Document & Records Management Archives | Page 11 of 25

The Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District Digitizes to Enhance Records Management and Remote Collaboration Capabilities

The Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District (MSD) provides comprehensive wastewater and stormwater management services to over 1.3 million people in St. Louis and surrounding areas. In recent years, the organization transformed its document management processes and file sharing, transitioning to Laserfiche Cloud. Using solutions such as Laserfiche Direct Share, MSD modernized the internal and external user experience while increasing efficiency and supporting information governance. As a result of investing in a robust digital infrastructure, MSD also adapted quickly to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, equipping employees with tools to work remotely.

“The ease of adoption has been accelerated because Laserfiche is so easy to use,” said John Daly, information governance manager at MSD. “You don’t have to be a records management information governance expert to succeed with it.”

Testing the Waters for a Digital Future

Since 1954, MSD’s mission has been to protect the public’s health, safety and water environment by responsibly providing wastewater and stormwater management. While its mission hasn’t changed, MSD has identified opportunities for improving operations, empowering its employees and delivering consistent, high-quality customer service.

As local governments, agencies and special districts grow in size and services, the ability to share information and collaborate while also maintaining information governance becomes increasingly important. MSD implemented Laserfiche Cloud to enhance information sharing both internally and externally, while facilitating regulatory compliance, safeguarding electronic records and simplifying records management with Laserfiche’s records management capabilities. Along with automatic updates and easy scalability, Laserfiche Cloud has streamlined document search and retrieval, allowing staff to perform more efficiently and improve the quality of information delivered to stakeholders.

“The biggest impact of MSD’s Laserfiche Cloud initiative has been on employee productivity,” said Daly. “The ability for staff in different departments to access documents organization-wide has saved countless hours previously spent on manually requesting and sharing files.”

As part of this digital transformation initiative, staff are able to preserve critical information dating back decades — in addition to streamlining document management, this increases accessibility of important content while enabling oversight across the organization.

The operational benefits adopting a Laserfiche Cloud system were especially clear during the COVID-19 pandemic, helping staff transition to working remotely and contributing to business resiliency during the major disruption. MSD was able to continue meeting customer needs and keep staff safe at the same time. “With a high level of agility, flexibility and scalability, we couldn’t be happier with Laserfiche Cloud and its role in our organization as a core business application,” added Daly.

Interoperability is also key to MSD’s Laserfiche Cloud system, which includes custom-built integrations with Outlook and DocuSign that facilitate approval processes and improve the user experience. Designed and implemented in partnership with Accelerated Information Systems, MSD’s Laserfiche solution provider, MSD staff can drag-and-drop email directly from Outlook into the Laserfiche repository. All relevant record retention schedules are automatically applied to these uploaded emails, and attachments appear in the file’s metadata just as they would within Outlook.

“It has been extraordinary working with John Daly and the MSD team on their digital transformation,” said Zaheer Master, president at Accelerated Information Systems. “Going from a small, self-hosted Laserfiche implementation to the limitless capabilities of Laserfiche Cloud enabled MSD to better serve their constituents, even while working remotely during COVID-19. As a premier Laserfiche Cloud provider, Accelerated is excited to work with John and MSD to continue to expand their Laserfiche solution.”

“Laserfiche has really opened our eyes to new possibilities we had not even considered before,” said Daly. “We have really noticed an improvement in our overall operations since developing these integrations to automating document management processes.”

A Transparent Pipeline of Content

In addition to addressing the needs of staff members, MSD reimagined the way staff could share documents with people outside of the organization. Rather than rely on traditional methods of information sharing that lacked trackability such as email, USB drives or discs, MSD deployed Laserfiche Direct Share, which allows users to share content from their Laserfiche repository with external customers or community members in an audited and tracked manner.

“Direct Share has been one of the most useful solutions for us at MSD,” said Daly. “For the first time in the history of our organization, we are able to send documents securely and safely, which is a huge game changer.”

MSD has found Direct Share particularly useful for the legal department, which frequently sends and receives large files, and benefits from the visibility and security measures Direct Share provides. MSD attorneys can password-protect links, set the amount of time that recipients can access the document, and manage and track sharing and downloading activities

“I don’t have attorneys calling me anymore, saying, ‘How can I get these case files to someone?’” Daly said. “My phone doesn’t ring as much because now they are using Direct Share to their benefit.”

A Clear Path for Digital Transformation

Using Laserfiche Cloud, MSD continues to modernize processes enterprise-wide to reimagine how employees, vendors and citizens interact with the organization. As part of its commitment to transparency, the district created a Laserfiche-powered public portal on its new website, which gives citizens frictionless access to public documents such as those related to environmental compliance, annual reports, budgets, diversity and more.

Additionally, MSD is working to deploy a number of Laserfiche electronic forms to digitally manage activities such as travel reimbursement, company vehicle requests, badge requests, and business card requests, with more in the works. By digitizing information, forms and processes, MSD is uncovering greater efficiencies while improving the experience for employees and citizens alike.

“For me it’s all about the customer — whether internal or external,” Daly said. “Every day we have the opportunity to make someone’s day better and meeting people’s needs. Every day I’m working, I’m asking what paper-based processes we currently have that could become digital. When customers and employees find information in seconds, rather than minutes, that’s providing us with real organizational value.”

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

Royal London FSI (Insurance)

In its efforts to move to a digital-first environment, find out how Royal London automated, optimized and transformed their organization

Cabarrus County, North Carolina, Innovates with Chatbots and Laserfiche to Deliver on ERAP Funding

To assist Americans across the country who face economic uncertainty, rental debt and housing insecurity as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. federal government launched the Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP) to provide financial assistance for housing expenses and housing stability services. Along with local governments across the country, Cabarrus County, North Carolina, took on the responsibility of developing an accessible way to determine people’s eligibility and get the funds out as soon as possible.

“The IT team decided that this was going to be the most important thing we were doing,” said Todd Shanley, CIO at Cabarrus County.

The county’s IT team took quick action to put the pieces together, creating an online Laserfiche form that would capture applicants’ information and route it to the relevant departments and systems. The form was integrated with a chatbot to walk people through important eligibility requirements, providing an intuitive experience for what could have been a complex process for applicants.

The solution enabled the county to collect and process hundreds of applications, quickly getting financial relief to people who needed it. The chatbot integration also helped to immediately redirect people who were not eligible, ultimately saving time for county employees who would have had to spend time reviewing hundreds of ineligible applications.

An Intuitive Solution for Capturing Information

Serving more than 200,000 residents over 360 square miles, Cabarrus County has been recognized for its visionary leadership and good stewardship. For nearly a decade, the county has been named a Top Digital County by the Center for Digital Government.

“One of our county priorities is healthy and safe communities; another is sustainable development,” said Debbie Brannan, area manager of technology and innovation at Cabarrus County. As part of these commitments, county employees took immediate action after hearing about ERAP would assist household unable to pay rent or utilities due to COVID-19-related challenges.

“Being in the county manager’s office, I heard about the money coming — $6.5 million,” said Brannan. “We needed to find the citizens who needed that money and get it distributed quickly.”

Beyond this urgent task, Brannan noted that the county would need to document as much as possible in order to ensure distribution was fair, and that the county would meet the federal government’s rules and requirements. “My vision was that there would be an online application, and we’d be able to vet the application as much as possible,” she added. “We also wanted to get relevant information over to our social workers. We have Northwoods [case management software] integrated with Laserfiche, so we also wanted to get that information over, and then get it to finance and into our ERP so we could pay people.”

Leveraging Laserfiche Forms and business process automation, the county pulled together an electronic form to be hosted online, and a workflow to route information to the correct departments.

“Mark [McIntyre, our senior software developer] pulled together a form over the weekend, and by Monday morning, he had it done and built,” Shanley explained. “We tweaked it from there; it was fast.”

In addition to building the Laserfiche form that residents could access online, the county integrated the form with a chatbot, with the goal of guiding applicants through specific eligibility requirements and providing immediate answers so that people did not have to wait just to find out whether they were eligible for ERAP assistance.

“The set of criteria from the government was very lengthy, and some of it was very restrictive,” Shanley explained, adding that people applying for funding or services may not want to read through pages and pages of fine print in order to identify the eligibility requirements. “We provided that criteria upfront through the chatbot, so that people would get immediate feedback — they could respond to these questions and realize they were or were not qualified without having to wait long after they submitted all of their information.”

Going Beyond Expectations

While the chatbot provided a more intuitive way for people to apply for funding, it also redirected would-be applicants who were not eligible for ERAP assistance. This process reclaimed desperately needed time for county government employees, who could focus on providing other critical services during the pandemic. The county has processed more than 500 emergency rental applications in just two months.

“We don’t want people to have to wait two weeks to find out that they’re not eligible,” Shanley said. “We wanted to provide that TurboTax-style environment, which provides customers the information they need in a timely manner.”

The Cabarrus County team also took care to ensure that the form was mobile accessible, to make it usable by as many people as possible. “Accessibility is an issue for some people, but a very large percentage of our population has a smartphone,” Brannan explained. “Even if they don’t have a computer, they can use a smartphone, and they can even upload documents if they need to from their phones or take photos with their phone and upload them.”

“That was probably one of the biggest benefits to this process,” Shanley added. “All of this paperwork that the federal government is requiring — people have that stuff stored in so many different places. Rather than having to have a scanner or having to take everything to a place where they have a scanner, you can just take a picture of it and upload it from your phone.”

Smiling mature middle aged business woman using laptop working on computer sitting at desk. Happy old businesswoman hr holding cv interviewing distance applicant, senior seeker searching job online.

The Future of Citizen Services

Cabarrus County has been using solutions that integrate chatbots and Laserfiche in order to help people use other digital services, including a personal status request (PSR) form for county employees, and a quarterly inspections process for the sheriff’s department. These solutions have enhanced users’ experience by auto-populating data from previous form submissions, cutting down time that people have to spend filling out forms.

“Cabarrus County continues to be a shining example of how enterprise adoption of a technology has exponential benefits to the organization,” said Traci Small, EVP of sales and marketing at MCCi, Cabarrus County’s Laserfiche solution provider. “The county’s deep knowledge of Laserfiche and desire to serve is second-to-none. We have even used this same chatbot technology at MCCi after we saw how well it worked at Cabarrus. We learn just as much from our customers as they do from us. Cabarrus County citizens have a top-notch team as do we in a client partner.”

“The importance of experience — it’s going to change how governments interact with their customers every day,” Shanley said. “People don’t want to submit information and then have to wait. That makes call volumes go up, and there are unintended consequences for governments. If you’re presenting people with overly complicated forms, it could cause someone who really needs help to just give up on the process.”

To date, the county has paid out over $330,000 in ERAP funding to eligible people.

“Without an established workflow application like Laserfiche in place, we would have been in trouble,” Shanley added. “We would have spent months trying to make this work.”

The county continues to digitally transform processes across the organization, with a focus on supporting more accessible, more transparent and more intuitive public services.

“My vision for Laserfiche Forms and our chatbots to present more of a conversation with our employees and citizens,” said Brannan. “We get feedback that people want to come and talk — they don’t want to fill out a form. But if we make our forms conversational, we make them more accessible and easier to understand.”

“We are trying to continue our growth and the growth of opportunities, while providing transparent and accountable government,” Brannan said. “Laserfiche does a good job of helping us do that.”

Read the Center for Digital Government report: “The Way Forward: Insights for Government Leaders on Modernizing Service Delivery” for more on how governments are meeting rapidly changing citizen needs using technology.

eBook: Business Continuity Playbook for Higher Education

The disruption scale and speed of COVID-19 uncovered the gaps in higher education’s business continuity plans. As post-COVID recovery begins, forward-looking colleges and universities are revisiting their approach to strategically position themselves in a competitive future.

What’s inside the guide?

A comprehensive business continuity framework with key steps from risk assessment to business impact analysis, disaster response plan to crisis response strategies and more.
Discover tried and tested tools, including enterprise content management and cloud technology, to keep your institution focused on what matters most – its students, faculty, and staff.
Strategies to ensure your institution can sustain critical functions and rebuild operations key for institutional growth and student success.
Case studies to gain actionable insights from higher education institutions with effective crisis response measures.

Click here to get the eBook.

Leesburg, Virginia Supports Community and Local Businesses During the COVID-19 Pandemic with Laserfiche Cloud

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted business activities throughout the U.S., creating a need for local governments to better serve and support their communities. Prior to the onset of the pandemic, the IT department for Leesburg, the largest town in Virginia, had recently migrated its enterprise content management (ECM) to Laserfiche Cloud. The cloud-based system quickly became an invaluable asset to Leesburg government staff during stay-at-home mandates, especially when they were tasked with distributing relief funds.

With as many as 200 employees working remotely at a time, Laserfiche Cloud expanded the town’s digital capabilities beyond the limitations of on-premises servers. This flexible and scalable environment has enabled Leesburg to achieve business continuity while supporting both staff and the community as remote work becomes the norm.

“Laserfiche has helped us to handle data collection digitally and be elastic while responding to major changes within our IT infrastructure as staff work from home,” said Jakub Jedrzejczak, Director of IT at Leesburg. “I’m so impressed by Laserfiche Cloud and its automated features and scalability.”

Automating processes in Laserfiche Cloud has helped Leesburg be more agile during the pandemic, while positioning the town for long-term success. Using Laserfiche’s electronic forms and business process automation capabilities, Leesburg reduced manual tasks under tight schedules and continues to improve the quality of service provided to the community. This has streamlined response times to citizens, businesses and other organizations while enhancing the overall digital experience and maintaining fairness and transparency

Solutions to Support Local Businesses, Non-Profits and Town Staff

“When COVID-19 first hit, we had just completed our Laserfiche Cloud migration,” Jedrzejczak said. “Access to documents was key for us — and we immediately had to streamline a lot of internal processes and external services that we offer to support to our community.”

Like many other localities, Leesburg needed a solution to process $6 million in funding under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act to support eligible businesses and nonprofit organizations.

“Distribution of relief packages is very time sensitive,” Jedrzejczak said. “Businesses and nonprofits can’t afford to wait months for government IT to develop an effective solution, or for us to implement a new system. The faster we can process data, the faster we can provide support to our community.”

Though the town already maintained detailed information on local businesses and nonprofit organizations, the primary challenge for the Leesburg IT department was authenticating existing data and determining eligibility. Laserfiche Cloud was implemented to streamline the authentication and cross-referencing processes based on existing data on thousands of local businesses and nonprofit organizations in the finance department database. Using this data, a dedicated form was set up with required fields relating to license information, employer identification number (EIN) and other conditions. If a business or nonprofit did not meet specific conditions — such as the revenue threshold or funding information — a pop-up notification would appear to indicate that the applicant is ineligible for CARES Act funding. Applications were sorted into separate folders within the Laserfiche repository based on whether they were accepted or not, which were concurrently monitored by town staff to ensure accuracy.

The metadata from the forms submissions helped the Leesburg team determine that over 330 businesses and over 20 nonprofits were eligible for funding. Not having to sort through data manually streamlined this process, reclaiming time for staff members to focus on citizen services at a time when the town needed them most.

The form helped with the quality of CARES Act submissions as well. Applications completed using the Laserfiche online form could not be submitted with incomplete or incorrect information, meaning that staff members did not have to spend time manually verifying missing details, business licenses and misspelled organization names.

“The more that we can guide residents with requests, the faster we can respond to their needs — often in minutes rather than days if the right information in the right format is submitted,” said Jedrzejczak.

The Digital Transformation Domino Effect

Major disruptions such as COVID-19 highlight the need for governments to digitize and standardize public services. At the same time, it is also increasingly important for governments to respond to disruptions quickly, using flexible and scalable solutions that enable them to keep information secure. For these reasons, Leesburg is relying on the cloud for core technology systems including ERP, asset management and ECM.

“I can eliminate the need for maintenance, and have a scalable system that has a predictable cost, and I always inherit functionality — that is why we choose Laserfiche Cloud,” Jedrzejczak said. “I don’t have to worry about uptime. I don’t have to worry about the security. I know these two components are being addressed by the Laserfiche Cloud platform. I can focus on the development of the systems and focusing on user needs versus the back end maintenance.”

While town staff work with Laserfiche Solution Provider MCCi for complex projects, Leesburg is preemptively developing solutions in-house, including the electronic forms and digital processes related to the CARES Act. Laserfiche has empowered IT department staff to create a digital town hall where innovative solutions modernize citizen services. This has enabled staff to train new users on the platform based on specific needs and connect with the Laserfiche community to share best practices on ways to streamline business processes to increase efficiencies.

Today, most of the municipality’s departments are using Laserfiche. “We support internal processes, such as in our finance department, as well as external processes,” Jedrzejczak said. “Our town council uses Laserfiche to review documents; our utilities department uses it to gather information from residents, and we process a lot of forms and approvals through Laserfiche.”

Jedrzejczak added that most local governments today experience information overload — too many emails, and too much data to process.

“Information overload is a problem, but Laserfiche helps us with it. We can’t rely on in-person or paper-based communication to gather and process information anymore,” said Jedrzejczak. “There is so much that needs to be digitized — we just can’t have paper driving processes outside the office.”

The town has been in the process of creating a digital town hall to increase access to services that will serve residents long after the pandemic. Leesburg is also working on integrations between Laserfiche and other core systems that will enable further automation and enhanced collaboration across the organization.

Looking ahead, Leesburg is planning to continue building on the success of the COVID-19 grant application process by reimagining the scope of government services to support members of the community during COVID-19 and beyond.

Want to gain more insights into modernizing service delivery? Read the Center for Digital Government report: “The Way Forward: Insights for Government Leaders on Modernizing Service Delivery” to understand why technology plays a critical role in generating cost savings, continuing operations and meeting growing constituent demands.

Protected: What Is Document Management?

Laserfiche-Driven Digital Transformation Enables Township of King to Innovate Public Services

The Township of King, located in the Greater Toronto Area in Ontario, Canada, implemented Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM) to store and centralize content, making information more accessible across the organization. Since then, the township’s staff has leveraged the software for digital transformation initiatives that go beyond document management. The township now uses Laserfiche to modernize the government experience, where citizens can access public information and submit online service requests (i.e., permits and licenses) using Laserfiche electronic forms. The township’s staff has also integrated Laserfiche with other core technologies and automated key business processes in order to accelerate service delivery.

Centralizing Content Across Departments

Over the past several years, King has assessed its digital infrastructure with the goals of ensuring employees have access to necessary information, breaking down department siloes and improving efficiency. In 2018, the township built a new municipal center, prompting a large-scale initiative to digitize and centralize content that was previously stored in filing cabinets and banker boxes, and across individual and department network drives.

“We initially looked for a solution for electronic document and records management; we have been moving away from paper, and we wanted to have one central, streamlined filing system for all electronic documents,” said Manager of Legislative Services and Deputy Clerk Denny Timm. “We saw the opportunity and improvements that would be realized if we could increase department collaboration and information sharing.”

With the support of Ricoh Canada, one of the township’s workplace technology solution providers, King implemented Laserfiche as its central digital repository. Laserfiche allowed the township to reclaim time previously spent physically searching for information — which now is accessible at staff’s fingertips. Using Laserfiche, departments have transitioned off network drives, and content has been centralized while simultaneously strengthening the municipality’s information governance program.

“Implementing Laserfiche really allowed us to look at our filing methodology and filing structure from a corporate perspective,” Timm added. “It’s like building a house — you need to build a solid foundation, organize and plan what goes in the rooms, and assign the proper access to those rooms. With Laserfiche, we have one corporate folder structure as our foundation, filled with subfolders and documents, and appropriately assigned access privileges and controls. We now have greater integrity and confidence in our information management system. We know staff are accessing what they need to access, while elevating the protection of personal and confidential information.”

As King saw the benefits of digitizing and centralizing content, they began to learn more about taking their digital transformation to the next level by integrating Laserfiche with other core technologies and using Laserfiche’s electronic forms and business process automation capabilities.

“We saw that Laserfiche was more than just a place to put files,” said Timm. “That’s when we started to view tutorials, speak with our team at Ricoh, and understand that there’s way more capability within the system than we initially thought.”

Next-Level Digital Transformation: Electronic Forms and Process Automation

King’s document management project was a catalyst for the team to reimagine how they could now use the township’s digital information in its mission to deliver citizen services, maximize efficiency and ensure employees are well equipped to respond to customer’s needs. Laserfiche’s electronic forms and business process automation capabilities enabled King to increase access to information and public services. This mindset shift came just in time — before the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the region.

“We were fortunate to have had departments adopt Laserfiche before COVID-19 arrived,” Timm said. “Staff have access to all the information they need in a central resource that they can securely access remotely. Departments also see the immediate savings in administrative work, no longer needing to file paper copies, and now being able to easily search and retrieve information.”

Now, the township is using Laserfiche to actively replace paper forms with electronic forms to make more public services available online — a key benefit during the pandemic. King recently launched a new website where constituents can access applications, permits and other essential items with an integrated payment system, including:

Building permit payments
Bulky item pickup and garbage bag tags
Pet and service animal licenses
Fire permits
Freedom of information requests
Marriage service payments
Road occupancy permits
Property information requests
Tax certificate requests
E-Billing registration for property and water bills
Temporary sign permits

In addition to increasing access to these forms, staff leveraged Laserfiche business process automation to automate information routing and approvals. Now, when a resident submits an electronic form through the township’s website, the information is automatically sent to the relevant departments and approving parties for review and approvals. By removing the dependence on manual routing, automated processes streamline the flow of information and expedite service delivery, whether employees are in-office or working remotely. Laserfiche’s process reporting and analytics also increase transparency and create opportunities for continuous process improvement.

“We are excited to see our public forms integrate with our repository, too,” said Timm. “Now, forms and information will be automatically filed in the right spot, and our approval process moves to the digital realm — we’re able to track and start looking at the analytics.”

The central repository and automated processes have also supported business continuity during COVID-19 and as the King team navigates the staff changes that all municipalities must manage.

“We have staff retiring, and that previously meant information and institutional knowledge would be lost,” said Supervisor of IT Business Systems Angelo Castillo. “Having everything in Laserfiche provides that single repository that everyone is familiar with. If we use Laserfiche for forms and processes, our staff will be comfortable using them.”

Building a Digital Future

Today, the township continues to build on its success by automating processes across all departments, with a clear vision toward creating a more modern experience for employees and the people they serve. The IT team has plans to further centralize content and processes by using Laserfiche where possible to replace niche software that individual departments may have acquired or are looking to acquire for specific processes. “Laserfiche doesn’t make digital transformation seem overly complicated because the tools are all there — we are equipped to easily automate processes without having to acquire and learn multiple small, specific pieces of software,” Callisto explained. “For example, we just successfully launched and leveraged Laserfiche forms and its business process capabilities to automate our entire Performance Development and Recognition Program (PDRP). By expanding our in-house knowledge of the system, we are beginning to build more complex and corporate wide implementations. These new electronic and automated processes streamline core critical corporate processes, making them easy and accessible to staff.”

The IT division is now aiming to create a self-service model. “The goal is to have each department build their own digital forms and publish them online,” Castillo said. “The subject-matter experts in the individual departments are going to know the processes the best, and with Laserfiche’s ease of use, we know staff are eager to build and implement!”

Into the future, the township plans to further leverage Laserfiche’s process dashboard to analyze information such as the number of permits, applications and licenses received, what time of year is the busiest, etc. “We’re really excited to dive into the data and analytics, and look at them in terms of usage and output,” Timm said. “It’s going to give us a whole new area that we haven’t explored before.”

For more insights into modernizing service delivery and to understand why technology plays a critical role in generating cost savings, continuing operations and meeting growing constituent demands, read the Center for Digital Government’s report: “The Way Forward: Insights for Government Leaders on Modernizing Service Delivery.”

What’s the Difference Between Document and Records Management Systems?

Most document management systems can be considered records management systems, but not all. Thus, a robust DMS can set up your organization for success. Read on to see why knowing the difference between the core concepts of document and records management can help you make the right choice when choosing software for your organization.

Below are definitions of each term, followed by the three key characteristics that distinguish these practices from one another.

What is document management system?

A document management system involves the capture, storage, modification and sharing of physical files within an organization.

Generally speaking, practicing document management offers opportunities to:

Reduce lost and misfiled documents.
Provide faster search and retrieval of documents.
Help better organize existing documents.
Improve business processes and organizational efficiency.
Reduce the amount of physical space used to store documents, such as file cabinets, boxes and shelving.

Want to know more? Download the document management software buyer’s guide.

What is a records management system?

Records management systems establish policies and standards for maintaining diverse types of records. Some, but not all, documents within an organization become records.

Records management can be thought of as a subset of document management that can also bolster efforts to:

Distinguish non-record content from records.
Apply required retention periods to records.
Identify the owners of records.
Determine that a chain of custody and a proper audit trail both exist for each record.
Assist in e-discovery issues and applying legal holds to records when needed.
Manage the proper and timely disposition of records.
Develop and administer records policy and procedures for electronic or paper records.
Preserve records throughout their life cycle.

Want to dig deeper? Learn even more about records management here.

What makes document and records management systems different?

Although you may use the same system for document management and records management, these types of content are managed differently. These differences in management practices include: the goal, or purpose of each practice, the information or content involved in each practice, methodology, or the way each practice is performed.

1. Goal

The goal of document management is efficiency. Approving documents faster, reducing manual data entry and automating recurring tasks are some of the many functions of document management that work toward this goal.

The goal of records management is compliance. A well-maintained records management system helps organizations avoid penalties when audited by regulators, auditors and other governing bodies.

Document management and records management share a common goal of business continuity. Shortcomings in either can contribute to organization-wide challenges. However, when both document and records management work toward their goals (efficiency and compliance), organization resiliency is better within your reach.

2. Information

The information of document management is comprised of transient content. Invoices are signed and then sent off to the next approver, older drafts are discarded for revised ones, forms pass from submitter to reviewer and so on.

The information of records management is comprised of historical content. The status of a document is determined by different phases of the records lifecycle, as shown below:

Diagram outlining the records management lifecycle. — Different phases of the records lifecycle

3. Methodology

The methodology of document management is content-driven. As mentioned above, content is the catalyst for all document-related activity. Therefore, document repositories are usually organized with the needs of general users in mind: finding documents by keyword or title, keeping all documents together by employee or project, etc.

In contrast, the methodology of records management is context-driven. Records managers care more about document types (insurance records, employment applications, etc.) than the words written on the actual documents. As a result, retention schedules are the catalyst for records-related activity, as different types of records must be kept for different lengths of time, and under different conditions.

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

Discover how to prepare for an audit, protect sensitive records across the enterprise and more in our ebook, The Ultimate Guide to Electronic Records Management.

Download the eBook: The Ultimate Guide to Records Management.

TPIRC Automates Business Processes to Treat Patients With Orphan Diseases

The Translational Pulmonary & Immunology Research Center (TPIRC) deployed process automation and data analytics to develop new treatment protocols for patients suffering from rare and orphan diseases, and used document management technology to scale its practice.

TPIRC founder and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Inderpal Randhawa spent the early part of his career working in intensive care units where he saw enough children die from anaphylactic reactions to food allergens that he began to question conventional treatment protocols. He decided to dedicate his career to changing how healthcare operates. To help the medical team continue to innovate on behalf of patients, TPIRC and its second division, the Southern California Food Allergy Institute, employed Laserfiche to automate treatment plans, reduce the time practitioners spend on paperwork, and share information between clinical and research divisions.

In addition to regular treatments, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic the clinic rapidly rolled out a key Laserfiche form and automated business process, which were used to schedule COVID-19 testing for high-risk patients, ensuring continuity of care.

Innovation Fueled by Data Analytics

Healthcare is one of the fastest growing segments of the U.S. economy, yet it’s one of the slowest moving in regards to innovation. TPIRC’s mission is to close that innovation gap by developing new treatment protocols for conditions other physicians no longer try to treat or cure, a category known as orphan diseases. To advance its mission, TPIRC relies on complex clinical processes and huge amounts of data which must be shared efficiently between practitioners.

“What separates us from other physicians who are attempting to do any type of food allergy treatment is data analytics,” said Herman Sandhu, medical liaison at TPIRC. TPIRC physicians compare the results of lab tests to over 1 trillion data points TPIRC has gathered over the years.

Previously, TPIRC managed data for each patient manually, using a spreadsheet program. The laborious process led to employee overtime and made it difficult to identify data or process bottlenecks. The center connected with Laserfiche to implement a Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM) system, then began eliminating siloed programs and automating patient data tracking.

“Document sharing, document storage, and the ability to automate processes are important for us as we expand our program,” said Sandhu. “Finding a way to operate in an efficient manner, with processes as automated as possible, was what led us down the road to adopting an ECM solution. … Once we saw how Laserfiche improved efficiency and gave us access to specific data points, we decided that we would like for each department to start to operate within Laserfiche, using the program for any tasks that could be automated or would benefit from some type of workflow.”

TPIRC implemented a pair of Laserfiche solutions to communicate the results of lab analyses and automate the development of treatment plans for food allergy patients.

Sandhu built the Lab Analysis Workflow, an automated workflow in Laserfiche that routes patients’ lab results to multiple physicians who can provide an assessment or extract information from the results. This allows the team to smoothly communicate their medical and data analysis, and track when each portion of medical analysis is complete.

“Before, I would’ve had to manually check all the dates, whereas Laserfiche gives me the kind of time stamp data that allows me to understand how long processes are taking,” said Sandhu. “Laserfiche allowed me to understand where bottlenecks were occurring and how I could improve the process. And then, the amount of time being spent on each patient did speed up.”

After the Lab Workflow Process is complete, TPIRC practitioners are able to predict the level of allergens that will cause a reaction in a particular patient and develop a course of treatment that will desensitize the patient over approximately 18 months.

Before implementing Laserfiche, Sandhu and Dr. Randhawa manually typed treatment plans to distribute to practitioners as well as to the food lab, which produced the food-based “doses” patients received during each appointment. Not only was the process time consuming for the practitioners, the food lab couldn’t easily export data to understand how many doses of each food they needed to prepare for each day or each appointment.

To digitally transform this process, Sandhu used Laserfiche to create a custom form that included the patient’s identifying number, the type of food they would consume during each visit, the amount of each food dose, and the number of doses need. “Now when our food lab production team needs to know the number of doses to produce, they can just pull a report,” said Sandhu.

The form also allows TPIRC to add to their growing data set, and further increase the effectiveness of their treatments.

Laboratory worker in protective mask using digital tablet

Testing Patients for COVID-19

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the TPIRC team knew they couldn’t interrupt their essential health services. In order to maintain continuity of care while preventing the spread of the disease, TPIRC began testing patients for COVID-19, assisted by a Laserfiche automated business process.

Over two days, Sandhu quickly built a business process in Laserfiche to receive COVID test requests. The process begins with patients filling out a Laserfiche form, providing information including their exposure history, their distance from the TPIRC clinic, and their age.

“With everyone scared and unsure what was going on, everyone wanted to get tested, but certain patients needed to be tested sooner than others,” said Sandhu. “Laserfiche helped us to prioritize patients and keep track of them.”

Through a Laserfiche automated process, TPIRC emailed patients consent forms and invoices prior to testing. Following the test, results were uploaded and routed to the diagnostic manager, who performed a medical analysis then marked the test results as either positive, negative, or invalid. The process then branched off into multiple flows depending on the results: Patients who received negative tests were sent an email, while results that were marked positive received a second look from one of TPIRC’s main providers. If the provider confirmed a positive result, the Laserfiche process prompted a member of the provider team to reach out to the effected family to offer guidance. All results were saved to the repository.

“Our biggest win from Laserfiche came when COVID hit. We’ve tested over 500 patients now,” said Sandhu. “Our patients needed to feel like when they were showing up to a clinic, they were in a safe environment. If we don’t have trust, we can’t offer them treatment.”

Maximizing Efficiency to Provide Care for More Patients

After implementing Laserfiche, TPIRC immediately saw a reduction in the amount of practitioner overtime. Rather than spending two to three hours of overtime per week manually completing essential documentation, providers were able to regain some work-life balance.

At the same time, TPIRC has seen an improvement in the flow of information and data between the center’s divisions. In the healthcare industry, clinical practitioners, medical researchers, and patient advocates generally operate independently of one another, even though their work influences each other’s results. In an effort to realign this disjointed system, TPIRC houses not only clinical providers, but their own research and diagnostic lab, as well as an advocacy center.

“We can push all of our patient data to the researchers, and start to discover new bio-markers that we can use to test patients,” Sandhu said. “This increases our efficiency rate and the scope we’re operating within.”

As the footprint of the organization expands, so will the number of orphan and rare diseases that TPIRC treats as well as the efficacy of the treatments already in place. Dr. Randhawa’s research has already increased the life expectancy of patients suffering from cystic fibrosis from about 15 years to about 25-30. The organization considers this to be a good starting point — and positive progress toward its ultimate goal of leaving no disease behind.

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.”