Blog Archives | Page 12 of 13

Electronic Records Management 101: How to Reduce Risk and Restore Control

Physical records management isn’t practical for organizations with limited storage space or a wide variety of information formats.

Yet after working with numerous clients, especially government organizations, that want to move from paper archives to electronic formats or maintain a hybrid of both, I know the transition brings its own set of questions and business needs.

Any records manager worth her salt asks: How do we recreate years of records? How do we maintain control once records are living in a new software system? How do we show regulators that we’re still compliant? How do we get everyone on board with retrieving documents in a software system instead of a file cabinet?

In these video clips, I’ve covered five things to consider when you’re tackling big-picture questions about your organization’s records.

Why Electronic Records Management (ERM)?

Managing records in an electronic format is the most secure way to ensure that every document in your archive is maintained in both a compliant and easily retrieved format (just ask anyone who has had to pull paper records during an audit or discovery for a lawsuit).

This short video clip includes additional reasons that organizations have chosen an electronic format.

Webinar Clip: Why Electronic Records Management (ERM)?

What is ERM Technology?

ERM technology is different from imaging or document management systems that specialize in paper capture and document management. ERM technology goes a step further by automatically enforcing consistent, organization-wide records policies and having controls in place that protect records from loss and tampering.

Webinar Clip: What is ERM Technology?

Baseline Functionality of ERM Software

When moving to a digital format, it’s especially important to not only maintain but improve control of your records at every stage of the record life cycle. An ERM system should offer multiple ways to track every single interaction with a record from the moment it is created to the day it’s destroyed.

This video clip outlines the five features that are the mark of a fully controlled electronic records management system.

Webinar Clip: Baseline Functionality of ERM Software

Importance of Certifications

There are two important archival certifications to consider: The Department of Defense (DoD) 5015.2 certification and the Victorian Electronic Records Strategy (VERS).

This clip outlines the operational, legislative and legal guidelines of these certifications.

Webinar Clip: Importance of Certifications

Transparent Records Management

It’s common—and not incorrect—to create a record system structured entirely on retention schedules. However, those repositories can be difficult to navigate when someone wants to reference, say, a case file from ten years ago and doesn’t know that document’s exact creation or destruction date.

Transparent records management, a unique feature to Laserfiche’s records management system, enables general users to create a record layout of their choice without interfering with the overall records management structure.

This clip shows you how it works.

Webinar Clip: Transparent Records Management

Take the next step to implement electronic records management within your organization and get your copy of “The Ultimate Guide to Records Management” eBook.

14 Acronyms You Need to Know Before Researching ECM

Enterprise content management (ECM) companies love their acronyms, especially in online conversations (perhaps because they eat up less characters when drafting tweets). while these acronyms can succinctly express technology and industry-specific concepts, they may also intimidate the uninformed.

To help ECM newcomers make sense of all this jargon, here’s a quick guide to 14 ECM-related acronyms you’re sure to encounter.

Industry

Before we dive into this industry of information management, what does the industry call itself? It’s important to note that some terms are fitting for specific solutions, while others can be labeled as all of the above.

CMS: Content Management System

This term seems like it could refer to anything from closet organization to email filtering. It actually refers to applications that allow users to store, edit, search for and control content, especially (but not exclusively) web content. CMSs range widely in functionality and application—ECM is one of the more feature-rich and powerful examples of a CMS.

ECM: Electronic Content Management & Enterprise Content Management

“Enterprise” ECM and “electronic” ECM are both established abbreviations in the industry. However, enterprise content management refers to solutions for enterprise organizations while electronic content management is a broader term that can include consumer products.

Enterprise content management is an umbrella term that encompasses nearly every other acronym on this list. Go here to learn the basics of ECM.

DMS: Document Management System

DMS refers to the management of physical and/or digital documents. Most companies in the ECM industry, including Laserfiche, came into being by developing document management software. Today, DMS is considered a subset of ECM, as organizations have to manage far more data formats than text documents alone.

Check out our complete guide to document management here.

EDMS: Electronic Document Management System

While DMS can refer to both physical and digital documents, EDMS implies—you guessed it—only digital documents. Well, that was an easy one. Moving on!

DI: Document Imaging

DI is the process of turning a paper document into a digital document. DI tools come in many forms, from printers to scanners to the camera on your smartphone. Any technology that can digitize a paper document can be considered a document imaging tool.

Here’s how documents can be captured and stored in Laserfiche.

CSP: Content Services Platform

While this is still a newcomer in the field, it’s important to note. This term came about with a re-categorization of ECM, initiated by research firm Gartner. Learn more about this change here.

Processes

In the ECM industry, processes make the work go ‘round.

BPA: Business Process Automation

As it relates to ECM, business process automation is a powerful feature that reduces the time and resources required to move documents from A to B. For example, instead of dragging electronic documents into different folders and emailing them to coworkers, employees can use BPA software to handle these tasks automatically.

BPM: Business Process Management

BPM is a strategic approach that concentrates on reshaping an organization’s existing business processes to achieve optimal efficiency and productivity. It encompasses, but does not necessarily indicate, the automation of business processes.

RPA: Robotic Process Automation

Cousin to BPA and BPM, though distinctive in its use of AI. Robotic Process Automation is a software technology that enables employees to better focus on high priority tasks by pushing routine, monotonous tasks to software “robots” to complete.

TCM: Transactional Content Management

This term is easy to confuse with BPM as it also refers to organizing, automating and tracking content. However, TCM refers specifically to transactional content such as invoices, receipts and contracts. This focus on transactional content means invoices get paid on time and business vendors stay happy.

Records

ECM handles both live and archived documents. Understanding the terms used to describe digital versus paper will make it easier to research solutions, if you’re planning a Digital Transformation.

RM: Records Management

Many documents used and produced by businesses eventually become records. Some have to be destroyed after five years, some after ten—and others are kept indefinitely. RM establishes rules and practices for maintaining diverse types of records in accordance with internal policies and legal mandates. Basically, RM helps organizations stay out of trouble.

Get a quick overview of RM here.

ERM: Electronic Records Management

Because records management can be as low-tech as boxes of paper in a storage closet, ERM has emerged as a distinct industry term. ERM systems greatly improve the management of records through features such as retention and disposition scheduling and activity monitoring.

Learn more about the benefits of ERM in this guide.

Business Continuity

ECM aims to protect information on good days and bad days.

DRP: Disaster Recovery Plan

IT departments use DRPs to plan for system and infrastructure failures. The goal of a DRP is to recover from a disaster—man-made or natural—as quickly as possible and with as little data loss as possible.

An ECM system plays a vital role in disaster recovery by keeping company information in electronic repositories rather than flammable, flood-able file cabinets.

BCP: Business Continuity Plan

BCP is the more comprehensive version of DRP. Rather than focusing on systems failures, business continuity aims to minimize interruptions and downtime across the entire organization in the event of a disaster.

With ECM, organizations can back up and recover documents and records because information is digitally stored off-site. Data remains safe from harm and, with the ability to remotely access information, employees can keep working even if they can’t access the company building.

Now you’re ready dive into the great big world of Enterprise Content Management! Get started with 2023 Gartner® Peer Insights™ ‘Voice of the Customer’: Content Services Platforms to help inform your research.

What Exactly Is Records Management?

What is a record?

A record is “information created, received and maintained as evidence and as an asset by an organization or person, in pursuit of legal obligations or in the transaction of business”, according to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

This quote brings up an important distinction. While records are often considered synonymous with documents, they include one important characteristic that makes them unique: records, whether physical or digital, include evidence of a particular business activity, requiring them to be stored and retained over an extended period.

What types of records are there?

Records include any tangible object or digital information which have value to the organization.

Common types of records are:

Documents created in the course of business (correspondence, agreements, studies).
Items that require organizational action (FOIA requests, controlled correspondence).
Documented organizational activities and actions (calendars, meeting minutes, project reports).
Items mandated by statute or regulation (administrative records, legal/financial records, dockets).
Items supporting financial obligations or legal claims (contracts, grants, litigation case files).
Items needed to communicate organizational requirements (guidance documents, policies, procedures).
Items posted on social media sites (when required by a specific industry.)

Why is records management important?

The U.S. alone has more than ten federal records management laws and regulations that must be followed when managing government records. In addition, regulatory bodies like the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) may outline specific requirements for financial records. There are also laws like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) that have their own set of rules that apply to specific industries.

How are electronic records maintained?

Storing files on an organization’s shared drive is not enough to meet industry compliance standards. Beyond the legal mandates, a records management strategy is vital to the lifecycle of your organization’s information.

*The record lifecycle encompasses the following phases: the creation, distribution, active storage, inactive storage and retention, disposition and archiving of an organization’s records.*

An organization-wide strategy should govern how information is created, stored, shared, tracked and protected.

This ensures your organization’s information will never be in the wrong hands or the wrong place and can still be accessed by those who need it.

Is your organization compliant with GDPR?

The General Data Protection Regulation, known as GDPR, is a regulation on the processing and movement of personal data, implemented by the EU in 2018. Although GDPR was passed in the EU, its implications are global — any organization keeping or transferring data pertaining to individuals within the EU is subject to this regulation. In addition, other countries and even some individual states in the U.S. have created their own regulations in line with the requirements of GDPR.

Organizations need to remain steadfast in their dedication to proper records management if they want to comply. Reynold Leming, Chair of the Information and Records Management Society, encourages firms to establish an “information pedigree,” which combines a record of information assets held with proper information governance and audit trails of business events. This “information pedigree” then results in a traceable and accountable “ancestral line” for any piece of information your company works with over time. Here’s a few additional considerations for records management that you might not think of right away:

A records request can come from anywhere. Besides routine audits, requests may come from lawyers in a court case, insurers, law enforcement, the public or even the media. Having established best practices for storing and moving records can help make sure your organization’s time, or its reputation, isn’t squandered.
Business processes are a part of records management. Make sure your processes are consistent and can handle any records or personal information in compliance with any industry or government regulations. A process automation platform can help mitigate process inconsistencies and thus bolster your efforts to stay in compliance.
You can keep audit trails of paper documents. Although paper documents are largely a thing of the past in terms of day-to-day processes, records management involves, and in many ways necessitates, looking back in the past. You should maintain digital audit trails and inventories of any paper documents held in archives.
When you exchange data with a third party, make sure they take your compliance needs seriously. Make sure vendors are aware of any necessary records management or data privacy regulations, and that they intend to follow them. Keep a record of any contracts signed with vendors of software, equipment and the like, as well as third parties who process personal data on your behalf. In addition, you’ll want to know their best practices and policies when it comes to records retention and information management.
Maintain records of how you handle information. Policies, best practices and even laws evolve — you need to take note of when changes happen so you can show regulators, the public or whoever else asks, that you followed the rules when handling information.

What are the benefits of an electronic records management system?

Electronic (or digital) records management is the modern standard for how organizations control their information and records.

A quality records management system should provide:

Improved efficiency in the storage, retention and disposition of records and records series.
Detailed reports of which records are eligible for transfer, accession or destruction.
Audit trails to track all system activity and the entire lifecycle of records.
Customizable and flexible capabilities — tailored to the needs of the organization.

A dependable, efficient records management system can help meet these challenges without drastically altering business operations. In the words of Justin Pava, Principal Technical Product Manager at Laserfiche, “The best records management solution is one you don’t need to think about.”

In summary, building a records management strategy should be a top priority for any organization that values efficiency, security and compliance with regulatory recordkeeping requirements.

Customer Spotlight: City of Ithaca/Tompkins County

Learn how one county in New York reduced the time to furnish records in response to FOIA requests by more than half.

Browse customer reviews of Laserfiche on G2

Get insights from real customers on why Laserfiche is a top choice for organizations looking to encourage better recordkeeping.

10 Ways People Kept Records Before Paper

Today, we live in a digital world, in which paper is quickly becoming an outdated source of records storage. But what about the days before paper?

Here are 10 ways people recorded information before paper and mass printing became available.

1. Bamboo

Chinese scholars wrote on bamboo stalks as long ago as 500 BCE. The scholars used small knives to scrape away mistakes. These knives became a symbol of political stature, as the owners had the power to change records.

2. Birch Bark

Birch bark manuscripts have been found in India, Russia and the Middle East. Birch bark was used in medieval Russia for school exercises, personal letters and business ledgers.

3. Bones and Shells

Ancient Chinese oracles used shell & bone fragments to predict future events. Oracles carved questions onto the bone or shell, then applied heat until it cracked. They interpreted the crack patterns as answers from deities.
These “oracle bones” date back to 1400 BCE & represent the earliest records of Chinese writing.

4. Clay Tablets

Cuneiform, one of the earliest writing systems, is often found on clay tablets. The first libraries consisted of clay tablet archives. Ancient Mediterranean civilizations used clay tablets for sophisticated accounting systems.

5. Ostraca

Ostraca, or broken pieces of pottery, are considered the “scrap paper” of ancient civilizations. Ancient Athenians used ostraca to cast votes when the government wanted to banish a citizen. This gave rise to the term “ostracize” which means to exile or banish.

6. Palm Leaves

Palm leaves were used in Southeast Asia as early as 1500 BCE. Scholars theorize that Southeast Asian scripts contain mostly rounded shapes because angular letters split and broke the palm leaves.

7. Papyrus

The oldest discovered papyrus scrolls date back to 2500 BCE. The word “paper” derives from the word “papyrus.” Papyrus was expensive to produce and became a monopolized resource in the city of Alexandria. It was often washed and reused to save money.

8. Parchment

Parchment is made from goat, sheep or cow skin. Its use as a writing medium was perfected in Pergamon (modern day Turkey) as a cheaper alternative to Egyptian papyrus.

9. Silk

Some of the earliest known manuscripts of I Ching and Tao te Ching exist on 2,000 year old silk. Silk manuscripts were used for philosophical, mathematical and military records in China.

10. Wax Tablets

Wax tablets were made of wood panels covered in soft wax. Entire tablets could be erased by melting the layer of wax, giving rise to the Latin expression “tabula rasa” or “clean slate.”

Looking to take your office past the days of paper? Deploy a Laserfiche solution and get started quickly with the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace, which offers pre-built workflows for processing digital contracts, permits and more!

Want to learn how to maintain even the most sensitive of records, despite the challenges of the modern era? Get your copy of the “Ultimate Guide to Records Management“.

Download the eBook: The Ultimate Guide to Records Management.

Tech Tip: How to Use URL Parameters to Pre-Fill Form Fields

Often a will contain several generic fields that many respondents will answer in the same way. Rather than making users fill in these fields, which can be repetitive and time consuming, organizations can pre-populate them with the correct information so that, when users open the form, these fields will already be filled in. To do so, organizations will need the form’s URL and the variable names associated with the fields they want to fill in.

Filling in the fields of an electronic form can be repetitive and time-consuming. Rather than making users fill in those fields, organizations can pre-populate the generic form with the correct information that multiple respondents will answer in the same way.

This can all be done by linking to a specialized URL that includes all the information you want pre-filled in the form when users click it.

For example, let’s say you were emailing an event singup form to clients, and your email lists were already sorted by region. For the emails going to California, you could change the link from:

www.website.com/signupform

To:

www.website.com/signupform/?State=CA

To dig a little deeper, let’s take a quick look at the basic structure of these specialized URLs:

baseURL?variable1=value

All you need to do is replace baseURL with the form’s current URL, variable1 with the variable associated with the field to be filled in and value with the appropriate field value.

To fill in multiple fields, insert the ampersand symbol (&) before any additional variables:

baseURL?variable1=value&variable2=value

In the example below, on a purchase order form that is only available to Laserfiche employees, the Company field was pre-populated using the following URL:

baseURL?Company=Laserfiche.

Browser window with pre-filled URL in address bar.

Note that these URLs can also be generated using a digital workflow.
Pre-populating form fields can both reduce errors and save time for whoever is filling it out, increasing efficiency of staff and satisfaction among customers.

Customer Spotlight: Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Group

Discover how Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Group wanted to deliver a more seamless experience for its staff and customers. Learn how online forms and other technologies helped the firm reach its goals.

Continue Your Journey

Compare top enterprise content management (ECM) vendors on G2

Digital forms can be powerful, but can be utilized even more effectively in conjunction with other ECM features and tools. Check out the G2 Grid® for Enterprise Content Management (ECM) and compare top vendors on the market.

G2 Grid® for Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Systems

Get more out of forms within Laserfiche

For those eager to learn how forms within Laserfiche can be made even more effective, be sure to check out these enhancements available on the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace!

See Laserfiche in action

Want to further explore how Laserfiche can help your organization achieve its goals? Schedule a consultation today.

InvestmentNews Study Shows the Payoff of Advisor Technology for Financial Services

Right now, RIAs are busy formulating their business plans for 2015. In the area of advisor technology, investment decisions have become increasingly complex: what kind of technology is needed, can current technology simply be upgraded—should new technology be purchased at all? To help advisors answer these questions, InvestmentNews performed a study on the effects of investing in technology for advisory businesses. According to the study, firms that integrated a variety of technologies and displayed an innovative and progressive attitude toward technology had higher revenues, profits, AUM, and number of clients than those who limited their technological investments.

What Types of Advisor Technology Are Used?

In the study, the technology ‘innovators’ were identified as using up to six software solutions on a daily basis. The most commonly used advisor technology applications are:

CRM
Financial planning
Account aggregation
Document management
Portfolio management
Portfolio rebalancing

Each of these technologies provides unique opportunities for efficiency, compliance, data accuracy and better customer service—but trying to manage so many distinct applications with siloed information can be just as inefficient as having no software at all.

The real benefit comes when these technologies can share data and talk to each other. When integrated, these technologies not only provide faster data and better insights to the advisor, they can automate entire processes with workflows—leaving more time for the advisor to focus on clients.

What Daily Processes Are Improved by Technology?

One of the most common processes that financial advisors automate is the opening of new accounts. Without technology, this can be a tedious process. Forms have to be filled out, mailed for signatures and checked for errors repeatedly until the new account can be finalized.

With integrated technologies, this process looks much different. By implementing CRM, document management software, forms filling software, and electronic signatures, the time required to open a new account can take minutes instead of weeks.

Through the use of these software applications, advisors opening new accounts experience the following benefits:

Software auto-populates electronic forms, reducing processing time and errors resulting from manual entry.
Forms are e-mailed to account holders for e-signatures, eliminating paper and courier costs.
Compliance review and approval processes are automated with workflows, allowing advisors to start booking revenue sooner.

This method of processing new accounts not only saves time, but records an audit history of every action taken at every step.

These efficiency and compliance benefits are not limited to the opening of new accounts. Virtually any data or document-driven process can be automated, including the creation of a blotter, storing client communications, social media archiving, AP processing, HR onboarding and document filing.

Why Adopt Advisor Technology Now?

A combination of factors including increased audits, changing recordkeeping requirements, the rise of mobile devices and social media and the vast potential for efficiency gains are driving advisors to shift their attitudes toward technology.

Those who realize these benefits are surging ahead in this competitive industry and allowing technology to take care of the back office. Now they can dedicate valuable time and effort to more important tasks, such as client and talent acquisition, money management, financial planning and client relationships.

To learn more about the benefits of adopting technology in your business, read our new whitepaper, “Technology Strategies of Top-Tier RIAs,” which summarizes the data from the InvestmentNews Research Study and outlines the practices of these top performing RIAs.

3 Steps for Optimizing Business Processes

What’s better? Processing a document digitally or with paper? If both methods take the same amount of time and effort—the answer is neither.

Optimizing a business process requires more effort than simply purchasing new software. It requires taking a critical look at an organization’s operations and minimizing the resources required to get things done.

This blog post will outline three steps to optimizing your organization’s business processes.

First, let’s establish what kinds of business processes we’ll be discussing:

Document-based business processes

Every organization, whether it provides education to students or wine to consumers, relies on repetitive tasks to accomplish its “big picture” goals. Contract management, invoicing and hiring are just a few examples of processes that keep businesses moving. The tasks that fall under each process must be handled attentively and consistently—no matter how menial they may seem.

contract_mgmt1 — Contract management is one example of a repetitive process that keeps an organization’s operations moving.

These document-based processes are imperative to business operations, but in some cases they’re more of an Achilles’ heel than a blueprint for success. Do any of your everyday tasks feel more burdensome than productive? Keep one in mind as we go through the phases of business process optimization.

Phase 1: Identify

Once you determine which business process needs an overhaul, the first step is to list out all the key components of the process. These should be fundamental, unchangeable aspects of the process. To identify key components, ask yourself these questions:

What is the goal or desired outcome of this process?
When does the process begin and end?
What activities move the process forward?
What departments and/or employees are involved?
What information is being transferred between steps?

For instance, the following questions should be answered in the case of employee hiring:

What is the goal or desired outcome of this process? To hire a qualified candidate for the job.
When does the process begin and end? It begins when an application is received and ends with the decision to hire or reject.
What activities move the process forward? Application reviews, interviews, approvals and rejections.
What departments and/or employees are involved? HR and the applicable department managers.
What information is being transferred between steps? Applications, resumes, cover letters, interview dates/times and notes from reviewers.

Note that the answers don’t address how the process is done, only what is done.

Phase 2: Rethink

This phase should address your unique methodology and reveal potential areas for improvement. Think about every step that is involved in the business process you’re analyzing, then ask the following questions:

How much paper is used in this process?
How many copies of the same document are made?
How many man hours are required to complete the process?
Of those hours, how many are spent doing redundant or extraneous work?
Where does the process stall and why?
When do errors occur?

Compare these answers against your key components list. You’ll realize tasks that seem essential, like photocopying a document for every department manager, don’t actually align with the process goal. You’ll also realize that correcting an error is only essential if an error is made—eliminate the error, and you eliminate an extra task that does nothing to drive the process forward.

Let’s look at another example. RMS, a medical device manufacturing company, answered the above questions and found that its document management processes were inefficient. Important information for each order was compiled in a large folder and hand-delivered between departments across a 155,000 sq. ft. shop. RMS threw out the book (literally) and starting using business process automation (BPA) tools to digitize orders and automatically route them to the appropriate departments at the appropriate times. This cut order processing time from 8-10 weeks to 72 hours and saved over 200 hours of staff time annually.

The intention of business process optimization is to reduce or eliminate time waste, resource waste, unnecessary costs, bottlenecks and errors while achieving the goal of the process. But until you know how this can be accomplished, you’re stuck in dreamland.

Phase 3: Automate

Repeat unnecessary tasks, and workflow stalls. Repeat successful tactics, and business flourishes. Once you’ve separated the essential from the non-essential in your business process, it’s time to apply a solution. But if this is your first experience overhauling a document-based process, you might feel daunted by the possibilities. You could even worry that you’ll make more mistakes if you alter the process than if you just leave it alone.

As a matter of fact, alleviating this concern over human error is precisely what BPA tools are designed to do. By allowing the software to “automate” tasks, organizations can manage processes faster and with fewer errors. You can read more about automation and see some concrete examples here.

9c82c2857c441df5a0bf0ad9bfd96a8e429030e7 — **Business process automation** (BPA) tools optimize operations for organizations in a wide range of industries.

Of course, not all automated workflows perform the same. How can you design the fastest, easiest and most cost-efficient business process possible?

Next step: Learn from the best

By repeating the best practices of other organizations or departments, you can demonstrate tangible ROI and avoid a lot of guesswork. Most importantly, you’re better equipped to convince your coworkers that change is not only possible, it’s practical.

For an overview of how process automation can help your organization streamline operations, watch our webinar, ECM 101: An Introduction to Process Automation Capabilities.

To learn more about how process automation software can help you automate routine tasks, such as data entry, routing information between parties, organizing documents and more, check out our process automation buyer’s guide.

What Is Business Process Automation?

What does business process automation mean?

Business process automation (BPA) is the use of technology to automate repeatable, day-to-day tasks. BPA accelerates how work gets done by routing information to the right person at the right time through user-defined rules and actions. Thus, organizations can leverage this technology to streamline processes such as employee onboarding, accounts payable, contract management and more.

Why is business process automation important?

It isn’t just about replacing paper with PDFs—business process automation aims to make processes more cost-efficient, streamlined, error-proof and transparent. With automated processes in place, organizations save time and ensure best practices are implemented to improve overall operational efficiency.

What business processes should you automate?

Almost any business process you can think of can be enhanced in some way by automation. Still, some processes are better suited for automation than others. When assessing candidates for automation, you want may want to take a closer look at processes that are:

Consistent across the organization.
Repeatable.
Require little room for error.

What are some examples of business process automation?

Below are three common business processes and how organizations drove positive change through automation:

HR Onboarding

Texas A&M University’s College of Engineering wanted to keep its commitment to increase student enrollment, but needed to hire new employees to manage this potential influx of students while keeping costs down. Their legacy HR onboarding process, however, was paper-driven and time-intensive. If the college was going to meet its goal, it needed to eliminate inefficiencies and streamline employee onboarding.

Chart showing employee onboarding process before and after automation.

Automating HR onboarding with Laserfiche enabled the College of Engineering to hire more than 3,400 employees in a little over one year. Since its initiative’s success, other departments at Texas A&M have also began reengineering their own processes, sharing that successes campus-wide and creating a new culture of collaboration and innovation to make processes more efficient.

For more information on how your organization can find similar efficiencies, check out our guide to HR automation.

Accounts Payable

The City of Boca Raton’s accounts payable process relied heavily on paper invoices and copies being manually routed. Sometimes paper copies would be misplaced or delayed on someone’s desk, leading to unpaid invoices and upset vendors. Chasing down paperwork and answering phone calls from vendors was taking up employee time that could be better spent elsewhere.

Leveraging business process automation, the city was able to track all its invoices from the moment they were received to final payment. The city significantly reduced processing errors while boosting customer satisfaction as a result of a faster and more efficient process.

For more information on how your organization can use business process automation to better manage invoice processing, check out our guide to accounts payable automation.

Contract Management

To continue its mission in keeping families out of poverty, non-profit organization Heifer International needed to increase efficiency and facilitate easier collaboration across its teams and partners worldwide. With documents built up from decades of work and hundreds of contracts requiring review per project, Heifer needed to centralize information and streamline contract management processes to help more people, faster.

By acquiring and deploying a system that could effectively automate processes, Heifer enabled its team members to collaborate on a worldwide scale on projects that help families, from Arkansas or Nepal. Legal contract reviews are streamlined, expediting the execution of projects including delivery of food and supplies. After its success implementing business process automation, Heifer continued to identify more back-office operations that could be made more efficient, freeing up resources for program initiatives.

How do I automate my business processes?

Most business process automation is done using a software platform. Choosing the right one can be a challenge, but once you do the rest is quite easy. Most have a low-code interface to help you design out how you want the process to work.

Then, once your process is created, you choose how it is triggered and what it outputs, such as a process that starts when you fill out a form and ends when you get a confirmation email. To that end, it is usually beneficial to have a process automation platform that is included in a robust document management solution, that includes a repository and forms functionality. Having process automation capabilities and the features that support them within the same software is far more convenient than having to bridge the connections with other solutions.

What is the difference between RPA and BPA?

Despite sounding similar, business process automation (BPA) and robotic process automation (RPA) are in practice quite different. RPA usually allows you to program a rudimentary software robot, or “bot” to perform basic data entry or other repetitive tasks to save time, usually using the same graphic user interfaces (GUIs) that users do. On the other hand, many BPA automations may be standalone or work on the backend of other software, outside a user interface, to retrieve information as needed.

While a bot may be easy to train by recording a human doing a repetitive task, a BPA solution may require more strategy and planning to implement effectively. Still, in many cases a BPA will likely cover a wider variety of uses cases and provide more end-to-end solutions. In fact, many BPA solutions may use RPA, but only as part of its broader functionality.

For an even deeper dive into the differences between RPA and BPA, check our our blog post here.

Customer Spotlight: Sky Telecommunications

Learn how the HR department at leading telecommunications company Sky was able to deliver more efficient services for its 25,000 employees by leveraging automation.

Browse customer reviews of Laserfiche on G2

Get insights from real customers on why Laserfiche is a top choice for organizations looking to streamline processes.

Continue your journey

Laserfiche has plenty of resources to help you find the right process automation platform and learn how to get the most out of the one you choose.

Discover 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.

Download the Process Automation Buyer’s Guide

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See how a robust process automation platform like Laserfiche can speed up the deployment of your solutions with process templates found on the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace. Visit the site to browse and download pre-built workflow templates for many everyday processes, including contract management, onboarding, front desk sign-ins and help desk requests.

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You can also check out the G2 Grid® for Digital Process Automation (DPA) to compare top vendors on the market. G2 is a website that collects and offers millions of business software reviews.

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Records Management Makeover, Kentucky Style

Kathy Jenisch, Records Manager for Kentucky Sanitation District No. 1 (SD1), had quite a messy document management problem to clean up.

Her organization, the second-largest public sewer utility in Kentucky, had been fined $40,000 for failing to produce just eight pieces of email — and that didn’t include the operational expense of paying several employees to spend six hours a day for three weeks searching for documents they couldn’t find.

Then she discovered that the organization’s offsite storage facility was allowing records to get moldy or rodent-infested — leading to the destruction of almost six tons of documents.

On top of that, she had to comply with a new state government transparency law that required her to create a website that displayed records about the organization’s financial expenditures as well as its annual budget and annual audit. The records needed to be searchable, updated monthly, and maintained on the web site for at least three years.

The solution to all these problems was obvious. Digitize SD1’s records.

That’s not to say it was a simple process. SD1 did it on a project by project basis.

One such project involved 27 tubs of documents. Jenisch spent $20,000 hiring a digitizing service to prepare and scan the documents. The job was completed in five weeks, as opposed to the years the department estimated it would have taken to do on its own, she says.

Having records digitized paid off when SD1 had to respond to requests for documents associated with a state audit. Instead of pulling HR file folders from archive and hand searching for the documents, the search took only a matter of minutes. SD1 was also able to summon up historical documents dating back to the creation of the organization, board meeting minutes, policies and procedures, travel expenses, board and staff contact information, and budgets. SD1 could search and copy everything to a CD in about an hour. Without digitized documents, it would have taken days to comply with the audit request. SD1 passed its state audit with compliments to its record keeping, and aced its local annual financial audit as well.

Jenisch has advice for other organizations contemplating a similar move. “Just start somewhere,” she says. “Pick a project and get started. You can’t mess it up, it can always be changed or revised.”

3 Reasons Electronic Records are Safer Than Paper

People can have a strange kind of cognitive dissonance when it comes to electronic and paper records. Many people won’t think twice about handing their credit card (with the security code prominently displayed on the back) to a high-school-aged waitress. Similarly, they may have no problem leaving their credit card bills and checks in their mailbox for hours or even days. But if you ask them to use paperless billing or online bill pay, they’ll refuse because they’re concerned about security.

Something similar can happen in organizations. When companies convert from paper to electronic documents, many employees suddenly become concerned about the security or the privacy of their data…even if the organization has not traditionally been concerned about the security of its paper records.

“Nobody asks about privacy when the data is in folders sitting on desks,” Dr. Rhonda Dean Kyncl, assistant dean for academic services for the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma, said in her presentation at Empower 2013. “But it’s held to a different standard when it’s online.”

It’s important, of course, to safeguard the security of electronic records. But many people don’t realize that electronic documents are inherently more secure than paper records. Evidence supporting this was published as long ago as 1996, for example, in a paper in the Journal of the American Medical informatics Association.

Here are three important ways paper records are vulnerable.

Inappropriate access: This can occur when people gain access to unlocked record storage areas and file cabinets (particularly when they look like they belong there). It can also occur when they find records left on counters, offices, or copy machines, or receive misdirected fax copies. In fact, whenever paper copies are sent to other places — whether it’s other offices, insurance companies, or government agencies — the data on them can be read by mailroom workers, administrative assistants, and other unauthorized individuals. This access could be accidental or intentional, but either way, the data on the paper records management can be compromised. Electronic data, by contrast, can be encrypted so that even if it’s copied or stolen, the information can be protected. Also, electronic records can more easily have sensitive data redacted for certain uses.

Data tampering: Anyone with access to a paper record can remove pages, add entries, erase or otherwise tamper with authentic entries. Electronic records can have a digital signature that notifies people when this has happened, as well as a time stamp that indicates whenever a record is transferred or modified.

Loss: Because paper files need to be moved around and filed again, they can be lost or misfiled. Electronic records tend to stay where they are, often with audit trails and other indications of which people have used them. There are other limitations as well: Paper records are typically not copied. If something happens to them, there’s usually no backup. Destroying paper records presents another set of problems: they can often be recovered by the wrong parties after they’ve supposedly been disposed of.

A survey by the Ponemon Institute showed that respondents found paper to be less secure than electronic records in a number of ways. While the survey dates back to 2008, there’s no reason to believe that paper is any more secure now.

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