A representative from Wilmington’s CastleBranch will be part of a panel Thursday about how market leading companies can remain innovative.

Kelli Davis, CastleBranch’s chief information officer, is one of three company representatives at the innovation session, part of the N.C. Technology Association’s (NCTA) annual Technology Leadership Conference held Thursday and Friday in Greensboro.

On the panel with Davis will be Mark Laurenti, executive vice president and chief information officer for Charlotte-based Belk Inc. and Katrinka McCallum, vice president of products and operations at Raleigh-based software company Red Hat.

“The general topic will be about ongoing innovation once you are a market leader,” Davis said.

She explained that NCTA president and CEO Brooks Raiford learned about CastleBranch when the NCTA state tour brought him to the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship a few months ago.  

“He thought we were a very innovative company and wanted to hear our insights about how we stay ahead of the curve,” she said.

CastleBranch has grown from its beginnings as a background-check business into a company that provides a range of pre-employment screening services and also helps students in health care related fields fulfill all the requirements for clinical rotations.  

Davis said that the company’s continued growth depends on getting ideas for new products and services from clients and employees. The company has assembled a faculty advisor council made up of administrators from client programs.

“They don’t know one another but they share common issues,” Davis said, adding that CastleBranch listens to the problems and needs that council members discuss and looks for ways to address them.

Soliciting ideas from its own employees is also part of the CastleBranch model.

“We like to think we hire bright people; let’s allow them to be creative,” Davis said.
 
“We also have a business development team that’s responsible for testing ideas; see if an idea we’ve come up with has a market,” Davis said.

One new service that resulted from being alert to unmet needs is an immunization tracking program for students in health care fields. Davis explained that when incoming college students provide immunization records, those records stay with the admissions office and are not available to students in health care fields who must provide immunization proof before they can start their internships.

CastleBranch’s new electronic system notifies students of what immunizations they will need for their particular clinical rotation and reminds them of anything that remains to be done as deadlines approach, Davis said.

“Our solution is twofold: we know the requirements because each school has built a to-do list with us. And we maintain a schedule with each individual student,” Davis said.

The company is always open to ideas for improvements to existing programs, she added, noting that CastleBranch tweaked some of its systems to allow students to enter their own data for background checks and other screening programs. That small change, she said, relieves school and hospital staff of time-consuming work and ultimately makes students responsible for the accuracy of their own information.