Management Team

Rick Smith founded Imagine Solutions in 1998 to bring companies an innovative, cost-effective way to take advantage of advances in digital imaging and content management. With his leadership, Imagine has built a solid reputation for rapidly delivering enormous cost savings and significant improvements in business processes and workflow.

Mr. Smith is a frequent speaker at ECM conferences and writes a regular column for clients on a variety of ideas, both practical and insightful, for making the most of imaging technology.

Early in his career, Mr. Smith built and managed large information systems with market leaders such as AT&T, Fidelity Investment, American Airlines and Sabre Computing Services. He designed the first contract management imaging system for Sabre and implemented the first FileNet enterprise content management system on the Windows platform. He built Intellifile, the first service bureau for digital document imaging services, for Lomas Financial Services which was ultimately acquired by Affiliated Computer Services (ACS), where Smith was responsible for increasing the division's revenue to eight figures within three years.

Committed to community involvement, Mr. Smith leads Imagine Solutions employees in regularly volunteering with and contributing to charities such as the Make-A-Wish Foundation, The North Texas Food Bank, Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, and the Susan B. Komen Foundation.

He holds a bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Management from Texas A&M University.

"Nothing happens until a paper gets scanned. Then amazing things happen. Nobody has to copy that piece of paper, file it, ship it, store it, lose it, find it, fax it. Five people can work it at the same time. It can be everywhere it needs to be without costing anybody anything except a mouse click. Headcounts and shipping costs plummet."

Jason Bair is a founding member of Imagine Solutions and its Chief Technology Officer.

He is responsible for having architected and built one of the first distributed capture software products, Encapture^®, currently installed in numerous financial institutions and other companies where it routinely reduces costs by 30% and more.

With more than 20 years of software development leadership, Mr. Bair sees his role at Imagine as providing a roadmap for IT executives seeking self-sufficiency in enterprise content management. He and his team deliver this roadmap through domain expertise in designing, implementing and supporting solutions built using IBM FileNet technologies, agile methodologies, SOA, and Web services.

Before helping found Imagine Solutions, Mr. Bair was a consultant with ARGO Data Resource Corporation and Affiliated Computer Systems, where he delivered technology projects in banking and enterprise content management.

Mr. Bair holds a bachelors degree in Business Administration in Business Computer Systems and a bachelor's degree in Accountancy from New Mexico State University.

"Imagine Solutions was built on the idea that if you take the best people in the industry, nurture their skills, and provide them with challenges that allow them to grow personally and professionally, great things will happen. This is the foundation that we continue to build on every day."

Darrell Royal has an extensive executive background in financial services software and in data storage solutions. As head of sales and marketing at Imagine, he is responsible for aligning content management services and solutions that directly address clients' unique needs.

Before joining Imagine, Mr. Royal delivered strategy consulting services to financial institutions and their suppliers through the company he founded, Grove Hill Solutions.

Mr. Royal was managing director of Profit Solutions for Sheshunoff Consulting + Technology, with responsibility for the company's software product lines and analytic services to banks.

As managing director of Software Solutions and executive vice president of Strategy at Carreker Corporation, a publicly traded payments software and consulting company acquired by CheckFree in 2007, Mr. Royal's clients included scores of U.S. financial institutions. He was senior vice president of the Solutions Business Group at StorageTek. He and two other StorageTek executives co-founded ManagedStorage International as a spin-off from StorageTek.

Mr. Royal received his bachelor's degree in English from Baylor University.

"Enterprise content management can be interesting when applied to a company's central operations, but it's transformational when extended out to the first point of touch. This is what Imagine does best. If you have a distributed, paper-intensive enterprise and touch documents more than once, we have a compelling story for you."

Gary Hepler leads a team of highly experienced content management consultants and technology implementation specialists who help clients rapidly achieve 30% expense reductions and workflow improvements.

Mr. Hepler has more than 25 years experience in developing and delivering high quality systems and solutions across a variety of technologies and client industries. Among his career highlights are developing a two year ECM strategy roadmap for shared services unit of top 5 US bank, hands-on management of ECM infrastructure and application implementations, and oversight of services and delivery with emphasis on quality and client satisfaction.

Before joining Imagine Solutions, he worked for Hire Edge Professionals, the IT staffing company where he was co-owner) and also Virtual Solutions, the technology consulting company where he was a member of the operations management team.

Mr. Hepler has a bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Arkansas and a master's degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Texas – Arlington.

"A client who gets our best thinking and our attentive service is going to be a satisfied client. And a satisfied client is a long-time asset for any company. At Imagine, our clients tend to be repeat customers for all of their content management needs."