Alabama Department of Mental Health Digitizes Patient Records

The Alabama Department of Mental Health provides critical services to over 200,000 patients annually at hospitals and clinics across the state. With medical archives dating back over 150 years, the agency must manage patient data in a manner that enables staff to easily and quickly find the information they need.

Implementing Agency-Wide Records Management

“The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act asked all organizations, such as ours, to demonstrate meaningful use for information and have electronic health records to keep funding with Medicare and Medicaid,” said Cindy Shrum, Director of Information Systems. “We want to maintain our Medicare or Medicaid funding, but having an electronic records management system is also just easier. We’re able to get the information when we need it.”

Upon the recommendation of the State of Alabama, the agency selected Laserfiche as its records management solution. Laserfiche’s ease of use and competitive pricing meant the department could more productively use federal funding to create an agency-wide records management system for patient records.

Improving Patient Care through Staff Efficiency

The department partnered with the state, which was already using Laserfiche, to procure the software; this partnership also shortened implementation time and improved data sharing. The department has since digitized all medical records at Bryce Hospital, the state’s oldest and largest inpatient psychiatric facility.

“We’ve got them organized so you can see the physical history, the summary, and the progress notes,” Shrum says. “What I like about Laserfiche is that in just three clicks, we’re in the electronic health record. For a clinician, especially our doctors, that time matters to them.” Benefits include:

  • • Eliminated the need to build a warehouse for patient archives, freeing up additional funds for patient services
  • • Created efficient process to automatically digitize, organize and file full charts of new and archived patient data in a shared repository accessible to clinicians and nurses across departments
  • • Integrated document management with the agency’s CoCentrix medical system eliminates repetitive data entry
  • • Increased compliance with federal laws, ensuring continued Medicaid and Medicare funding

These financial and operational improvements have ultimately enabled the Alabama Department of Mental Health to provide better quality health care and a greater volume of patient visits. “We started out small, but the potential is unlimited,” Shrum says.

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St. Louis Public School District Streamlines HR Management

As one of the largest urban school districts in Missouri, the St. Louis Public School District oversees 70 schools and 4,700 employees. For the district’s HR office, transparency and quick communication between hiring and budgeting teams is critical for efficiently allocating staffing resources to classrooms throughout the year.

Reducing the Paper Burden

The district maintains over 4.5 million documents dating back to the early 1900s. To find files, staff previously had travel to a storage facility 10 miles away. This paper-intensive search and retrieval could often delay hiring decisions that require multi-department reviews.

“If the request for a new position involved funds outside of what the district was allocated, the information could really go a million different places,” says Clarissa Buckley, Coordinator for Human Resources Information Systems. “We had almost eight levels of approval built into the previous process that made having a paper form extremely difficult and cumbersome. And we never want to reach a point where we’re asking, ‘Do we let this classroom go without a teacher because we’re waiting on this paper form to get approved?’ ”

Streamlining Staff Requisitions

The district began using Laserfiche to digitally organize its archived and active paper storage, and quickly moved on to automate new hiring, benefits enrollment and other core HR services.

Staff requisitions are now completed in hours, with all involved parties able to share information and collaborate on decisions. “Laserfiche helps everyone stay on track,” Buckley says. “We can always see and monitor where our requisitions are caught up in the process.” Instant information access also means the HR department can better service teachers and staff with timely W2s, emergency information, student transcripts and more.

Benefits include:
  • 80 percent of the district’s HR active records and historical archives have been digitized
  • HR documents are instantly accessible, where previously staff needed to wait 48 hours to retrieve a file from a storage facility
  • Staffing requisitions are completed in three hours instead of three weeks

“Our teachers are beginning to see when they bring other records to us, not only are we able to receive that information and quickly digitize it, but we’re also able to retrieve it for them if needed in the future,” Buckley says.

Why You Need to Care About DoD 5015.2

It’s said that the wonderful thing about standards is that there’s so many of them. But when it comes to records management, one in particular stands out: Department of Defense 5015.2 (DoD 5015.2).

Formally known as Design Criteria Standard for Electronic Records Management Software Applications (you can see why most people call it 5015.2), the standard is recognized not only in government, but also in the private sector, writes David Roe in CMSwire. “By being certified, records management solutions can assist corporations to achieve compliance and reduce risk by enabling them to control how and for how long enterprise content is retained. It also ensures destruction of that content when this time has elapsed.”

DoD 5015.2 Background

DoD 5015.2 came about in the early 1990s following Congress’s investigation into the Gulf War Syndrome, a debilitating illness affecting many soldiers who fought in the war, according to the Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC) Records Management Application (RMA) website. This mean DoD officials had to produce millions of records from Operation Desert Storm. “Congress concluded that the Defense Department did not do a good job of managing the records and as a result, many of the needed records had been destroyed or lost,” JITC notes.

Congress ordered the Defense Department to improve its records management capabilities, so the DoD created a task force in 1993, including representatives from several military branches and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). The task force published its report, specifying functional requirements and data elements for an electronic RMA, in 1995, and later developed into a testable and measurable design criteria standard by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA).

In 1998, NARA endorsed DoD 5015.2, which meant that federal agencies other than the DoD could adopt it as a baseline standard for records management. NARA noted, though, that this was not an exclusive endorsement—meaning it could endorse other protocols as well—and that more was required than just the standard itself. “DoD 5015.2-STD defines only a baseline set of requirements for automated records keeping,” cautioned John W. Carlin, then Archivist of the United States. “There are a number of additional questions that must be resolved in order to satisfy all the established requirements for managing federal records. Each agency must address some of these questions to fit their own environment.”

What is the purpose of DoD 5015.2?

The purpose of having DoD 5015.2 is so users have some assurance that products support records management in a standardized way as they work toward compliance with the 2012 NARA/OMB Managing Government Records Directive, OMB 12-18. That mandates that all permanent records be managed in digital format by 2019, as well as calling for management of email in electronic format by 2016.

Electronic records management software enforces organization-wide records policies and reduces the cost of regulatory compliance. Records management systems let organizations centrally, securely and electronically manage their records. This kind of software lets records managers track and store records in a variety of formats, including:
·         Imaged documents
·         Electronic documents generated by programs (e.g., Microsoft Office)
·         PDFs
·         Scanned and digital photographs
·         Audio and video files
·         Output from legacy systems
·         Physical records stored offsite

Other incentives for improving electronic records management include a 2010 requirement that U.S. agencies move to the cloud when possible, other initiatives to streamline business processes and prepare for audits, and concerns about security. Having all federal agencies supporting DoD 5015.2 makes it easier to perform such overarching tasks as populating metadata in records.

“DoD 5015.02-STD marked the beginning of the transition from paper-based systems to electronic-based systems to manage records,” writes JITC. “DoD 5015.02-STD made it possible to transfer records management responsibility from the file room to the front office, from the hands of a few, to the hands of virtually all employees.”

Now on Version 3, DoD 5015.2 includes features such as establishing requirements for managing classified records, as well as requirements to support the Freedom of Information Act, Privacy Act, and interoperability. In particular, Version 3 was endorsed by NARA as meeting the agency’s criteria for transferring permanent electronic records to it.

Vendors certify their products against DoD 5015.2 through JITC’s software testing program for the standard. After they pass, their products are put onto a list. DoD organizations can purchase only the records management products that are on this list.

Other opportunities for record management

All that said, DoD 5015.2 isn’t a panacea. It has been criticized by some as being overly complex and unwieldy (well, it is a government standard) and outdated.

“Why is it assumed that what may be required and workable for Defense will also be viable for the civilian federal government?” writes Ron Layel, a records management contractor for NASA, noting there are several examples where the 170+ functional requirements in 5015.2 are either irrelevant or over-engineered, particularly for civilian agencies.

But as we also know, the wheels of government standard development tend to grind pretty slowly, so chances are we’ll have DoD 5015.2 Version 3 with us for some time to come. And knowing a DoD-certified system has been tested against the DoD’s rigorous standards provides reassurance to records managers at thousands of organizations across a wide variety of industries.

Unless you work for the State Government of Victoria, Australia, or the United States Department of Defense or one of its components, you are not required to select a records management system that meets the specifications of either standard. However, the downside of not complying with recordkeeping requirements on organizational reputation and value highlights the importance of investing in a records management system that helps ensure an organization’s information assets are safe and well-managed.
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Texas A&M University System: Shared Services for Increased Efficiency

Texas A&M University System is one of the largest university systems in the United States. Coordinating, managing and archiving documentation is an intensive task for such an organization—yet the university system has found an efficient way by offering Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM) as a shared service through its central IT office.

One of the university system’s members, Texas A&M AgriLife, adopted Laserfiche in 2008. Texas A&M Health Science Center (TAMHSC) followed shortly after. While the individual deployments cut paper-related costs, saved filing cabinet space and secured content in repositories, the university system as a whole was not leveraging those benefits across the entire institution.

Texas A&M University System’s central IT office was determined to break down silos through implementing a shared services model, so that all schools and departments could efficiently leverage ECM knowledge and resources, and eliminate the need for individual departments or schools to purchase their own software.
Texas A&M Health Science Center adopted Laserfiche ECM in 2008 to streamline contract management.

Implementing a Shared Service

While individual schools and departments within Texas A&M University System had implemented Laserfiche for various reasons (AgriLife sought secure storage for records after enduring a flood, fire, collapsed roof and hurricane; TAMHSC wanted to combat costly contract management inefficiencies and eliminate file cabinets), users experienced similar benefits: increased efficiency and accuracy, improved records management, reduced costs and business continuity.

Texas A&M University System’s procurement office provides shared services so that schools and departments can share documents, file structures and workflows, building on each other’s efforts. Shared services also consolidate IT functions from several system members to one location, reducing costs and time spent on maintenance.

To that end, in 2010 a committee selected Laserfiche as the preferred vendor for a new shared ECM system to avoid hardware and software purchases at the department level, reduce costs by eliminating redundant systems and make it easier to share data, file structures and workflows between schools and departments.

“By providing a feature-rich implementation at an affordable price point, Texas A&M is able to make available economies of scale and document sharing that individual departments could not approach by themselves,” explains Judith Lewis, Senior IT Manager at Texas A&M. “This is value delivery at its best.”

In addition to accomplishing the original goals, the shared system provides:
  • Consistent framework to support compliance
  • Risk mitigation through disaster recovery capabilities
  • Ability for different departments and system members to leverage the cumulative accomplishments of their colleagues
  • Internal and remote access to electronic documents
  • Reduced printing and physical paperwork, minimizing requirements for physical file space

Two other campus-wide communities in addition to central IT are intimately involved with the Laserfiche shared services offering: a steering committee of senior management representatives who evaluate and promote best practices and appropriate conventions for Laserfiche; and a user community of practice that provides input and training for the end-user community.

Other customers of Laserfiche shared services include the Texas A&M University Office of the President, Prairie View A&M University and Texas A&M University – Kingsville.

Laserfiche automatically classifies reports and their contents, facilitating easy file management and the ability to search through keywords to retrieve information. Account processing and purchase processing are faster and records management is more efficient and secure, allowing Texas A&M to adhere more closely to state compliance requirements and institutional procedures.

“In addition to the Laserfiche talent, our IT department brings a broad skill base to support a shared services offering,” Lewis adds. “From application development and administration, risk and policy assessment and project management to networking and infrastructure services, our IT department is able to provide the level of support that an enterprise shared service demands.”

Interested in learning more about how higher education institutions use a single ECM system to manage information across multiple administrative departments? Click here to download a free strategy paper from the Center for Digital Education, “Adopting Enterprise Content Management with Shared Services.” 

HR Automation at Texas A&M’s College of Engineering

Texas A&M University’s College of Engineering is consistently ranked among the nation’s best public programs. Amid a constantly changing marketplace, the college remains rooted in its mission to provide the world with top engineering graduates.

Texas A&M University’s College of Engineering’s “25 by 25” initiative prompted the school to examine many of its processes so that it could handle an influx of students.

The school has more than 15,000 enrolled students and is currently working on an initiative deemed “25 by 25,” in which it aims to increase enrollment to 25,000 students by the year 2025.

“Our dean looked at the current economic and employment conditions and determined that we must grow our enrollment numbers to meet the large demand for engineering graduates,” explains Ed Pierson, the college’s CIO. “The goal is to increase accessibility to engineering education at all levels and deliver that education in a cost-effective manner. Educational institutions’ budgets are always tight, so doubling our staff along with the enrollment growth wasn’t an option.”

This meant that the school needed to hire additional staff to handle the growth, but also needed to ensure efficient business processes such as those surrounding employee onboarding were in place to keep costs down. To do so, the school deployed Laserfiche ECM to reengineer some longstanding HR processes, encourage new ways of thinking and increase efficiency.
Texas A&M University’s College of Engineering’s “25 by 25” initiative prompted the school to examine many of its processes so that it could handle an influx of students.

On Board With 25 by 25

Texas A&M University System offers Laserfiche ECM as a shared service through its centralized IT office, so the College of Engineering implemented it to reengineer paper-driven processes such as employee onboarding.

Onboarding new employees used to require an in-person meeting between the potential employee and a business administrator, the completion of paper documents and physical routing of those documents to relevant departments. Christopher Huff, Network Systems Administrator for the college, and the IT team, department representatives, and the HR and payroll offices gathered to reengineer the process with Laserfiche, which pushed everyone involved to acknowledge all the parts of onboarding that they found cumbersome, that were taking too long, or that were unnecessary.
Laserfiche Forms eliminates the need for an in-person meeting during the onboarding process.

The HR department has automated employee onboarding with Laserfiche Forms and Laserfiche Workflow, eliminating the need for an in-person meeting, paper documents and physical routing. This has shortened the amount of time the process takes by about 45 minutes per employee and enables staff to easily search and retrieve employee records.

HR automation has additional implications beyond onboarding, as the Department of Public Safety (DPS) occasionally audits the college to make sure it keeps proper documentation of criminal background checks.

“We create shortcuts to the requested documents and place them in a special folder that the DPS has access to,” Huff says. “We don’t want to show the auditors all confidential information about employees, which is why we use folders with shortcuts. After the audit is concluded, we simply delete the shortcuts folder. The original documents are never actually touched.”
Laserfiche Workflow automatically files employee records, making it easier to retrieve them during audits.

The school also integrated Laserfiche Forms with a database of the college’s departments, which enables departments to automate and create forms for a variety of other processes ranging from course approvals to leave requests.

Changing Mindsets and Growing ROI

The Texas A&M University’s College of Engineering demonstrates how a longstanding institution can leverage Laserfiche ECM to reengineer processes and create a culture of efficiency. In collaboration with business units, Huff and the IT team help identify inefficiencies and reimagine how a process could work better and an on-campus Laserfiche user group meets frequently to share and showcase solution designs.

IT has worked with select employees, deemed “superstars,” to reengineer their own processes with IT guidance and oversight.

Huff has also taken note of significant measurable results. “IT is usually seen as a spender of money, but dollars invested in information technology can have a positive return on investment,” Huff says. “The reengineered onboarding process saved about 45 minutes per new employee. Because we’ve hired over 3,400 employees in a little under a year, we equate this time savings to be about 2,600 working hours, or slightly over $100,000 in soft savings. This allows our employees to invest the time saved into other job duties.”

eBook: Document Management Software: The Buyer’s Handbook

An Easy-to-Follow Guide to Evaluating Document Management Solutions

Whether your organization is evaluating document management software for the first time or looking to replace a legacy system, this buyer’s handbook will provide you with everything you need to start your research.

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Download your free copy today!

Inside this guide, you’ll find:

  • An Introduction to Document Management Solutions
  • A Needs Assessment for Your Organization
  • A Guide to Creating Your Own Cost-Benefit Analysis
  • An Introduction to Mapping Your Current Processes

Reviewing available electronic document management software isn’t about finding the one with the best features and offerings; it’s about finding the solution that is the most applicable to your organization’s current and future needs.

In addition to the guide, you’ll also receive BONUS worksheets:

  • Understand Your Organization’s Records and Risk Management Factors
  • Evaluate the Functionality of Different Document Management Software

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eBook: The Ultimate Guide to Electronic Records Management

Everything You Need to Know to Make the Case for Electronic Records Management

When it comes to protecting your organization from risk, records managers are on the front lines. This free eBook outlines everything you need to know to handle an unexpected audit, improve ongoing compliance and reduce time-consuming tasks around records storage and retention.

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Inside this electronic records management guide, you’ll get:

  • 4 essential questions that every records manager should ask when deciding which records to keep.
  • Assessment worksheets for evaluating the status of your existing records management program—and prioritizing improvements.
  • 5 steps to implementing electronic records management from an experienced records manager.

Get your FREE copy by filling out the form!

D.L. Evans Automates Compliance and Records Management

SITUATION

• Needed an electronic document repository to store scanned documents
• Paper-driven operations were becoming overly expensive and time-intensive to manage

RESULTS

• Estimated $1 million in annual savings
• Enhanced employee experience
• Foundation for an optimized omnichannel experience for customers

D.L. Evans Bank is a century-old organization with over $3.2 billion in assets and dozens of branches across Idaho and Utah. As a true community bank, D.L. Evans offers a variety of personal, business and investment services while maintaining a simple mission: Help people.

To remain responsive to customer needs while addressing the banking industry’s ever-changing compliance requirements, D.L. Evans has built a strong digital ecosystem that includes Laserfiche as a key component. Laserfiche acts as the bank’s information backbone and main processing system, integrating with its core applications to support growth and scale. 

“We’re a $3.5 billion-in-assets institution today, up from $175 million around 25 years ago — a big part of that has been possible because of Laserfiche,” said Gerardo Munoz, D.L. Evans’ SVP IT director.

“Over time, our use of Laserfiche evolved from document management to a business-critical system,” said Munoz. “Every process can be refined and automated, and Laserfiche was able to help with that.”

As a part of this evolution, the bank leverages Laserfiche’s integration tools to connect Laserfiche to other core systems including its eSignature application, core banking software, CRM and loan origination program. Munoz and his team even use Laserfiche Connector as an integration tool to bridge applications for operations that do not use Laserfiche at all.

“Our Laserfiche repository has over 80 million documents in it, so it’s as critical to us as our core banking system,” Munoz said. “Laserfiche is the second-most critical application that we use in our institution.”

Beyond the time and cost efficiency gains, D.L. Evans counts Laserfiche as a trusted system due to its robust records management capabilities. As a financial institution, the can’t afford to make mistakes with its record management procedures, which are heavily regulated by FDIC rules.

Laserfiche has helped minimize FDIC violations by standardizing how records are kept and updated; for example, retention rules notify compliance officers when a policy document needs to be updated and versioning enables policy reviewers to know if they are working with the most up to date copy of a document.

Auditing has also been streamlined. Whenever the FDIC requests a records audit, D.L. Evans’ team is able to promptly retrieve and present the electronic documents and files in question. “Laserfiche has brought audit time down from four weeks to two,” explains Munoz. “This is actually a bigger improvement than it sounds because as we’ve grown, we now have twice as many loans to audit.”

Transforming the Employee Experience

In addition to making information easier to access, Laserfiche has enhanced the employee experience by standardizing and automating review and approval. Furthermore, integrations eliminate much of the manual data entry and application switching that waste employee time and cognitive energy.

“Just about every process needs some level of automation,” said Munoz. “The fact that automation can standardize procedures and processes is a major reason to do it. Using Laserfiche to do that has helped us save time and money, as well as prevent a lot of mistakes.”

The bank recently reimagined the loan process, starting with vehicular loans, using Laserfiche. The integration between Laserfiche and Meridian — the bank’s loan origination program — allows many of the previously manual tasks associated with loans to be entirely managed through a Laserfiche form and automated business process. 

A Laserfiche form reads information directly from the loan application program and creates the loan packet, routes it through approvals and files everything in a centralized location.

This process also leverages a Laserfiche-DocuSign integration, enabling customers to submit signed documents that are automatically filed in the correct folder in Laserfiche, eliminating that task for loan officers.

“Rather than hire more loan processors, we are trying to automate the process so we can be more proactive,” Munoz said. “It also gives our loan officers better visibility and trackability into all activities.”

Similar automations are used to create new accounts, where information gathering and routing is managed by Laserfiche. As a result, bank employees can spend more time on the activities that require a human touch, such as customer service.

Another process that sounds deceptively quick and easy, but in reality can require multiple manual steps, is that of replacing a lost or stolen credit card. To accelerate these activities, the bank built a solution on an integration between Laserfiche and its CRM, 360 View. This enables representatives to easily create a service ticket in the CRM to start the replacement process for a customer. When a customer reports a lost or stolen credit card, a representative uses Laserfiche to automatically populate the service ticket with the customer’s information and then route the ticket to the appropriate reviewers and approvers. The improvement has reduced processing time by 66% — from six weeks to two weeks.

Laserfiche has also played an important role in mergers, as the bank is able to easily bring documents and data into their systems from acquired organizations. In one merger, Munoz explained, the bank avoided a $50,000 cost and monthslong wait to have a professional services firm convert and import documents.

“It took me two hours to write a workflow and the documents were converted in a week,” he said.

A True Community Bank

While most of the bank’s Laserfiche initiatives are considered back-office solutions, D.L. Evans customers directly benefit from the increased efficiency. “Laserfiche helps us be more productive and provide faster responses to our customers,” Munoz said.

The customer experience continues to be a guiding light for the D.L. Evans team, which was all-hands-on-deck during the COVID-19 pandemic. The bank’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan process was developed over a weekend, and staff — including the entire executive team — were trained on how to process PPP loans in a matter of hours.

“We even had our CEO processing PPP loans,” Munoz said. “Everything worked seamlessly and was processed through the proper channels. Afterward, all the documentation was there, and customers were satisfied.”

Thanks to the IT team’s quick response with Laserfiche and the entire staff’s commitment, D.L. Evans was the largest PPP provider in the state of Idaho.

Today, the bank provides other forms of community service, including its scholarship program. Students can submit a Laserfiche form for D.L. Evans’s Education Pays program — a drawing which rewards high-performing students with laptops — or its Scholarship Program, which awards thousands of dollars each year to high school seniors to attend any accredited college, university or trade school in the U.S.

Looking to the future, D.L. Evans is committed to creating a more cohesive, omnichannel experience for its customers. Laserfiche initiatives on the horizon include creating a self-service customer portal of Laserfiche Forms, enabling quicker and easier, 24/7 access to various services.

“All things considered, Laserfiche saves us about $1 million every year since we’ve implemented it,” says Munoz. “Laserfiche has never been one of those products that just sits on the shelf and doesn’t get used.”

Click here to learn how your financial firm can automate records management and compliance.

How College of the Desert Modernized Student Forms to Reduce Application Processing Time by 40%

Enhancing Student Success by Digitizing Enrollment and Financial Aid Forms

College of the Desert in Palm Desert is one of the 112 institutions in the community college system of California. With an enrollment of 13,000 students, as many as 20,000 to 30,000 documents are processed annually at the college. Using a paper-based application and filing system, the college was servicing a high volume of commuter students with inconvenient and inconsistent enrollment processes.

“With paper forms, students had to travel up to three hours to submit documents or complete their student files,” says Dr. Annebelle Nery, Executive Dean, Enrollment Services. “Student lines at the counter were very long. Once students got to the front of the line, they were extremely frustrated because we’d either lost their documents or the documents were stuck in processing—but where exactly, we weren’t sure.

Information requests were funneled through as many as five departments in order to compile a complete and accurate student file. Records systems were siloed from the college’s student information system (SIS), and staff members had to search multiple locations to find a complete student file.

Standardizing Records Access Across Campus

To improve operational efficiency, the college  replaced 20 different paper forms with Laserfiche electronic forms that are instantly accessible through a student’s online portal.

Students can now view, complete, sign and submit degree applications, change of major requests and other student forms all from one online portal. Once a form is submitted, Laserfiche automatically:
  • Routes it to required employees and departments for processing.
  • Emails status updates to the student throughout the review process.
  • Attaches documents to the corresponding student file in the SIS.
Associating metadata fields with electronic forms track the exact status of each application at every step of records processing.

Today, every student form at College of the Desert is received electronically through Laserfiche. The college also automated more than 50 business processes, including:
  • Petitions
  • Concurrent enrollment
  • Enrollment verification
  • Name change
  • Request to add a class
  • Information releases

All departments now access and use a centrally managed document management system, reducing overall costs for maintenance and IT support. Staff members aren’t just sharing information more efficiently with students—they’re collaborating across departments to reduce excessive paper volume and needless filing efforts.

See additional screenshots of the college’s campus-wide e-forms and approval workflow configurations. 

Improving Student Satisfaction and Accreditation with Document Management Software

With Laserfiche, the admissions and records and financial services departments now require 40% less time to process applications and petitions. Inquiries from students and lines at the service counters have decreased significantly now that students receive email notifications about their applications.

“The frustrated phone calls from students are down and now we’re getting calls from other departments that want to use Laserfiche,” says Dr. Nery.

These improvements have not gone unnoticed:
  • The college met accreditation standards by being able to offer its main campus services to extension centers and online students.
  • Student satisfaction levels have risen sharply and even the Board of Trustees has complimented the college on its Laserfiche initiative.
  • Recently, the college received the Models of Efficiency Award from University Business Magazine, which recognizes institutions with business savvy and technological expertise.

Looking to digitize student records and paperwork processing at your institution? Schedule your free demo of Laserfiche Forms for colleges and universities. 

Community Action Partnership’s Automated Case Management for Low-Income Energy Assistance

Automating Case Management Paperwork Processing

Each winter, thousands of residents in Minnesota’s Ramsey and Washington Counties struggle to access basic heating and utilities. When a household finds itself in need, it turns to the Community Action Partnership of Ramsey and Washington Counties, which runs one of the state’s largest low-income home energy assistance program.

“We receive thousands of calls from clients anxious to know if we can help,” says Catherine Fair, Director of Energy Assistance Programs. “These kinds of calls were hard for our staff to field since we had over 25,000 active applications stored in filing cabinets. We knew that automating our application approval process would make us more efficient and accelerate our ability to help households in need.”

To automate the case management process, the agency began scanning applications and related documentation into a Laserfiche document repository connected to automated document filing, routing and approval workflows.

Case workers can now quickly determine grant amounts and deliver assistance faster:
  • Workflows automatically create case folders for new scanned applications, including eligibility worksheets and case note logs, and route them to case workers for review.
  • Urgent cases can be automatically sent to an expedited processing queue.
  • Staff members can re-direct files to other groups for review and action. If a case worker chooses “yes” under Furnace Problem metadata field, Laserfiche will auto-route the file to the furnace repair group for attention.

“We have significantly improved crisis response time,” says Fair. “Urgent calls for assistance are much more productive. We can find a client’s application immediately by looking in Laserfiche and can then let the client know exactly what he needs to do to complete his application.”

Standardizing Record Archival, Auditing and Security

In addition to expediting service delivery for low-income residents, the new case management process also streamlined the program’s twice-yearly audits. By law, the agency is required to keep archived case files for three years.

Fair explains, “Files are randomly selected by the auditors, and it was a daunting task to find the ones they requested among 25,000 others!”

Being able to store all records in TIFF format was another reason the agency choose document management software. The open file format ensures that the files stored in Laserfiche will still be supported in 25, 50 or even 100 years.

“Vendor lock-in is a big concern for the IT department. If you choose a file format that’s controlled by a single vendor, you invite a lot of unnecessary risk from both an IT and an information governance perspective.”

Laserfiche’s TIFF archival format means that the agency can continually adopt advances in hardware, software and communication technologies without limiting access to their records.

Built-in Windows authentication and named-user access to the repository also enabled the agency to better protect sensitive client information, like social security numbers.

“Laserfiche protects sensitive information while making our business processes more efficient, “ says Fair. “It has helped us tremendously and we hope that other non-profit agencies that deliver federal programs can learn from our success!”

Looking to digitize the case management process at your agency? Get a free demo of Laserfiche software for case management today.