3 Top Records Management Challenges (and How to Solve Them)

Records management involves more than safely filing documents. Here are three top records management challenges organizations are facing today.

Making records easily accessible

Making records easier and faster to locate can be a challenge for most organizations, and especially large enterprises.

Organizations can simplify records searches by:
  • Digitizing records for viewing on computers, tablets or smartphones.
  • Applying metadata to records, so that they are instantly searchable by record type.
  • Use saved searches so it’s faster to locate the types of records you frequently search for.
Application window featuring the Laserfiche repository.
Digitizing records and storing them in an ECM repository makes information easily accessible on computers, tablets or smartphones.

Complying with retention schedules

Organizations have a wide range of records retention schedules to comply with based on their industry and the types of records they deal with. Regulatory agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and the US Department of Labor — among others — can impose strict fines on organizations that fail to follow the rules.

To meet these needs, organizations can enforce consistent, organization-wide records policies with an electronic records management system:
  • Auto-file newly created records according to industry regulations and corporate policies.
  • Set schedules for the retention, transfer and archival of records based on record type.
  • Group records in a series based on retention and disposition schedules.
Application screenshot showing a list of retention schedules.
Laserfiche can automatically retain, transfer and archive records based on the record type.

Preparing for audits

Organizations are frequently subject to audits as they manage records lifecycles. They need to prove to regulators that they retain records in compliance with retention schedules. An ECM system can bolster an organization’s efforts to prepare for an audit, with features that allow them to:
  • Monitor system events, such as login and logout, document creation and destruction, password changes and more.
  • Log user actions taken on smartphones and tablets.
  • Generate audit reports that specify what users changed within a system and when.

For example, investment advisory firm Hanson McClain easily prepares for audits by using Laserfiche records management tools to track the creation, deletion and modification of the documents stored in the repository. Even if a document is deleted, IT can still locate it, find out who deleted it and restore it in the repository.
Application window featuring audit trails.
Laserfiche can track every interaction with documents stored in the repository, including document creation, deletion and modification.

Managing risk for an entire organization can be challenging, but with a solid strategy and the right tools, you can be ready for whatever comes your way.

Looking to make Laserfiche your records management solution? Customers can get started streamlining regulatory processes, such as building permit applications and inspections, quicker than ever with the pre-built workflows offered through the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace.

To learn more about records management challenges organizations can overcome with ECM, get your complimentary copy of The Ultimate Guide to Records Management.
Download the eBook: The Ultimate Guide to Records Management.

Ministry of Human Resources & Emiratisation (formerly known as the Ministry of Labour)

Headquartered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, the United Arab Emirates Ministry of Human Resources & Emiratisation aims to create a work environment characterized by efficiency, high quality and social integrity.

Established in 1971, the United Arab Emirates Ministry of Human Resources & Emiratisation (formerly the Ministry of Labour) has over 1,200 employees to serve and manage the UAE labour force. The ministry’s office used massive file cabinets to store all staff-related documentation, resulting in long document search and retrieval times.

These issues prompted the ministry to look for a digital solution to help organize its documents, maintain security and reduce retrieval times. In addition, the ministry wanted a system that would meet its archiving needs while allowing it to provide optimal customer service.

Ease of Use Contributes to Staff Buy-In

The Ministry of Human Resources & Emiratisation had relatively simple selection criteria; it wanted a solution that could meet its requirements and was easy to use. That is exactly what it found with Laserfiche.

Ahmad Al Nasser, IT Director at the ministry, explains, “We started the pilot, did it for 2-3 months, found it suitable, well defined and easy to use, and then purchased the solution.”

When there is change, resistance from staff is often expected. However, according to Al Nasser, “Our staff were very happy and satisfied with Laserfiche from the start.”

From an IT perspective, Al Nasser says, “The beauty of Laserfiche is the ease of implementation and configuration. We expected requests and changes, but surprisingly there was little need for modifications. Once things were set up in the beginning, it suited the users’ requirements and only minor questions came up. Those were accommodated quickly.”

Tackling HR, “the Heart of the Organization”

The HR department is responsible for managing all employee files in the HR archive room. Before implementing Laserfiche, new documents had to be physically inserted into existing employee files. There were complaints of lost documents and long retrieval times, which formed barriers for effective internal processes.

One of the first tasks was to capture and index documents for the 1,200 ministry employees, and electronically archive all the employee files. The original plan was to outsource the process of scanning the documents, then manually entering up to 14 index fields.

However, the ministry’s value-added reseller (VAR), Mazroui and Partners, recommended using Laserfiche to automate document capture and indexing. After documents are scanned in, Laserfiche reads document barcodes to automatically retrieve and add necessary metadata from the in-house HR database.

Laserfiche also simplified the ministry’s records management practices by automating the process of purging pertinent portions of files after a specific interval. When the expiration date for a document approaches, the HR office is notified through email, alerting it of the task to delete the relevant documents. Upon approval, the system then purges said document.

Immediate Benefits
Laserfiche makes it easy to manage employee records.

Using Laserfiche has allowed the Ministry of Labour to digitize the entire employee registry in-house instead of outsourcing the work. This will result in estimated savings of AED 700,000 over three years.

In addition, there has been an increase in the security of the organization’s physical files as well as strengthened disaster recovery procedures.

With servers based in Abu Dhabi and physical records in Dubai, the ministry’s data is not all in one location. Employees now have access to both hard and soft copies of documents. In the event of any data loss, documents are easily recovered due to regular backups of the ministry’s Laserfiche repositories.

Finally, the biggest savings can be seen in document search and retrieval times. Employee documents are found with one click and folders are quickly updated, reducing access times from half an hour to seconds.

Al Nasser recalls, “In the past, it would take HR two to three days to find a document, but within minutes I received a call telling me that the document was in my email.”

From an HR officer’s point of view, the auto indexing and exporting of files to the HR repository “is just magic.”

Ministry-Wide Rollout
Ahmad Al Nasser accepts a Laserfiche Run Smarter Award from CEO Chris Wacker at the Laserfiche Empower 2015 Conference.

What began as a pilot program in the human resources department has now expanded into the IT, administration, finance and legal departments, contributing to improvements in contract management and client services. Plans are in place to roll out Laserfiche across the entire Ministry of Labour in the coming year.

Aside from digitizing its documents, the ministry hopes to automate many of its current business processes, including the procurement process, which is currently one of the more paper intensive operations.

Al Nasser explains, “Laserfiche can help a lot with business process re-engineering. It’s a very easy and straightforward solution, which can make a big change in the organization.”

London Borough of Tower Hamlets: Optimising Operations to Deliver Flexible Government Services

SITUATION

• The London Borough of Tower Hamlets embarked on a Digitisation Programme that prioritised digital information over paper, and automated workflows over manual activities. The goal was to use technology to stay ahead of residents’ needs, and deliver services with great efficiency at low cost.

SOLUTION

• Tower Hamlets Council began capturing information digitally in the Land Charges Service using Laserfiche, with metadata attached that enabled the borough to develop an automated way to process and keep new records.

RESULTS

• The digital-first approach streamlined content capture and archival in Land Charges, Planning and Building Control services, enabling faster decision making that was key in preparing for the 2012 Olympic Games, and creating significant cost savings in these services.

The London Borough of Tower Hamlets is one of the U.K.’s most culturally vibrant and diverse areas. Formed in 1965, the borough also includes a number of London’s famous attractions including the Tower of London, Tower Bridge, Columbia Road Flower Market and Billingsgate Fish Market. The attractions of Bangla Town bring in thousands of tourists every year, and the area has won praise and recognition for its parks and open spaces. For centuries, the borough has welcomed and been home to many immigrants in Britain. Today, some 49% of residents are from black and minority ethnic (BME) communities; 33% are of Bangladeshi heritage, and there are also sizable Somali, Caribbean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Indian and Pakistani communities.

For centuries, the Tower Hamlets area was a key location within Britain’s port industry. Today, it has been transformed into one of London’s fastest growing and most densely populated boroughs. The population in the borough has doubled in the past 30 years, and is predicted to rise by almost 100,000 by 2031. Tower Hamlets Council is responsible for managing the area’s growth and development while continuing to provide residents with high quality services.

In 2007, the council embarked on a comprehensive Digitisation Programme, which began with a vision to bring Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM) and business process management (BPM) functionality to the council’s functions and processes.

Initially, many of the council’s services were heavily paper-based and inundated with on-site and archived documents. Searching for the correct documents became increasingly difficult and indexing all documents seemed impossible. The Land Charges Service was managing 15,000 paper files by hand — using a typewriter to register Land Charge entries on index cards. Information requests would routinely take the target turnaround time of 10 days. The Building Control Service had 1,500 boxes of 50,000 unscanned files — 3 million pages and 100,000 drawings. And the Town Planning Service was housing 400,000 paper files dating back to 1948.

“We had a ton of information held with a storage company,” says John Pulman, ICT client officer at the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. “Plus we had racks of storage internally, just filled with folders.”

In addition to needing a way to digitise this information, the council also required a solution that could easily integrate with a land management system that was already in place.

“Laserfiche really did meet all of our requirements and more,” explains Louis Du Preez, the IT project manager for the London Borough of Tower Hamlets when the project began. “It’s simple and flexible, and the integrations are extremely easy to do.”

The team worked with Laserfiche solution provider Global ECM Solutions to implement a digitalisation program in Land Charges. The previously paper-based departments were able to successfully capture information digitally using Laserfiche, with metadata attached that enabled the borough to develop an automated way to process and keep new records.

“With the council, Laserfiche was a bit of a pioneer,” says Pulman. “It opened the door to more flexible, paperless work, and the device agnostic/location agnostic setup that really fit into a digital workflow.”

Improving productivity with geo-spatial searches

Going beyond information storage, the borough launched an initiative to automate a number of business processes, including Building Control applications registration, monitoring of works and construction completions — which helped to eliminate time-consuming administrative tasks.

“It was great to have the peace of mind of knowing that with Laserfiche, you can start with a very small system and upgrade it to an enterprise-wide solution — and can still integrate with all the state-of-the-art software solutions at any time,” says Du Preez.

The Land Charges Service had a goal of automating geospatial searches which, before Laserfiche, felt impossible. All geospatial indexing was still being performed manually with a typewriter. Searches for information regarding a property often surpassed the turnaround time of 10 days since paper requests had to be manually sent to relevant departments.

In order to automate the search process, 15,000 files, each representing an area with a polygon drawn using ESRI GIS, were captured into the borough’s land management system, and scanned and indexed into Laserfiche. The automation shortened the search time from days to hours.

“Laserfiche is able to do what our other document management systems couldn’t,” Du Preez adds. “Large files can now be broken down electronically into smaller files that cover smaller geographic areas. The capturing became easier to do and information is now easily accessible to the users.”

Being able to perform automated and accurate geo-spatial searches helped Land Charges become more efficient, saving staff time and frustration. This same efficiency was applied to the Planning Service as well. All planning decisions from 1948 onward were captured by Laserfiche, which made for quicker access to planning decision histories and in turn, helped the borough streamline proposal review for the 2012 Olympic Games.

Integrating Laserfiche and Land Management

In the Building Control Service, 3 million pages in 38,000 files were scanned and indexed — some dating as far back as 1895 — eliminating 1,500 boxes taking up 40 square metres of office space. At the same time, Building Control decisions from as far back as 1986 were made available digitally.

In 2008, Laserfiche was integrated with the borough’s land management system, enabling all of the critical documents generated from the land management system to be directly stored into Laserfiche. The seamless integration meant that documents no longer had to be manually transferred, and town planning case files can now be viewed outside of internal servers through Public Registers or by external viewing folders, making service delivery to the public much more efficient and effective.

Internally, security rights are granted to appropriate staff allowing access to information such as drawings, emails and Microsoft Office format files directly from Laserfiche. Data accessibility has been improved and information can flow seamlessly across the service.

The Building Control team also used Laserfiche Workflow to automate administrative tasks, such as metadata entry and updates. Eliminating these small manual activities prevented errors, saved staff time and allowed for greater productivity.

By streamlining business processes, the London Borough of Tower Hamlets is now more transparent, and accessibility to information about local land charges has greatly improved. Automation of business processes has elevated staff morale through more efficient ways of working and collaboration. According to Philip J. Price, the project manager and business process consultant for the London Borough of Tower Hamlets at the time, “standardisation of actions that came from the business process analysis facilitated culture change in the workplace and our staff really feel more empowered.”

A Smarter Working Strategy

Like many other local governments, the London Borough of Tower Hamlets has seen a squeeze on budgets in recent years, however, over the past decade, Laserfiche-driven digitisation and automation initiatives have saved the borough a significant amount of money. The organisation had been working to adopt a more paperless, remote working environment, including an ability to work from home, before COVID-19 hit the country, but the pandemic kicked that initiative into high gear.”

“Even before COVID, we were reducing our office space enormously, and that’s continued to be the trend,” Pulman says. “Having this more paperless environment with more digital workflows in Laserfiche supports more flexible working. In the new working environment, offices are not where paper files are stored. You can just connect to work from whatever computer you are on. Modern workplaces have a device agnostic/location agnostic setup — Laserfiche workflow really enables that vision.”

With government cut-backs and councils looking for ways to do more with less, digitising Land Charges, Planning and Building Control services has helped the borough cut down on costs, become more efficient and provide better public services.

“Laserfiche has really played a fundamental part in our smarter working strategy. Across the board, all of our information is now easily accessible, which allows information to be viewed through various internal and external means and they are now only constricted by rights and no longer by technology limitations. Laserfiche helped overcome this,” says Price. “The Laserfiche ECM solution allowed us to raise efficiency while lowering costs. … I strongly feel that Laserfiche has had a profound impact on the organisation and it can continue to adapt with our Council’s evolving ECM strategy. It is truly a complete solution.”

The DCD Group

An international engineering company headquartered in South Africa, the DCD Group is comprised of 12 business units in four different divisions: rail, mining and energy, marine and defense, with some companies in the group having been in operation for over 100 years. As a highly respected industry leader, DCD is always looking for innovative ways to provide top engineering services.

Dawie Marais, General Manager Support Services, had a vision to find an enterprise content management (ECM) solution that would eliminate administrative lags, improve the efficiency of business functions and add true value to the company. “It just made sense from a cost, support and maintenance standpoint to choose one ECM system that has flexible business process management tools that could be deployed in all our departments,” explains Marais.

Having one comprehensive solution like Laserfiche meant that we only have one system to oversee. We could cut down on the need for support, eliminate the extra time spent on overlapping systems, increase staff’s productivity and allow information accessibility throughout the enterprise—it was the most cost-effective choice.

Streamlining HR, saving $150,000 per year

The same contract employee may be re-hired up to four times a year at DCD’s Marine Division, depending on the amount of projects and the different skills needed at specific stages of each project. Over a short period of time, DCD’s contract staff can fluctuate between 300 and 2,500 employees, with most contracts lasting 90 days or fewer. Each year, 2,000 to 5,000 contracts are processed.

The huge amount of records associated with hiring and managing this temporary staff created a time-consuming and difficult administrative workload for HR staff. “Before implementing Laserfiche in our HR department, onboarding a new employee took 45 minutes,” Marais says. “Now, it only takes 15! Having Laserfiche has empowered our staff and made their work so much more efficient. They no longer have to search through stacks of employment records just to find something—all the files are now digitized.”

By using Laserfiche Forms and Laserfiche Workflow, the HR department was able to reduce the steps in the onboarding process for both staff and applicants.
  • The need for printing multiple paper documents was eliminated as applicants can use Laserfiche Forms to enter their information on a computer at the HR office.
  • Populated forms are directly routed into the Laserfiche repository by Laserfiche Workflow.
  • For new contracts, new folders are automatically created. For re-hired employees, existing folders are located and automatically updated, reducing the risk of errors and centralising the data.
  • To simplify change management and improve staff adoption, HR staff continued work from their existing human capital management system. Laserfiche is integrated into the back-end to help minimise time-consuming and manual administrative work.
  • Employee records are digitised and scanned into Laserfiche, freeing up physical storage space.
  • Authorised personnel are granted appropriate access to employee records, improving the flow of information.

With Laserfiche, we speed up our employment process, saving at least $150,000 a year and reducing administrative work by 50%,” Marais explains. “HR staff at DCD Group feel empowered by Laserfiche—it lifts a lot of pressure off our staff. There were minimal disruptions during the implementation since we could retain the familiar user interface; there were no additional username and passwords to remember; employee records are all scanned, making searches simple; and all employee details are now secure and in one, easy-to-find location.

Making purchase requisition paperless from start to finish

Before implementing Laserfiche, purchase requisition at DCD Group was a paper-based process, where employees manually searched for expense codes and descriptions before filling out each request by hand. This process was prone to mistakes; hand-written requests were difficult to read, and there were a lot of easily damaged paper documents. The approval process was also time-consuming, as the employees had to physically track down the appropriate manger to get approval.

Using Laserfiche Workflow and Laserfiche Forms, DCD Group succeeded in making the entire purchase requisition process paperless, increasing efficiency and productivity. Thomas Matthee, Manager Systems Development and Implementation, adds, “Laserfiche simplified the purchase requisition process. Staff used to have to run around trying to find the right person for authorisation. Sometimes the managers just weren’t available and there were times where the requests didn’t even get looked at or they got lost. Now, everything is transparent.”

The new, streamlined purchase requisition process works as follows:
  • Requests are now made through Laserfiche Forms, where departments and expense codes can be easily selected through drop-down lists, reducing administrative work and minimising errors.
  • Laserfiche Workflow sends the appropriate manager a notification of the request and directly routes the populated forms for approval.
  • Once approved, the workflow will automatically route the request to completion.

Matthee notes, “I would estimate a minimum of 15 minutes per requisition is saved by using Laserfiche, boosting staff productivity. Employees now spend less time on administrative tasks, and they don’t have to file extra paper work or worry about lost documents. With Laserfiche, automating business processes is so easy.”

Producing efficient and compliant project documentation

For the manufacturing process in the mining and rail sectors, mandatory certifications are done through the submission of data packs, which contain testing information, documents, welding certificates, drawings, and quality assurance information. It was a constant challenge to manage the data packs, which could involve anywhere from five to 50 boxes—all ordered by date and free of duplication.

Before we implemented Laserfiche,” says Marais, “the administrative work involved was a nightmare to handle. It was difficult to keep track of the versions of the documents and also the duplications. And once we’d organised the paper documents, we’d have to send all of the boxes over to our clients. There was too much room for error and damage during the whole process.

He explains that DCD Group needed to find an ECM solution that would meet the company’s stringent quality assurance standard while decreasing the administrative burden placed on employees. “Today, all data packs are submitted electronically, which increases document security while decreasing costs. We also have a check in/check out process where only one copy of the most up-to-date document is stored in the Laserfiche repository and only one person can update it at a time,” says Marais. “By digitising and automating this process, we’ve improved productivity and boosted staff morale.”

Driving efficiency across the organisation

Marais particularly appreciates that Laserfiche is not limited to one department. “Laserfiche’s deployment flexibility made it easy for us to implement it in multiple departments, including Human Resources, Sales and Marketing, Quality Assurance, Scheduling, Project Management, Planning, Buying, Finance and Maintenance,” he says. “At DCD Group, we believe it is important not to chase technology but to find a technology that truly adds value to our company. With Laserfiche, we continue to increase our overall operational efficiency and gain more value from the system.”

How to Make HR Records Management Way Easier

Here on the ECM Blog, we talk a lot about the roles and responsibilities of records managers—but not all organizations actually have records managers. In the case of human resources (HR), maintaining employee records often falls on the HR department itself.

HR professionals shouldn’t spend too much time acting as records managers, yet it’s crucial to comply with government and company policies regarding employee files. How can HR professionals balance compliance with the core responsibilities of HR? The key lies in three words: Transparent Records Management.

Here’s why managing employee records is difficult and how Transparent Records Management can be used in organizations without a dedicated records manager.

The Challenge of HR Records Management

Records management is the practice of filing, retaining and destroying company records in accordance with government and industry regulations.

The challenge is that most employees aren’t thinking in terms of records management when they create and use documents. Regular employees organize documents based on their daily needs, not the rules of retention and destruction set forth by the IRS, state governments and so on.

For example, an HR professional might prefer to organize her files by employee name. She creates a new folder for each new employee and keeps it in a file cabinet. But within each employee’s file is a mixture of documents—each with different records management requirements. Imagine how time-consuming it would be to search through every employee file for W4s during tax season or manually locate records that are ready for disposition.

A first step toward better records management is implementing enterprise content management (ECM) software, which allows organizations to store records in an electronic repository. This solves the problem of manually sifting through cabinets of employee files, but it does not change the way an HR professional organizes employee files—arranging them by employee name is still the most logical approach for an HR professional. Fortunately, there’s a way to retain this file structure and still make records management easier for HR.

Transparent Records Management to the Rescue

Transparent Records Management allows the same ECM repository to be viewed in two different ways. For HR, one view can display employee records by employee name while a second view displays employee records by record type: applications, insurance documents, tax documents and so forth.
“Records management” view on the left; “regular” view on the right.

This ability to arrange the same repository of employee files in two different ways is key to efficient HR records management. Regular HR employees can access a folder structure relevant to their jobs while a designated HR administrator sees a folder structure designed for records management.

The important thing to remember here is that transparent records management provides two views of the same repository, not two separate repositories. The “regular” view actually contains shortcuts to the original documents. This means that if a document is edited in the “regular” view of the HR repository, that change is reflected in the “records management” view as well—sort of like The Matrix. This function of transparent records management prevents unnecessary duplication of documents and ensures information consistency.

If you’re interested in learning how HR processes can be automated, check out our free eBook on HR automation.
The Ultimate Guide to HR Automation by Laserfiche

Scribbled in the Margins: Capturing the Knowledge of Marginalia

Were you one of those students who, despite your teachers’ warnings, continued to write in your books? If so, you have a lot of company—some of it illustrious (no pun intended). And now, there are a number of efforts going on around the world to capture these scribbled snippets of wisdom.

The notion of “marginalia,” or making handwritten notes and drawings in the margins of book pages, dates back as far as the Middle Ages. Presumably, monks made random drawings and notes to relieve the tedium of the manuscripts they were copying. Once mechanical printing started, marginalia really took off as scholars of the day held debates with the books they were reading—not so different from comment sections on websites.

To the despair of librarians everywhere, marginalia has marched on. “Such readers feel that they aren’t really giving a book their full attention unless they’re hovering over it with a pencil, poised to underline or annotate at the slightest provocation,” writes Mark O’Connell in the New Yorker, going on to quote George Steiner’s description of an intellectual as “a human being who has a pencil in his or her hand when reading a book.” Writers such as Jack Kerouac, Vladimir Nabokov, Samuel Beckett, Graham Greene, and Mark Twain were all noted for their habit of scribbling in books written by others.

These notes can still be useful to us today, say researchers. “This diverse evidence of annotation provides a considerable range of unique and largely untapped research materials, which reveal that readers—much as users of the internet today—adapted quickly to the technology of print: interacting intimately, dynamically, socially, and even virtually with texts,” writes Johns Hopkins University.

In fact, Johns Hopkins goes on to call marginalia “among the largest, least accessible, and most underutilized of original manuscript sources from the early modern period, due to the fact that they are almost entirely uncatalogued, or undercatalogued, by major research collections throughout the world.”

That’s what marginalia digitization projects hope to change. Here are some examples:

The Archaeology of Reading in Early Modern Europe, a joint venture of Johns Hopkins, Princeton and University College London, will transcribe and catalog marginal notes in 16th- and 17th-century books held in various libraries. The project will begin with a number of heavily annotated books and expand from there, eventually producing a large, fully searchable dataset available on a publicly accessible website.

Annotated Books Online enables people to add transcriptions and translations and upload annotated books of their own, access to which is then provided free of charge to researchers. Thus far, it contains about 60 volumes, including Martin Luther’s copy of the New Testament.

The Darwin Manuscripts Project, which currently offers “digital access to all of the 34,643 folios [of Darwin’s] that deal directly with the theory of evolution.” “Transcriptions are essential, as Darwin’s handwriting is often difficult to read, and having his marginalia, notes, and letters be legible can more readily support new research,” writes Allison Meier in Hyperallergenic. These include scribblings in books he studied, abstracts, book drafts, articles and their revisions, journals he read, and his notebooks on transmutation. “There are even some charming oddities like drawings by Darwin’s children on the back of leaves of The Origin of Species,” Meier notes.

Digitizing Walt Whitman’s Annotations and Marginalia is a project that has been going on at the University of Texas at Austin since 2007. “Using Walt Whitman’s manuscript marginalia—his annotations and other scribblings on other writers’ printed works—we have built prototype tools for marking up such documents as well as for displaying interactive search results for such documents using images and text,” notes the project’s website.

Hidden in Plain View: Making Visible the Robbins Library’s Marginalia Collection is a project that began this summer to digitize the marginalia at Harvard University’s Robbins Library. “Interest in readers’ marginalia ranges across disciplinary bounds,” writes Eric Johnson-DeBaufre of Robbins Library of Philosophy. “Making visible our collection of marginalia thus stands to benefit philosophers as well as historians, literary scholars, and others.”

As people progress to reading books electronically, does this mean the death of marginalia? Just the opposite, actually. Some marginalia aficionados see it as a new revolution, equivalent to that of Gutenberg. “Imagine reading, say, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and touching a virtual button so that—ping!—Ernest Hemingway’s marginalia instantly appears, or Ralph Ellison’s, or Mary McCarthy’s. Or imagine you’re reading a particularly thorny passage of Paradise Lost and suddenly—zwang!—up pops marginalia from a few centuries of poets (Blake, Coleridge, Keats, Emerson, Eliot, Pound), with their actual handwriting superimposed on the text in front of you,” writes self-confessed marginaliaist Sam Anderson in the New York Times. “This, it seems to me, would be something like a readerly utopia.”

Gitterman & Associates

Since it was founded in 1990, Gitterman & Associates Wealth Management, LLC has grown from a five-person financial firm to a dually registered firm with 25 employees handling $225M assets under management (AUM) on its RIA side and over $400M AUM on its broker-dealer (BD) side. With this growth came the need to manage more client information and business records—and, now as a dually registered RIA/BD, to meet separate compliance standards for both FINRA and the SEC.

Since implementing Laserfiche Avante earlier this year, Gitterman & Associates is not only saving the staff and storage costs of working with paper, the firm is using Laserfiche to proactively manage its information to make compliance simpler, easier and more efficient. “Laserfiche is as user-friendly as it says it is, but it has the flexibility to separate our information to meet our compliance needs as both an RIA and a broker-dealer,” says Jeffrey Gitterman, Founder and CEO. “No other company or solution we looked at did that.”

Declaring Independence from Its BD – and Its Legacy ECM

Laserfiche was not the firm’s first enterprise content management (ECM) solution—but it was its first successful one. “Two years ago, our broker-dealer at the time came to us as one of two branch offices to beta test their document management system. I jumped on it, thinking this has got to be better than having a file clerk in a room all day,” recalls Marcy Gitterman, Director of IT & HR.

Trouble was, with no folder hierarchy and searching limited only to template fields, the legacy system was creating as many problems as it was meant to solve. “It was just a really cumbersome program to use,” she says. As the firm prepared to switch broker-dealers to Fidelity, only one of 19 staff members had actually scanned their paperwork into the system. Marcy was frustrated, but optimistic. “I knew there had to be something else out there that would work,” she says.

The firm’s principals, meanwhile, just wanted something people would actually use. “At one point, we were just talking about scanning everything to PDF ourselves and storing it on a hard drive, but I was really against that,” Gitterman says. “We needed something a lot more robust—the fact that PDFs can be altered wouldn’t help with security or compliance.”

Laserfiche, turns out, was one of the ECM providers on Fidelity’s short list of recommended solutions. Jeffrey Gitterman was aware of Laserfiche from local FPA chapter meetings, as well as from hearing about it from colleagues who used it. “It’s just a name we kept hearing a lot,” he says. When Zaheer Master, President of Laserfiche reseller Accelerated Information Systems, presented a Laserfiche solution tailored to the firm’s dual registry, Gitterman knew he was working with the right company—and that he’d actually use the software.

“I avoid technology like the plague, so ease of use was my number one priority. How easily can our new employees use it? How easy is it for me to use it?” Gitterman says. “Laserfiche could take our paper filing system—the one we’ve been using successfully since 1996—and transpose it to a Windows-type environment we were comfortable with.

“But what really impressed us about Laserfiche was the way our reseller presented it. The other solutions we looked at were totally reactionary—they just said, ‘This is how you get rid of paper.’ Our reseller presented Laserfiche in a way that said, ‘Okay, now that your information’s automated, here’s how you’ll need to set this up to get the most out of it and here’s how you do it,’” he adds.

Implementation took place over two months. Says Master, “We showed them how they needed to separate the RIA side of their business from the BD side for FINRA and SEC compliance. We also showed them how, using metadata, you could set up a template field search with a cut-off date or destruction date to easily enforce a retention policy. I think the important thing to realize with ECM is that just because it’s easy to keep everything, doesn’t mean you necessarily want to.”

The space saving alone, Marcy says, was a relief. “We look at the hundreds of square feet we’d been devoting to our file room—it just gets crazy. And half of those files you’ll never see, but you have to keep for compliance,” she says. “Now we get our space back and all we have to do is shoot something through the scanner so we don’t have to touch it again. It’s that simple.”

The flexibility to segregate information and customize user access to certain folders was not only effective, she says, it was easy. “In the old system, we would have to hire a support person to do that. Now we can set up permissions to assign access,” Marcy says. “We use Laserfiche for client files, HR files, benefits, payroll, you name it, so the ability to lock down some files versus other files is really helpful.”

She adds, “Laserfiche doesn’t just say it’s user friendly, it is.”

Automated Compliance – Even at 2 AM

While having more accessible information is a benefit, Gitterman & Associates has also realized that automated information is more useful information. “We do a lot of our compliance right in Laserfiche,” Marcy says. “Instead of our reps having to make copies of client correspondence, they scan them in and it’s automatically submitted to our Chief Compliance Officer in a folder only he has access to. Then we set up a stamping process so the CCO can tell the rep that it’s been approved.”

This automation has paid off in faster service for financial advisors. “One of the nice things is that if our CCO is on the road, it’s not like it has to wait a week if it’s something that needs to be pre-approved. He doesn’t have to look for a fax machine or find time to respond during business hours, he can just log into Laserfiche at 2:00 AM.”

For his part, Jeffrey agrees. “Laserfiche is a huge help from a compliance side.”

But Gitterman says it’s the little things that make using Laserfiche an effective part of everyday business. “The fact that I can redact a line in a memo, and then send it in a secure email—these are the kinds of things I like. I don’t have to ask someone how to do it, I can just do it.”

He sees the potential for Laserfiche to make audits more hassle-free. “I just went through six months of FINRA audits and I can tell you it was painful. They basically put me out of business for six months. If we had already had Laserfiche, it wouldn’t have been a tenth of the nightmare it was,” he says.

“Now that we have Laserfiche, even though an auditor can come and say he wants to see incoming correspondence from a certain date range, we can have everything for them in 30 seconds. That’s going to be huge for us.”

Marcy says now that the firm is enjoying its first taste of content management efficiency, she is eager to see what Laserfiche Workflow can do to automate business process management. “Right now our CRM integrates with our email system—I’d like to see it integrated with Laserfiche as well,” she says. “And our internal processing department will be able to automatically route documents to our principals to approve from anywhere, instead of having them wait in a folder on a desk—that’ll be nice.”

As nice, says Jeffrey, is that the firm has found an ECM system that’s finally living up to its potential—and uncovering new potential in the process. “Of all the new software we’ve gotten in the last few months, this is everyone’s favorite,” he says. “Laserfiche did what it promised to do. None of the other software did.”

City of Eugene

In the decade since the City of Eugene, OR, first implemented Laserfiche, the system has been deployed to the City Manager’s Office, City Attorney’s Office and Public Works Administration, Planning and Development, Police, Wastewater, City Prosecutor and Municipal Court. As Department Application Team Manager Loring G. Hummel explains, this resulted in four separate Laserfiche services, one of which included multiple workgroups that shared concurrent licenses between the City Manager’s Office, Planning and Public Works Administration.

“Everything exposed to the Internet was on this server, so we had problems with licenses being used up,” Hummel says. “About two years ago, a member of my team pointed out that our Laserfiche licensing was actually pretty inefficient—overall the number of concurrent users was inadequate to maintain and grow.”

Hummel saw that a consolidation to an enterprise solution made sense to streamline administration, and would allow him to better leverage his own staff to handle future integrations and deployments. Eugene’s long-time reseller VPCI, of course, had an app for that: Laserfiche Rio enterprise content management.

In April 2009, Hummel submitted a memorandum to Eugene’s Central Services Advisory Board outlining a plan to consolidate Eugene’s four Laserfiche systems by moving to Laserfiche Rio. Besides recapping the “high return on investment” Eugene had already enjoyed in the areas of sustainability, efficiency and “new capabilities”—GIS and SharePoint integration among them—as well as asset protection over the last ten years, he outlined the potential benefits of moving to Laserfiche Rio:
  • Unlimited servers and repositories: With the unlimited servers included in the Laserfiche Rio system, Hummel’s team could easily establish environments for testing and pilot projects.
  • Named user licenses: Instead of limiting mission-critical users like judges and 911 operators with first-come, first-serve concurrent licensing, licenses assigned to individual users would provide constant access.
  • Enterprise-wide features: Because Laserfiche Rio licenses come fully loaded with a complete suite of applications, features previously used only by certain departments—including Laserfiche Workflow, Laserfiche Records Management Edition and the Laserfiche-SharePoint Integration—would now be available city-wide.
  • Unlimited read-only public connections: Laserfiche Rio’s Public Portal provides unlimited read-only connections through Laserfiche WebLink, which would enable the city to meet surges in public demand for information.

Hummel points out that a 100% credit offered by Laserfiche, as well as pooling support costs, not only made the upgrade affordable, but it also allowed the city to centralize administration and IT staffing for further deployment and customization.

Leveraging a city-wide telecom tax set up to support three-year IT projects, Hummel was able to secure a funding boost to launch the project, while giving departments a temporary break from their own support costs until 2013.

The Rio Reality

According to Hummel, “Laserfiche Rio not only solves our licensing problem, but it also lays the framework for Laserfiche as a common content management platform for everyone across the enterprise,” Hummel adds. “Beyond that, it has the potential to become a real information sharing and collaboration tool.”

The biggest improvement, Hummel says, is centralizing Laserfiche administration and service. “I think we’ve made a more professional IT environment for Laserfiche—which is part of laying the groundwork for future deployment,” he says. “We’re proactive in that we’re able to apply patches and fixes all at once. Where we had functions within departments before, we’re able to cultivate expertise in the right place as far as realigning departmental staff into central server administration.”

At the same time, he adds, this centralization has afforded Eugene greater control and oversight of its information assets. “A big benefit is that the whole system is auditable. Because Laserfiche authorization is now controlled by a central administrator, in respect to security roles, we’re able to lock down repositories and folders according to different administrative needs,” Hummel says. “Now, we’re treating Laserfiche like one of our larger information systems such as ERP and database servers that also encompass risk management and compliance.”

And, he says, having a single, standardized ECM system allows staff to be more self-sufficient. “We have a lot of applications with embedded Laserfiche components, so we use the Laserfiche SDK a lot. We’re a .NET shop, so that’s the kind of flexibility that’s important to us,” Hummel says. “Laserfiche offers flexibility and programmability in terms of .NET integration that allows a full-featured IT shop like ours to use the tools we already have to fully customize it for our own applications.”

He points to a recent example: “We built an ASP.net web application for building inspectors in our planning and development department that has GIS maps, their routes, etc. All supporting documents are stored in Laserfiche, but the inspectors use the application in their cars, and click on a button and the supporting documents come up in Laserfiche WebLink—without them knowing where it came from. All the searching and metadata is behind the scenes. We basically wrote our own client.”

Standardizing Enterprise-Wide

For Hummel, standardization is its own combination of reality and potential. “In government, everything seems to grow in silos, by workgroup and department,” Hummel says. “The ability to easily and seamlessly automate information across organizational boundaries—it’s kind of the holy grail of IT.

“Just having Laserfiche isn’t going to get us there, but our Laserfiche Rio-based architecture—and by that I mean both the placement of servers on our network as well as the way we positioned our repositories to simplify the creation of shared processes—gives us the technical framework that will allow departments to create business processes to cut through silos. That’s a good start,” he adds.

He also points to the promise of Laserfiche Workflow, which will enable his department to easily develop and implement standardized, repeatable processes. “For city-wide applications, we’ll write our own custom user interfaces. We want to use the workflow engine, but we’ll build in interactivity using the SDK API and .NET,” he says.

One of these new business processes is city-wide contract management. “Right now, every department keeps its own copies of contracts and its own retention policies, even though everything’s in the City Recorder’s archives. They may not know what’s being kept centrally and if they do, they think it’s a big process to access them,” Hummel says. “One of the things that attracted us to Laserfiche Rio was the idea of transparent records management, so we could make the actual storage transparent and be able to assign access to certain folders according to who needs to get them. That way, we can really increase the transparency of information back to the organization, which will translate into efficiency.”

Hummel points to this efficiency in the evolution—and simplification—of how the Eugene Police Department (EPD) shares reports with the Eugene Municipal Court (MuniCourt).
  • In the past, the EPD used shortcuts to a special distribution folder in Laserfiche, then a custom integration that briefcased police reports to move them into the MuniCourt repository—which still created multiple copies.
  • Now with Laserfiche Rio, EPD staff use a simple “yes/no” MuniCourt template field to give the court read-only access to designated reports in the EPD folder, which are searchable by case number.

“We actually had a customization written for the prosecutor [to briefcase reports for MuniCourt]. But since going to Laserfiche Rio, now that they’re sharing common services, we’ve eliminated a ton of custom code and complexity,” Hummel says.

Reaching ROI

Hummel is confident this self-sufficiency will translate into enterprise efficiency, especially on the staffing side. “We’re not talking about using automation to eliminate positions, but we’re looking at using technology to cope with positions we have already lost during the economic downturn, as well as any future staff reductions,” Hummel says. “We want to make sure the level of service doesn’t deteriorate. We want to cope with the reduced footprint using automation tools. Laserfiche is one way to do that.”

Besides increase efficiency, he says, Laserfiche Rio has allowed his staff the freedom and focus to excel as well. “The information services department is 40-plus people, where all six city departments have two to three analysts to determine their application needs,” Hummel explains. “Every department is really its own business. One of the challenges is to serve very specialized departmental needs with a fairly modest staff. Each member of my team is assigned directly to a department for application support, so professional collaboration among IT staff has always been a challenge.

“Laserfiche has been a unifier,” he adds. “We have a team of Laserfiche IT folks so we can make the most of where the expertise lies to serve all the different departments. It’s made the upgrade possible. We have this collaborative environment that’s made the lines between assignments more fuzzy, so hopefully that will be a catalyst for other [IT-driven] endeavors.”

Hummel notes that functionality his staff once had to develop themselves is now available out of the box. That, and the collaborative, catalyzing environment standardizing on the Laserfiche Rio ECM system inspires, is encouraging, he says, both for the success of the Laserfiche consolidation, but in terms of the reality and potential of his own department.

“If you look at companies like Microsoft or Apple, they owe a lot of their success to the way developers are able to build innovative solutions in it,” Hummel says. “It’s not locked down. Like Laserfiche, it’s a broader base of development that encourages more innovation, because users are not just customers, they’re partners.”

How Do You Explain Records Management to Non-Records Managers?

Explaining a concept to an unfamiliar audience requires more than expert knowledge—you need to be able to adapt your message so it’s relatable and thought-provoking. Records management, with its myriad rules and regulations, can sound almost like another language to the untrained ear. But employees who don’t understand the importance of electronic records management are unlikely to follow its rules, leaving the organization at risk and the records manager constantly frustrated.

We asked a group of over 3,000 records managers on LinkedIn how they explain records management to regular employees who do not share their expertise or daily business goals. Here are eight takeaways from that discussion.

1. “Keep it simple”

Straightforward messages are easier to understand and remember, but it can be a challenge to break down the many aspects of records management. Rich Lauwers, Director of Information Governance at Merrill Corporation, shared a simple slogan that was passed on to him from a colleague:

Records management is knowing what you have, where you have it and how long you have to keep it.

By starting every client conversation with this slogan, Rich is able to ease any anxiety caused by the changing regulations, practices and legal ramifications of records management.

2. “Put your global view to good use”

Besides the CEO, the records manager is one of the few people who has a comprehensive view of the organization’s methods and operations. This knowledge is collected over the years through information audits and policy reviews, giving the records manager keen insight into the routines of regular employees.

Records managers can use this global view to address “throw it over the wall” thinking—i.e., when departments pass off responsibilities to the next department without considering the impact on organizational efficiency. A common example of this is when one department passes a paper form to the next department, which then has to enter the form data into its software system—using a consistent electronic form would save time for everyone.

Once records managers help regular employees understand they’re all part of the same team, those employees might be more receptive to sharing the duties of records management.

3. “Show how records management is a means, not an end”

Records management, like IT, exists to support the infrastructure of an organization. It is crucial that employees view records management not as a resting place for unneeded documents but as a set of principles that must be followed in every department and process.

In order to communicate this idea, records managers should first understand how their users operate by asking:

  • What services are you providing?
  • Who are your customers or clients?
  • What are your pressures or pain points?
  • What consequences do you have for errors or non-compliance?

With these questions answered, records managers can explain records management and the useful role it plays in the day-to-day lives of regular employees.

4. “Let executives spread the message”

If the message of the records manager tends to fall on deaf ears, change the speaker. One LinkedIn member used video recorded messages from his organization’s CEO and Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer to roll out a new records management program. In his case, it was crucial to go beyond C-level approval and have executives actively advocate the records management initiative.

5. “Use analogies for records management”

When employees claim that records management is too complicated to handle on their own, it helps to relate organizational records management to personal records management. For instance, home life requires you to sort mail and throw out what you don’t need, keep some mail until an action is completed (such as paying a bill) and retain other pieces of mail as required (such as tax documents).

In this way, records managers prove that regular employees already practice records management to some extent, making it less alien of a concept. The main distinction is that in an organization, everyone must follow the same rules and the consequences of non-compliance affect more people.

6. “Bring the risks of non-compliance to life”

Certain people require dramatic examples to be shaken out of apathy. I am in no way endorsing the idea of staging an emergency in the records storage facility, but it can help to go over the worst-case scenarios of non-compliance. For example, one wealth management firm experienced a six month FINRA audit that essentially put business on hold. According to one LinkedIn member, sharing these horror stories prompts action from regular employees without much effort from the records manager.

This approach should be made with caution as employees might replace arbitrary recordkeeping behavior with record hoarding, which can still put the organization at risk.

7. “Don’t associate records management with downsizing”

Electronic or automated records management can make compliance easier for records managers and regular employees, so why would anyone resist the idea? One LinkedIn member emphasized the importance of phrasing records management initiatives so that employees focus on the direct benefits, such as taking on more valuable tasks, improving service and freeing up office space. On the other hand, records managers should avoid associating an automated system with staff reduction.

8. “Let regular employees do the talking”

Ultimately, some people need to realize the importance of records management on their own and not because someone gave them a list of rules. With these employees, it helps to let them explain records management to themselves.

To use this method, records managers should ask several questions and engage in two-way conversations with regular employees. For example, a records manager at a university can ask an administrator, “What bothers you about the current student records system?” A possible answer might be, “I dislike it when I ask for a student record and it takes a week for the student services department to respond, then when I get it, the file’s incomplete.” This answer highlights the value of an electronic records management system with a searchable database, which the administrator identified in her own way.

The task of explaining records management to regular employees is not always easy, but it can be done. To make the job of the records manager even easier, organizations should implement a records management system that is systematic, organized and easy to use. Learn more here.

Colorado Department of Natural Resources

Colorado’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) manages a wealth of information across eight divisions, including:
  • Colorado Division of Forestry
  • Colorado Division of Parks and Wildlife
  • Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining, and Safety
  • Colorado Division of Water Resources
  • Colorado Geological Survey
  • Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC)
  • Colorado State Land Board
  • Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB)

According to Susan Lesovsky, Application Support Manager for the CWCB, the DNR purchased a Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM) system in 2005 to replace a legacy IBM system that lacked an out-of-the box web interface, optical character recognition (OCR) functionality and the ability to automate business processes. “Our old system was pretty much limited to search and retrieval,” she explains.

She notes that a top priority for implementing Laserfiche was making it easier for citizens to stay informed about government activities. “Ultimately, our customer is the public, and our success is measured on how we provide and process information for them,” Lesovsky says.

To that end, the DNR upgraded to Laserfiche Rio in 2009. According to Lesovsky, “Laserfiche Rio has allowed us to increase the transparency of information to the public, and it’s done it in such a way that we don’t have to worry about connections or cost.”

In particular, she describes the benefits of upgrading to Laserfiche Rio as:

Laserfiche Rio Enables Citizens to Cut through Red Tape

Lesovsky notes that Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper recently called for every department in state government to reduce red tape. Good government, he says, is characterized by “efficiency, effectiveness and elegance.”

“As one of only two recommended content management systems for the state, Laserfiche epitomizes all three E’s,” Lesovsky says.

She explains how easy it is for citizens to access documents such as the CWCB’s meeting documents:
  • The current year’s materials are available on the Board’s website in a table that provides direct links to PDFs stored in Laserfiche.
  • Archived materials are accessible through a custom search box (created using the WebLink Designer) on the lower right side of same page or through this link.
  • The custom search box is limited to three fields (title, date range and document type) to streamline access and reduce user confusion. (Custom search components have been included throughout the CWCB’s website to help direct the public’s search for Board-related documents.)

Colorado’s Decision Support Systems website also includes custom search boxes throughout its Website, such as the one at the top of this page that searches according to document type and a few other parameters, while a set of “Google-like” search results based on document type displays below thanks to an encoded URL string.

“We used the WebLink Designer to create custom searches because we noticed that our users would get overwhelmed when presented with a long list of templates and fields,” says Lesovsky. “Each custom search focuses on a particular program area or topic and uses a limited set of search criteria within the associated template.”

Quick, easy and efficient searches support Hickenlooper’s goal of driving the “three E’s” into government operations. Lesovsky explains, “In the past, people had to come to our offices to request information. Laserfiche WebLink provides a simple and elegant way for the public to get immediate access to the information they need whenever they need it.”

Integrations Make ECM “Mission-Critical”

By integrating Laserfiche WebLink with other software applications, the DNR has been able to make information even more accessible. For example, by integrating Laserfiche with ESRI ArcGIS, staff can click on a stream and retrieve associated court documents, while public users can quickly access information associated with flooding and flood hazards in the state.

To see the public-facing integration in action:
  1. Visit Colorado’s Flood Decision Support System page
  2. Click on the Flood DSS Map Viewer.
  3. Agree to the disclaimer.
  4. Click the Documents tab in the top menu.
  5. Enter your search criteria in the pop-up window. For example, select:
  6. Group: Historical Flooding.
  7. Document: Historical flood photographs.
  8. Type: Photographs.
  9. Hit the search button.
  10. A new window displays the results (produced on-the-fly by an encoded URL string) in a grid format.

It’s the integrations with applications like ESRI ArcGIS that make Laserfiche “mission-critical.” According to Lesovsky, “When you integrate Laserfiche with business-specific systems, you embed it into your existing workflow processes and it becomes integral to how you operate.”

ECM Enables Electronic Forms Processing

Laserfiche Rio has been a particularly effective ECM solution for the DNR because different divisions can configure it to meet their unique needs. For example, the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) uses Laserfiche to enable an eForm application that provides an interface for oil and gas operators to enter and submit permit forms and supporting documents. There are currently six active forms and three in development.

According to Ken Robertson, Application Developer for the COGCC, “Uploaded files are stored in our production web server. Once the operators submit the form to our internal server, we export the attachments to Laserfiche.”

He explains that the public can view the files directly from the production web server or wait until the files are imported to Laserfiche and use Laserfiche WebLink to access them. Furthermore, he outlines how the COGCC has used the Laserfiche SDK to create customized Laserfiche scripts and programs.

Robertson says, “For those attachments still sitting in our production web server, we created a Windows service to check queued files in the Web server every 15 minutes and use the Laserfiche Toolkit [SDK] for .NET to import files to the Laserfiche repository server. In the meantime, we also collect the Laserfiche reference numbers in our attachment table so that system (eForm) can provide a Laserfiche WebLink download page for users to view the attachments.”

He notes that there is a separate application that allows oil and gas operators to upload well logs, which are imported into Laserfiche using Laserfiche Import Agent, a tool that captures and processes electronic documents. Scanning staff members use Laserfiche Quick Fields to index other types of electronic documents.

The biggest benefit of processing permits and well logs with Laserfiche is time. Robertson says, “We used to shuffle files from one person to another until they were approved, and then we scanned everything into the system. Having the operators upload their attachments to their documents saves an average of 15 minutes of scanning and indexing time for our staff, not to mention the time saved on data entry.”

He goes on to explain that having everything available electronically at the beginning of the process allows multiple people to work on the same forms simultaneously, further reducing processing time.

“Not only do we save time,” Robertson says, “but the approval process is now more transparent for the public.”

Lesovsky adds, “Laserfiche is powerful, flexible and easy to work with. Even though all our divisions use the same system, we can all use it a little differently.”

Looking Ahead

Lesovsky is particularly excited to use Laserfiche to harvest data across organizations. She explains that the CWCB has already conducted a feasibility study and has a grant in place to make it happen.

“Colorado State University has an ECM solution other than Laserfiche but a healthy collection of water information. The Colorado Water Resources Development & Power Authority and the Colorado River Water Conservation District currently use Laserfiche, with repositories of useful water documents. By hooking our systems together and using common metadata, we’ll be able to search for information across all four entities and gain a more complete picture of accessible water information in the state.”

She says that the DNR is also working on integrating Laserfiche and SharePoint. “Most of our divisions use SharePoint for their external websites. Right now, people have to conduct separate searches if they want to find content stored in both Laserfiche and SharePoint. What we’re looking to do is enable searches that return results from both systems at the same time.”

All in all, she says, “Laserfiche Rio is a great tool. The bottleneck now is just finding the time to make it do everything we want it to do.”