Enhancing Student Success by Digitizing Enrollment and Financial Aid Forms
College of the Desert in Palm Desert is one of the 112 institutions in the community college system of California. With an enrollment of 13,000 students, as many as 20,000 to 30,000 documents are processed annually at the college. Using a paper-based application and filing system, the college was servicing a high volume of commuter students with inconvenient and inconsistent enrollment processes.
“With paper forms, students had to travel up to three hours to submit documents or complete their student files,” says Dr. Annebelle Nery, Executive Dean, Enrollment Services. “Student lines at the counter were very long. Once students got to the front of the line, they were extremely frustrated because we’d either lost their documents or the documents were stuck in processing—but where exactly, we weren’t sure.
Information requests were funneled through as many as five departments in order to compile a complete and accurate student file. Records systems were siloed from the college’s student information system (SIS), and staff members had to search multiple locations to find a complete student file.
Standardizing Records Access Across Campus
To improve operational efficiency, the college replaced 20 different paper forms with Laserfiche electronic forms that are instantly accessible through a student’s online portal.
Students can now view, complete, sign and submit degree applications, change of major requests and other student forms all from one online portal. Once a form is submitted, Laserfiche automatically:
Routes it to required employees and departments for processing.
Emails status updates to the student throughout the review process.
Attaches documents to the corresponding student file in the SIS.
Associating metadata fields with electronic forms track the exact status of each application at every step of records processing.
Today, every student form at College of the Desert is received electronically through Laserfiche. The college also automated more than 50 business processes, including:
Petitions
Concurrent enrollment
Enrollment verification
Name change
Request to add a class
Information releases
All departments now access and use a centrally managed document management system, reducing overall costs for maintenance and IT support. Staff members aren’t just sharing information more efficiently with students—they’re collaborating across departments to reduce excessive paper volume and needless filing efforts.
Improving Student Satisfaction and Accreditation with Document Management Software
With Laserfiche, the admissions and records and financial services departments now require 40% less time to process applications and petitions. Inquiries from students and lines at the service counters have decreased significantly now that students receive email notifications about their applications.
“The frustrated phone calls from students are down and now we’re getting calls from other departments that want to use Laserfiche,” says Dr. Nery.
These improvements have not gone unnoticed:
The college met accreditation standards by being able to offer its main campus services to extension centers and online students.
Student satisfaction levels have risen sharply and even the Board of Trustees has complimented the college on its Laserfiche initiative.
Each winter, thousands of residents in Minnesota’s Ramsey and Washington Counties struggle to access basic heating and utilities. When a household finds itself in need, it turns to the Community Action Partnership of Ramsey and Washington Counties, which runs one of the state’s largest low-income home energy assistance program.
“We receive thousands of calls from clients anxious to know if we can help,” says Catherine Fair, Director of Energy Assistance Programs. “These kinds of calls were hard for our staff to field since we had over 25,000 active applications stored in filing cabinets. We knew that automating our application approval process would make us more efficient and accelerate our ability to help households in need.”
Case workers can now quickly determine grant amounts and deliver assistance faster:
Workflows automatically create case folders for new scanned applications, including eligibility worksheets and case note logs, and route them to case workers for review.
Urgent cases can be automatically sent to an expedited processing queue.
Staff members can re-direct files to other groups for review and action. If a case worker chooses “yes” under Furnace Problem metadata field, Laserfiche will auto-route the file to the furnace repair group for attention.
“We have significantly improved crisis response time,” says Fair. “Urgent calls for assistance are much more productive. We can find a client’s application immediately by looking in Laserfiche and can then let the client know exactly what he needs to do to complete his application.”
Standardizing Record Archival, Auditing and Security
In addition to expediting service delivery for low-income residents, the new case management process also streamlined the program’s twice-yearly audits. By law, the agency is required to keep archived case files for three years.
Fair explains, “Files are randomly selected by the auditors, and it was a daunting task to find the ones they requested among 25,000 others!”
Being able to store all records in TIFF format was another reason the agency choose document management software. The open file format ensures that the files stored in Laserfiche will still be supported in 25, 50 or even 100 years.
“Vendor lock-in is a big concern for the IT department. If you choose a file format that’s controlled by a single vendor, you invite a lot of unnecessary risk from both an IT and an information governance perspective.”
Laserfiche’s TIFF archival format means that the agency can continually adopt advances in hardware, software and communication technologies without limiting access to their records.
Built-in Windows authentication and named-user access to the repository also enabled the agency to better protect sensitive client information, like social security numbers.
“Laserfiche protects sensitive information while making our business processes more efficient, “ says Fair. “It has helped us tremendously and we hope that other non-profit agencies that deliver federal programs can learn from our success!”
Tompkins County avoided building a $5.5 million records warehouse by using Laserfiche software to digitize records.
Two centuries’ worth of county records packed into 9,000 boxes take up a lot of space, enough to (almost) justify building a $3.5 million storage warehouse.
Before moving forward with the new warehouse, the Tompkins County Clerk’s Office was tasked with cataloging the millions of archived documents and examine storage alternatives. Records management software quickly entered the conversation for its ability to track records in a digital database.
“Our original plan had been to put barcodes on the boxes of records to keep better track of them and then to either build a new records center or renovate the existing one,” says Maureen Reynolds, Deputy County Clerk.
However, driven by an office culture that prizes sustainability and workplace flexibility, Tompkins County’s plan shifted. “We quickly realized that we could extend the value of the system by scanning all 9,000 boxes of files into a Laserfiche system.”
“Our analysis showed that with an investment of $400,000 to $500,000 for scanning, software upgrades and IT infrastructure updates, using Laserfiche could save us as much as $5.5 million dollars,” says Deputy IT Director Loren Cottrell.
Kicking the Paper Habit to Transition into an Electronic Records System
Thousands of legacy county records were transitioned into a digital file management system.
With a new records repository, the Clerk’s Office envisioned a digital records system that would dramatically reduce the need for paper records. “We wanted to bring greater efficiency and cost savings to the county by implementing, maintaining and instructing all county departments on the best practices of using a digital records management system,” says Reynolds.
Unfortunately, this vision hit an impasse as the county staff reverted to old paper habits.
“We looked around the county and realized everyone was still making paper,” says Reynolds. “They’re creating records on the computer, printing them, storing them in boxes and then three or four years later would bring the records to us and ask us to put them away and track them.”
Reynolds and her team went from department to department to prove the ease and value of digital records. Her team:
Examined departmental files and records.
Interviewed department staff to understand the use and flow of documents.
Scanned documents into Laserfiche.
Destroyed the physical documents.
Created a digital folder structure within Laserfiche that mimicked the organization of physical folders.
Integrated Laserfiche into other systems used by the department.
Improving Records Indexing, Retrieval and Retention
The Laserfiche repository provides a more sophisticated indexing and retrieval system that improves how the departments process their information. More importantly, the repository is integrated with the applications employees are already using.
Records templates in Laserfiche standardize how incoming documents are classified and routed.
“Records are available through a web browser either on the desktop or via a mobile device,” says Cottrell. “The mobile feature makes key documents and records available to engineers, inspectors and other employees working in the field.”
For example, the sheriff’s department previously used an archaic index-card system to track arrest reports crammed into a records room that overflowed into a garage. After scanning the arrest reports, the department was able to reclaim office and parking space.
Court officials have also adopted digital processes. The county court handles approximately 1,400 civil cases and 4,500 criminal cases a year. Before Laserfiche, it could take hours for law clerks and legal secretaries to find and retrieve pertinent records. The court now can now:
Automatically route and process court case files between departments.
Enable judges and employees to use iPads to easily access case files while in court.
Improve efficiency and lower printing costs.
Expanding Records Management as a Shared Service Across County Departments
Laserfiche has been so successful for the county’s records program that Reynolds decided to onboard the county’s municipalities onto the same system.
Using $450,000 in state archiving grant money, the county formed the Tompkins Shared Services Electronic Records Repository (TSSERR), a Laserfiche-powered digital archive that is hosted by the county and serves 20 partnered government agencies including the City of Ithaca. Each member municipality is given its own dedicated repository and has complete control over its content with various levels of security. This also means the Laserfiche system can continue to grow and accommodate every new TSSERR member.
This shared service records capability has reduced support maintenance costs and created a public portal that allows citizens to search for public records. In addition to saving taxpayer money at all levels of government, TSSERR ensures that records across the county are compatible and easily accessible.
“We wanted to be transparent for years and years,” says Reynolds. “People always say the government is hiding information. It wasn’t that we were hiding anything—before Laserfiche, we just couldn’t find it!”
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) sent many government and county social service agencies scrambling to process the sudden increase in welfare assistance applications. For Olmstead County, Minnesota, the new law catalyzed the need for a more responsive case management paperwork process in the County’s Community Services (OCCS) unit. “The ACA scared us to death, because we didn’t have a document management product at the time. The State of Minnesota has a very complex eligibility system for assistance benefits. There’s a lot of variance in the paperwork,” said Olmsted County Community Services Director Paul Fleissner. Without a technology solution, the county anticipated needing to hire 12 full-time employees to handle the expected caseload increase. “We already handled hundreds of thousands, even millions, of pages per year. We had piles of paper everywhere and would occasionally lose a page or file. We needed to find a way to operate more efficiently.”
Paul Fleissner, Olmsted County’s Community Services (OCCS) DirectorRob Ronnenberg, Olmsted County’s Continuous Improvement Manager
OCCS’ need to improve its efficiency was supported by Olmsted County’s LEAP (Lean Efforts and Automated Processes) Initiative. The LEAP Initiative uses the Lean methodology—creating greater value with fewer resources—in combination with Laserfiche software to create efficient and sustainable operations throughout the county. “With ACA, the staff and funding we needed just weren’t going to be there,” said Rob Ronnenberg, Continuous Improvement Manager. “We needed a better way to do things. To provide the same level of services, we had to be 5% more productive with 5% less funding.”
Implementing Digital Case Management
Before Laserfiche software could be implemented in OCCS with the LEAP Initiative, the LEAP team had to show county administrators and commissioners that it fully understood OCCS’ needs and that document management software was the appropriate solution. “Right from the start, it wasn’t the IT director saying, ‘I have a new toy I want to play with,’” said David Nault, ITS manager. “All 12 county departments and the state district courts signed a service-level agreement and came to the IT department saying, ‘We need your help to implement this.’” With everyone highly motivated to do away with paper processes before ACA came into effect, the department implemented Laserfiche quickly. OCCS scanned 15,000 paper case files and converted paper information to electronic data, and the results were immediate. The new ECM-powered process allowed OCCS to:
Increase case worker productivity by 20%
Hire only three additional case workers instead of the estimated 12
Eliminate nearly 125 filing cabinets
“The number one result was improved staff productivity. Everyone felt Laserfiche made their jobs easier,” Fleissner said. “Time spent filing papers, shuffling papers, sorting and distributing mail or scanning files for telecommuters, was replaced with the task of scanning each document once and never touching paper again.”
Ronnenberg added, “Telling social workers that they don’t have to skip their lunch — that they can take a 15-minute breather and still ensure that their clients are taken care of — that’s powerful.” Overall, Olmsted County believes that investing in technology is a sound strategy for the future. “We as government can be more efficient. There are tools out there to do it, and it’s worth the investment,” says Fleissner. “I think there’s a great return on investment story to be told when you automate the right way, for the right reasons and in the right business areas.” Want to improve case management in your office? Schedule a demo of Laserfiche software for case management today!
• A growing bank’s acquisitions led to many ways of managing documents.
• Locating missing information resulted in wasted time.
SOLUTION
• Laserfiche helped to centralize information and save time searching for documents.
• Laserfiche automated loan applications eliminated repetitive tasks and accelerated the process.
• Bank employees have immediate document access from any of the bank’s branches.
For this bank, growing from a startup with less than 10 employees to a bank with multiple acquisitions and 250 staff came with a challenge.
“The banks we bought all had different ways of managing documents — some of them used paper files, while others had software in place,” said one of the bank’s assistant vice presidents. “As a result, we spent a lot of time calling other branches to locate missing information.”
Having disparate approaches was a liability to bank operations and client service. New account applications had to be mailed or faxed from branch offices to the main office, resulting in lost documents — and wasted time.
“We wanted a centralized system to house our information,” the AVP said. “We needed something that would be fully functional across all departments and locations.”
The organization found Laserfiche document management software. “We chose Laserfiche for its flexibility. We like that the system can be used by all our employees while still being customized to fit specific departmental needs.”
Streamling Loan Application and Approval Paperwork
“Our top goal was that loan application processing or opening a new account wouldn’t take forever,” said the AVP.
Using Laserfiche, the bank automated the processing of new accounts and loans:
The customer fills out and submits new account paperwork, which can include signature cards, credit card applications and online banking enrollment forms.
A personal banker scans the documents into Laserfiche.
A customer data specialist enters important document metadata into Laserfiche, such as name, account number and Tax ID.
Laserfiche automatically routes the documents to the appropriate department for review and approval.
The department marks the document as approved, rejected or still in process, and the customer receives notification of the decision.
“This process saves time on administrative tasks and provides immediate document access from any of the bank’s branches. For example, if a customer questions a check, the signature card can quickly be found in Laserfiche and a copy of the signature can be instantly retrieved for verification.
“Every department wants Laserfiche,” the AVP added. “They all have different ideas about what they want to do with Laserfiche.”
Why Should My Organization Care about Document Management Software?
Streamlining business processes and increasing efficiency are fundamental concerns for any organization, regardless of its size or industry. By implementing document management software, business leaders can improve organizational efficiency.
Document management software transforms the management of business-sensitive information, making it possible to:
Manage the storage, search, and retrieval of millions of documents, allowing users to access files in seconds.
Share documents with colleagues while protecting confidential information.
Automate time-consuming manual processes like filling in metadata and document naming.
What Does the Best Document Management Software Do?
Document management systems capture paper documents and a variety of electronic files while managing the storage, retrieval, security and archiving of these documents.
The document management process begins with the conversion of paper documents, forms and records to electronic files. This is considered Phase 1 of the Digital Transformation journey.
Conversion eliminates many of the obstacles created by paper: labor-intensive duplication procedures, slow distribution, misplaced originals and the inconvenience of retrieving files from off-site storage.
Document management systems have five basic components:
Desktop, web and mobile apps that make documents easy to locate and edit.
Folder structures to organize, store and archive documents.
Workflow functionality that automates tedious manual processes like filing and approval.
Security functionality to protect documents from unauthorized access or modification.
Learn more about the basics of document management here.
How Can Enterprise Document Management Software Save Time?
A recent PwC study reports that the average worker spends 40% of their time managing non-essential documents. In addition, IDC estimates that employees spend 20% of their day looking for information in hardcopy documents and that, 50% of the time, they can’t find what they need.
The best document management software can help you save time by:
Answering information requests from clients, citizens and auditors immediately.
Cutting time spent copying and distributing documents to staff, branch offices and outside contacts by digitizing file sharing.
Eliminating lost documents that must be recreated and refiled — and spending less time filing them once they’re found.
Establishing a secure, customizable digital repository for business-critical information, making it simple to search and modify files.
By implementing a document management solution, employees can stop spending time handling paper to start spending more time doing the work that matters: serving clients, citizens and students at maximum efficiency.
How Can Document Management Software Help Improve Efficiency?
Every organization relies on repetitive tasks to accomplish business goals. When it comes to standard, document-based processes like hiring and invoice processing, there are many ways a document management system can help your organization work faster and more effectively.
Enterprise document management software can help your organization increase efficiency with business process automation tools that:
Eliminate manual data entry, document naming and document filing.
Provide staff with information they need to quickly make decisions.
Alerts managers about employee action and inaction.
Make unstructured data (e.g. documents, emails, photographs, etc.) accessible, searchable, available and relevant.
Enable employees to share documents quickly and securely with clients.
Get more information about how document management software can help your organization optimize business processes and increase efficiency here.
What is the Biggest ROI in Enterprise Document Management Software?
Your organization generates large amounts of paper and electronic documents. Traditional methods of storing paper and electronic records require a great deal of effort to manage, distribute and find those documents. As your business grows, so do files, and so does the time and effort required to manage them.
Document management software simplifies business processes by allowing instant access to information, greater collaboration within and among departments and offices and enhanced security for files and records.
Learn how document management software can help your organization recapture lost hours, reduce overhead expenses and increase profitability—download The Document Management Buyer’s Guide today!
“Our municipal website is like having City Hall open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,” says Deputy Clerk Maryanne Fair. “My office is only open from 8:00 A.M. until 5:00 P.M., but even after hours, people can still find what they need.”
The city customized Laserfiche with a file tree structure broken down into nine main entries covering different departments in City Hall. Each of those was then broken down again into folders for each department. According to IT Director John Presley, this file structure makes information easier to find for casual searchers, as curious residents searching city documents account for a lot of the traffic on the site.
City Clerk Phil Goodwin says, “Basic research questions have gone down by as much as two-thirds because people are already finding the info they need on their own.”
Freedom from FOIA Requests
Freedom of Information Act requests used to be an unpleasant subject around the offices of O’Fallon City Hall. FOIA requests, as they are better known, can be vexing for the city clerks who must respond to them. When submitted by laypersons in the community, they can be poorly worded and difficult to understand and respond to. When professionals file FOIA requests, they can be tedious and complex tasks requiring dozens—even hundreds—of hours to fulfill.
So, when a couple of attorneys filed a FOIA request for documents related to an O’Fallon construction project last year, the request looked like it would take two staffers a month each to fulfill. Then one of those staffers suggested sending the attorneys to the city’s Laserfiche WebLink public portal instead.
That was the last staff heard of that FOIA request.
“We sent them an email about Laserfiche WebLink and they did the rest,” Presley says. “They found everything they needed right there. It turned out to be a tremendous time saver for us—and for them.”
Presley points out the cost-effectiveness of having documents available through the Laserfiche WebLink public portal. “That FOIA request would have taken two staffers a full month to fill without Laserfiche WebLink,” he says. “With Laserfiche WebLink, the attorneys could search our documents themselves, which saved us thousands of dollars for just that one request.”
FOIA requests have dropped by at least 50 percent since the Laserfiche WebLink portal has been available, and a lot of the traffic comes from contractors doing business with the city, Presley says. They can submit RFPs much more quickly using Laserfiche WebLink because they can call up old contracts and cut and paste much of the perquisite text.
An Eye to the Future
The public is clearly responding to the increased access to government records. City Hall staffers are getting emails from potential FOIA filers saying they already found what they needed on Laserfiche WebLink, Presley says.
It’s not just O’Fallon residents and businesses benefitting.
“With the volume of usage we’re seeing, Laserfiche WebLink has paid for itself tenfold in staff time savings,” he says. “Now staff can concentrate on their primary role of running the city instead of running around and pulling documents for FOIA requests. FOIA used to be a real unpleasant word around City Hall. Now the subject doesn’t even come up.”
The site’s popularity has prompted O’Fallon to start planning to integrate the city’s GIS application with Laserfiche, opening public access to a vast store of government maps.
A records management strategy is vital to the life cycle of your organization’s information. At an organizational level, a records management strategy governs how information is created, stored, shared, tracked and protected.
Electronic records management (ERM) software simplifies the application of this strategy, helping to manage the life cycle of business records without interfering with your line of business. A records management application supports the automatic enforcement of consistent, organization-wide records policies, simplifying compliance with federal, state and industry regulations.
What are some best practices for managing electronic records?
Once you’ve decided to make the switch to an ERM system, there are four important points to consider.
1. Develop an information governance strategy
Before switching to electronic records, it is essential to design a comprehensive information governance strategy. An information governance strategy explores the breadth of content an organization manages, how content is organized and who should have access to it.
A good governance structure:
Enables staff to work in the most efficient and effective way possible by giving them access to information when they need it.
Outlines which user groups have access to which record types, simplifying the actual application of appropriate security within the ERM system.
Takes into account any state or regulatory requirements for record access or retention.
“Records management is a critical component in information governance, and organizations need information professionals who can incorporate records retention and management principles into all storage media architectures, automated systems and emerging technologies,” says Allen Podraza, Director of Records Management & Archives for the American Medical Association.
2. Evaluate certified records management systems
When switching to an ERM system, you may want to look at systems that are certified, particularly those certified to meet a set of requirements outlined in the Department of Defense (DoD) 5015.2 standard. The Department of Defense has rigorous requirements for ensuring that records are properly organized and managed. The DoD 5015.2 standard outlines requirements for managing classified records and includes requirements to support the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), Privacy Act and interoperability.
Unless an organization provides services to the United States Department of Defense or one of its components, it is not typically required to meet the DoD 5015.2 certification. However, an ERM system that has been certified to meet stringent requirements for organizing file structures — and reliably preserving data — likely offers some of of the best tools available for properly maintaining records.
3. Ensure the electronic document can be legally presented as an official record
Before you switch to an electronic system, you must ensure that the electronic document can be legally presented as the official record. To meet state regulations, it is often important that the ERM software is compatible with a wide range of hardware components, such as optical, tape and magnetic-based WORM (write once, read many) storage.
Utilize both hardware and media storage methodologies to prevent unauthorized additions, modifications or deletions during the approved life cycle of the stored information.
Be verifiable through independent audit processes ensuring that there is no plausible way for electronically stored information to be modified, altered, or deleted during the approved information life cycle.
Write at least one copy of the electronic document or record into electronic media that does not permit unauthorized additions, deletions, or changes to the original document and that is to be stored and maintained in a safe and separate location.
4. Track the actions taken on the document
To form a complete record of organization-wide activity, the ERM system should track every action taken on each document throughout its life cycle, including what information was added and deleted. These reports should not only track each action, but also when and by whom it was performed.
These reports can be run regularly or on an as-needed basis. This whole process can also be automated and reports emailed to the appropriate people on a schedule.
An ERM system can generate system-wide reports on user logins, audit activity, document modifications and more.
Continue Your Journey
Fast track your digital transformation with the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace
Compare top enterprise content management (ECM) vendors on G2
Laserfiche offers records management features as part of a robust enterprise content management (ECM) system. Check out the G2 Grid® for Enterprise Content Management (ECM) and compare top vendors on the market.
An Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system enables organizations to securely manage content and information throughout its lifecycle. It enables unstructured information — such as Word documents, PDFs, emails and scanned images — to be securely stored and made accessible to authorized users.
From commercial supply chains to contract management, HR processes to government administration, the driving force behind implementing an ECM solution is to do business more efficiently. By eliminating dependence on paper documents and organizing unstructured information according to business needs, organizations can simplify and streamline work.
Top 5 Elements of ECM
Listening to our customers over the years, we’ve found consistent goals for implementing ECM. Customers commonly rely on ECM to:
Decrease dependence on paper and streamline business processes.
Drive better customer service and increase productivity.
Reduce organizational risk.
Leading ECM solutions, including Laserfiche, accomplish these goals and more. Here are 5 key elements of an ECM solution:
1. Capture documents digitally
Managing an organization’s content begins with the capture and importing of information into a secure digital repository. This can be any kind of document that is created, captured, stored, shared or archived, including:
Invoices from vendors.
Resumes from job applicants.
Contracts.
Correspondence.
Research reports.
A few methods of capturing these documents include:
Using electronic forms to make documents digital from the point of creation.
Scanning paper documents to be filed in a digital repository.
Managing natively digital content, including Microsoft Office documents, PDFs, photos and videos.
Automatically filing and categorizing documents from servers, shared devices and network drives.
Traditional methods of capturing documents require a great deal of effort and expense. Capturing documents in a digital repository eliminates many of the obstacles created by paper: labor-intensive duplication, slow distribution, misplaced originals and the inconvenience of retrieving files from offsite storage.
Classify and search for documents based on metadata
Organize documents within a flexible folder structure.
The benefits of enterprise content management go far beyond document storage. An ECM system also reduces the time, cost and complexity associated with managing documents that require retention schedules, throughout their life cycle, assisting in efforts to bolster regulatory compliance.
3. Retrieve documents, regardless of device or location
Once an organization’s records have been securely stored, you can:
Identify specific words or phrases within document text, metadata, annotations and entry names.
Use preset search options to search by document creation date, the names of users who checked out documents and other metadata.
Enterprise content management software helps eliminate time spent searching for information, enabling employees to answer information requests from clients, citizens and auditors immediately. More than that, staff have instant access to the information required to make better decisions about issues that can your organization’s bottom line.
4. Automate document-driven processes
Automation helps organizations eliminate manual tasks — such as photocopying or even drag-and-dropping digital documents — to achieve greater results with fewer resources. Some ECM systems have digital automation features that can:
Automatically route documents to the right people at the right time.
Alert staff members when documents require their attention.
Recognize errors before they cause delays or make staff redo work.
Every day, businesses need purchase orders signed, records archived and employee vacation requests approved or denied. Automation moves these critical documents through the necessary steps of review and approval, in the order specified. The end result is processes that are more cost-efficient, streamlined and error-free.
5. Secure documents and reduce organizational risk
With strengthening compliance restrictions in a wide range of industries, organizations are increasingly using ECM systems to optimize records management practices and protect against risk. An enterprise content management system must provide customizable security settings to allow organizations to protect information from unauthorized access or modification. These settings should allow you to:
Restrict access to folders, documents, fields, annotations and other granular document properties as needed.
Monitor system login and logout, document creation and destruction, password changes and more.
Protect sensitive metadata by controlling access to information within individual folders, templates and fields.
Leading ECM solutions enable line of business departments to manage user access independently — which means sensitive HR information stays within the HR department, while private financial information stays within the finance department, even if the information is stored in the same repository.
What are some use cases for ECM?
An ECM can assist your organization in a variety of ways. Below are a few examples:
Accounts payable:Capture information from invoices and purchaser orders (POs), automate invoice matching and flag mismatches between invoices and POs.
Customer and client services: Provide secure, anytime access to documents customers and clients need with online portals hosting digital documents.
Remote and off-site work: Give those working from home or in the field the tools, content and services they need to do their jobs effectively.
Staffing and recruiting: Streamline approvals, paperwork, and everything else involved in bringing in new talent to your organization.
Information governance: Bolster your efforts to keep information secure and in compliance with a set of powerful records management tools.
Customer Spotlight: Learning Arts
Learn how Learning Arts, a company dedicated to the care of children with autism, leveraged ECM to share data about patients with their parents and behavior specialists in real-time to enhance care and programming.
Browse customer reviews of Laserfiche on G2
Get insights from real customers on why Laserfiche is a top choice for organizations looking to further their digital transformation with ECM.
As you can see, an ECM can help streamline a wide variety of processes. Below are some resources to help you continue exploring solutions to your business challenges.
Schedule a personalized Laserfiche demo
Most ECM platforms include a few of these 5 key elements, but category leaders — like Laserfiche — provide a complete ECM solution, helping your organization dramatically improve business processes. See first hand how Laserfiche can be your solution and schedule a demo.
Discover powerful solutions on the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace
Some of the more robust ECM systems, including Laserfiche, offer marketplaces for process templates you can use to jumpstart digital transformation initiatives. To learn more about the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace, watch the video below:
Explore Laserfiche’s 4 Steps to Innovation
Also be sure to check out the below infographic “Laserfiche 4 Steps to Innovation” to see how Laserfiche users can not only deploy solutions quickly, but get involved with a larger community of innovators.
Evaluate and shop for software more effectively with our buyer’s guide
Laserfiche Solution Contributed By: Ed Rolon, Information Technology Manager, Boca Raton, FL
All new technology projects at the City of Boca Raton, FL, follow an eight step implementation strategy. Here is how the City automated its accounts payable process with Laserfiche Forms and Laserfiche Workflow.
Lean project management
Boca Raton created a Boca Lean Steering Committee or the Lean Team to oversee all Laserfiche projects. The city uses the lean methodology for project management which is a customer‐centered approach that uses existing resources to identify areas for improvement by eliminating non‐value added activities. Members of the Lean Team represent different departments such as:
Financial services
Police
Utilities engineering
IT
Compliance
Before automating their first process, the Lean Team participated in a general training about lean process improvement that was led by the City.
1. Get a request
Potential projects are prioritized after they are received. The City tackles the most visible projects, such as the accounts payable automation process, first. These processes affect many staff members, so automation has the greatest impact in these areas. More employees are able to see a tangible benefit and therefore get on board with the project.
2. Hold a kick off meeting
Once the accounts payable process was selected, the Lean Team participated in a “Kaizen” event during which they looked for as many improvements to the accounts payable process as possible. Afterwards, the team held a kick-off meeting with various representatives from departments throughout the city to discuss the overall team goals of the project, the project charter and scope as well as identify stakeholders.
3. Go through a lean discovery process
This was the most time-intensive part of the accounts payable project. During this phase, the Lean Team mapped out the existing process on the wall with sticky notes. Every step, no matter how small, was included. Once the process was mapped out the team evaluated each step and asked if it was value added. Non-value added activities such as walking a file to someone’s office or obtaining three different signatures were identified as waste and discarded.
During the discovery process, the steering Lean Team communicated with the rest of the city through monthly newsletters outlining the progress to help generate buy-in from stakeholders for eventual change.
4. The new Accounts Payable process
Once the non-value added activities were eliminated, the new accounts payable process was designed in Microsoft Visio. Only value-added steps were included. Here is the new process the team designed:
5. Design forms and workflows
Once the new accounts payable process was finalized, the workflow developers created workflows and vendor information request forms. The finalized process progresses as follows:
Before doing business with the City, a vendor must fill out an Additional Vendor Information form on the Boca Raton website.
The form is automatically saved in Laserfiche, and Laserfiche Workflow sends an email to the vendor confirming the form submission. Another automatic email is sent to the accounts payable manager who is also notified of the new form submission.
Accounts payable staff verifies whether the company is incorporated and, if the verification is complete, the accounts payable manager generates a vendor record in the financial system, SunGard NaviLine.
The accounts payable manager opens the form’s metadata and populates the vendor number. She also selects “Completed” from the form status field.
If the state of incorporation validation is not successful due to incomplete information, the accounts payable manager enters the reason why the form is incomplete in the comments field and selects an “Incomplete” form status.
Laserfiche Workflow sends an automatic email to the vendor with one of two messages:
A vendor number and instructions on how to forward invoices to the City.
A notification that the form is incomplete and the reason why along with instructions for resubmittal.
The vendor sends an email with the invoice attached to a specific email address.
The email subject line identifies the vendor and purchase order number.
The accounts payable clerk drags and drops the email into the “Accounts PayableInvoicesValidation” folder in Laserfiche and enters the invoice number and amount into the corresponding template fields.
If the email subject includes a purchase order number, then Laserfiche Workflow performs a lookup into SunGard NaviLine to check if the purchase order is active.
If the purchase order is active, Laserfiche Workflow creates a folder with the vendor name under the “Assignment Vendor” folder based on the first letter of the vendor name.
The accounts payable staff verifies that the goods and services have been received in SunGard.
If the department has entered the receiver, the accounts payable staff selects the “Pending Payment” document status from the Finance Document Status field.
If the staff member from the department hasn’t entered the receiver, then the accounts payable staff selects the “Sent to Department” status. This triggers an email to the staff member requesting the receiver to be entered into the system and routes the invoice to the “Sent to Department” folder.
When the payment is issued, a copy of the check or electronic fund transfer notification is imported into Laserfiche with Laserfiche Quick Fields and Laserfiche Import Agent.
Laserfiche Workflow matches the payment with the invoice and moves both to a common folder in the record series area where it is organized by fiscal year and due date.
City staff can search for invoices through the Laserfiche WebLink portal.
6. Test
During the testing phase, the City had to redesign some parts of the workflow. For example, originally Laserfiche Workflow was sending an email to a vendor based on the information stored in the customer database. Not all vendors had an associated email address, so sometimes the email would not be sent. To remedy this issue, the workflow was redesigned to send the email to a central inbox from which the accounts payable manager routes it to the correct receiver.
7. Train users
To train users, the Lean Team held training sessions and developed a step-by-step guide to the new process that included detailed instructions and screenshots. This guide is available to everyone through the company’s Internet portal.
Here is sample a page from the guide:
8. Launch
After training was complete, the City launched the process into production, making changes as needed.
Benefits of Laserfiche
Automating the Accounts Payable Division process with Laserfiche has resulted in the following benefits for Boca Raton:
Processing errors have been greatly reduced since purchase orders are now automatically looked up in SunGard NaviLine and matched with appropriate invoices.
The process is much faster since redundant (or non-value added) steps have been eliminated.
Customer satisfaction has increased tremendously since all vendor information is now submitted through a single, electronic form.
Lost invoices have been eliminated since the system tracks the invoice from the moment it is received through the approval process and onto the final payment.
All documents including checks and backups are now centrally located in the Laserfiche repository. Each department can check the stage of its payments in the same system.
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“This process saves time on administrative tasks and provides immediate document access from any of the bank’s branches. For example, if a customer questions a check, the signature card can quickly be found in Laserfiche and a copy of the signature can be instantly retrieved for verification.
