New Account Opening in 30 Minutes

SITUATION

• New account opening process depended on paper forms and direct mail
• Legacy new account opening process could take from three to seven days
• Difficulty tracking activities taken on documents resulted in challenges with audit preparation

SOLUTION

• Accelerated new account opening process from one week down to 30 minutes
• Simplified audit preparation
• 40,000 hours of annual time savings

An independent investment advisory firm that provides financial consulting services to more than 4,000 households with approximately $2 billion in assets under management needed a way to expedite client services.

The firm sought out document management technology to automate its new account opening process. The legacy process was paper-based, requiring the firm to prepare stacks of paper forms and individually mail them between advisors, a client service representative, the firm’s cashiering department, the client and the custodian. This typically took three to seven days and often delayed important client transactions.

“New account documents are extremely time sensitive. At times, we would have to interrupt advisors during meetings to get a signature,” said the firm’s IT director. “We were looking for a paperless system with efficient workflow, SEC and FINRA compliance and a strong integration capability.”

Accelerating New Account Opening from a Week to 30 Minutes

After a demonstration of Laserfiche software, the firm’s IT team felt that Laserfiche’s configurable workflow tools could easily address their operational needs.

To automate account opening, the firm integrated Laserfiche with DocuSign, its Tamarac customer relationship management (CRM) system and Laser App. By integrating these systems, client paperwork can be reviewed, signed and finalized in under half an hour:
  • Laserfiche pulls the new client contact record from Tamarac CRM and routes it to Laser App.
  • Laser App automatically populates an electronic form with the client’s account information.
  • The system automatically identifies who should receive the form next and routes it to the client service representative for review.
  • The applicable advisors electronically sign the form using DocuSign.
  • The custodian and client each receive a copy of the form for final sign-off.

New Account Opening in 30 MinutesCompared to the legacy system, this new process has generated a week in time savings. The process is not only quick, but enhances personnel accountability from start to finish.”

“If a document that requires review sits for more than 24 hours, the system emails a reminder to the responsible person,” said the IT director. “If the same document sits for more than 72 hours, the system emails that person’s boss.”

Creating Comprehensive SEC and FINRA Compliance

Improving operations was only part of the firm’s information management overhaul. The firm also needed comprehensive compliance functionality to meet the strict standards of its industry.

“The SEC and FINRA require that firms use a certain type of document management technology, such as unalterable database software,” said the IT director. “Our research showed that Laserfiche’s technology is not only the most flexible, but also offers the option to use numerous add-on features.”

New Account Opening in 30 MinutesOne feature that simplifies audit preparation is Laserfiche’s event log capability, which tracks the creation, deletion and modification of documents.”

“Our system logs every possible interaction with a document,” said the IT director. “Even if a document is deleted, it is still available in the Laserfiche repository and we can see who modified it.”

The firm’s DocuSign integration also verifies the identity of a document’s signer. Detailed security questions, social security verification and access code protection maintain the integrity of client transactions and prevent fraud.

New Account Opening in 30 Minutes“It’s pretty astounding when you consider the time savings,” said the IT director. “We estimate that Laserfiche saves us up to one hour per document. “Given the firm’s estimated average of 165 documents processed per day, Laserfiche produces an annual time savings of roughly 41,415 hours.”

Chinook’s Edge School Division Expands Outdoor Learning Opportunities with Process Automation

A short drive from the Rocky Mountains and some of Canada’s most postcard-worthy national parks sits Chinook’s Edge School Division. The largest rural school division in the province of Alberta, Chinook’s Edge has an established reputation for staff and student wellness, and is on a mission to engage every student in meaningful learning. Although temporarily put on hold during the COVID-19 pandemic, field trips to the mountains and beyond — with opportunities for world-class hiking, outdoor adventures and skiing — are an integral part of achieving that mission.

With 11,000 students and 43 schools in its division, Chinook’s Edge uses Laserfiche to streamline its field trip management processes, maintaining the integrity of its records as well as supporting its risk management for field trips.

School Division Goes Digital to Improve Risk Management

Parents and guardians voiced their frustrations with the overwhelming amount of paperwork required to provide consent every time a student participated in a field trip, which could be more than 10 times a year per child. The forms included a guardian consent form, medical consent form and health consent form — each of which required duplicate information, such as student name, address and guardian name.

For teachers, the internal request forms to create and plan a field trip were long and detailed. All field trip planning was performed manually, generated mountains of paperwork and required school staff to spend hours of time to coordinate a single trip.

Principals and members of the Chinook’s Edge School Division Board of Education were also concerned about legal liabilities due the rugged nature of numerous field trips and potential natural disasters, as well as a lack of conformity in parent sign-off processes. For example, if a form was forgotten, a guardian might write their consent on a napkin and hand it over to the school. Risk management became an increasing concern, exacerbated by skyrocketing insurance costs.

Chinook’s Edge looked to Laserfiche to automate field trip management, streamline approval processes and enhance the integrity of its records. Jeremy Regehr and his team at Inspiris, a Laserfiche solution provider, developed an end-to-end digital solution that would reduce the work required for parents, teachers and administrators while enabling improved transparency and accountability. All guardian and medical consent forms were consolidated into one user-friendly electronic form, which could be pre-filled for subsequent field trips for the same student. The solution was configured to integrate with Rycor, an online payments software, to simplify payment collection and processing, and PowerSchool, a student information system, to ensure student data is automatically updated.

Digital Transformation Expands Staff Capacity and Student Horizons

In the three-month initial rollout of the new field trip management process, more than 150 field trips had been completed — with over 11,000 students and 18,000 parents or guardians. By the end of the first year of implementation, a total of 758 field trips were processed. The digitized solution with Laserfiche produced 10,697 emails, saving 57,000 pieces of paper. With 70 cases of paper saved, Chinook’s Edge reduced 1,750 kilograms of carbon emissions in one school year.

With much of the workload now completed through an automated process, the division can monitor all trips with just three staff members, who are easily able to do so while fulfilling their other daily responsibilities.

“The new Laserfiche field trip program has been a huge asset to us in the school,” said Leanne Stickland, administrative support in finance for Innisfail Middle School. “It’s quick and easy for both the school and parents. And even better, we don’t have boxes of paper to store at the end of the year.”

“It’s just that easy,” added Susan Roy, FOIP coordinator and treasurer.

The time parents and teachers spend preparing for field trips has been reduced dramatically. What was once eight to 10 pages of paper per trip, per student is now completed via an automatically generated email link. The four hours teachers took to prep for each field trip now takes an average of 30 minutes, and what originally took 30 minutes for parents was reduced to just one minute. All in all, teachers across the division saved an estimated 3,250 total hours, equating to at least $100,000 in cost savings.

Centralizing all field trip information helped teachers identify opportunities to diversify outdoor learning experiences, as well as inspire ideas for new field trips. Laserfiche helps provide oversight for members of the Board of Education, and makes it easy for them to see approvals. On top of that, administrators and teachers use Laserfiche to verify whether all legal and logistical requirements are met and that consent forms are collected before students board the buses. If a natural emergency, such as a wildfire, were to occur, all field trip participant information would be available at a moment’s notice, so that all participants could be easily accounted for and safely evacuated.

Inspiris owner, Regehr, reiterates, “The ROI on the process was as close to instantaneous as you can get. The improvements to efficiency for all teachers and administrative staff was apparent the moment we helped roll out the process— and feedback confirmed that. When I heard the principals exclaim they could sleep at night because they understood the reduced liability, it was obvious to me that the process had already paid for itself.”

Making Honor Roll for Saving Time and Money

Even before Chinook’s Edge set out on the adventure to automate its field trip management process, the organization aimed to streamline processes across the division.

“The finance department had a process to collect eight different documents, twice a year from each of our 41 schools. It was a time-consuming task and often required a staff member to search through emails, open attachments, rename and save files,” says Paul Matsune, core services manager for Chinook’s Edge School Division Technology Services department. Now the forms are easily accessible online for staff division-wide.

The provincial government requires that student report cards are uploaded as individual files, with each student’s unique number. With over 11,000 students, this was a time-intensive undertaking to do several times a year. Laserfiche Forms and Quick Fields — a high-volume capture tool that automates document import, classification and indexing — helped save over 1,000 hours a year for administrative support staff on this task alone.

Other daunting administrative tasks for the Chinook’s Edge People Services team of two have nearly been eliminated thanks to Laserfiche, with automated processes created for personal leave, maternity leave and ID card requests, among others. A dashboard was created for payroll and HR to be notified of employee changes. If a coworker is sick, it’s easy for another staff member to see what tasks need to be done.

The centralization of administrative work hasn’t just saved time across the division, it has also made it easier to reallocate funding and minimize overtime worked. Like any organization on a digital transformation journey, Chinook’s Edge School Division is still seeking new ways to nurture efficiency. For instance, its accounts payable department aims to soon begin using Laserfiche to automate processes such as credit card reconciliation and expense claims.

Laserfiche has touched nearly every stakeholder at Chinook’s Edge, including teachers, staff members, students and families, principals and other division leaders. The optimized processes, improved access to information, reduced liability and increased satisfaction of parents all add up to support the school’s vision to help students achieve success as compassionate and innovative global citizens.

Explore more ways to increase staff productivity, automate processes district-wide and efficiently manage student records by visiting Laserfiche for K-12 Schools and Districts.

Jones College Provides One-Stop Student Services with Laserfiche Cloud

In the past year, Jones College began an initiative aimed at improving the student experience by bringing five previously separate departments (financial aid, admissions, records, recruiting and the student success center) under one umbrella. Using Laserfiche Cloud, the college centralized the five teams’ documents and processes, giving staff and students access to forms and information online, and streamlining key student services.

These digital transformation initiatives have enabled Jones College to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic and various government mandates, even as the college saw a 15% jump in enrollment during the summer of 2020 over summer 2019

Moving Enrollment Management to the Cloud

Jones College is a public community college in Ellisville, Mississippi, that was established in 1911.

“As a community college, the impact we have in our society is big — we offer high-quality education at a lower price,” said Paul Spell, vice president of enrollment management. “We’ve been here 100 years, and there have been a lot of changes through the years. We have to continue to show value to students and to our community, and to do that we have to think outside the box.”

As part of the organization’s commitment to providing the best possible experience to students, Jones College President Dr. Jesse Smith looked for opportunities for modernization and new efficiencies. In 2018, the college embarked on a mission to bring together five disparate teams — financial aid, admissions, records, recruiting and the student success center — under one department called enrollment management.

“The goal was to have students go to one admissions counselor who can get their paperwork processed and guide students through the enrollment process in a centralized way,” said Spell. Previously, staff and students had to physically walk paperwork across campus to get it to the right people, which was not only inconvenient and time-consuming, but also introduced the risk of information loss. “To centralize the experience, these five departments had to work together as a team, and Laserfiche really enabled that.”

The college turned to Information Consultants, a Laserfiche solution provider, to implement Laserfiche Cloud and help to map out the newly formed enrollment management department’s processes. Information Consultants was able to implement Laserfiche within a week, as a result of the cloud deployment.

“We chose to use Laserfiche Cloud because we wanted less of a hassle managing servers and software here on campus,” Spell explained. “We don’t have a lot of IT people, and we are always looking to be as efficient as possible. On top of that, we want our staff to be able to access documents from the office or home — or anywhere — easily.”

“The enrollment management department really took Laserfiche and ran with it,” added Pierre Smith, workflow specialist at Information Consultants (ICONS). “Jones College and its embrace of digital transformation using Laserfiche Cloud is proof that a 100-year-old institution can continue to innovate, and deliver a modern experience for staff and students.”

New Opportunities for Efficiency

Initially, the enrollment management department implemented Laserfiche as a digital filing cabinet, and began scanning paperwork into the Laserfiche repository. Staff quickly saw, however, that capturing information digitally from the beginning of the process would eliminate the need for paper and open up greater opportunity for transparency, efficiency and ongoing optimization through business process automation. The COVID-19 pandemic and stay-at-home orders further highlighted the need to transition to a more digital workplace.

“Everything was put on hold when COVID-19 hit,” Spell said. “When we were able to come back, we realized that paper processes were just inefficient. We decided to have a ‘digital day,’ essentially a deadline for us to go digital with everything. This was all during the pandemic, and we were able to go digital in about a week.”

Spell introduced Laserfiche Forms to the financial aid team. The team’s responsibilities, including managing processes related to grants, fee waivers, scholarships and other financial assistance programs, made it an ideal candidate for transitioning to Laserfiche electronic forms and automated workflows. Within two weeks, the financial aid team had created more than 30 online forms to replace their paper counterparts, including the form to validate students’ tax status, income verification and others needed to qualify for financial aid like FAFSA.

“For financial aid programs, we need to collect and verify a lot of information, which previously was done manually on paper and could take days to weeks,” said Jones College Director of Financial Aid Kari Dedwylder. “Now, students don’t have to come to the office in person. They can access the form they need and get it filled out in less than 10 minutes. We can also leverage electronic signatures which is helpful since a lot of people don’t have a printer, and verifying information electronically is so easy to get done while also meeting the needs of the college, the financial aid organizations and the federal department.”

The college is also working to digitize the graduation application, a long document which students previously had to fill out and physically take around campus for advisors to sign it. Another opportunity for automation is the process of accepting transcripts, which have traditionally come through the mail or brought in by hand. With a new, automated workflow in Laserfiche, the college can automatically email students to tell them whether they have been accepted.

“Communication with our students is huge, and something we’re always looking to enhance,” Spell said. “Through Laserfiche, we can effectively build communication into our processes without having to manually email each student.”

With Laserfiche helping to centralize information and standardize and automate processes, the enrollment management department now offers a more streamlined experience for students. Meanwhile, Laserfiche has improved accountability and trust among the five teams that were merged to form the department.

“Laserfiche not only helped with digitizing our paperwork and processes, but it’s also helped with our teamwork,” Spell said. “Now, we have processes we can see; we have better accountability.”

Spell estimates that the Jones College’s Laserfiche initiative has saved the institution about $30,000 to $40,000 in staff hours, or about three to four months of work for the department. Over the summer, enrollment was up 15% over the summer of the previous year and — during a pandemic and without adding additional staff — the enrollment management department was able to manage the larger workload due to their efforts to streamline processes using Laserfiche.

“When the pandemic hit, we were planning for lower enrollment,” Spell said. “We had transitioned learning to online, and administrative processes were online thanks to Laserfiche. Over the summer, though, enrollment was up while other community colleges have taken double-digit drops. People don’t know what’s going to happen, but the digital processes and automations have taken the burden off of our staff as we navigate these changes.”

Building on a Digital-First Approach for Student Success

The Jones College team continues to look for new opportunities to leverage Laserfiche for business process automation and improved efficiency.

“This is only our first year using Laserfiche, and all I can think about is how much more streamlined we’re going to make these processes,” Dedwylder added. “Right now, we still have some students who are used to the old processes but, being a two-year college, we’ll have new students who will be introduced to the digital forms right away. Our students are going to expect this digital experience.”

Spell already has plans to enhance existing forms with auto-fill functionality so that there is even less manual data entry for students, and to integrate Laserfiche with the college’s other applications including the student information system (SIS). Some future projects that are not student-facing include a Laserfiche form that keeps a log of all of the activities required for student admission, so that admissions counselors can quickly see what a student has completed and what paperwork has been submitted.

“As a community college, the services we offer are incredibly valuable,” Spell said. “Many students are from rural or underserved communities. The main part of our job is people — the technology solutions that can make us more efficient and improve our processes help to keep us focused on that.”

U.K. Law Firm Modernizes Legal Forms

SITUATION

• Paperwork after courtroom or police station visits took time away from client service
• Manual processes caused delays in billing and case completion
• Compliance and governance practices added time and burden of manual tasks on employees

RESULTS

• Less time spent on manual routing of information and data entry
• Faster, more responsive client service
• Increased accountability and transparency across the firm
• Reduction in administrative costs

A general practice law firm located in the United Kingdom offers a broad range of services across many types of U.K. law — such as crime, personal injury, property, and commercial — and needed a way to create clear accountability and support compliance for each litigator’s daily activities.

Helping Firm-wide Compliance

Prior to using Laserfiche, lawyers would fill out a 40-page form after courtroom or police station visits, creating a cumbersome and time-consuming process for both the lawyers and clients, as well as delays in billing and case completion.

“The compliance wasn’t there and the money wasn’t there,” said the firm’s operations manager. “The starting point for us was to deal with that particular issue of ensuring that when someone went to the police station, the paperwork actually got to us and got to us on time, instead of two weeks later.”

Laserfiche’s advanced electronic forms capabilities were an attractive solution for improving processing times and creating compliance controls. The company selected Laserfiche to bring information accessibility and accountability to the firm’s client and administrative processes.

Taking the Leg Work Out of Legal Work

The firm began by implementing mobile forms within its Crime and Litigation Department. With Laserfiche Forms, litigators can now use iPads to immediately capture and update client information at police stations or courtrooms, then instantly send the information to the firm’s administrative department for end-to-end processing. Forms-based workflow and analytics automatically track litigators’ court attendances and time reporting, simplifying accountability and providing more accurate data for billing.

“Laserfiche gave us a fantastic vehicle for that,” said the operations manager. “The Laserfiche system could capture information from the client, which is more and more important from a data protection point of view now. There was accountability. Things weren’t just going to disappear.”

Benefits include:
  • Solicitors can instantly and accurately capture client information on mobile devices.
  • Client paperwork is automatically sent from lawyers to administrative teams for processing.
  • Offline access to documents helps solicitors address client needs on the fly.
  • Police station visits, court attendances and litigator timecards are automatically tracked, creating more accurate and transparent reporting.
  • Administrative costs in the company’s Crime department were reduced.

“Laserfiche looks after all the typical elements of what a lawyer does,” added the operations manager. “That’s been the biggest breakthrough for us as a practice, and the most spectacular application of it for the firm as a whole.”

Transform Your Firm’s Software Revenue Model with Laserfiche ECM

Laserfiche is the leading global provider of intelligent content management and business process automation. Customers across industries — including government, education, financial services and manufacturing — rely on Laserfiche to work smarter and faster. With powerful workflows, electronic forms, document management and analytics, Laserfiche enables organizations to eliminate manual processes and automate repetitive tasks, accelerating how business gets done.

However, the platform itself is only one part of the equation. Service and support are also paramount in providing customers with the best experience possible. One of the ways Laserfiche customers receive this type of experience is through its expansive network of value-added resellers (VARs) and managed service providers (MSPs).

Read on to see how Laserfiche stands out from the pack when it comes to giving value-added resellers, managed service providers, solution providers (SPs) and other resellers the tools they need to maximize revenues and better serve their clients.

SaaS as recurring software revenue

It’s no secret that most software these days is sold as a service. It provides recurring revenue for software companies to further develop and update their offerings, with a low upfront cost for customers that can pay for software only for the time they need it.

For resellers and technology implementers this can also be a boon, with this new breed of software providing consistent revenue in a similar way to support and services. This also means that a high renewal rate is essential for resellers to fully capitalize on this revenue stream.

The Laserfiche platform provides proven and easy-to-use software that customers simply love to come back to, and 90% of Laserfiche customers renew their subscription when it comes time to do so. Customers often expand their solutions over time or spread the word to other firms in their industry, and with a license-based model, this provides even more recurring revenue for resellers, month over month, year over year.

We have your back, not your wallet

Some companies take margins of their resellers’ support and service revenue, taking a crucial piece of what many SPs, VARs and MSPs see as the core of their revenue models. These providers are putting in the hours and resources into providing services and support, and they should be getting the maximum value out of these offerings, which may include:

  • Software and hardware support
  • Hardware and software maintenance
  • Data storage and backups
  • Cloud services and cloud system migrations
  • System and network infrastructure management
  • Network and system security

Laserfiche allows its Solution Providers to keep all revenues generated from the support and services they provide. This enables SPs to reap the rewards of their work and maximize the value of being part of the Laserfiche Solution Provider program.

However, this doesn’t mean that resellers have to go it alone when it comes to services and support. They can also decide to add services directly from Laserfiche for a flat fee, or contract out partial or complete projects to Laserfiche on an individual basis based on business needs.

In fact, Laserfiche provides additional support to its network of resellers for simply being in the program, from sales, to marketing and even product demonstrations. These offerings provide Solution Providers with the tools they need to thrive in a competitive business environment and provide the highest level of service to their customers.

Easy-to-sell products that fit within your portfolio

For VARs, MSPs, or any firm that simply wants to add enterprise content management to its product offerings, Laserfiche makes a platform that’s easy for resellers to sell to customers.

Laserfiche has the flexibility to fit into virtually any tech stack. Used as a solution for HR, vendor management, and other departments, Laserfiche can help fill in gaps with solutions VARs and MSPs are offering to customers, or act as a catalyst that brings a reseller’s services and platforms together with its extensive integration capabilities.

In addition, any professional services and support a reseller offers for Laserfiche comes in at a very low risk. The ease-of-use that comes with the Laserfiche platform, along with the ability to use pre-configured process templates, ensures that VARs and MSPs spend their time configuring systems instead of troubleshooting them.

Most of all, Laserfiche has a transparent and easy-to-follow pricing structure. Instead of spending time browsing price lists, a reseller only has to tell Laserfiche how many licenses it needs as part of a customer order. Solutions are also bundled to meet specific customer needs, such as document management or process automation, so all the functionality a client wants is there without any surprise fees or necessary add-on features. This means resellers can build solid customer relationships while still maximizing revenues.

The simple solution for SPs, VARs and MSPs

An established product that is easy to set up, service, maintain and support, the Laserfiche platform is a powerful solution for resellers wanting to spend less time troubleshooting with their vendors and more time interacting with customers while increasing revenue across multiple streams.

To learn more about the benefits that the Laserfiche Solution Provider Program can offer SPs, VARs and MSPs – and how you can sign up – click here.

First Choice Bank Leverages Technology to Be First in Speed, Service, and Solutions

While the community banking industry faces competitive pressures from larger institutions, First Choice Bank has found success in remaining true to its mission — to be “First in Speed, Service, and Solutions” for the communities it serves.

First Choice prides itself on its responsiveness, deep understanding of client needs and exceptional customer experience. These priorities have driven digital transformation across the organization, including the implementation of a Laserfiche electronic records management solution. Having used Laserfiche for almost six years, the bank has centralized and standardized records, preserved record integrity, and automated routine tasks such as classifying records so that employees can reclaim time for customer service. As a result, First Choice has seen greater efficiencies, a more modern, responsive customer and employee experience, and a stronger IT infrastructure upon which to build more automated business processes in order to support the bank’s strategic imperatives.

“In this ever-changing world, we’re given the opportunity to really open up people’s minds to the possibilities of leveraging technology — and what you can miss out on and what you lose without it,” said First Choice Bank EVP, Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Commercial Banking Lorraine Lee. “Change and technology are at the forefront of business progress, particularly in the increasingly competitive market in which community banks, like ours, operate — an industry that has not historically embraced technological change. We need to find the right solutions that work for our organization – solutions that will allow us to flexibly pivot as the world changes so that we can continue to effectively service our clients.”

Electronic Records Management: Accelerating Service Delivery and Simplifying Compliance

First Choice Bank, headquartered in Cerritos, California, has served its community since its founding in 2005. With a diverse client base of individuals and commercial clients, First Choice is a leading provider of commercial and industrial loans, loans to small businesses and other financial services that enable customers to grow, maintain strength and reach their financial goals.

As the bank grew, the First Choice team recognized the need for technology that would support staff to easily search and retrieve documents and information, while enabling the organization to set up safeguards and controls to protect client data and show compliance with regulatory requirements. First Choice worked with the Laserfiche team to implement a Laserfiche electronic records management system and build out robust processes that are scalable as needs change.

“Community banking runs on human interactions and communication, which require time and commitment,” Lee said. “We believe that technology can support us in what we need to do to serve our clients efficiently. It allows our talent to focus on more of the important things that require communication with our customers, rather than spending a lot of time performing tasks that technology can take care of.”

In addition to making client information easier to find and use, Laserfiche electronic records management system has enhanced information governance and facilitated seamless audits. In 2018, First Choice acquired another organization adding six branches with expanded geographic footprint and further realized the value of electronic records management in bringing new employees and departments into First Choice’s operations and processes.

“We get a lot of compliments from auditors and examiners about how well our files are organized — which is a huge testament to how the platform adds value to our business proposition. With the help of Laserfiche automated workflows, we are able to protect the integrity of the files — taking out any element of human error or inconsistency, so our staff can stay focused on our clients.”

—First Choice Bank EVP, Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Commercial Banking Lorraine Lee.

Keeping Business Moving

Most recently, First Choice saw the benefits of the Laserfiche initiative during the COVID-19 pandemic, during which about 70% of bank employees shifted to work from home. Using Laserfiche to access loan files and other documents has enabled the bank to continue operating with minimal disruption.

At the same time, the bank saw an influx of Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan applications from business owners looking to keep employees on payroll despite revenue losses due to the pandemic. Having immediate access to client information in their time of need has been an invaluable benefit, according to Lee.

“You see on the news that people call larger banks and they can’t get a response,” Lee said. “At community banks, we gain business by leveraging our strong asset — relationship banking — by striving for a high level of responsiveness and personal attention. When a client asks for information, we can quickly retrieve it from Laserfiche and tell them what this may mean for them, what the terms are, and give them copies of documents they need. All our clients can talk to someone individually at the bank and have their concerns addressed. In a time of uncertainty, that is really important.”

Supporting a People-First Approach with Tech

First Choice is always exploring new ways to digitally transform the organization with the goal of creating the best possible experience for clients and employees. Driven by that commitment, the team attends the annual Laserfiche Empower Conference to learn about Laserfiche’s ever-evolving capabilities and how to best implement new features and solutions.

In the coming years, First Choice plans to expand its use of Laserfiche into areas such as compliance, loan processing and loan servicing — where Laserfiche electronic forms and business process automation will assist the bank in streamlining legacy processes that are currently driven by paper forms and manual tasks.

“We want to leverage technology as much as possible, and be as efficient as possible in service of our community,” Lee said. “As a community bank, we’re very much a people business. Laserfiche is empowering us to stay true to our values while delivering top-notch service to our clients.”

Simplify audits and reclaim time to for customer service: Learn more about digitizing, standardizing and automating your records management with our free eBook, “The Ultimate Guide to Electronic Records Management.”

Self-hosted or Software as a Service? Making the Right Choice for Cloud Document Management

If you’re an organization considering the move to cloud document management, you might be wondering about the differences between self-hosted and SaaS solutions. Some organizations want complete control over their software and hardware. Others prefer lower maintenance costs, pre-configured security features and automatic software updates.

Read on to see how SaaS and self-hosted solutions differ, so you can make a more informed decision on how to deploy a document management system for your organization.

Software as a service (SaaS)

SaaS offers customers access to software over the internet on a subscription basis, with the software hosted by the vendor or another third-party.

There’s no installation required, and resources such as servers or storage capacity can typically be scaled up automatically, or via a quick conversation with the SaaS vendor. On top of that, using SaaS generally means you don’t need to worry about the costs of maintenance, server space or hardware that you’d need if you were maintaining your own solution in-house.

Built-in security is also a particularly attractive benefit of SaaS products. The right vendor will have security controls already in place that are continually assessed, updated and improved to respond to the latest threats. Some vendors can also provide specialized security services to support compliance concerns and industry regulations, so customers have peace of mind that they’re abiding by the rules. Some of these features and services may include:

  • Automatic and on-demand detection of system threats and vulnerabilities
  • Penetration testing and other services that simulate real-world threats
  • Security controls that restrict access to sensitive content and features

Software as a service platforms can also be well-suited for organizations wanting built-in business continuity measures. In many cases data stored in these solutions is replicated and encrypted in real time to multiple sites at different geographical locations, so if disaster strikes in one location, your data is safe and sound in others.

Especially as technology improves with vendors innovating on their platforms year after year, SaaS is proving to be a convenient and cost-effective solution for the modern enterprise.

Self-hosted solutions

Unlike a SaaS platform, where your back-end infrastructure is managed by experienced IT professionals outside your organization, these deployments offer ways for you to take more control of your hardware, software and updates. Organizations in certain industries, such as government or finance, may also be subject to certain regulations that restrict how they can store information, thus preventing them from deploying a SaaS solution for the time being.

However, a self-hosted solution can still be cloud-based, and therefore share some of the advantages of a SaaS platform. Let’s take a look at each of the self-hosted solution types.

On-premises

Before cloud technology systems, on-premises deployments were the de-facto standard for document management. The most notable differentiator for this type of deployment is owning and maintaining hardware, and the need to manually deploy software updates. Here’s a look at advantages and disadvantages:

Advantages

  • Ability to purchase the highest-performance or most-specialized machines for your purposes
  • Security that can be configured for your organization, in-house by your own IT staff
  • More control over computing resource usage
  • Capability to increase access points for custom integrations and other add-ons

Disadvantages

  • Top-of-the-line hardware can be expensive
  • Managing backups and associated sites can be labor-intensive and time-consuming
  • Need to spend money and time to upgrade hardware to keep up with pace of technology
  • IT will need to spend time and resources to implement even basic security settings
  • Recurring costs such as maintenance, server rooms and extra electricity usage

Self-hosted cloud

A self-hosted cloud deployment operates in largely the same way as an on-premises deployment with the exception of maintaining your own hardware. In fact, the applications themselves are the same and simply hosted on a vendor’s servers — most of the popular platforms, such as Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure, allow you to run standard computer operating systems on them. Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages:

Advantages

  • Scalability and flexibility to grow the solution with your business
  • Reduced system downtime after a disruption with built-in security and backup features
  • Hardware infrastructure maintained by experienced IT professionals outside your organization
  • Capability to increase access points for integrations and other add-ons

Disadvantages

  • Costs of renting hardware and specialized support services can add up
  • Implementations aren’t completely configurable as hardware isn’t on-site or owned by you
  • Hardware might not be optimized for your needs (or customizable to do so)
  • IT will need to spend time and resources to implement even basic security settings
  • Recurring costs such as maintenance, server rooms and extra electricity usage

Finding the right solution

The first question you really need to ask is if you need control over the hardware itself. These days, SaaS solutions offer so many valuable benefits, like managed security, disaster recovery and automatic updates that they are a worthwhile choice unless you absolutely need to use your own hardware. Modern cloud applications offer flexibility without any of the hassle setting up hardware or paying for extra space, power or cooling for your server room. They can give your IT team extra time and resources to keep your business running smoothly.

To learn more about a document management solution that can be deployed as either an SaaS or self-hosted platform, take the Laserfiche Cloud product tour.

Automating Blotter Submissions and Supporting Compliance with Laserfiche

SITUATION

The firm saw an opportunity to automate and streamline core processes, such as the blotter process, to improve accuracy and compliance, while reducing the organization’s reliance on paper files.

SOLUTION

The firm implemented Laserfiche Forms, which enabled representatives to upload blotter forms digitally, importing and archiving files into the repository. The system sends automatic notifications to stakeholders, reducing the need to follow-up and improving accountability.

RESULTS

The firm substantially improved efficiency, enhanced the customer experience and fulfilled industry-specific regulatory compliance requirements.

A full-service broker-dealer with over 300 licensed financial advisors and team members around the country struggled with modernizing the way the organization handled advisor paperwork. All that changed when the COO joined the firm and attended the Laserfiche Empower Conference. “I happened to walk into a session where another customer was describing a simple workflow his organization had created, and the lightbulb came on,” he said. “I started madly texting back and forth with our AVP of advisor relations. We knew we could use Laserfiche to automate our entire operation across the U.S.”

Eliminating Lost Paperwork with Electronic Forms

“Our chief problem was that documents got misplaced,” the COO added. “When new client paperwork wasn’t filed properly, our back office wouldn’t see it, and couldn’t process it promptly. This caused frustration for both the home office and the advisors in the field.”

To address these pain points, the organization did a close examination of its existing processes and the steps that could be taken to improve them.

“The best decision we made was to do a whiteboarding session,” the COO said. “We sat down with representatives from every department to map out their processes and agree on the best automation plan.”

The AVP of advisor relations added, “I joke that our Laserfiche programmers are ‘business process therapists’ because they helped us look at what we were doing, what we needed to do and where we could add efficiencies and streamline processes.”

As a result of the whiteboarding session, the team implemented Laserfiche Forms. Advisors could then submit all their paperwork using a Laserfiche form, which ensured that advisors entered all the necessary information consistently, in the correct file format. Just a few of the processes that the organization automated in this way include:
  • New account onboarding
  • Asset movement
  • Money movement
  • Distributions
  • Check requests
  • Product approvals
  • Sales preapprovals
  • Advertising approvals
  • Electronic blotters

“Follow up with the representatives is all handled electronically,” the COO explained. “it also allows our reps to see the status of their documents at any time, helps compliance by tracking all the actions taken on any given document and increases visibility by automatically generating and circulating reports on compliance, process performance and the like.”

Making Blotter Submissions Easy for Field Representatives

The blotter submission process was one that dramatically approved through automation.

“Preparing blotters is not something our advisors are excited to be doing on a monthly basis,” the COO said. “In the past, blotter submission was a manual process that was not easily tracked or reportable for FINRA. It was difficult for us to gather the data to find out which offices were compliant.”

The firm completely digitized the blotter process with Laserfiche:
  • If an advisor hasn’t submitted their blotters via a Laserfiche form by a certain date, Laserfiche starts sending automated email reminders.
  • If the deadline passes and the blotter is still unaccounted for, the rep receives an email detailing the action that has been taken as a result (e.g., a commission hold).
  • Once the blotter is submitted, the reminders cease.
  • The COO’s team can run a report to see who has or hasn’t submitted their monthly blotters and send reports to the Office of Supervisory Jurisdiction (OSJ) and the compliance department.

“Before Laserfiche, we needed a wheelbarrow to give to regulators the documents they needed,” the COO explained. “Now, if FINRA or the SEC asks us to produce a report showing that we have specific pieces of information, we can quickly run a report and give them that information in an electronic format.”

The benefits of automating blotter submissions have been felt in both the home office and out in the field. “Our new process saves three people in the back office at least one full work day per month, of just having to track down blotters,” the COO said. “Plus, it has taken a process that was frustrating and difficult for our reps and made it much easier for them. Really, all they have to do now is scan a check or fill out a few fields on the form.”

medical sector can modernize and streamline data with LaserficheSIU also used Laserfiche to expedite the collection of patient information when a local healthcare provider retired. “There was a local practice where the provider retired, and all of their patients were transitioned into our practice,” Washburn explained. “We had to collect release of information notices, so we quickly deployed a Laserfiche form to streamline that process. Our clinical staff just had to enter the patient’s health record number. Our system integrates with our practice management system to pull everything automatically, which significantly reduced the time it would have taken manually.”

Montgomery County Hospital District Powers COVID-19 Response with Digital Data and Process Automation

The Montgomery County Hospital District (MCHD) is eliminating its reliance on paper forms and manual processes in order to keep employees and the public safe, protect information privacy and better enable remote work and communication in the midst of COVID-19.

When the novel coronavirus arrived in Texas, it changed almost everything about the hospital district’s operations, shifting many employees to work from home, and requiring new digital processes for information gathering and sharing. The hospital district had been using Laserfiche to create electronic forms and automate processes since 2019, but the pandemic would reveal new critical use cases for Laserfiche and accelerate digital transformation across the organization.

“Montgomery County Hospital District employees were using Laserfiche before COVID, but we’ve found that Laserfiche made it so much easier to work from home and maintain HIPAA compliance, and protect privacy for ambulance patients,” said Shawn Henners, Electronic Business Process Manager at the hospital district. “If COVID-19 had hit six months ago, we would have had to ramp up a lot faster, and things would have been a lot more chaotic. We’re grateful that we had begun our business process automation and electronic forms initiatives with Laserfiche at the time that we did.”

In the first few weeks of Montgomery County’s COVID-19 response, the hospital district rapidly rolled out a number of Laserfiche electronic forms and automated processes for exposure reporting, employee symptom tracking and case investigation.

Rapid Response: Automating Information Gathering with Exposure Reports

MCHD is responsible for providing indigent care, emergency medical services and public health to Montgomery County, Texas. As a publicly-funded organization, MCHD aims to provide quality care to the county while remaining a good steward of taxpayer dollars. In the past year, MCHD worked with Laserfiche Solution Provider DocuNav Solutions to unveil its first agency-wide online forms and automated workflows to increase access to services while improving efficiency.

“All healthcare organizations need to adjust to new ways of working, and technology is key to their ability to respond quickly to change,” said Cody Bettis Sr., CEO of DocuNav Solutions. “The team at Montgomery County Hospital District has really embraced a digital approach to operations, and their Laserfiche solutions are enabling them to rapidly deploy e-forms and automated workflows that meet changing needs.”

One form that was rolled out over the past year was for infection control. Initially created to report employee exposures to things like HIV or meningitis, the form and automated process behind it was used to report exposure to COVID-19 hit once the virus arrived in Texas.

“We used to use the exposure form once or twice a month,” said Henners. “In March, we had about 30 submissions due to the virus. Having those processes automated already made a huge difference for us.”

With the automated process, the infection control officer is able to document exposures and record them in Laserfiche without significant manual intervention. Information is automatically filed in a standardized manner in compliance with industry regulations, enabling authorized personnel to access the information when it’s needed.

“We were able to quickly give our employee health monitor access to the infection control form, so they can see what’s going on, stay in the loop, run reports and make sure that nothing is falling through the cracks,” Henners added.

The hospital district’s human resources team, which is working remotely, can also easily track processes, file workers compensation claims, and communicate with people in office as a result of Laserfiche forms and the repository.

The Front-line: Symptom Tracking for Safer Work Environments

In addition to tracking exposure, MCHD gathers data on employees’ temperature and symptoms to help protect the health and safety of its workforce — including doctors, nurses and EMTs — and those they serve.

“This has helped tremendously since we have employees spread over the county,” said Henners.

Employees who report to work take their own temperature at the beginning of their shift, and log it along with any symptoms they may be experiencing. They are required to do the screening every 12 hours, so if employees work for 12 hours, they would log the information at the beginning and end of their shifts. Those who work 24-hour shifts perform the screening three times.

If the employee becomes symptomatic, the system advises them on what steps to take next. The forms and workflow also enable dynamic case scenarios, so instructions may differ depending on the individual’s department or role. For instance, the protocol for an employee who reports symptoms in a care unit would look very different from the protocol for an employee in an administrative role.

The information collected provides MCHD insights such as the employee’s symptoms and temperature the day before, or two days ago. To protect employee privacy, only infection control officers have access to individual data, while incident command and executives have access to see totals and trends by unit.

“We connected that information on the backend with our scheduling software to look for people who missed their check-ins, so that supervisors can follow up with them,” said Henners. “We want to keep employees safe. Those who are in essential positions can’t work from home, and so we want to do everything we can in order to make sure we’re not exposing each other, and that employees feel safe when they come to work.”

The project took MCHD about a week to get up and running, and staff has been able to copy and paste from the Laserfiche workflow to repurpose it for other processes.

Case Investigation: Automating Information Gathering and Reporting

MCHD has also implemented a Laserfiche solution to automate case investigation, and the collection of data to inform county decisions about COVID-19. As a manual process, case investigation involved epidemiologists making phone calls twice a day to close contacts of people who had tested positive for COVID-19, to manually enter their symptoms into the system.

“On the public health side, they were monitoring hundreds of case contacts, and it was unsustainable,” said Henners. “We built an electronic form and automated workflows that take a huge burden off of the epidemiologists, who can now better focus on their jobs.”

MCHD rolled out the new electronic form and process which enables people to voluntarily self-report their symptoms every 12 hours. “For every positive case we get, we’ll do an investigation on it in the public health department and document our findings,” Henners said.

The information collected also enables MCHD to create reports in Laserfiche that provide critical insights into the health of the county, while protecting patient privacy in accordance with HIPAA. For example, MCHD staff can pull up reports on how many people are at home under monitoring or how many people have recovered. This aggregated data can be made available to county leaders who are making decisions about reopening, while details about individuals is only available to case investigators who need the information to follow up with patients.
Medical worker approaches car to administer COVID-19 test during the pandemic of COVID-19 disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2.

The New Normal: Accelerating Digital Transformation

MCHD is in the planning stages of offering telemedicine through an app; as part of this process, a Laserfiche workflow will support the collection, centralization and protection of patient information, signed consent forms and medical charts in the Laserfiche repository.

“We want to make sure that we have continuity of care, and all of the patient’s information is saved in a central location,” said Henners. “We already have a Laserfiche repository set up for patient records with appropriate security settings in place, so we are able to build and adapt processes easily, while staying in compliance with HIPAA requirements.”

Henners and the team at MCHD continue to experience increased adoption of Laserfiche and digital initiatives across the organization as employees discover new ways to streamline manual, paper-driven processes.

“COVID-19 has forced every employee to use Laserfiche for something — whether it’s specifically about COVID or not,” said Henners. For example, MCHD has a Laserfiche Form embedded on the employee website, where employees can ask questions. “If someone doesn’t know who to direct the question to, they can still get a response. If they don’t want to provide an email address, their question will be addressed in our all-staff calls. That’s another way Laserfiche is improving communication.”

MCHD is working to roll out new, key processes such as travel expense reports and inventory checkoff sheets for ambulances. “In the midst of all of this, I’m still getting emails from EMS chiefs and others who have paper forms that they would rather have in Laserfiche,” added Henners. “We are still improving processes, building checks and balances into our system, and maintaining ease of use for everyone.”

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