding process, can use a single system to onboard, select, and pay. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a law office, it’s health industry, if it’s a course, if it’s a camp, if it’s a school. And that didn’t exist until then.
Now, just to clarify the idea of onboarding, when you go buy a shirt, there’s no onboarding process. The onboarding process is pay. But nearly in anything that is service-based, there’s an onboarding process. They need to get your information, they approve your preferences, you need to sign some kind of agreement, you may be assigned an account manager or a project manager. There’s a process that happens for you to onboard as a client. And considering that in the West, close to 70% of businesses are services, it sounds crazy that there’s no software out there that solves this problem.
Now, that was 10 years ago. And still, there’s no real competitor to Regpack in terms of the ability to onboard any type of service-based business.
Beau Hamilton (06:26.498)
Well, I really liked the, you know, just proving your kind of professor wrong in the kind of early days of UC Berkeley. And he’s really pushing you challenging you. And, you know, I think there’s something to be said about, you know, one thing really supporting your students, but also kind of, you know, doubting them to get them to, you know, produce better results. But, you know, you had the last laugh there, I would say. You showed them, you kind of prove that, Hey, you can make this system not be so rigid because it’s, I mean, which is the end goal for so many other platforms and kind of systems where, you know, you have this, the finite, the set sort of constants like you’re talking about, but they don’t align with the changing sort of human dynamic where human behavior is so variable, like you were saying.
When you, as far as the onboarding process and that kind of jump between where you like noticed this kind of gap in onboarding software being so kind of rigid. What was the aha moment there? Were you signing up and working with the company? Or what made you think, I should tackle this specific problem?
Asaf (07:40.629)
Actually it was a very specific case where we were at the university. We had one software to allow us to set eligibility for students for courses. And then we wanted to do an event for one of the courses where they present what they’re going to do so they’ll get more students in. And we needed to use a different software because the whole process for joining the event was different. And it was like, and that was the aha moments. Like, why is it two different softwares? Like, why can’t one software just do the whole thing?
It’s basically the same process. Both of them are giving information, selecting something. Here it’s participating in events, and the other it’s like a course. And then approving attendance or arriving. It was basically the same thing. So I really didn’t understand why they were different. And then when I started looking at it, I saw that there are specific constants that are created in each software. And that creates a situation where they can’t create any type of onboarding process.
Now, the end result of that is a lot of organizations either need to seek forever to find the exact software that is built for their process, or they need to compromise, constantly compromise. And not, I’m not talking about compromising about the process, compromising about their goals. They need to say, okay, so I found a software that can do A, B, C, but I need also D, but I can’t do D, so I’ll just let go of D.
Beau Hamilton (09:24.3)
Maybe you can talk about, can you talk about some of the specific standout features like you’re just alluding to that really stand out for a client organization when they first get up and running? And along with that, I also I know that obviously when you first started, were mostly a limited registration tool. But now over the years, you’ve really expanded your feature set. So maybe you can just talk about what are the features that really make, I guess the biggest difference in this space and what kind of feedback are you receiving?
Asaf (09:58.657)
Early on, I initially thought that the most important thing is the data gathering and the ability to manipulate data, see statistics, reports, stuff like that. In time, I understood that that’s actually not the problem that most of them are dealing with. The biggest problem that they’re dealing with is being able to offer services in a way that aligns with what they’re actually offering. That’s one. And two, to actually get their money.
The personalization aspect happens throughout the software. And that is actually what drives such high conversion rates and completion rates. So let’s talk about that for a second. And then we can talk about the service selection and the payments.
So one of the biggest issues that exist in these type of softwares is that you’re asking people questions that do not apply to them. So think of it like, how many times have you gone in to register for something and they’re asking you, do you have a heart condition? Do you have asthma? you have this? And you’re like, I don’t have any health condition at all. And you have to go through and you have to answer and so forth. Now, what this causes is that at some point, you get a bit exhausted and there’s a good chance that you will not finish the process.
Now, what we did, one of the things, the first thing that we did is we built a conditional logic engine that works with AI. And it basically detects what questions you should be asked and what questions you shouldn’t be asked. Now, the result of that is that once you see that you’re only being asked questions that actually apply to you, at some point, you go into auto mode. And instead of being frustrated and maybe not completing the process, exactly the opposite happens. You complete the process very, very quickly because you know that every single question, every single form, every single offering that you will see is personalized to you. And that is done throughout the software, from the questions or the multiple choice answers that you see to the offerings that you’ll see to the type of payments that you’re allowed to choose and so forth. So everything is personalized based on your interaction with the system. So think of it like everybody starts at the start line, but then it’s like, it opens up completely to multiple methods of getting to the end. And each person goes through their unique path based on the exact things that they selected.
Beau Hamilton (12:51.694)
Right. Yeah, no, it’s a good way to put it. The medical sort of questionnaire is, you know, something we can all relate to. mean, it also like when you’re checking off these boxes that don’t apply to you, you also like the questions that do apply to you, kind of gloss over, don’t pay as much, you know, you kind of just, you don’t answer to the best of your ability. You don’t pay much attention to it because of all the kind of redundancy or the just irrelevant and other questions.
So. OK, so you mentioned this AI engine. And this probably gets to some of the artificial intelligent features, or in other words, the automations that you have built into the platform. Can you talk about some of the automations the platform is capable of handling? How did the automations actually improve the day-to-day operations for an organization?
Asaf (13:51.041)
So we like to tell organizations that our job is to get them out of the way. That’s really what we’re trying to do. Because if you have an AI engine that can do conditional logic, you can reach a situation where the system is automating 95% of the users that go through your process. That means that 95% of the people that go through are answering all the questions, seeing only the services that are applied to them, selecting the services that are applied to them, seeing the payment options that apply to them, the installment options that apply to them, and finishing the process without anybody in the organization being involved. Unless they want to be, obviously, but most of the time they don’t want to be involved.
Now, the result of that is that those 5%, there’s always 5 to 7% of the people, that are unique, that have a unique problem, that some kind of human common sense decision needs to be made, that you need to allow them to attend something that the rules basically do not allow, that in their situation it’s special and they are allowed to attend. So suddenly you can give great service to those 95% of the people because they’re just like running it, right? And those 7% or 5%, they get special attention because you have the time for that. And you’re creating a situation where everybody’s happy because normally what happens in these situations, either the 7% get forgotten because you don’t have time because you’re dealing with a 93% or worse yet, a lot of the organizations that it’s really important for them to take care of the special cases, hurt the 93% or the 95%. And then they see their revenue go down, and they see their attendance go down, and they don’t understand what’s going on because they’re working very, very hard.
Beau Hamilton (15:54.862)
Yeah, no, I think that’s great. And it just goes back to what you were saying about, yeah, just trying to really narrow in and focus in on the specific needs of the organization. You don’t get too lost in the irrelevant stuff. As far as the efficiency kind of automations go, I always just talk like liken it to, we’re in this efficiency era. And I think it’s anything you can do to save time and to of maximize, well, just kind of reallocate the time to areas that are just more important and fulfilling, think is really kind of what’s most important. But then also, like you were saying, tapping into this 5%, 7% of individuals in an organization that otherwise kind of get glossed over, right?
Asaf (16:41.375)
Right, the time they save that suddenly they’re taking care of more of their curriculum. They’re taking care of their client communications. They’re taking care of things that only humans can do. Right, creating relationships, stuff like that.
Beau Hamilton (16:52.524)
How long have you had some of these AI automations built into the platform?
Asaf (16:59.265)
Some of them have been implemented in the last three years, but some of them were from the get-go because, yeah, because I basically worked for many years at the AI lab with my advisor. So AI was not new to me.
Beau Hamilton (17:18.99)
Wow. So yeah, you’re one of the early kind of founders in a way. Like, cause that’s the thing is like, you know, a lot of times AI nowadays is just, it’s just rebranded automations from tools and capabilities from years past, right? And for whatever reason, it’s just, everything’s just kind of put on this umbrella under of AI when it’s not maybe true AI. Or if it is like, it sounds like your use case, kind of being from UC Berkeley and working in AI lab, like this is, you were just really early day, early day founder of the technology, right?
Asaf (17:52.514)
You know, when we, I remember when AI came out, like about two years ago and everybody’s like, oh AI, AI. It’s like, I don’t get it. Like this has been around for like 20 years. It’s like, what are you talking about? It’s just been, it was just like, you know, it was, I think what ChatGPT did and all of these tools, they made it more accessible. They made it a lot more accessible, a lot more playful, and they allow people to ask questions without all the complexities that normal AI engineers understand. They sort of, they appled it in a way.
Beau Hamilton (18:38.358)
Yeah, democratized it. And yeah, yeah, I think it’s yeah, it’s very true. I want to so like you mentioned the you always got to make sure there’s kind of a human in the loop and for some of these processes, maybe you can could you expand on that? Like, how do you make sure the experience still kind of stays personal, I guess, like, well, while automating other areas?
Asaf (19:02.721)
Okay, so the way that we always try to tell our organizations to think about the registration process and the onboarding process is that nobody wants to do it. Think of a mother making dinner for her three kids while she’s trying to register her oldest kid to a math course that he needs to do because he’s falling back and the younger kid to, I don’t know, to a Lego course, right?
She really doesn’t want to do this and she wants to do it as quickly as possible. The more that can be auto-filled for her, the better. She’s doing it on her phone while the kids are running around and she’s going out with her girlfriends an hour from now. So in our case, the more you can automate, the better. Nobody wants a personalized experience. All people all just want to get over with it. They want to select, they want to put in the information, select the options, make a payment. When do they want a human interaction? When something gets stuck. Okay, like I don’t have the option that I need. I don’t have the situation that I need. In there, in all Regpack systems, you have the ability to stop the process and connect with a human.
And then each organization decides how they do it. They do it like after you’re out offline or write a chat. They have all the options in Regpack, but basically you’re keeping the human connection by the very fact that only if you’re encountering a problem, you do that.
Beau Hamilton (20:43.072)
Okay, yeah. That’s a good approach, I think, because you don’t want to automate the, I don’t know, customer support side of things, because that’s where the personal human connection comes. I mean, I think there’s some points in the process where you could automate that as well, but I think that at the end of the day, you want to be able to connect with a person, discuss the specific issues you’re having, and then just try to also get the most out of the platform. And then I think the best way to do that is still through a person, but maybe that’s just my opinion.
Asaf (21:12.881)
You’re totally right, and I can say that a lot of our organizations are very people-centered. They’re very people-oriented, relationship-building oriented. And in this case, the automation actually allows them to do that more, because they were so entrenched in the bureaucracy, in the day-to-day administration, and the approval process, and running after people to get their money and so forth that when that is taken out and it’s out of the way, suddenly they can focus on creating these connections, these real connections.
Beau Hamilton (21:52.364)
Right. Yeah. Get rid of the kind of mundane processes. I mean, every organization has them. And, so I think that’s the first part of, you know, where you should put the automation kind of focus on, is somebody is kind of speeding up that.
Asaf (22:06.299)
I’ll give you great example. Regpack lowers account receivables. Most of our organizations right now are from the educational space. So in the educational space, the common very macro level account receivables is between 27 to 30%. That’s account receivables. Account receivables for anybody that doesn’t know means that someone said that they’ll pay you and they don’t. Regpack takes that 30% and lowers it to 3%. That’s huge.
Think for an organization that processes a million dollars, that’s $300,000. That’s lot of money. Now, we can talk in a second about all the technology that happens in order to make that happen, but that’s not what’s important. Suddenly, that team of people normally is three people. If you’re processing between a million to two million dollars, you probably have three people on account receivables. Those people that were basically harassing everybody, and everybody did not like them, become people that you can use to build relationships. Become people that you can use in order to help the organization look better in the community. And that’s what most of the organizations do. First of all, you have the funds now because you have that extra income. And second of all, they’re freed from taking these steps that a computer can do much better.
Most of the people that are not paying you are not paying you because they don’t have the money at that given moment. So let’s say you want the money on the 15th. But I don’t know, I paid my rent and stuff, and I don’t have money on the 15th. And if you try to charge my card on the 15th, it bounces, right? But if you’ll try to charge my card on the 21st, it’ll pass because I got my weekly salary or whatnot. Now, the probability of an account receivables person trying every single day, three times a day for 15 days to charge the person the $300 that they need to pay is zero. But that’s exactly what the system does. So the system catches when they have those $300 and takes it and everybody’s happy because they really didn’t want to pay you.
Beau Hamilton (24:51.95)
No, that’s huge. It sounds simple, but it sounds, I don’t know. I think that does help. And I think the example you provided with 22% going down to 3%, I mean, that has huge ripple effects, I would say. Especially like you said, you have the money now and you can kind of allocate those funds elsewhere. It just sets you up for kind of, I almost pictured like a banking lending situation where you’re able to kind of lend those funds out more and tackle other problems.
Asaf (25:23.017)
I’ll give you another example. A lot of organizations in the US do not offer installment plans. Okay? Now, the service-based business is perfect. There’s no other word for it. It’s perfect for installment plans. And I’ll explain why. Most of the times when you’re going to take a service, okay, you order it in advance. At least six to seven to eight months in advance. If you’re sending your kid to a camp where you’re gonna learn a course or you wanna send your kid to after school or you’re going to an event. Most chances are you are deciding on that at least six months in advance. Otherwise you won’t have a spot, right?
So six months in advance, I tell you to pay me $3,000. You’re like, I don’t have $3,000 now, right? But if I tell you, hey, until the event, I’m going to charge you $500 per month. You’re like, oh, I can do that. So by offering time-based installment plans that change based on when you’re registering and when the actual event is happening, we have reached the situation where the amount of courses or services that organizations sell go up by 20%, because suddenly there’s first there’s no there’s no situation where people see the ticket item price and they’re like, that’s too much for me. Cause they see $500 for six months. I can do that. Yeah, that’s one. And two, they lower their abandoned carts considerably. And the most important part is that they actually get all their money by the time that the event happens. And they actually only needed the money when the event or course or service is happening. So it’s a win-win situation.
Beau Hamilton (27:25.58)
Yeah, I was going to say it’s a win-win situation because yeah, you have, you lock yourself into that event. Like if you’re the customer, you’re paying, you’re guaranteeing a spot. You’re, you’re not spending all your money all at once. Like you’re, you’re using a fraction of that as a kind of a deposit. and then the, company organization receiving it receives it like earlier ahead of time and you don’t pay interest.
Yeah, I’ve seen, I’m starting to see a little, few more kind of a pay later sort of installment plans with some of the bigger providers. You don’t think like, you know, Apple and I don’t know, Samsung and some of other ones from a consumer standpoint, but I think you’re absolutely right. There’s a lot of room for growth in this area.
I do want to talk maybe some more about the technical kind of components to make this all possible. But I also want to pivot slightly to this growth category and topic. Because it’s a good problem to have when you’re an organization that’s experiencing rapid growth and trying to scale up. And automations, I think, can generally help this. But they can also create some more chaos, I guess. How does maybe the architecture of Regpack help scale organizations and deal with this kind of dynamic problem so that you focus on the scale, the pillars of maybe efficiency and personalization so they continue to stay really intact?
Asaf (29:01.153)
Normally the way that we view Regpack is that we automate what is called the common case, when I said like the 95%, we automate the common case, but at the same time, we leave all the power in the hands of the administrator to do any action. It’s not automation that you’re locked into that you can’t change. That’s never the situation with Regpack. At any given moment, they can change the options that the users see. And at any given moment, they have the ability to override the system. They have the ability to cancel restrictions. And everything is on the back end. So we like to think of it like it’s a computerized automated system. But from the administrative standpoint, it’s like a piece of paper. You can do whatever they want.
Beau Hamilton (29:49.614)
OK, so you have those toggles, have those controls, and then underscoring the fact that there’s still a personal touch involved, there’s still people in the loop, which is very important. OK, now we talked about this a little bit, but it kind goes back to the user behavior and how it’s dynamic. It’s changing all the time based on different needs and circumstances.
What does your customer feedback look like and how did those kinds of customer insights help sort of shape the product roadmap? Are you constantly in communication with, the clients you work with and trying to obviously work to help solve their, their needs, but also help kind of bake in maybe established features into the platform?
Asaf (30:35.425)
The way that we approach features is never a feature that serves a single client or a single situation. We want to build features that even like a connection of features together will resolve a problem for multiple situations. So when we think of features, we really think of how can we address the problem that people are seeing. One of the things that I always, I try to talk to clients a lot, at least like three, four times a week. And the main question that I ask is what is the problem that you’re trying to solve? Because people always come to you with solutions. I need this, I need this. And a lot of times they don’t need that. They’re trying to solve a problem by having that.
Now, once we understand what the problem is, we can find solutions that are generalized. I’ll give a great example. We have started working with a lot of museums, zoos, and various organizations like Pepsi, Amazon, so forth, that have school field trips to their facilities. Now, there’s a specific problem with field trips, because I want to just tell you that I’m coming with 20 students on this date, this time. And let’s say you have a limitation that you can allow up to 100 students at any given moment in your facility. I don’t want to give you the names because you don’t care about the names. You don’t care about that I’m bringing 20 people. Maybe there’s some kind of payment associated with that. And maybe there needs to be a ratio of children to teachers.
Now, most organizations out there will allow you ticketing or software out there will allow you ticketing, but then there’s no connection to the ratios, there’s no connection to the score information, there’s no installment plan options, etcetera. And then now in Regpack, we said, okay, how do we solve this problem? We solve this problem by allowing you to create multiple events per day. Creating a booking type experience where you first select the days that you want. And then you only see the options that are possible even though there are thousands of options. And then you select the children and you can select the limitation of the number of teachers based on the number of children. And all that falls into the quota. So this is a situation that came up with one of the clients.
Now instead of like, and I don’t remember the exact solution that they came up with, but it was very, very different. And we sat down, the operations team and the project consultant team and the dev team and the QA team, and we thought, like, how can we solve this problem? And then we came up with a few tools that were very simple to build initially. And they solved the problem for a much wider number of clients. And I remember, I was actually on the call when we showed this to the client because and initially they were like, no, no, no, I want my solution. like, I remember his name was Dan. It’s like Dan, give me five minutes. Give me five minutes. I’ll show you the experience. And then if you don’t like it, you get a few for you, all good. Like nothing happened. Show them the experience. And then he was like, oh wow, this is actually better than what I thought it would be.
That’s the whole concept of how we work at Regpack. We try to solve the problem and not necessarily do the solution that someone brought up.
Beau Hamilton (34:51.864)
Gotcha. Okay. That’s a great example. Yeah. Cause I feel like that. So, yeah, you’ve found a solution for that specific problem. You realize, Hey, other, you know, events could benefit from having these features, these kinds of granular controls. And so you built it into the platform. I feel like on the flip side, you know, you probably, you know, more often than not, you run into really maybe niche examples or maybe a little niche issues for clients that you have to work with individually that you’re like, this specific need doesn’t apply to the general client base that we serve for the general needs, right? So I’m sure that happens as well.
Okay. So, go getting back to this sort of, main sort of problem you hear, clients talking about, I know that the issue is just circumstantial. It’s different depending on what kind of event there is, or what type of organization it is, but, maybe could you think you could boil it down to one specific area? Like I imagine it’s maybe generally trying to sort of just modernize their current system. I feel like companies are always trying to kind of modernize their infrastructure, catch up with the current times? Is that sort…?
Asaf (36:08.417)
Actually, that is not something that we see a lot where people say, just want to modernize. In the process of working with an organization, we like to keep the conversation at very macro level because sometimes going into very finite problems, creates a situation where if it’s not exactly what I thought it would be, then I’m not gonna do this. And eventually they come back a year later and they’re like, okay, I wanna listen this time, right? So we keep it at a high level where we try to understand what are the goals. And this is where the power of how flexible Regpack comes into play.
So I’ll give an example again. One organization could come in and say, my goal is to get as many leads as possible. I want to know how many people are interested in us. We’ll do the hard sell after. But I want as many people as possible to register, not necessarily complete the process. Another organization comes in and says, I have the opposite problem. People are now finishing the process and I actually get not the good students in, but the ones that are just diligent enough to complete the process that’s really annoying. These two organizations, the system would be built completely different for them. Because one is basically I want the bar of entry to be close to zero, whereas the other, I am looking for full conversion. So this is how we approach clients, where we try to understand what are the goals that they’re trying to reach, and then we, I wouldn’t say we build because it’s more configure, right? We configure the system in a way that will result in the best situation for their goals.
Now the goals that we see a lot is completion of the process or getting as many leads as possible. The second is growing revenue. I think that comes up every single time. Unless there’s an organization, the flip side of that is that there are organizations that come and say, don’t want to, like, we don’t have a revenue problem. We’re at capacity. We actually have a problem where in 20 minutes, everybody’s trying to come in and finish the process as quickly as possible, and we have to have quotas and all that. So that’s the flip side. So either grow revenue or make sure that the quotas are rock solid and so forth. And the third one is financial reporting. We see a lot of these organizations work with systems where the financial reporting it’s just terrible. I have no other way of saying it. For example, you have families that are registering in the financial reporting instead of applying for information or finances per child. It’s just bundled at the family level. And then if one of the children drops off, you don’t know how to refund or you don’t know how to allocate. We actually laugh about it that every single time an accountant joins the call, the deal is closed because they’re like, what? Oh, this is what you’re going to take because this is going to save me like 50 hours a month.
Beau Hamilton (39:53.696)
Okay. So you got those three sort of main, you know, things that you hear kind of companies wanting to address. You got the getting more leads, growing revenue, and then the issues with financial reporting. I think that just kind of talks, that speaks to just the, how versatile your platform is and how you’re able to tackle all these different needs of different organizations.
I’m curious to hear what’s next for your platform, but where this is all going? I mean, is there one particular area you’re focusing more on than others? I know you mentioned sort of this, like, with terms of payments, like the installation plans and how most services don’t offer this in the United States. But yeah, where do you see this going in the next, I don’t know, a few years from now, if it’s even possible to look that far ahead in the future?
Asaf (40:56.097)
My vision for RegBack, which is slowly unfolding, is that there will be a central SaaS system for onboarding in the service businesses. That it will be a situation where organizations can reach the exact process that they want their clients to go through in order to onboard with them.
That’s from like at a very high level. I think the result of that is that a lot of businesses now that are service based are still in the 1990s in a sense, like the type of technology that is available to them is not the technology that should exist in 2025. Yeah, that’s the first thing. And then the second thing, and we’ve actually started working on this already, we want to embed AI more into our platform, where basically you would tell it, this is my organization. This is my offering. These are my goals. And the AI engine through the API would build the system for you automatically. And we’ve had some initial success with that. It’s still very prototype level. For me as a geek, it’s very exciting to do this.
Beau Hamilton (42:29.034)
I bet. I bet. Yeah. And that constantly needs, you know, refinement. You kind of work in stages, just like with your company and how you started. You started small, then you grew into kind of addressing all these other sort of needs and use cases. Well, that’s good. That’s great insights. I mean, I don’t know. My mind goes to a few different places, like just thinking about you kind of using kind of stuck in the nineties with technology and some of these, I don’t know, current systems.
I mean, my mind goes to like the networking. was talking to a networking guy and a lot of it was over my head, but he was just saying like, you know, in regards to the AI kind of topic conversation, it’s like, they’re not even really worried about and like discussing AI with networking because they’re just trying to catch, like move these legacy systems from like the nineties, eighties and nineties up until like just somewhat modern cloud-based systems.
Asaf (43:22.081)
I had a conversation a month ago with a very big organization, can’t say their name, and I was like, okay, so how do you guys do it now? And they actually said, it’s with paper. People fill out forms, scan them and send them over. It was like, no, seriously, what you guys using? It’s like wow!
Beau Hamilton (43:44.128)
Geez, yeah, no, that’s surprising. I don’t even, last time I held a sheet of paper and printed something. I can’t even tell you the last time I did that. But, and then the other interesting thing you said was the consolidation, the all-in-one platform, I guess, for handling for SaaS products. Is this, I mean, my mind from a consumer standpoint, it’s with AI and having used chatbots and stuff like, the future seems to be kind of moving towards this all-in-one system where AI chatbots, your favorite one, Gemini, OpenAI, ChatGPT, they eventually integrate with all your apps so you can do everything from calling an Uber to making a payment. Is that sort of kind of on the realm of what you’re talking about on your side of the problem?
Asaf (44:43.125)
Yes and no, because it’s more at the business level, less at the consumer level. So from the business level, Regpack is unique in the sense that it can do multiple registration processes in the same platform.
Now, I think of it like this. Let’s say a school. A school has the school registration. They have the after school, they have events. They normally have a camp in the summer and they have field trips and they have a trip. Let’s say, you know, a one week trip that the kids go to New York or whatnot. So they have six different processes that happen at the school. Now, normally today, each school has six different systems for these six different things. Now there’s no real reason for that to happen. The only reason for that happening right now is because other systems are unable to cater for the multiple structures that they need.
Beau Hamilton (45:45.944)
That makes sense. OK. So yeah, just getting all those, those six different systems to talk together and integrate in one sort of central spot is just gonna, yeah, that would be music to so many admin’s ears, I feel like making the process all the more efficient and seamless. Okay. So I have a couple more questions that are sort of, you know, maybe macro and conceptual, but I’m curious, like in regards to the registration and payments industry, I want to give you maybe the chance to kind of address some sort of misconceptions that are out there. What’s a misunderstanding about your industry that maybe you wish more people understood?
Asaf (46:26.689)
First of all, that the registration software is just a registration software. A lot of these people, a lot of people come in and say, oh, just need people to give me some information and make a payment. And they don’t understand that this is a key to a ecommerce system from your perspective. From your type of industry, this is an ecommerce system. Like this is your storefront. This is managing all your income, your users, the whole thing. So that’s the first thing. So it’s more a business tool than just a data gathering and payment tool. You can’t compare registration software to Google Docs and PayPal. It’s not the same thing. That’s one.
Another large misconception that happens is that people think that each vertical or each need needs its separate software. Now I can understand where this is coming from. I like to the analogy of that. If you would go into a restaurant and they would tell you, serve pasta and sushi, and steak and mexican. You’d like, you’d walk right out. You’d be like, this restaurant is terrible, right? That’s not how software works. If you have the technology, you can do all these things. So the misconception of that I need a software that is like a cookie cutter from my industry, that’s one of the biggest problems that we deal with on a day-to-day basis. And hopefully that will change in time.
Beau Hamilton (48:14.99)
Yeah, I think it will. I think that’s a great way to put it too. I love all your examples and analogies there. And piggybacking on that last question, if you could get one message out to maybe potential customers or just people in the industry based off your experience, maybe imagine that you’re chatting from the rooftops, this is the one thing I want you to…
Asaf (48:38.029)
I have a very easy one. You don’t need to work so hard. You don’t need to work so hard. You really don’t. Don’t resist the fact. Look, the type of people that we work with are very, very A type people. They take pride in the fact that they work very hard and all that. And sometimes it takes time for them to understand you don’t need to work this hard. You really don’t. Let the systems or the abilities that are out there do that for you and you can become more human in the sense that you can do things that only humans can do.
Beau Hamilton (49:34.08)
I love it. Don’t resist, surrender yourself to the tools that you have available. I love it.
I appreciate all those insights. And I think listeners are going to get a lot out of this. For prospective customers, maybe just people interested in learning more about Regpack, or maybe getting in contact with you and your team, where should they go?
Asaf (50:08.629)
Best place to go to our website, obviously, www.regpack.com or our LinkedIn. We have a very strong LinkedIn profile for our company. Again, just LinkedIn, google Regpack LinkedIn. You’ll get there right away. We have a really fun Instagram profile. It’s actually hilarious, I think. So again, it’s just like Regpack. That’s it. That’s the best way.
Beau Hamilton (50:35.416)
Perfect. All right, well, you’re gonna get a new Instagram follower for me, that’s for sure. All right, I’m gonna check that out. But thank you again. This is Asaf Darash, Founder and CEO of Regpack. Asaf, I really appreciate all your examples, all the insights you shared. I think this has been a very Zen and informative conversation.
Asaf (50:54.785)
Great, thank you too.
Beau Hamilton (50:56.462)
Thank you all for listening to the SourceForge Podcast. I’m your host, Beau Hamilton. Make sure to subscribe to stay up to date with all of our upcoming B2B software related podcasts. I will talk to you in the next one.