How Streamlining Accounts Payable Helped a School District Keep the Focus on Students

Located 10 minutes from Seattle, Mercer Island School District (MISD) has a K-12 student population of approximately 4,500 supported by more than 500 staff members. Committed to putting the student first, the school district prioritizes digital initiatives with the goal of creating the best possible outcomes for students and their families. Most recently, the district implemented Laserfiche Cloud to automate its accounts payable invoice approval processes, streamline records management and build toward long-term digital transformation goals. By doing so, MISD has been able to increase efficiency, reclaiming time to focus on serving students and navigate operational challenges, including those brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Acing Accounts Payable Automation

Established in 1946, MISD consists of four K-5 elementary schools, one 6-8 middle school and one 9-12 high school, with programs combining academics, cultural expression, and athletic achievement.

“The district is regarded for our innovative approach to providing a holistic, well-rounded education to students in the region,” said Tyrell Bergstrom, executive director of finance and operations at MISD. “Our mission, values and vision are really centered on putting the child first while recognizing opportunities for improvement and advancement. One of our long-term goals as a district was to invest in programs and technology to benefit the students and to strengthen our digital capabilities for years to come.”

Aligning with this vision, MISD embraces digital solutions that increase efficiency, while allowing staff to focus on student needs. Recently, the district identified accounts payable invoice approvals as a time-intensive process that could benefit from digitization and automation. In the legacy process, staff relied on paper documents and email communication to obtain approvals and do follow-up. Matching and assembling the invoices, purchase orders and bills of waiting, and then finalizing payment could take more than a week.

MISD worked with Laserfiche solution provider FreeDoc to implement Smart Invoice Capture, a solution that uses machine learning technology to automatically capture information — from any invoice, in any format — that can be used to automatically populate accounting systems or ERPs.

“The school district wanted to improve invoice AP processing in conjunction with a mature enterprise installation of Laserfiche business process automation. Smart Invoice Capture reduces invoice processing time and improves qualitative processing. This adds up to enterprise savings for the school district,” said FreeDoc ECM Consultant Garrett Frix.

“We implemented Smart Invoice Capture and it was night and day,” Bergstrom said. “Smart Invoice Capture scans our invoices, we validate the information that’s been captured, click send — and it’s on its way. We’ve been seeing turnaround times of within a day.”

The new process has eliminated lost and delayed invoices, which previously required a significant amount of time to track down from one of 2,000 profiles in MISD’s database. Staff have also benefited from Laserfiche’s reporting functions and automatic reminders. Smart Invoice Capture is currently being used in three departments and will soon be rolled out throughout the district this year.

“It’s been a huge shift in our ability to be more nimble and spend less time tracking things down,” Bergstrom said. “It’s improved our level of accountability — we can go into the reporting functions within Laserfiche and see what invoices still need to be approved. It’s giving us the gift of time back.”

Graduating with the Cloud

The school district as a whole has also benefited from digitization and centralization of records as a result of using Laserfiche Cloud. As a public school district, MISD must comply with recordkeeping requirements and manage public records requests — both of which can be challenging with information stored on paper and disparate systems.

“The centralized repository, the increased accessibility and the benefits of the workflows really highlighted what was missing in our organization,” said Bergstrom, adding that the pandemic further accentuated the importance of ensuring remote access to information and processes. “Our ability to store records and quickly search records is going to speed up our response time, and our ability to implement workflows is going to mean that we’re more accountable and we’re more efficient in what we do.”

At the same time, Laserfiche Cloud aligns with the district’s forward-thinking technology strategy. “We chose Laserfiche Cloud as part of our long-range vision and how we want to develop our infrastructure going forward,” Bergstrom explained. “Cloud-based solutions have replaced a large amount of our on-premises server functions. Our share folders are being transitioned to the Laserfiche Cloud repository as well.”

With plans to decommission their existing servers and migrate files to a cloud-based environment, MISD will be able to reinvest server maintenance and infrastructure costs to other programs that provide more benefit to the students.

Building a Digital Future District-Wide

MISD has started to identify additional processes to optimize using Laserfiche, including key HR activities from onboarding of new staff members to retirement and resignation. Other processes include a student accident reporting workflow and budget requests. “We want to take as many pen and paper forms and requests circulating throughout the district and migrate them to Laserfiche in order to increase accountability and efficiency as much as possible,” Bergstrom said.

The district’s digital transformation is enabling a more strategic approach to operations and time management, considering how solutions can increase operational efficiency for staff members and improve the experience for students and their families.

“Laserfiche provides our staff with transparency, accountability and efficiency,” said Bergstrom. “Our district’s effort to become more technologically advanced and innovative in our processes is really an effort to help us be more thoughtful about what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. And the more efficient we can be in our processes means we can spend our time finding ways to improve the educational environment for our students.”

Request a demo to learn more about Smart Invoice Capture and other Laserfiche Cloud features designed to accelerate how business gets done. 

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Nature Coast Women’s Care & Family Medicine Accelerates Patient Processing with Laserfiche Cloud

Nature Coast Women’s Care & Family Medicine developed an automated patient intake process using Laserfiche Cloud. As a tech-forward, comprehensive family healthcare center that offers a wide range of services — including obstetrics, gynecology, preventative services, aesthetic medicine and family medicine — Nature Coast modernized its patient experience using digital forms, and shortened patient wait times by 75%. Accelerating patient processing proved to be an especially significant benefit as COVID-19 arrived in the U.S. and it became more important to lessen the amount of time patients were in the waiting room.

A Faster, Modern Patient Experience

Located in Tallahassee, Florida, Nature Coast Women’s Care & Family Medicine was started by Dr. Chukwuma M. Okoroji to advocate for patients’ health throughout all stages of their life. The practice prides itself on combining technology innovation with a proactive approach to patient care. The practice’s strategic planning led to the implementation of Laserfiche Cloud as a means to reimagine the patient intake process.

“Before using Laserfiche, our patients were instructed to come into the office early to fill out their new patient packet, and bring their license, insurance card — just all these pieces of paper,” said Tamearia Williams, practice administrator at Nature Coast Women’s Care & Family Medicine. “They’re filling out demographic information, financial information, etc. They would sit out in the lobby for about 10 to 15 minutes, sometimes longer, to fill out that paperwork.”

Once the front desk staff receives the paperwork, they check to make sure everything is complete and accurate before scanning the packet into the patient chart in the electronic medical record system. While the legacy process was similar to many other clinics’ patient intake process, the Nature Coast team saw opportunities for improvement. By digitizing the intake form, the clinic could reduce errors that may occur when patients fill the form out with a pen and paper, and ensure all necessary information is captured without having to return the form to the patient. Additionally, offering the ability to submit the form online would reduce wait times for all patients and streamline work for the practice.

The Nature Coast team worked with Business Automation Pros, a Laserfiche solution provider, to implement Laserfiche Cloud content management and realize their vision for a digital patient intake process.

“Nature Coast Women’s Care & Family Medicine is one of the few healthcare facilities in the region that has a digital patient intake process, which is a testament to the organization’s forward-thinking approach, and commitment to providing the best possible experience for patients,” said Ja’Baree Allen, president of Business Automation Pros. “We worked with the Nature Coast team to digitize the process just before COVID-19 arrived in the U.S. and stay-at-home orders began to take effect, enabling the clinic to continue caring for patients without missing a beat.”

Using Laserfiche, Nature Coast Women’s Care & Family Medicine replaced the in-person, manual process with an online form that patients can submit before even setting foot in the office.

Once the patient submits the intake packet online, the information is sent to the front desk team, who receive an email notification of the new patient. The information is pushed over to eClinicalWorks, the electronic health records system.

“Our front desk staff just needs to press a button and all the patient’s information is put into eClinicalWorks, which sets up the initial appointment,” Williams said. “There’s no wait time once they arrive. Laserfiche frees up a lot of time for staff and reduces the amount of time patients are in the office.”

The Cloud Advantage

For the team at Nature Coast, selecting a cloud-based content management system aligned well with the practice’s approach to technology. “We’re very tech driven here, so we like cloud-based everything,” Williams said. “We are in this office to treat our patients. So we need our technology to be top-of-the-line, all across the board. We need the ability to be remote, now more than ever. And no matter where we are, we need access to our files and our electronic medical records.”

The need to protect patient information also played a large role in the decision to implement Laserfiche Cloud.

“Being a healthcare organization, data security, HIPPAA and regulatory compliance plays a large role in our decision-making process,” Williams added. “Protecting patient information is just something that we know we must do on a day-to-day basis. Laserfiche offers the ability to see who can see what in what folders on a granular level, which is a big benefit. And Laserfiche records management is DoD-certified, which makes us feel very secure using the system and protecting the information that we are putting into the system.”
Female Doctor Wearing Scrubs In Hospital Corridor Using Digital Tablet

A Prescription for Digital Transformation

Since implementation, Nature Coast has received positive feedback from patients and staff about the new digital intake process. “Patients aren’t sitting out in the waiting room filling out paperwork, and there’s no longer the issue of forgotten driver’s licenses or insurance cards — they’ve already sent us the information we need,” Williams said. “Nothing is missed. They get here and check in, they’re seen, and then they’re on their way.” She estimates that they have shortened wait times for new patients by 75%.

Nature Coast Women’s Care & Family Medicine continues to build on the success of the new patient intake process. Human resources and financial are the next departments that will digitize records and processes, with plans to put the clinic’s job application online using Laserfiche Forms. As Nature Coast automates more of the clinic’s repetitive tasks, Williams also plans to take advantage of Laserfiche’s process analytics to help grow the practice.

“We’re hoping to increase our new patient volume,” Williams said. “Once we get more data, and more of the organization starts using Laserfiche, those analytics will be key.”

Find out how Laserfiche Cloud can transform how you do business. Experience Laserfiche Cloud today.

What Is Document Metadata?

Document metadata is information assigned to a document to provide additional context. This metadata describes such characteristics as what the document is, who created it and when it was created.

Applying metadata to documents can help ensure information accuracy, simplify document search and retrieval, and automate business processes using an enterprise content management system.

Let’s take a deeper dive into what metadata is and the best practices for putting it to work in your organization.

What is document metadata used for?

A document’s metadata provides context that can help you better organize content. Additionally, search tools can usually read metadata much faster than a document’s full text, saving you time when searching.

Types of document metadata

Metadata holding document information can take on a variety of forms, including:

  • Fields and templates
  • Tags
  • Links to other resources or documents
  • Version information
  • Digital signatures

Fields and templates

Fields store metadata about a document or folder. They can contain information including but not limited to words, lists, numbers, and dates.

Multi-value fields can be assigned multiple values at once. For example, someone may create a multi-value “author” field since some books may have multiple co-authors. Multi-value field groups enable someone to group together related fields. For example, you may group together “first name” and “last name” fields.

The most advanced cloud content management systems allow you to customize how fields are viewed to enhance the user experience. In addition, many systems offer the option to set fields as “required” so that users have to enter necessary metadata when creating or importing a new document.

A template is a group of document metadata fields. A template allows you to immediately apply a set of fields to a document, organized in a way that you want. Dynamic fields are useful when you want the list of options in one field of document metadata to depend on another. For example, a form on a government site may have a “county” field that depends on the “state” a user chooses.

Templates allow you to quickly apply related metadata fields to documents.

Tags

Tags can be a quick way to classify and categorize documents. Informational tags provide additional notes on a document, while security tags can restrict access to only authorized users.

Links

Flexible, reliable content management systems support document links – a type of metadata that associates a document with another. Two important document link types are:

  • Document relationships, which connect two documents
  • Link groups, which connect larger groups of documents

Document relationships are useful whenever you want to be able to keep two documents associated with each other—especially if they are stored in different parts of your digital repository. For example, you might file email messages in a “Communications” folder by date or sender, but put the email attachments in other folders depending on their content. If you connected emails with their attachments using a document relationship, you could quickly find an attachment that goes with a particular email message no matter where in the repository the two documents are stored.

A link group is a collection of related documents, each with their own metadata, location, and other information. You can create a link group from any document, add or remove documents in the group, import documents into that group, or comment on documents in the group. Similar to document relationships, you can quickly access any of the documents in the group from any other document in the group.

Versions

Versions are useful for making reversible and trackable changes to documents. If you scan or save a document as a new version, the old version of the document remains intact in its version history, eliminating the risk of accidentally losing information by overwriting. In addition, a document’s version history allows you to see and compare the changes made in previous versions and to revert to a previous version, if necessary.

Digital signatures

A digital signature is a way to indicate a document’s authenticity, confirming the signee’s identity, and providing a digital footprint that the signature itself has not been modified. For example, a manager can use a digital signature to indicate that he or she has approved a document. Later, a user can look up this signature to verify who signed it and if that signature was modified.

Document metadata best practices

Document metadata is typically accessed by two parties in an organization: administrators, and users. Administrators have control over modifying types of metadata, permissions and rules (for example, making certain fields required when a user edits a document). Users may access metadata to update a search for and modify a document, or to organize a portion of the digital repository.

When establishing a system of metadata use within an organization, the administrator should set the following best practices:

Design a document metadata plan

As an administrator, it is a good idea to plan out the use of document metadata as early as possible.

Deliberately designing your metadata allows for a more structured, streamlined and intuitive system than adding metadata elements to your documents at will, which can result in duplicate fields and a cluttered environment.

For example, if you plan your fields ahead, you can create a single “Customer” field that can be used for all templates, which reduces the total number of fields a user must contend with and simplifies search and retrieval.

In contrast, if users create fields as they go, one user might create an “Invoice Customer” field and another user might create a “Customer Report” field, creating unneeded redundancy as both fields would contain customer names.

Streamline document metadata

As a standard, you should use as few document metadata types as you can while still storing all the information you need. The more metadata elements you have in your repository, the more performance (i.e. speed of search) will be affected.

In many cases, a single metadata element can serve more than one purpose. For example, it’s not necessary to have five different “Vendor” fields just because you have five different templates. If all of those fields will contain a vendor name, you should create a single “Vendor” field and use it in all of the templates.

Use the right document metadata types

Certain kinds of information can be stored in more than one way, by more than one document metadata type. Occasionally, several metadata types will be equally suited to a task; however, in most cases, one type will be most appropriate. Consider how the information will be set and used, and choose the type most suited to the task.

Want to learn more about how digital document management can simplify business operations? Download the Document Management Software Buyer’s Guide.

What Is Document Management?

Document management is a set of practices that define how an organization manages, stores and tracks its documents.

Documents come in a wide variety of formats, from contracts and forms to images and emails. However, whatever form documents take, the principles of document management stay consistent. The common components of document management include:
  • Storage: Provide a centralized location for documents that’s easy for authorized parties to access and search.
  • Annotations: Add notes or comments to a document without needing to edit the document itself.
  • Check-in and check-out: Ensure that changes to documents by different users don’t overwrite each other, with a system that only allows for one party to make edits at a time.
  • Version control: Track and record changes in real time so that with each new version of the document, you can view the edit history and roll back to a previous version if needed.
  • Audit trails: Support your compliance initiatives by enabling authorized users to view a log of who has viewed or edited your documents, and when.
  • Security and access control: Do everything possible to ensure access to documents is limited only to authorized parties. This is especially important in highly regulated industries.
The common components of document management: storage, annotations, check-in and check-out, version control, audit trails and security and access control.

These components play an important role in securing your organization’s information. That’s why it is important to select the right tools and technologies to take full advantage of them. This is where a document management system comes in.

How is document management useful?

Organizations and teams increasingly rely on document management in order to conduct business. They are producing content at an ever-increasing rate, and today’s documents, now mostly digitized, stay around a lot longer than they did in the days of paper.

In fact, according to the Association for Intelligent Information Management (AIIM), “on average, organizations expect the volume of information coming into their organizations to grow from X to 4.5X over the next two years.” — © AIIM 2020

When unaddressed, these challenges can result in:
  • Siloed desktops
  • Cluttered network drives
  • Unorganized databases

With information scattered between individuals and teams, documents can become missing, outdated, unsecured, and in a worst-case scenario, even compromised by an unauthorized party.

For example, employees could end up working with missing or incomplete information, hindering efficiency and productivity. For heavily regulated industries, unsecured documents can be a compliance risk, and consequently a financial liability. Compromised documents can present an even more serious security risk, creating the possibility of information falling into the wrong hands.

Customer spotlight: City University of Hong Kong

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For an overview of how document management can help your organization streamline operations, watch our webinar, ECM 101: An Introduction to Document Management Features.

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Visit our document management product page for a quick overview of available document management features within Laserfiche, and why customers trust Laserfiche as their document management solution.

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To learn more about the benefits and uses of document management, along with advice and insights on how to procure a system for your organization, download The Document Management Software Buyer’s Guide.
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What are the benefits of a document management system?

A document management system is designed to make it easier, and in many ways, automatic, for you to implement standard document management practices and procedures. By implementing a document management system, any organization can get their documents in order and take advantage of the following benefits:

• Increase transparency across the enterprise: Whether reviewing contracts, processing invoices or collecting forms, it’s essential that employees can find the right documents when they need them. A document management system puts documents all in one place, ensuring that employees are working with the same set of information. This centralized repository of critical documents can serve as a “source of truth” across the organization.

• Quickly search through multiple documents: Regardless of size and format, the right document management system can make every document full-text searchable. This enables employees to find the information they need, whether it’s in a document’s title, its metadata or deep within the full text. New technology such as artificial intelligence and machine learning can further enhance a document management system’s ability to extract information from documents.

• Securely share content internally and externally: It’s critical for many organizations to share documents with customers safely and securely. The right document management system can provide specialized functionality for this purpose, storing the document in a secure location, ensuring that it is shared for only a limited time, and enhancing transparency by logging who accessed what documents and when.

• Foster employee and organizational collaboration: When employees are working on a document together, advanced document management systems enable them to collaborate on a document in real-time. This process can be a boon in removing the back-and-forth of editing through email threads and getting final versions of documents out faster.

• Keep track of major revisions: Feature-rich document management systems have built-in version control. This helps employees track document changes and ensure that the document they’re working with is the most up-to-date version that exists.

• Protect sensitive information: With a document management system, administrators can grant or deny access to information as needed. This helps your organization ensure that documents can be accessed by authorized users and no one else.

• Support compliance efforts: Most document management systems provide audit trails – logs of system activity, including document edits, login attempts and user permission changes. This functionality helps to show auditors that your organization is following regulations and that system security measures are effective.

• Access information securely from anywhere with cloud document management: With today’s cloud technologies, employees can now access document management systems from wherever they are in the world. This ease of access, combined with the security that advanced document management systems can provide, offers a secure and effective way to ensure information can be communicated between project stakeholders, no matter where they are. Additionally, many cloud systems automatically back up content, providing a foundation for quick recovery in case of a disaster or disruption to business.

There are many ways a document management system can benefit organizations and improve their operations. In addition, as the digitization and adoption of cloud document management becomes more widespread, there are increasingly quick, efficient and secure ways of delivering this functionality to organizations.

Choose a recognized document management platform

In its recent report, the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Document Management, analyst firm Gartner named Laserfiche a Leader in document management, evaluating vendors based on ability to execute and completeness of vision. Download the full report here.
What Is Document Management?

Document management is a set of practices that define how an organization manages, stores and tracks its documents.

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