Don’t Get Fined: SEC Rule 17a-4 Updates You Should Know About

The First Changes in 25 Years, and Why?

SEC Rule 17a-4 and 18a-6 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, which define a set of electronic recordkeeping and prompt production of records requirements for registered broker-dealers, security-based swap dealers (“SBSDs”) and major security-based swap participants (“MSBSPs”), have their first updates in 25 years. The amendments are effective on January 3, 2023.

“The amendments are designed to modernize recordkeeping requirements given technological changes over the last two decades and to make the rule adaptable to new technologies in electronic recordkeeping”, quoted from the SEC recent press release. The most noticeable amendment is adding an audit trail as an alternative stated in Rule 17a-4(f)(2)(ii)(A) to the long-ago adopted requirement to preserve records in write-once, read-many (WORM) format. It eliminates the need for firms to deploy a separate electronic recordkeeping system used for compliance purposes only, which also lowers the compliance cost.

Adding Audit Trail as an Alternative Requirement to the Existing WORM-Format

Firms have the final discretion to adopt an electronic recordkeeping system that meets either the audit trail requirement or the WORM requirement. It should provide a complete time-stamped audit trail to preserve electronic records in a manner that permits the recreation of an original record if it is altered, overwritten or erased; defined terms extracted from the final rule include:
  1. All modifications to and deletions of a record or any part thereof
  2. The date and time of actions that create, modify or delete the record
  3. If applicable, the identity of the individual(s) who created, modified or deleted the record
  4. Any other information needed to maintain an audit trail of each distinct record to ensure the authenticity and reliability of the record will permit the re-creation of the original record and interim iterations of the record

The audit trail requirement particularly applies to final records required pursuant to the rules, in lieu of drafts or iterations of records that would not otherwise be required to be maintained and preserved under Rule 17a-3 and 17a-4 or Rules 18a-5 and 18a-6. Moreover, the electronic recordkeeping system used by the firms must automatically verify the completeness and accuracy of its processes for storing and retaining records electronically.

Other Major Amendments
  1. Eliminates notifying the designated examining authority (“DEA”) for compliance representation before deploying an electronic recordkeeping system under Rule 17a-4(f)(2)(i)
  2. Serializes the original and duplicate units of storage media and dates the required period of retention for the information placed on such electronic storage media, if applicable
  3. Be able to readily download and transfer copies of a record and its audit trail (if applicable) in a human readable format
  4. Uses either a backup recordkeeping system or other redundancy capabilities under 17a-4(f)(3)(iii) and 18a-6(e)(3)(iii)
  5. Provides access rights to the staff of the Commission and other relevant securities regulators to examinate the records via the electronic recordkeeping system

Don’t Get Fined by SEC and FINRA!

The SEC and FINRA continue to levy steep fines on wealth management firms. As recently as 2022, SEC charged 16 Wall Street firms with widespread recordkeeping failures. The firms admitted the facts and agreed to pay combined penalties of more than $1.1 billion. “In 2022 so far, there has been a record year with over 760 SEC enforcement actions representing $4 billion in fines,” says Timothy D. Welsh, President, CEO and Founder at Nexus Strategy, LLC, in a webinar conducted by WealthManagement.com and Laserfiche.

Adopt a Robust Enterprise Content Management System

The Compliance landscape keeps rapidly evolving. It is imperative to choose a comprehensive solution that supports the urge to tackle the increasing compliance challenges presented by SEC and FINRA rules with powerful audit trail functionalities, document and records management capabilities and process automation toolsets to make compliance a breeze.

Want to learn more? Access our Laserfiche Records Management solution page and learn more about how you can partner with Laserfiche to simplify recordkeeping compliance in your firms.

What Can Financial Services Gain from Process Automation?

Financial Services Firms Are Leveraging Process Automation to Drive Growth

Financial services (FS) organizations of all types, including wealth management firms, insurance firms, credit unions and banks are adopting technologies to stay ahead of the game under economic uncertainty. Customer experience and streamlined internal process efficiency are the major drivers of their digital transformation strategies which are critical accelerators of overall growth. A recent survey conducted by WealthManagement.com and Laserfiche found that 88% of the respondents changed workflows as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, especially for customer-facing processes such as adoption of virtual meetings, digital signatures, online client onboarding and processing of new accounts.

Challenges Facing Financial Services Firms and Reasons to Adopt Workflow Automation

Today’s customers look for intuitive, seamless and personalized digital engagement with organizations, whether it’s for new account openings, insurance claims, e-signature requests or wire transfer requests. In a recent survey conducted by Digital Insurance and Laserfiche, findings revealed that 77% of insurers prioritize customer experience in the majority or entirety of their digital transformation initiatives. Moreover, organizations that have streamlined their operational workflows are inclined to characterize their digital transformation initiatives as customer-centric. Thus, a customer’s decision to do business with an organization may be dependent on the robustness of a digitized experience.
Despite this change in customer expectations, many organizations are still having manual, error-prone and labor-intensive processes that drag on employees’ productivity and efficiency, including:
  • Re-keying data onto spreadsheets or across line-of-business applications.
  • Inability to retrieve or recall email conversations with customers.
  • Manual review and approval processes.
  • Manual execution of data analytics initiatives.

Due to these inefficiencies, many employees are swamped with tedious administrative tasks, which can increase the turnaround time for customer requests. As a result, customer service delivery is adversely affected. According to a recent survey conducted by Forrester Consulting, more than half of the respondents believe that their company’s tech stack is outdated and restrictive, which prevents employees from working efficiently.

Real-World Examples of Financial Services Firms Benefitting from Process Automation

How are your peers strategizing to get the most out of process automation? Rehmann in Michigan, a wealth management firm, has been designing workflows across professional service lines in a low-code/no-code approach to streamline data collection and reporting. Using Laserfiche forms and integrations with customer relationship management (CRM) software, information can always be automatically populated when a customer fills out an electronic form, e.g., new account opening. It saves customers’ time, provides accurate information to associates and supports compliance. Amy Flourry, wealth management director of operations at Rehmann, shared in a webinar that they opened 400 new accounts and brought in $200 million in new assets in 2022 alone. “Our biggest problem with [Laserfiche forms]…tends to be keeping up with demand for new ones,” said Flourry.

F&M Bank in Long Beach decided to use process automation in order to meet the demands of their rapid growth and evolving workplace. They decided to go beyond a simple document management solution and transform it into a fully integrated enterprise content management system that included process automation solutions and integrations with their core banking system. For example, they leveraged Laserfiche in most of their loan processes, “the nimbleness of Laserfiche Forms and workflow, plus SQL allowed us to build out an application process for those PPP loans literally overnight. I was not only impressed by F&M as an institution, but I was also impressed with our ability to create literally something out of nothing,” said Morgan Wheeler, business intelligence manager and assistant vice president at F&M Bank.

Customer experience was the major focus of Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Group (MSIG) Hong Kong throughout the design of its process automation strategy. MSIG Hong Kong leverages Laserfiche to develop a widely recognized EASY Claims System that helps manage all claims in a centralized platform. It saves more than 200 workdays a year for the claims processing organization-wide, supports business continuity in case of unprecedented transitions and maintains a high level of customer service at the same time. “Claims is only the beginning of our digital transformation. Since implementing Laserfiche, we are looking at expanding to multiple channels, underwriting teams and core business processes to digitize and automate as well,” said Alan Yue, senior vice president of information technology at MSIG Hong Kong.

Benefits of Digital Process Automation for Financial Services Firms

Financial services organizations must be nimble and innovative to digitally transform how they provide services throughout the customer life cycle. One way to achieve digital transformation in such a way is to utilize digital process automation (DPA), which helps eliminate manual steps and improve user experience for customers, employees and vendors. By leveraging electronic forms, business process management and reporting and analytics, key advantages of DPA include:

Avoiding capturing information through error-prone and inconsistent methods: Operation teams receive customer information and requests digitally with metadata in an audited and tracked approach.

Eliminating manual reviews and approvals, lost documents and unknown statuses: Workflows are triggered once requests come in — for example, reviews are automatically routed to appropriate parties for rounds of approval with due reminders.

Spotting bottlenecks of delayed tasks: Get a clear picture of workflows using dashboards so teams can identify where and when delays are happening.

Integrating with core business applications and systems: Eliminate data silos and improve collaboration.

Improving customer experience: Customers receive notifications at each step of their requests, resulting in increased transparency between them and the organization they’re doing business with.

Freeing up time for employees: Enable employees to spend their time on more value-driven tasks and drive productivity.

Archiving information and supporting documents: Bolster your efforts to stay in compliance with regulations and audits using records retention tools.

Scarce IT resources remain another challenge for financial services organizations even if they are ambitious to evolve. Pre-built solution templates help organizations jumpstart automation with less overhead on these resources. Laserfiche users have the ability to get these kinds of templates from the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace, which provides more than 100 publicly accessible, industry-vetted and departmental solution templates for organizations accelerating digital transformation.

Learn more about how Laserfiche solutions help financial institutions drive business growth and productivity.
Download eBook: The Business Process Automation Buyer’s Guide

What Is a Document Repository and What Are the Benefits of Using One?

Having a sufficient document management strategy is essential regardless of your business’s size. A vital element to this strategy is a document repository. Repositories serve as the central hub for all your organization’s vital forms and documents.

Read on to learn more about document repositories and how they help your organization save time and resources.

What is a Document Repository?

A document repository serves as a centralized storage point for all your organization’s critical and day-to-day content. Document repositories are a vital component of your organization’s overall document management strategy and can assist your organization in efforts to ensure that:
  • All content is centrally managed and accessible to all team members
  • Files and documents are systematically organized and easy to locate
  • Your content is safe and compliant with regulatory and security standards

What is a Document Repository Used For?

The main function of a document repository is to centralize all content produced and housed by your organization. Limiting your document management to physical documents is risky and becomes less efficient as your company grows and scales. A document repository eliminates the need for paper and conveniently organizes your documents into logical categories, folders and subfolders.

Document repositories aid in boosting productivity and collaboration within your organization by simplifying how teams share necessary documents amongst each other.

Additionally, many document repositories come with features that make it easier to locate documents, track their lifecycles and set in place security measures to protect sensitive information.

What are Common Features of a Document Repository?

Many document repositories come with a suite of useful features that allow you to boost your company’s productivity, streamline processes through automation and employ the latest security tools. Features you can expect to make use of in a document repository include:

Capture tools: Capture tools assist with bringing data into your document repository. Having a variety of capture tools increases your team’s ability to work efficiently. Some common capture tools include drag and drop, scanning, online forms and mobile capture.

Automation: Document repositories may allow you to digitize manual workflows and automate processes such as naming and organizing files, modifying document security levels and sharing content with relevant team members.

Integrations: Some repositories integrate with third party software your organization utilizes, boosting efficiency and collaboration.

Collaboration tools: These tools improve productivity by streamlining processes that enable your team members work on various projects together. Other useful collaboration tools allow members to collaborate in real time, add comments and share with stakeholders.

Security controls: One of the most important aspects of your document repository will be upholding your organization’s security policies. Document repositories allow you to assign privileges and rights, oversee document access and sharing and employ access restrictions.

Metadata: Many repositories enable you to store details about a document, such as document type, owner, description and date of creation, as metadata. Metadata aids searchability and ensures documents are easy to query.

The Benefits of a Document Repository?

Your organization’s document repository provides many benefits in addition to increasing productivity and efficiency. Here are three benefits of utilizing a document repository:

Systematically organize your content: A document repository gives your organization full capability to organize content to fit your company’s needs. This allows you to create folder structures and naming conventions that work well for your company’s current workflows.

Manage the lifecycle of your content: A great benefit of uploading content into your document repository is the ability to track its digital footprint. This allows you to monitor who has viewed a document, limit editing and duplication and control the amount of time a document remains accessible.

Maintain security and privacy standards: Document repositories allow you to grant specific access rights and privileges to your folders. These security features give your organization more control to grant various teams and departments the appropriate level of access to perform their duties.

Further Reading

Download our Document Management Buyer’s Guide to discover software that will support your organization’s growth and productivity goals.
The Document Management Buyer’s Guide.

Is Your Digital Transformation Just Digital Optimization?

According to IDC, worldwide digital transformation spending is expected to reach nearly $3.9 trillion in 2027.

To put that in perspective, with $6.3 trillion, you could buy 430 million tons of bacon. That’s enough to fill almost 2 million cargo planes. Imagine: With that amount of money, you could make pigs fly.

But while the world is spending incredible amounts of money on digital transformation, research tells us that 70 percent of digital transformation initiatives actually fail. That leads to the question: Why?

Transformation is not just about technology. Contrary to what many software companies may try to tell you, you can’t simply install a new system that will solve your organization’s biggest problems. Or take a legacy analog workflow, move it to digital and consider it “transformed.” Successful digital transformation initiatives are not centered on the technology itself.

What does this tell us? It tells us:

  • Digital transformation is change management. It is changing how we communicate and requiring alignment on our plans and goals.
  • Digital transformation is culture transformation. It is mobilizing and inspiring our workforce.
  • Digital transformation is transforming the human experience. It is reimagining the way we interact with the world around us, with organizations, and with each other.

If we want to look beyond today’s challenges to tomorrow’s opportunities, we must focus on human-centered digital transformation. Human-centered refers to more than just the people within the company. We must think about our customers, our customer’s customers, our partners, vendors, and anyone else who comes into contact with our organization.

Improving process efficiency and productivity is a great goal, but I believe that true transformation should transform the lives of the people we serve.

Here are some familiar digital initiatives:

  • Creating or updating a webpage for your organization
  • Updating an ERP or CRM system
  • Moving digital assets to the cloud

These are some examples of process improvements. They are admirable, but not transformative.

Have you heard the phrase, “putting lipstick on a pig?” It’s like that. No offense to the pig. But it’s still just a pig.

We want to use technology, data and digital transformation to not just improve, but to transform. To disrupt. To innovate.

We don’t to put lipstick on a pig. We want to make pigs fly.

Image of pig with wings.

Digital transformation is about transforming organizations, transforming culture, and transforming lives. And we should view all our digital initiatives through the lens of human-centered digital transformation. What digital initiatives are you currently working on? Are you putting lipstick on a pig, or making pigs fly?

Note: this article was also made available on LinkedIn.

302? 404? Everything You Need to Know About Sarbanes-Oxley

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, commonly referred to as SOX, was designed with the goal of implementing accounting and disclosure requirements that increase transparency in corporate governance and financial reporting with a formalized system of internal checks and balances.

Effective in 2006, all publicly-traded companies in the United States, including all wholly-owned subsidiaries and all publicly-traded non-US companies doing in business in the US, are required to implement and report internal accounting controls to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for compliance under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. In addition, certain provisions of Sarbanes-Oxley also apply to privately-held companies that are preparing for their initial public offering (IPO).

Formal penalties for non-compliance with SOX can include:
  • Fines
  • Removal from listings on public stock exchanges
  • Invalidation of Directors and Officers (D&O) insurance policies

CEOs and CFOs who willfully submit an incorrect certification to a SOX compliance audit can face fines of up to $5 million and up to 20 years in jail.

Each system that contributes to financial reports and disclosures must be monitored and tracked with audit trails in order to comply with SOX regulations. Under the SOX law, organizations must exercise tight control over financial reports and transactions, including document controls, disclosure methods and executives’ approval.

An effective Content Services Platform/Digital Document Management solution contains powerful organizational tools that elevate any organization’s compliance program with the ability to manage data with workflow automation, a complete audit trail, and security features.

There are two sections of the SOX Act which have clear implications for data management, audit trail reporting and security:

Section 302 Corporate Responsibility for Financial Reports:

This section relates to a company’s financial reporting. The act requires a company’s CEO and CFO to personally certify that all records are complete and accurate. Specifically, they must confirm that they accept personal responsibility for all internal controls and have reviewed these controls in the past 90 days.

Section 404 Management Assessment of Internal Controls:

This section states that annual disclosures and quarterly updates must be provided to shareholders and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. It stipulates further requirements for the monitoring and maintenance of internal controls related to the company’s accounting and financials. It requires businesses to have an annual audit of these controls performed by an outside firm. This audit assesses the effectiveness of all internal controls and reports its findings back directly to the SEC.

Automating AP Processes Enables Compliance with SOX

Organizations are faced with regulations that require them to control information, retain it and make it accessible to external auditors. Three key areas that can help support standardized, secure, internal controls for business processes include; Digital document management, automated workflows and record retention solutions implemented to ensure compliance procedures are consistently followed and can be easily tracked and audited.

An effective Content Services Platform/Digital Document Management solution provides internal controls with clear visibility into the network with complete oversight and control of secure access to the network, applications, databases, and sensitive data. Automation of internal [AP] processes enforces standardized operating procedures that ensure data authenticity, integrity, compliance and retention. With a verifiable audit trail, staff can document every step to auditors and provide them with detailed reports that demonstrate changes made to information systems can be detected, corrections verified, and variances explained.

A centralized solution allows organizations to organize, and maintain records on these automated processes in a secure, dynamic environment. In addition, it eases the cost and burden of manually monitoring systems and provides enhanced reports to evaluate procedures and ensure consistent and repeatable activities and processes.

In addition to ensuring that your organization passes external compliance audits for Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, and other industry-specific regulations, you can save time and resources by implementing document management best practices. An optimized digital document management solution can help your organization comply with SOX with monitored, logged and audited activities including; information access, login, network, user, account and database activity.

Data Management with Workflow Automation
  • Replace manual processes and provide a documented audit trail for the flow of information and documents.
  • Track all activity with automated workflow functionality that enables you to electronically match and route invoices for approval, review and exceptions resolution and post to ERP system.
  • Capture, index and analyze all electronic data, including report data from print streams and items within workflows.
  • Enable robust search and retrieval of documents and transactions with multiple indexing capabilities.
  • Automate document capture, classification and coding to reduce input errors.
  • Ensure processes and procedures are followed and reports are available to perform self-auditing checks for internal compliance.
  • Support version control for documents which allows visibility into when and who accessed which files, and the actions taken.
  • Granular content-type and class-level access control with feature and function permissions.

Compliance and Record Retention
  • Automate life cycle management to process records and record folders according to a life cycle, through creation, retrieval, storage, hold status and final disposition with automatic email notification to an approver before deletion.
  • Create custom file and folder structure and configure retention rules specific to the organization and in full compliance with government or industry regulations to prevent inappropriate or premature file deletion.
  • Gives you instant, comprehensive visibility into your repository, workflows and record retention activity to quickly generate reports of records currently eligible for cutoff, transfer, and destruction dispositions, and vital record review or records on hold.
  • Simplify the audit process, centralize your documents, images, photos, emails, voice files, faxes, and other documents in a fully searchable repository, or point to their location in other applications for fast, easy retrieval.
  • Demonstrate controls that reflect standards set by Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).
  • Robust search and retrieval functionality — information is instantly available in search results.

Security and Audit Trail 
  • Role based access controls — defined access rights and permissions for individual users, groups and roles to information assets within the system and assignment of privileges, such as viewing, editing, printing and downloading, which restrict unauthorized activity.
  • Tracks information access, login, users, network, applications, database activity and access to sensitive data with reporting to perform self-auditing checks for internal compliance.
  • Security classification hierarchy with segregation of duties and reports showing who handled, routed, approved and processed transactions.
  • Unchangeable audit log — all key usage is recorded and unchangeable including logging and auditing of permission and security changes.
  • Preserve data in its purest form — access to historical data for audit and forensic requirements and evidentiary presentation.
  • Tracks unauthorized modifications of data and configurations — automatically flags altered database files so that internal and external auditors can be confident they are viewing accurate and complete information

Key Benefits of AP Automation
  • Mitigate Risk and Avoid Noncompliance Fines
  • Prevent Fraud
  • Improve Visibility, Efficiency and Profitability
  • Develop Accurate Financial Reporting
  • Comply with Applicable Federal, State, Local Laws and Business Rules
  • Access to Historical Data for Audit and Forensic Activities
  • Improved Decision Making
  • Leverage AP Staff Resources on Higher–value Activities
  • Reduce Cost of AP Processes and Compliance
  • Capture Available Early Pay Discounts
  • Automating Document Retention and Destruction
  • Reducing the Costs of Long-term Data Preservation
  • Eliminating the Costs of Offsite Storage
  • Lowering the Costs of In-house Storage

A holistic Content Services Platform with digital document management, automated workflows, record retention and security controls along with the alignment of people, processes, and policy controls, helps enable organizations to satisfy the requirements for sections 302 and 404 and meet SOX requirements.

By leveraging existing technology and tools, organizations can identify, assess, and report on the status and security of financial-related processes and information, and can provide auditors with tangible evidence of their information security initiatives.

With a verifiable audit trail, staff can then document every step to auditors or assessors and provide them with detailed reports that demonstrate changes made to information systems can be detected, corrections verified, and anomalies explained.

By implementing effective, comprehensive policies and procedures for establishing accountability and consistent data collection, retention, and reporting practices, your organization can mitigate risk and enhance compliance for SOX Sections 302 and 404 requirements and keep costs under control.

SOX Compliance Checklist

Download and use this interactive checklist to facilitate internal discussions and assess progress towards improving controls across your organization’s ecosystem.
Download our simple SOX compliance checklist.

Click here to view the complete H.R. 3763 Sarbanes – Oxley Act of 2002 / text.

What Is Low Code Automation and What Are the Benefits?

Low-code automation is the use of software to automate a business process, without the need for traditional computer programming.
Compared to building a business process automation solution from scratch, a low-code automation solution offers:
  • The ability to develop, deploy and iterate on your processes quickly as business needs change.
  • A secure foundation that you can clear by IT once and then use to build out multiple processes.
  • An easy-to-use interface that allows non-technical process experts to build powerful solutions.

What is a low-code platform?

A low-code platform is a development environment that enables all types of users, including non-technical ones, to build processes without the need to code much, if at all, compared to building an application for that process from scratch. For both non-career developers and seasoned coders, these platforms are a way for you to build a custom business application or automate a process without the need to code basic functionality or back-end infrastructure elements, such as security and error handling.

By both lowering the barrier to entry to create an app, and speeding up development times, low-code automation platforms enable organizations to be more agile in response to changing needs, regulations and customer expectations.

What is meant by low-code?

Although you may see low-code platform vendors use a variety of terms to describe their offerings, they often share a common thread of digitizing key business operations in a way that’s easy for those without coding experience. This is usually achieved by providing a drag-and-drop interface that lets users design and map out logic for applications, workflows and business processes.

What is an example of low-code?

A low-code automation platform is usually good at gathering information and routing it to the right person or location. More robust platforms, like Laserfiche, with enterprise content management (ECM) technology, can store information as well without the need of a third-party application to support it. Below is an example of a low-code automation platform for a generic request:
Diagram showing a low code process that gathers information, routs information, and stores information.

Gather information: Low-code automation platforms can gather information either directly from a digital form, or a scanned paper form. When dealing with paper, these platforms usually use AI to sort and classify applicable data points from the document and stores them as metadata.

Route information: Using a workflow designer, you can make sure your low-code automation platform routes information based on certain criteria and sets up the logic as you see fit. This example routes a request based on whether it is approved or rejected. However, it’s important to note that you can route information based on a number of criteria and down a variety paths outside of “accept or reject.” This flexibility allows you to create a variety of applications on the same platform.

Store information: At this point, many platforms would integrate with a third-party system to store and archive any information relevant to the automated business process. Although third-party integrations are an important feature of many low-code platforms, they are not always necessary when it comes to storage and archival. If a low-code platform also works as an ECM platform, it can store and archive information in a centralized repository, with added features that enhance an organization’s ability to store and archive information in a way that remains in compliance with industry regulations and organizational policies.

What can you do with low-code platforms?

With the right low-code platform, the possibilities of what you can build are virtually limitless. Some platforms even offer marketplaces for solutions, which allows creators to share what they’ve built and for others to get started faster with pre-built templates. One example is the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace, which has pre-built workflows for many of your everyday processes.

The below infographic “Laserfiche 4 Steps to Innovation” shows how those that use the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace can not only deploy solutions quickly, but get involved with a larger community of innovators.Infographic showing the Laserfiche's four steps to innovation: asking what needs to be automated, seeing how others use Laserfiche, downloading and using solutions and sharing with others.

Below are a few examples of processes you can automate with a low-code platform:
  • HR onboarding: Have new hires fill out and sign paperwork digitally and route the forms to your repository for storage and archival.
  • Expense reimbursement: Streamline expense reimbursement requests by routing them directly to approvers for quick decisions.
  • Accounts payable: Gather relevant information from incoming documents and apply business rules to verify matching POs and invoices.

Which low-code platform is best?

There are a lot of low-code platforms out there, but not all offer the same level of functionality. Here’s a quick list of core features to look for in a low-code platform:

Drag-and-drop: If a low-code platform doesn’t include a drag-and-drop or other visual interface, it may require more coding and other complexities than you expect. See if you can get a demo or product walkthrough that explores how the low-code platform works before making a decision.

Integrations: You want to make sure that any low-code platform you use interacts with the digital ecosystem you already have in place. Check documentation for your desired low-code platform and any applications you plan to integrate it with before investing in a solution.

ECM features: While many low-code platforms can integrate with an ECM system to manage the storage and archival of documents, some of them offer an ECM within the product itself. This allows you to not only build applications around content, but actively manage the content throughout its lifecycle using the same application, making the deployment of these types of solutions more streamlined and centralized.

What is the difference between low-code and no-code?

A no-code platform, as its name suggests, requires no code from the user to program a solution. Low code, on the other hand, involves some level of scripting or manual coding from technical staff.

Solutions made using no-code can come in the form of a reporting dashboard or digital form where you’re putting together prepackaged UI elements. Some no-code platforms may allow you to build content management applications, digital workflows or mobile and web apps without code, although potentially with some limitations — it’s not that you can’t create an app without using code, it’s just that without the potential to add code, a platform may be needlessly limiting its own capabilities.

On the other hand, that little bit of code you add doesn’t have to be incredibly complex either, while still providing a great deal of customizability to your applications. Common use cases for these kinds of platforms, include making calculations based on incoming data and integrating with an application that has an application programming interface (API).

What does low-code have to do with APIs?

An application programming interface (API) works as a means for outside applications to interact with the one that the API is designed around. In the same way that a human needs some sort of an interface to interact with technology, like a graphical user interface (GUI) on an application or simply the buttons on a household appliance, an API gives outside applications a specific set of functions it can ask of the application providing the API.

APIs are useful in that they both give a low-code automation platform the ability to interact with other applications it might not otherwise have been able to, while sticking with the theme of simplicity that no-code provides. APIs are usually designed to just take in simple inputs and provide a simple output, with the rest of the logic inside the application providing the API. This makes most API functions light on code, and thus some of the easiest coding snippets to add to automated processes using a low-code platform.

Why is low-code popular?

Low-code is popular because it makes organizations more efficient. Especially in a business climate that can experience large, seismic shifts in an instant, the ability for organizations to develop and deploy solutions quickly is of upmost importance. There’s also a need to remain flexible and adapt the development or use of an automated process to meet new business needs. Although this era was inevitable given advances in technology and communications, its arrival was accelerated by the harsh realities of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Is low-code really the future?

Although opinions may vary, things seem to be trending toward low-code platforms becoming the norm. Analyst firm Gartner predicts that by 2025, 70% of new applications will be developed using low-code or no-code technology. The most telling sign that low-code is the future, however, is that future is already here.

Although this may not be the case with some enterprise applications, some kinds of low-code applications and platforms have been around for a while now, from game engines that help create interactive digital experiences, to website builders that empower small businesses to create more robust websites.

While the future of low-code is technically uncertain, it’s likely safe to say that building applications and processes from scratch is largely a thing of the past.

Should developers learn low-code?

Software programmers will probably be some of the first people to tell you that there are multiple solutions to a problem, and that the highest effort one is not the best solution. With that in mind, developers would be of sound decision-making to consider developing on a low-code platform. It allows them to develop faster from the start, and more quickly adapt to changes to a business process’s requirements or specifications. It’s also important for those in IT to have knowledge of the platforms and how they work, to ensure that the platform their organization chooses to deploy meets security needs and other requirements.

Further reading

Want to learn more about how you can design low-code processes with Laserfiche? Visit our low code automation product page.

If you’re interested in choosing the right kind of low-code process automation platform your organization, check out our Process Automation Buyer’s Guide.

What You Need to Know About the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace

With its easy-to-use, no-code workflows, forms and content management offerings for both cloud and on-premises deployments, Laserfiche makes it easy for all types of teams and individuals to streamline their day-to-day processes.

Since early 2022, customers now have a faster way to innovate on everyday workplace processes with the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace, a hub for Laserfiche community members to explore solution templates from Laserfiche, its industry partners, third-party vendors and even citizen developers.

What is the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace?

The Laserfiche Solution Marketplace is a place for users to download solution templates that include pre-built forms, workflows and other resources for the Laserfiche platform. It’s also a community hub where Laserfiche users can share their owns solutions with each other. (Want to contribute? You can submit your solutions here.)

Watch the video below for a quick overview of the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace, and read on to take a deep dive into how the marketplace can help you deploy solutions faster.

While the ability to create many of these solutions exists for most Laserfiche users, it can be much easier and faster — especially for resource-strapped individuals and organizations — to use or build upon what other platform experts have already created.

What kinds of solutions are available on the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace?

Here are a few examples of the types of resources you can find on the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace:

What are the benefits of using the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace?

While the time-savings are readily apparent in the use of pre-built solutions, there are also additional benefits one can get from using the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace:

  • Put your ROI in overdrive: A faster start from pre-built solutions means less lead-up time to enjoy the efficiency and productivity benefits of the Laserfiche platform.
  • Enjoy solutions with built-in expertise: Many pre-built solutions are created by industry leaders and already have best practices baked into them.
  • Democratize big ideas: Enable employees across departments and disciplines to take the role of citizen developers, combining and building on solutions to foster innovation.

How do I get started with the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace?

Visit the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace site to explore a growing library of 100+ solution templates for Laserfiche self-hosted deployments and Laserfiche Cloud.

Also be sure to check out the below infographic “Laserfiche 4 Steps to Innovation” for a step-by-step guide on how to get started deploying solutions and sharing your innovations with the larger Laserfiche community.Infographic showing the Laserfiche's four steps to innovation: asking what needs to be automated, seeing how others use Laserfiche, downloading and using solutions and sharing with others.

Calling all innovators! Stake your claim as a digital transformation pioneer by being one of the first to have their innovative ideas on the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace. Community members looking to submit their own templates can do so here.

Everything You Need to Know About AP Automation

Accounts payable automation can help you streamline invoice processing times, putting your organization on track to getting all the benefits that come with paying vendors promptly and accurately. Read on to learn more about each step in the AP process and where a process automation platform can assist.

How do you automate an AP process?

For the uninitiated, Accounts Payable, or AP for short, consists of four main steps:

  • Purchasing a product or service
  • Receiving an invoice
  • Reviewing an invoice
  • Paying for products or services

Overview of AP invoice processing.

Automating an AP process involves digitizing these steps and the documents involved. Read on to learn more about how each step is transformed with technology.

How do you automate purchasing a product or service?

For many organizations, the purchasing process starts with creating a purchase order, or PO, that lists the goods and services you want from a vendor.

One way automation helps with this process is allowing you to scan invoices individually or in bulk and store them in an enterprise content management, or ECM system. These systems digitize your everyday documents so you can retrieve them easily, avoid losing them and lessen your organization’s reliance on physical paper. Using intelligent content capture technology, an ECM system can also extract metadata for easy search, retrieval, and invoice matching (more on that later.)

Side note: when sharing POs and other documents with vendors, be sure to do so securely. We recommend using secure file sharing on your platform of choice.

How do you automate receiving an invoice?

Once an organization lets a vendor know they want to purchase a good or service, whether it’s through PO or something else, the next step usually involves an invoice. This is a document provided by the vendor, outlining the goods and services they will provide for the requesting organization.

However, not all invoices are alike. Formatting can differ greatly between invoices from different vendors, making automation more difficult when it comes to scanning and extracting information from documents. Thus, AP personnel are often required to enter invoice information manually.

Luckily, some process automation platforms can help you minimize the challenges of inconsistent invoice formats. How? By using a type of artificial intelligence, or AI, called machine learning, or ML. This technology helps your process automation platform learn from experience how to read these invoices, extract the data, and store it in a more consistent, digital format, along with the scan of the full document.

How do you automate reviewing an invoice?

When an invoice is received from a vendor, it needs to be cross-referenced with the purchase order given to them by the purchasing organization, through a process called invoice matching. This is to make sure that the goods requested are the ones to be delivered, and to address any discrepancies between the two.

Automation platforms would do a similar job to what an accounts payable department’s employees would have to do manually — compare each data point with the invoice to its companion on the purchase order, and verify they match.

These data points of comparison are usually presented as metadata, or pieces of information associated with a particular document on an enterprise content management platform, such as an invoice number, a purchased item’s name or the price for a particular service.

For most platforms, users can manually enter metadata, however if you used intelligent content capture for the invoice and the PO using an enterprise content management platform, there’s little if any data entry necessary.

How do you automate paying an invoice?

Generally, the last part of the AP process, once the purchase order and invoice are generated, stored, and matched, is to pay for any purchase items or services. Although this may seem like a simple step, there are plenty of opportunities for automation.

One way you can automate this part of the process is to leverage the integrations available to an enterprise content management system. These integrations are usually baked-in to an enterprise content management platform or can be obtained from that platform’s marketplace. These integrations allow you to do things like payment processing and signature gathering on other platforms and fold these processes into your existing digital workflows.

You can also use an enterprise content management system’s digital workflows to automatically send emails to appropriate stakeholders to notify them of a particular event, such as when a payment is on its way to a vendor.

What are the benefits of AP automation?

The most obvious benefit of automating any process is the time savings you get from not having to manually enter data, route documents, and the like. However, let’s dig a bit deeper and look at the various benefits you can get by streamlining your AP department’s processes:

  • Boost your AP team’s productivity by automatically capturing relevant invoice data and minimizing manual data entry.
  • Quickly maximize ROI from your enterprise content management platform with tools such as intelligent content capture, that associate searchable data points with your invoices, regardless of format, when they’re imported.
  • Improve transparency across your AP department and your entire organization with digital workflows that make it easy to see where an invoice or PO is in the AP process.
  • Bolster your efforts to protect against fraud with an enterprise content management platform that automatically validates invoice data against previously approved POs to identify discrepancies and routes to stakeholders to uphold a high standard of accountability.
  • Build on your initiatives to improve cash flow, automating reminders for key stakeholders and other parts of the AP process to avoid late fees and streamline payment cycles.
  • Enhance your information governance and compliance toolkit by leveraging granular user security, audit trails and records management tools to bolster your efforts to protect confidential data and enforce standards for invoice-related content.

See how organizations are doing more with AP automation: thanks to its cloud content management system, Mercer Island School District was able to streamline its AP processes and dedicate more time to serving its students. Learn more here.

What is the best accounts payable automation solution?

Deciding which AP automation solution is best is often up to preference and needs. Your organization’s needs may differ from others. One place to get started is to look at review sites, such as G2, that compare popular vendors.

If you want to learn more about how Laserfiche could help transform your AP department’s processes, check out our product page here. In addition to offering AP automation as part of a robust enterprise content management platform for multiple types of deployments, Laserfiche also recently launched its solution marketplace, which offers templates for organizations looking to jumpstart any digital transformation effort, whether it’s aimed at AP or elsewhere, in order to save time and focus on what matters.

Cloud Document Management Is the Future — Here’s Why

Today’s organizations have been using some form of document management for years, whether it be on paper, on a computer or online. While we at Laserfiche have encouraged customers to digitize documents for decades, many organizations are just starting to move their document management systems to the cloud. Read on to see why cloud-based document management systems are becoming so popular that they’re the norm rather than the exception.

What is a cloud-based document management system?

According to the Association for Intelligent Information Management (AIIM), document management is “the software that controls and organizes documents throughout an organization.” According to Merriam-Webster, cloud computing is “the practice of storing regularly used computer data on multiple servers that can be accessed through the Internet.”

In summary, cloud-based document management system is a platform that controls and organizes documents stored on multiple servers and accessed through the internet.

Why is cloud the future of document management?

Cloud is the future for document management because it is the easiest, most efficient way to access and organize your documents – no matter where your work takes you. In fact, the software as a service (SaaS) industry is expected to expand to a value of over $400 billion by 2025. Why is this the case?

The workplace is becoming remote. Like it or not, remote work is here to stay. According to the AP, Amazon, one of the world’s largest employers, announced in 2021 that it would allow many of its employees to work from home indefinitely. This new world of work means that employees need to access work-related content via the internet, and that’s where cloud document management becomes a necessity.

Cybersecurity is getting more complicated. Even the most robust IT teams face challenges creating in-house enterprise solutions for any and all cyberthreats. These threats are growing in number and complexity, which can strain IT teams that are also deploying solutions and answering helpdesk tickets. Cloud allows internal teams to offload security overhead to the vendor (or a firm dedicated to protecting cloud assets), enabling businesses to stay up-to-date with their security while distributing IT resources effectively.

The digital ecosystem is evolving. Changing trends are informing how we do our everyday work. Largely gone are the days where every line of business was managed within the same application or family of applications. Today’s modern enterprise links different platforms together with content services platforms and others like it. This concept of bringing applications together to form a unique experience, called composition, is essential as modern applications are becoming more specialized and connected.

What are the benefits of cloud-based document management?

Managing documents and content in the cloud offers a variety of benefits, including:

Robust backups of your data — Unlike an in-house solution, cloud content is backed up dozens or even thousands of times, ensuring that you don’t lose key information. This information can help you make informed decisions and keep business moving. Many cloud providers host backups in multiple data centers, which can support business continuity and help you recover from disaster quickly — if one of these facilities is down, your data and services generally aren’t.

Protect sensitive information — In addition to providing backups and multiple availability zones for your data, cloud services also often come with automatic updates and patches, and likely have more staff dedicated to securing information that is stored or moved to and from the cloud. Some cloud vendors may even offer specialized solutions based on the needs of heavily regulated industries, such as finance, that are either built into, or can be added onto, your existing cloud solution – with minimal setup on your organization’s end. This is great for organizations that can’t, or don’t want to, dedicate extensive staff or technological resources to cybersecurity.

Anywhere access — In the era of remote work, many professionals are moving out of established industry hubs and setting up home offices elsewhere. Cloud services make it easier for both remote and in-person teams to collaborate and communicate, making your organization more flexible in how it acquires and supports talent. In addition, anywhere access can simply help business processes move faster. Let’s say there’s a disruption to a time-sensitive process that needs a specific employee or role to get moving again — if this process is on the cloud, that employee or someone in that role can do what they need to do, even if they aren’t able to get to the office in a timely fashion. An ability to address these situations makes your business more efficient while giving it the ability to respond quickly to market forces and changes.

Low maintenance — A cloud solution often implies low to no hardware costs, as well as automatic updates that keep systems current for everyone. With your IT team free to offload some of these items, as well as security and data backups to another vendor or service, they can focus on new projects, procurements or respond to tickets faster. An agile IT team means a sturdier business, especially when it comes to business continuity.

How do I choose the right cloud document management system?

Ultimately, even when the decision to move to cloud is clear, it becomes even clearer that not all cloud document management systems are created equal. Although there are no hard and fast rules, here are some factors you may want to consider when shopping solutions:

Flexibility — in both capability and pricing, flexibility can be important dependent on your needs. Industries can change in an instant, so it’s important for your organization to be able to adapt as quickly as possible to disruptions and shifts in the market.

Robust capability — whether your cloud document management system can handle a task on its own, or integrate with a platform that does, you want to make sure it can handle your organization’s current needs, and potential future initiatives.

Compatibility — although these systems can be revolutionary, you want to have a new system to deploy seamlessly within most or all of the digital ecosystems you have already developed. Siloed systems should be avoided as much as possible in the age of content services, where different lines of business exchange information frequently.

The journey to find the right cloud document management system can be a daunting one — download our guide to learn more about why organizations need document management, and how you can procure the right solution for your organization.

What Is Document Management?

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