What Is WORM Storage?

WORM storage is data archiving technology that prevents information from being edited or deleted, while allowing it to be read as many times as needed. An acronym for “write once, read many”, WORM enables businesses to lock down records to ensure that no unauthorized changes can been made.

Organizations primarily use WORM storage to comply with recordkeeping regulations, address information security concerns and ensure data integrity. For example, in the event of an SEC audit, companies can use WORM to prove that they have not altered or tampered with the records in question.

WORM storage is especially important to the financial services industry, where this type of technology is required for financial firms to meet strict regulatory requirements issued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).

Stiff Compliance Penalties

The costs associated with poor data management are high, and proper utilization of WORM storage can help mitigate the risk of incurring expensive fines. Today’s financial firms risk millions of dollars’ worth of fines and lawsuits if they do not meet regulatory requirements.

For example, FINRA fined 12 firms a total of $14.4 million in 2016 for failing to protect financial records in a format that prevents alteration. From a business perspective, unsecure, lost and inaccurate data will lessen credibility with, and increase skepticism from, current and future clients. Additionally, corrupted data can cause businesses to make strategic decisions or even change the direction of the firm based on incorrect or skewed information.

Making Compliance Simple

Firms focused on improving records retention should consider using WORM-compliant technology to add an extra layer of security to their records.

A few industries that can especially benefit from using WORM storage include:
  • Education: Student records have strict retention rules for how long they’re stored. Storing records in a WORM-compliant format can ensure you’re not editing or moving a student’s records around—so when it’s time to dispose of records or present them upon request, you know you’re doing so accurately and in good faith.
  • Healthcare: The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) has its own set of retention rules for the healthcare industry. These rules, combined with the need to ensure patient privacy, makes WORM storage an attractive option, as it can help in efforts to limit access to and support retention of sensitive information.
  • Financial Services: As mentioned before, SEC Rule 17a-4 requires by law that wealth management firms such as broker-dealers use specific technology for their records, including WORM-format. In addition, as of 2022, audit trails are now an alternative for broker-dealers to preserve records. For this industry, the consequences for non-compliance can be damaging to their reputation and their bottom line due to expensive fines.

How WORM Storage Works

There are two ways to implement WORM storage in your organization. The first way is through hardware, using tape or another type of medium that permanently keeps data, making the only deletion method physical destruction of the WORM storage device.

Still, with many solutions moving to cloud and SaaS services, choosing specific hardware can be problematic. However, many providers of these services now provide software-defined WORM solutions that provide the flexibility of software with the strictness, security and indelibility expected from a hardware-based WORM solution.

Whether you use software or hardware to support your compliance goals, the concept works in much the same way. When someone adds data to a WORM drive, it stays there indefinitely. The idea that you cannot edit a WORM drive’s data only applies to data already stored there—the potential to add new data is always there, provided you have enough storage space left on the drive.
WORM storage allows authorized users to add to or read information from a device, but not delete or edit its existing information.
Figure 1: WORM storage allows authorized users to add to or read information from a device, but not delete or edit its existing information.

As you can see in the diagram above, it’s quite simple—user A adds data to the drive, then user B, then user C. Now, users A, B and C can presumably read all the data on the drive—barring any other security settings or access rights—but none of them can edit what’s already there. It’s read-only for everyone involved. This way, when auditors or administrative staff want to pull up retained records, they have the peace of mind of knowing the records are in the same condition as they came in when they entered their retention period.

A Worthwhile Solution

WORM storage, along with the right records management system can go far in assisting professionals in the financial, education, healthcare, and government industries meet their toughest compliance challenges.

For those in the financial services industry facing some of the strictest regulations, WORM storage can provide a secure and accurate system of record. Combining WORM storage with records management software can give broker-dealers additional tools to support broker-dealer compliance with SEC Rule 17a-4, such as the requirements for records retention, records quality and accuracy, audit reporting, and a designated third party.

Records management solutions and WORM storage can help broker-dealers and compliance-minded professionals across industries gain confidence and peace of mind in the face of stringent compliance requirements. With this confidence, they can better focus on meeting client needs and growing their businesses.

To learn more about records management software, WORM storage and other solutions that can help you step up to the challenges of today’s regulations, visit our Laserfiche Records Management solution page.

What Is SEC 17a-4?

Established as part of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, SEC 17a-4 defines a set of records preservation and retention requirements for registered broker-dealers. SEC 17a-4 itself became part of the law in 1997, and in recent years, enforcement of this rule—along with the consequences for violating it—have increased significantly.

As recently as 2022, the SEC fined 16 Wall Street firms with more than $1.1 billion for widespread recordkeeping failures.

Outlined in this 14-page PDF released by the SEC, the implications of 17a-4 can mean a lot for your business and its bottom line. Read below to see how you can step up to the challenges presented by each section of 17a-4, saving your organization time, money and staff resources:

Retention Periods – Rule 17a-4 (a), (b), (c), (d)

This section of the rule outlines records retention requirements for today’s broker-dealers. It requires that firms retain most of their records for 3-6 years, whether they’re hard-copy documents or electronically stored information (ESI) such as emails.
Figure 1: The standard records management lifecycle for most broker-dealer record.

To meet these requirements, most organizations need a way to classify and track records throughout their lifecycle, from the date they’re created, through their time in use, their retention period and eventually final disposition or archival. They’ll also need a solution that is able to put all these documents in the right place.

This is where document and records management tools come in. A document management system can help you gain control over all the different types of information you need to keep track of and even capture your paper documents for storage in a digital format. Many records management solutions offer the ability to monitor record lifecycles and notify you when records need to move from one stage to the next. In addition, advanced records management systems allow you to define retention schedules and policies at the folder level, saving records managers from having to store or move records through their lifecycles one at a time.

Audit Trail OR Write-Once-Read-Many (WORM) – Rule 17a-4(f)(2)(ii)(A)

Audit Trail

SEC recently made its first changes to Rule 17a-4 in 2022. The most significant change is allowing broker-dealers 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.

WORM-compliant

WORM-format has been a long-time exclusive requirement for broker-dealers to preserve record in a non-rewritable, non-erasable format. This means that once a firm finish using a record and is ready to put it into retention, they must retain the record in a format where it cannot be changed, moved or deleted.

The best part of using records management software to assist with this is that you can support record content integrity even before the record enters retention. Even when actively working with files, a good records management solution can set up read-only restrictions for particular records, which can assist in preventing their modification, relocation, and deletion. Read this blog post to learn more how to create a WORM environment with cloud and SaaS solutions to support compliance.

Quality and Accuracy of Recording Process – Rule 17a-4(f)(2)(ii)(B)

In addition to the setting standards for records themselves, SEC Rule 17a-4 also requires that broker-dealers “verify automatically the quality and accuracy of the records process.” This means that you must preserve data integrity and quality for examination by auditors. The right records management solution would have the tools necessary to keep logs of these processes and catch input or output errors. To preserve business continuity—in case of disaster recovery or otherwise—some solutions even automate the process of data replication and creating backups. Most importantly, the best solutions detect file corruption, degradation of records and file tampering, which gives you peace of mind that you’re presenting auditors with up-to-date, valid and accessible information.

Serialized Original and Duplicates – Rule 17a-4(f)(2)(ii)(C)

SEC 17a-4 further requests that broker-dealers serialize their electronic recordkeeping system and time-date this media for its required retention period. This makes it easy for auditors to identify records and establish a timeline for each record as it goes through its lifecycle.

To assist broker-dealers in fulfilling this request, the right records management solution can make records easy to identify and place chronologically. Many of them assign unique numeric entry IDs to each record, and then store the record’s entry date and last modified date in the system. Some records management solutions even allow you to locate records by their assigned entry ID, their creation date, or any retention policies that may pertain to them. This search-ability makes it easy to generate reports that auditors can review.

Downloading Indexes and Records – Rule 17a-4(f)(2)(ii)(D)

To comply with SEC 17a-4, a firm’s electronic recordkeeping system must “have the capacity to readily download and transfer copies of a record and its audit trail (if applicable) in a human readable format and in a reasonable usable electronic format, as required by the staffs of the Commission and other relevant securities regulators” under Rule 17a-4(f). This means that the records management solution you choose needs to make its records downloadable in an accessible format.

A robust records management solution will allow you to download files in a variety of formats, from TIFF to PDF, or in its original, unedited format. Those that are a step above may even permit the download of multiple records in an archive file format such as a ZIP file. These download format options give auditors flexibility in how they view records, which minimizes the risk of having format readability issues that could delay the audit process.

Easily Readable – Rule 17a-4(f)(3)(i)

Further emphasizing the need for auditors to be able to read from your records, 17a-4 states that firms “at all times have available, for examination by the staffs of the Commission and self-regulatory organizations of which it is a member, for immediate production of records preserved by means of the electronic recordkeeping system and for producing copies of those records.” Similar to how 17a-4 (f)(3)(i) establishes format readability, this part of the rule focuses on the need for firms to give auditors the proper mediums to review records.

An accessible records management solution will give auditors choices on how to view your records, whether it’s from a desktop, web-based or mobile application. Others will go a step further and include built-in document viewers and the ability for authorized users to export documents, giving auditors even more options.

Facsimile Enlargement – Rule 17a-4(f)(3)(ii)

This section declares that a broker-dealer must “be ready at all times to immediately address the production of records” that may be requested by the governing authorities. This statement takes the issue of readability in a direct way—it demands that broker dealers not only make files accessible, but also ensure that auditors can physically read the files with ease.

Records management software can offer zoom functionality to assist in meeting these demands, and even support record printing for more scrutinizing review.

Separate Duplicate Copies – Rule 17a-4(f)(3)(iii)

According to amended SEC Rule 17a-4, broker-dealers must use “either a backup recordkeeping system or other redundancy capabilities”.

This requirement requires firms to preserve a second set of records that can be accessed and examined if the primary electronic recordkeeping system storing the primary set of records is disrupted, malfunctions or otherwise becomes inaccessible. Other redundancy capabilities, for example, creating two copies on an optical disk, using a different server or group of servers to store a duplicate set of records. A proper records management solution can assist you in efforts to both preserve business continuity and meet compliance requirements by replicating contents across multiple geographic locations and monitoring data storage for durability.

Organize and Index Original and Duplicate Records – Rule 17a-4(f)(3)(iv)

Under 17a-4, firms are required to “organize and index accurately all information maintained on both original and any duplicate system and maintain information necessary to locate records maintained within the system.” This means that as a broker-dealer, you need to have information searchable and easy to locate.

Most records management software solutions allow you to search records by keywords or an ID number, and index scanned documents using optical character recognition (OCR). The best solutions even allow you to share links to records securely in custom-made reports. These features can give auditors a quick reference of records presented to them, with the added ability to search for records if necessary.

Audit System – Rule 17a-4(f)(3)(v)

This section requests that broker-dealers “must have in place an audit system providing for accountability regarding inputting of records required to be maintained and preserved and must at all times be able to have the results of the audit system available for examination”. Simply put, broker-dealers need an audit trail that keeps track of changes made to records and other activities taking place where records are stored.

Records management software can offer extensive auditing capabilities to track system activity. Some solutions even allow you to view, filter and sort audit information and export it in the form of convenient reports. In addition, the right records management software would attempt to keep track of what has happened to a record, even after it has entered disposition or finished its lifecycle.

Access to Records by Regulators – Rule 17a-4(f)(3)(vi)

According to SEC Rule 17a-4, upon request, a broker-dealer must provide prompt access to records and indexes stored on electronic recordkeeping system. This means that even if you stop using a records management solution for any reason, the SEC may still ask you for the records stored on the associated system.

Still, the best software vendors out there will offer to keep your data after you stop using their services, at least for a short time. This can give you the peace of mind that you’ll be able to present information to auditors when they request it.

A Comprehensive Package

With the right records management solution, you can make meeting the compliance challenges presented by SEC Rule 17a-4 a breeze. However, to achieve the best results, you need to choose the right records management software that fits your needs and the requirements set by auditors.

To learn more about which software features you can use to simplify Rule 17a-4 compliance, watch this webinar conducted by Laserfiche and WealthManagement.com, which contains valuable information and insights on how you can leverage the Laserfiche Records Management solution to support your organization’s needs.

What Is Records Retention?

Organizations are mandated by law to retain confidential client, employee and company information for a minimum period of time. So, what do you do once a document outlives its purpose?

Holding onto such a document for too long poses a security risk, and can put your business in non-compliance with current privacy regulations.

Records retention is a practice by which organizations maintain confidential records for set lengths of time, and then employ a system of actions to either redirect, store or dispose of them. Records can be considered evidence of a decision or transaction that took place within your business operations, and should be kept as long as required—or for as short a period as necessary–by regulatory, legal or business governance.

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

For example, in the U.S., many accounting and tax documents are kept for up to 7 years as mandated by IRS requirements. Depending on your industry regulations or business needs, you may choose to keep certain records longer, or even store them in a different manner than other records you maintain.

Records retention is driven by a system of policies, scheduling and infrastructure that enable administrators to comply with governing regulations, laws and business best practices.

Here are three major components of a successful records retention strategy:

1. A retention schedule 

A retention schedule is a system of classification that standardizes the different types of records your organization manages and how long they need to be kept. A successful retention schedule is routinely updated to ensure that rules for records retention included in the schedule comply with all laws and regulations which pertain to them.

Here is a simplified example of a retention schedule for a higher education institution, which includes the codes, document types, retention periods and mediums of the records in question.
Here is a simplified example of a retention schedule for a higher education institution, which includes the codes, document types, retention periods and mediums of the records in question.

2. Retention policies 

Records retention policies govern the classification, storage, preservation and destruction of all records in an organization. These policies help to ensure that important records are not mishandled, and that temporary records are discarded promptly in an effort to reduce risk and keep the records management system clean, coordinated and secure.

Powerful records management systems enable organizations to monitor records throughout their lifecycle, specifying when a record was originally filed and when it will be eligible for destruction.
Powerful records management systems enable organizations to monitor records throughout their lifecycle, specifying when a record was originally filed and when it will be eligible for destruction.

3. Records infrastructure

Records are only as good as they are accessible. The records your organization maintains should be easy to search, retrieve and update at all times. Whether preparing for an audit, accessing client information, or making changes to important documents, having a centralized, organized, digital records management system in place ensures that your retention schedule and policies are easily and consistently followed.

Easy-to-use records management systems allow organizations to filter records searches based on whether the record is eligible for cutoff, eligible for disposition or in need of review.
Easy-to-use records management systems allow organizations to filter records searches based on whether the record is eligible for cutoff, eligible for disposition or in need of review.

Qualities of a successful records management system should include:

  • Configurable security: Levels of access to specific documents or folders should be easy to manage by records administrators, to aid in security for clients and your business.
  • Simple search and retrieval: Records should be accessible immediately upon request, whether by business professionals, or via public portals for clients.
  • Centralized storage: Whether on-premises or in the cloud, records should be organized in an intuitive, easy-to-maintain digital repository.
  • Intuitive audit support: Often it’s as (or more) important to be able to demonstrate that your organizations followed regulations correctly after the end of the retention period than being able to find something during it. A system that supports the auditing process can be invaluable in any organization.
  • Automated records management processes: The life-cycle of any type of records should be tracked and maintained with process automation technology built into the infrastructure, resulting in seamless, transparent storage, access, archiving and classification of any and all records in an organization.

“The best records management solution is one you don’t need to think about,” says Justin Pava, Principal Technical Product Manager at Laserfiche. When considering your records infrastructure, be sure to prioritize simplicity, ease of use and reliability in your records management system.

Records retention is a necessary part of a successful records management practice, supported by a system of rules, regulations and organization the helps businesses run smarter.

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

To learn how digital records management supports compliance, transparency, security and ease of access, download the Ultimate Guide to Records Management.

Download the eBook: The Ultimate Guide to Records Management.

6 Ways Digital Document Management Makes Accounts Payable (AP) a Breeze

1. Capture Available Early Pay Discounts

One reason organizations don’t take advantage of vendor discounts is that they don’t have a defined workflow to consistently identify, flag and process invoices in the required time frame to qualify for the discount.

With the speed, efficiency, and automation that comes with the right document management software, AP staff can process required invoices and documents on time or ahead of schedule. This allows them to consistently take advantage of all eligible discounts while decreasing the cost to process invoices. Streamlining the cycle time to pay your suppliers on time also maintains positive relationships and elevates your brand in the marketplace.

2. Reduce the Costs of Long-term Data Preservation

Put an end to the paper chase! Depending on how you currently handle data preservation, records retention and disposal, your savings can be significant.

You save here in a few key areas:
  • Storage and Transportation: Keeping documents in offsite storage (along with transporting them to and from a location) can be costly. Electronic document management virtually eliminates this overhead, directly affecting the bottom line.
  • Filing and Locating Documents: AP staff can spend hours looking for files and filing them when they could be working on more strategic tasks and initiatives. Reducing the labor hours required for these time-consuming and tedious tasks can also boost employee morale and reduce turnaround time for document processing.
  • Repurposing Space: Use less space for filing cabinets and more space for people. Thanks to electronic document management, onsite storage space is drastically reduced or eliminated, allowing you to reclaim and repurpose the space to support revenue-generating and productive activities, whether it’s offices, work and collaboration areas or a new indoor recreational area.

3. Ease of Access

It’s no secret that our world is more interconnected than ever, and that organizations need to think globally when it comes to their needs, whether it’s for their own staff or their clients.

Digital document management solutions address this by allowing for ease of access. Instead of sending physical invoices through an inconsistent, manual workflow to acquire approvals, a digital document management solution makes invoices, forms, contracts, and support documents easier to track, locate, view, share and approve for payment in a timely and efficient manner.

In addition, a complete digital document management solution should support un-tethered access to processes and documents from a mobile app.  This way authorized users can view, review and approve invoices with the touch of a button, as well as access forms or documents on the go, anytime, anywhere.

4. Stay in Compliance with Laws and Regulations

Today’s AP professionals need to support compliance with a variety of federal, state and local laws and regulations, including the Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX) and adhere to standards such as the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).

Digital document management can make the compliance process easier for both AP staff and auditors by allowing you to:
  • Create an audit trail that logs all activity on critical documents.
  • Automatically flag suspicious or unauthorized modifications to data or configuration settings
  • Index documents for easy search and retrieval.
  • Automate document capture and classification to reduce input errors that slow down audits
  • Support—with the help of security controls—that auditors are viewing authentic and reliable information.
  • Facilitate ease of access for all stakeholders, including auditors.
  • Support consistent implementation of regulatory compliance requirements by automating records management and enforcing best practices for secure access.

5. Increase Process Visibility and Oversight

Visibility and oversight of processes are essential to keep AP running efficiently, but sometimes this can be a challenge without the right tools. This is where digital document management comes in. With a solution that can keep track of documents, where they go and the status, it’s never been easier to review and approve documents with the appropriate oversight.

In addition, digital document management solutions can gather data on workflows and how documents are being processed with reporting and analytics dashboards. See the whole process history of a document at a glance, including who approved it, when and how long the approval took. This gives AP staff insight into process bottlenecks, along with the ability to identify inefficiencies and hidden opportunities for improvement.

6. Leverage AP Staff Resources on Higher–Value Activities

Knowledge gained from increased process visibility goes beyond identifying staff needs. It’s a tool your AP staff can use for forecasting, analysis and reporting. With this data, they can make more informed and strategic decisions as they manage cash flow and allocate resources.

With the right digital document management solution, AP staff can spend more time on strategic initiatives in addition to expanding, maintaining, and enhancing relationships with vendors and cross-functional lines of business.

Want to learn more about the strategic advantages that can be gained by implementing an AP automation solution? Check out this infographic and see how process automation can help your organization gain a strategic advantage and tackle the challenges of invoice processing.
Gain a strategic advantage with AP automation.

What Is Federated Search?

Federated search is “a technique for searching multiple text collections simultaneously.” Think of it as a tool that searches a collection of sites, drives or other databases that the creator of the system chooses.

With a customizable scope, federated searches can provide a unique combination of sources for a particular user, community or organization.

Below are four key benefits of using federated search:

Convenience

Federated search is a convenient way to browse a variety of sources at the same time. With one search, users can see results from:
  • Network drives
  • Intranets
  • Repositories
  • Websites

Figure 1: Use Federated search to gather results from multiple sources simultaneously.

Users can search these sources all at once and see the results in a consistent, centralized interface.

This is especially useful for opening up siloed resources across different departments. For example, imagine you’re a city clerk and the public works department has its own set of databases, repositories and websites. Federated search would allow you to search those resources in addition to your own, while staying in your familiar search portal.

Security

Another key benefit of federated search is that it can query secure, gated sources. In addition to sending search queries to each source, a federated search can also send user credentials,2 allowing users to see results that wouldn’t otherwise appear in, say, a typical web search.

For instance, colleges and other academic institutions can use federated search to provide students easier access to academic journals and other subscription-based resources. Instead of having to log into each system and search separately, students can view results from a variety of authoritative sources as a combined list.

In addition, if the user of the federated search engine doesn’t have access to a particular source, those results simply won’t appear. This means that two users can search using the same interface, while having different results depending on their levels of access.

Figure 2: Federated search can pass user credentials, allowing for collected results from subscription-based resources.

Flexibility

Have you ever done a web search and felt you could have prioritized the results better than the search engine did? If you’re an expert in a field and find that a web search isn’t quite hitting the mark, it can be frustrating.

Federated search addresses this issue by giving you the ability to weigh sources depending on how relevant or visible you want them to be in your searches. This ability to tweak results gives the flexibility to prioritize searchable information in a way that works best for your organization or a particular user’s needs.

Figure 3: Users can weigh results as they see fit using federated search.

Many wealth management firms have compliance policies that employees need to know about. To keep important compliance information and documents accessible, a federated search could be set up to weigh the location of these materials above others. Users could then always see these documents prominently in searches, encouraging further awareness of the policies and procedures essential to business operations.

Reach

A versatile tool, federated search can be used to extend the reach of your searches and explore the depths of the web. It provides a reasonable solution for users who have difficulty searching the deep web, or parts of the internet ignored by search engines.

Not truly as scary as it sounds, the deep web is mostly comprised of content that a standard web crawler (a tool to scour pages and gather their information) either can’t or doesn’t find it worth the time to explore. This content includes:
  • Pages running on a slow server
  • Sites that request a user login or particular credentials
  • Areas of websites prohibited by the robot exclusion protocol
  • Documents that are not linked to from anywhere else
  • Dynamic pages that update too frequently

The deep web includes many useful public resources, such as the US National Library of Medicine’s PubMed service—which harbors a wide array of scientific and biomedical articles dating back to the 1950s, as well as the US Census Bureau’s insights and population statistics. This part of the internet also includes sites for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the US Copyright Office, whose core contents are not listed without the use of their own interfaces.

Research organizations, science labs, attorney’s offices or government agencies that want to view information from these resources (or a collection of services like them) can use federated search to find the information they are looking for and further their goals.

Want to learn about more document management features that can help your organization excel? Click here to download the Document Management Buyer’s Guide.

Laserfiche Partners with the YMCA of Greater Long Beach

Laserfiche has partnered with the YMCA of Greater Long Beach to support the Long Beach Youth Institute through an annual  Career Day program. The nonprofit uses technology to promote youth development, and education and career readiness for low-income high school students. Most recently, Laserfiche hosted more than 50 students at its Long Beach office where students attended classes to learn about various career paths in technology companies.

From cybersecurity to marketing, students participated in hands-on activities that allow them to explore potential future careers. They created their own marketing campaigns, learned how to protect their information online, analyzed data to answer questions, and learned how public relations is used to effectively respond to a crisis.

The YMCA is especially important to the Laserfiche family, as it held a special place in the heart of Laserfiche founder Nien-Ling Wacker. The YMCA employs more than 1,000 staff members and 500 volunteers, and services more than 800,000 members within the Greater Long Beach area. For more than 20 years, Laserfiche has supported the local Y branches through donations and volunteerism to help further its mission of providing community programs that promote positive youth development.
The YMCA Long Beach Youth Institute gives low-income high school students the opportunity to improve their academic achievement and their technology, career and leadership skills. We are proud to support them and thankful to Laserfiche employees for donating their time and effort.

Laserfiche is honored to partner with our local YMCA locations and work toward a common goal of empowering people, organizations and communities. Visit the YMCA’s website to learn more about the organization.
The best part of giving to our local YMCA is the amazing expression of creativity and gratitude from our Long Beach youth!

What Are Business Rules?

Business process automation is often a core initiative in organizations’ digital transformation strategies. As part of those efforts, organizations should take advantage of business rule-modeling capabilities and refrain from directly hard-coding business rules as part of their implementation designs.

Business rules can apply to many aspects of an organization and can be expressed in a variety of ways. In general, business rules define specific instructions or constraints on how certain day-to-day actions should be performed.

For example, business rules can include:
  • A decision-making approval structure for invoice processing where only certain managers can sign off on invoices totaling a specific amount
  • Calculations in which a formula may be used to calculate revenue or expenses
  • Policies where an organization requires its employees to work with a preferred list of vendors

When business rules are designed separately from process implementations, they provide a powerful and flexible approach to help organizations move more quickly in meeting their goals and better respond to changing business needs.  

How Business Rules Support Process Automation

In practice, business rules may not always be formally documented, but as many organizations undergo digital transformation, defining and automating business rules can help organizations more effectively reach their goals.

Traditional automation methods often involve hard-coding business rules directly within process workflows. However, these rigid process designs may restrict an organization’s ability to quickly make updates. Given that business logic is likely to change over time, it can be disruptive to find all the affected implementations and make time-sensitive updates to custom code or process designs, especially if multiple processes call on the same rules. There is also the potential risk of the same rule being implemented slightly differently, leading to inconsistent outcomes. Furthermore, how quickly design changes can be made often depends on the availability of technical staff or the IT department.

To help organizations remain responsive and agile, some process automation software offers the capability to model business rules independently from automated processes. This allows organizations to separate their business logic from their process logic. In other words, staff do not need to go one-by-one through each process and change each implementation of the rule manually.

Furthermore, business rules are made available in an easy-to-read format for the domain experts who manage the company’s business policies and likely do not having programming skills. This allows them to make updates to processes without involving developers or impacting the core infrastructure in place. With this approach, organizations are effectively able to maintain flexibility while saving valuable staff time spent updating organizational policies.

Common Types of Business Rules

To account for different types of policies and decisions, business rules can be modeled in multiple ways. Two common types of business rules are formula rules and decision table rules.

A formula rule allows employees to maintain calculations in a no-code format, similar to creating formulas in Microsoft Excel. Once a formula is defined, it can be reused as appropriate in multiple process designs. If the formula needs to be updated, only the formula itself needs to be changed without requiring an end user to manipulate code or individually adjust each applicable process. Many standard formulas are already built into the software, such as determining an average, sum, date, and maximum, among many others.

A decision table rule is a powerful feature that lets non-developers represent related conditional decisions or “if-then” logic in a concise manner as a spreadsheet style-table. Decision tables use columns as the conditions, while rows specify the appropriate outcomes. Approvals, application acceptance criteria, and loan eligibility checks are all general examples where decision tables can be applied and owned by the domain experts themselves.

In traditional approaches, these decisions can be hard-coded directly as part of process designs, leading to complex implementations that require developers to make manual updates as they arise. When complex logic is modeled as a table, it provides a much more relatable and visual format that is easier to maintain for both business and IT.

How Business Rules Simplify Automation Design

Consider a generic invoice approval flow as an example business process that an organization can automate. These types of processes can involve complex approval structures encompassing multiple cost centers and decision-makers that vary based on the type of invoice and invoice amounts.

When changes need to be made, it can be time-consuming to make updates if the business logic is implemented directly within the processes themselves. The diagram below represents a simplified design for how an invoice approval process may be implemented.
Diagram showing an invoice approval process.

In practice, the conditional decision logic that determines which manager level should approve an invoice of a certain amount can be hard-coded into the process design. However, if a manager ends up changing roles or the invoice threshold amount needs to be adjusted, this would require a technical employee to manually make the changes directly within the process implementation. This is not a trivial task—especially with complex systems where valuable technical staff could better utilize their talents on higher value projects.

Instead of building out the approval logic structure directly within the automated process, the decision logic can be modeled separately as a business rule, simplifying design and increasing flexibility. In this example, the decision logic can be best modeled as a decision table as shown below.
Chart defining logic that decides approver for an invoice based on invoice amount.

Based on the invoice value input amount, the decision table can automatically determine the appropriate approving party as the output. The output is made available for the underlying workflow design to move forward with.

This decision table provides an accessible format for a domain expert to easily update, test, and deploy as necessary without disrupting the underlying process implementation or depending on IT to perform updates. With the decision table in place, the above process implementation can now be simplified to the below.
Outline of process to approve and pay an invoice.

As many business processes include complex conditional logic, incorporating decision tables can greatly simplify process designs. Furthermore, the management of decision tables can be made available to the business, while IT or systems admins could be more involved with the advanced aspects of the solution design.

Benefits of Business Rules

Using business rules as part of a process automation software platform provides a number of advantages. These include:
  • Efficiency: Domain experts can centrally define and implement changes to policy logic themselves. Updates can be immediately applied to relevant processes without waiting for a technical resource to become available.
  • Increased productivity: With employees spending less time on tedious updates, they can focus more on value-add activities.
  • Consistency: If a business rule is updated, all processes referencing that rule will be changed accordingly.
  • Improved compliance: Organizations can effectively show how certain outcomes were reached when business rules are explicitly defined and decisions tracked.
  • Reduced Complexity: Business rules are represented in simplified formats that do not require coding skills, such as tables and diagrams, and can be re-used as necessary on appropriate processes.

With the many advantages business rules provide, they should be an important part of an organizations’ business process automation strategies. By placing business rules front and center in an understandable format, business and IT can better align on moving the organization forward.

Business rules enable gains in productivity, efficiency, and agility. As part of a robust process automation platform, they help organizations become more future-proof. For three decades, Laserfiche’s process automation and content services capabilities have helped enable digital transformation for organizations worldwide. Business rules further expand Laserfiche’s powerful feature set, where the domain experts are empowered to implement policy and rule updates on their own, while consistency and compliance remains intact across business operations.

If you want to get started quickly with business rules, be sure to check out the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace, with pre-built workflows for accounts payable, expense reimubursements and more!

To learn more about how business process automation tools can improve productivity and efficiency for your business, read our Process Automation Buyer’s Guide.
 
Download the Process Automation Buyer's Guide.

What is the difference between RPA and BPM?

For many organizations, achieving digital transformation is not an overnight process. Fortunately, there are tools to help organizations make significant advances and be better positioned to reap the rewards of a digital workplace. For years, business process management (BPM) technologies have been a core part of many organizations’ digital transformation strategies. As new innovations in the industry emerge, organizations are finding even more opportunities to become digitally adept. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has been gaining popularity as the latest automation tool to drive workplace efficiency and productivity – but how is it different from traditional business process management approaches?

While distinct in their own right, RPA and BPM are complementary to each other and, when deployed together, provide a powerful platform to enable digital transformation organization-wide.

Key Differences between RPA and BPM

As RPA becomes more of a mainstream solution, how does it fit within the context of existing BPM technologies? Let’s investigate the key differences between RPA and BPM.
Difference Between RPA & BPM

Let’s take a step back to outline the definitions of RPA and BPM as distinct methodologies.

Definition of RPA

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. These robots work directly across application user interfaces, automatically inputting data and triggering actions across multiple systems acting on the behalf of an employee. As a business user-friendly tool that does not involve any programming, robotic process automation technology enables non-technical professionals to self-serve and configure robots for themselves to solve their own automation challenges.

Definition of BPM

BPM is a strategic approach that concentrates on reshaping an organization’s existing business processes to achieve optimal efficiency and productivity. BPM software is the foundational backbone to facilitate completion of an organization’s projects, providing a variety of tools to help improve and streamline how business processes are performed. BPM software components can include business analytics, workflow engines, business rules, web forms, and collaboration tools. Often large-scale projects, BPM process improvement initiatives can impact an organization’s technology, employees, and customers, bringing about significant transformational returns.

BPM and RPA as a Combined Approach

Given their similar goals of increasing productivity and efficiency, BPM and RPA are not competing approaches and work together in harmony. RPA can be a valuable tool in boosting gains achieved with a traditional BPM system.

In many cases, an organization may not always have the resources and time to fully implement a completely integrated and automated process or have a process that does not require any human involvement. Implementing BPM and RPA together can bring about much greater process automation and value that one technology approach alone may not be as positioned to achieve.

Example of BPM & RPA in Action: Network Access Request

Members of the IT department are involved with a number of highly important responsibilities for the organization but may be hindered by a number of repetitive, manual tasks that do not require complex decision making.

Below is a simplified version of an automated network access request process where an employee submits a request to be granted access to or be removed from a certain software application. After being approved by a supervisor, IT can then review the request and complete the request as appropriate.

In this situation, the process has been automated with a BPM system, but still involves some manual work by IT. Completing the request could involve logging into multiple applications, opening up the appropriate pages to grant access rights, applying the appropriate settings, logging out of the applications, and marking the request as completed.

As an individual request, performing these tasks may not take a significant amount of time, but if it is happening multiple times a day, it can distract from other valuable actions that a skilled IT professional will need to complete.

While IT may want to closely monitor the requests to see who is gaining access to what, the actual actions involved with granting access may not be as important. Adding an RPA bot to perform the manual tasks that will likely need to be repeated multiple times as employees change roles, join the organization, etc., will further optimize the overall process flow and free up the IT staff to focus time on other priority work. It benefits the organization to have IT professionals focus their energy on tasks that actually require human decision-making and nuanced consideration.

Tackling Repetitive, Time-Consuming Work

For professionals, moving between applications to perform specific actions is a common activity. With this so-called “swivel chair” work, employees must constantly switch between multiple systems to complete a particular task in an automated process. Possibly the applications the employees are working with did not have an API available to integrate with or a complete integration was not justified to reduce the employees’ manual work. Manual tasks could include actions such as data entry, searching, copy and pasting, or pulling together reports from different places.

RPA technology helps fill in these types of gaps in a BPM process, allowing organizations to achieve an even higher level of efficiency that may not have been as possible before. Existing systems remain in place, where bots would perform the monotonous actions a person would typically need to perform. Once the bot has completed its task, BPM can take over, pushing follow-up actions and results to the employee to complete or review. Offloading time-consuming, repetitive tasks to bots as part of a BPM solution will help enable employees better focus their talents on more productive work only they can do.

Digital Transformation Driven by BPM and RPA

Although BPM and RPA technologies can be deployed separately in digital transformation initiatives, it is when they are strategically implemented together that their individual benefits are compounded. BPM and RPA complement each other, forming a powerful duo that can help organizations further deliver on their process automation goals. In the future, RPA will become even more of an incorporated part of traditional BPM systems and organizations’ overall digital transformation toolkit.

Laserfiche has long been a provider of powerful BPM tools including workflow, web forms, business reporting and analytics, and capture solutions to streamline and transform business processes.

Key Differences between RPA & BPM [Text Version]
 Robotic Process AutomationBusiness Process Management
TechnologySoftware Technology

 

Software “bots” are configured to complete routine, monotonous tasks that an employee would normally have to do

Holistic Technology

 

Encompasses a wide range of software technology components including business analytics, workflow engine, and more to optimize business processes for maximum value and efficiency

Automation FocusManual Tasks

 

Minimizing manual, repetitive, and rule-based tasks that do not require complex decision making

End-to-End Process Automation

 

Re-engineering process flows to eliminate bottlenecks, connect systems, and increase productivity enterprise-wide

Deployment EffortLow

 

Non-disruptively works across an organization’s existing processes and applications without requiring coding or extensive training

High

 

A longer-term effort which could require dedicated technical resources, depending on process complexity and depth of integrations

Business ImpactQuick & Immediate

 

Returns can be realized quickly and cost-effectively, but implementations may not always address underlying process inefficiencies

Significant & Transformational

 

Wide gains can be achieved in overall productivity, agility, cost reduction, efficiency, and compliance

Want to Learn More?

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

Download the Guide to Robotic Process Automation to take a closer look at the features, benefits and use cases of RPA.

Paperless Office Transformation — What Are the Benefits?

What is a Paperless Office?

A paperless office, also called a paper-free office, is a work environment which uses minimal physical paper and instead uses primarily digital documents. A paperless employee is a worker who has eliminated or greatly reduced the use of paper in the workplace. The process of converting paper files into electronic files is known as digitization.

The idea of an entirely paperless office has existed since personal computers became the basis of the modern workplace. Despite the prevalence of electronic documents and email, most organizations still rely on paper documents. There are many benefits to going paperless, from saving resources to boosting security. Yet from handouts at meetings and HR onboarding documents to receipts, many business processes still revolve around paper.

Benefits of Going Paperless

Saves Time

Time spent filing, organizing, and searching for paper documents is time that could be spent on more productive tasks. Digitized documents are stored in a central repository, which is basically a well-organized digital filing cabinet where all of your documents live.

Using a digital document management system, you’ll get to harness the same powerful search abilities that you’re used to using on Google. This means employees can find files at the click of a button, much more quickly than the laborious, manual process of searching for a specific file in a buried folder. Employees are able to use this extra time on revenue-generating projects.

Saves Space

Paper takes up a lot of space – as do filing cabinets and space to store those filing cabinets. Books and bookshelves are bulky, too. What’s worse, paper keeps piling up, oftentimes accumulating more quickly than it can be sorted and organized. This is particularly true of industries that have long mandatory retention periods for paperwork like the financial industry.

Digitizing files allows you to store all documents either on an on-premises server or in the cloud. Digital file folders in a repository require much less space than a physical records archive.

Saves Money

Going digital improves process efficiency, saving you money. Paperless offices can process a much larger volume of paperwork compared to traditional offices in the same amount of time.

Further, digitization reduces money spent on paper, printers, ink, postage, office space for files and employee time to manage paperwork. The savings on employee time become especially valuable in regards to regulatory audits and repetitive, high-volume tasks like expense reimbursements.

Eases Transfer of Information

Document management software offers a simple process for saving documents. The software easily compiles digital documents using scanners, mobile capture using a camera on a phone or tablet or importing any file type (.docx, .pdf, image files). Many commonly used applications, like Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat, integrate with document management systems and have native plugins which allow you to file your document into your content management system with just one click.

Promotes the Environment

Manufacturing paper products produce greenhouse gases, causing deforestation and global warming. Recycling can offset some of the environmental impact, but not by much. Most paper eventually ends up in a landfill. Further, ink and toners contain volatile compounds and non-renewable substances which are damaging to the environment. It is much more sustainable to simply reduce paper use altogether by switching to a paperless office.

Boosts Security

Physical documents are hard to track – reams of paper can get lost, misfiled or destroyed without anyone noticing. It can also be difficult to monitor the access, printing and copying of sensitive files. Document management software has advanced security capabilities that can tackle these challenges. System administrators can set-up granular access rights, which assign permissions at the document level (e.g. settings based on the type of document), user level (e.g. settings based on person’s job function), or system level (e.g. overarching security for all data in the system).

The security benefits of a paperless workplace go beyond access rights. Implementing document management software also allows organizations to leverage electronic signatures, redact confidential information, create audit trails and more.

Digitizing Paper-Based Processes

Technology has so seamlessly replaced paper processes that it’s difficult to remember how things used to be done. In nearly all cases, the evolution from paper-based items to their electronic counterparts is profoundly more efficient.
ThenNow
 

 

Paper Documents

  • Tediously shuffle paper between individuals and departments
  • Difficult to track changes when collaborating on a document
 

 

Digital Documents

  • Seamless electronic transfer between individuals and departments
  • Easy to track changes and records comments using “Track Changes” feature
 

 

Mail & Faxes

  • Constant maintenance required to organize and find documents, especially really old ones
  • Access based on location of documents
  • Easily misplaced or damaged
 

 

Email

  • Easily searchable based on content and metadata
  • Access from phone or browser
  • Archived forever. Even in the event of a deletion, can potentially be recovered
 

 

Encyclopedias & Dictionaries

  • Slow process to look up words and topics one by one
  • All data remains inside volumes of book
  • Access from wherever the book is at the time
 

 

Internet

  • Instantaneous access to information using search
  • Ability to save, copy and bookmark data to reference
  • Access from anywhere with Internet
Newspapers, Books & Magazines

 

  • News quickly becomes outdated
  • Message constrained by word space and page count
  • Slow redaction time and news cycle
  • Each new book takes up more space
 

 

Media Websites & eBooks

  • Immediate access to content
  • Message not constrained by space
  • Real-time updates and amendments and 24-hour news cycle
  • Compact e-reader holds multiple books and magazines

 

 

 

Printed Maps

  • No way to factor in traffic, road closures and other barriers
  • Gets worn out, cumbersome to use while driving
  • Becomes out-of-date

 

Waze, Google Maps & Navigation Devices

 

  • Reacts to traffic to maximize route efficiency and gives an accurate estimate of arrival time
  • Lives within a mobile device
  • Updated regularly to ensure accurate navigation
Business Cards & Rolodexes

 

  • Business cards pile up and get lost
  • Rolodex must be manually updated
 

 

Contacts Synced

  • Contacts live within email program and mobile phone app
  • Updates to contact information automatically synced across devices

The Path to Digital Transformation

Deciding to make the move from paper to paperless is part of a larger process called digital transformation.

Laserfiche has identified five key steps to completely digitize your workplace:
  1. Digitize: convert all documents from paper to digital
  2. Organize: categorize documents in a central electronic filing cabinet
  3. Automate: digitize business processes using forms and workflow
  4. Streamline: take a high-level view of business processes to identify bottlenecks and opportunities for more efficiency
  5. Transform: use advanced analytics to turn data into insights on how to make your company even more efficient

Document management software is a crucial tool to this road to digital transformation. Beyond the immediate benefits of going paperless, digitizing is the first step to transforming your workplace and ultimately driving business forward.

If you choose to deploy a Laserfiche solution as part of your paperless transformation, be sure to check out the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace, with pre-built workflows for processing contracts, permits and more!

For even more info about the benefits of going paperless, download the Ultimate Guide to Document Scanning:
Get the eBook: How to Improve Document Storage and Imaging Across Your Organization.

Migrating to a New Content Management System: What Documents Should You Keep?

How do you make a smart decision on what content stays and what goes when you transition to a new content management system?

Whether you are implementing a content management system for the first time or changing from one system to another, you will be making many decisions about which documents and files to move.

As part of the overall document management system implementation project, keep in mind the project’s goals and records retention requirements when deciding what to move and what not to move. Be sure that you and your project team understand the project’s desired outcome before deciding what content to move.

Defining Project Goals

Why is the new system for content management being implemented? What problems will this new system solve within your organization?

Possible goals may include things like:

  • Easier access to documents and simplified searching
  • Improved organization efficiency
  • Reduced cycle time for business processes
  • Enhanced protection of information, including compliance with laws and regulations

Decisions about how the new system is implemented should support these project goals.

New Systems Provide New Opportunities

Most organizations want to do things in smarter, more efficient ways. But, people and organizations are resistant to change, therefore unlikely to make the effort without some kind of catalyst. Implementing a new content management system is a golden opportunity to take a long, hard look at how things are being done, question the value of doing things the same way and investigate how business processes can be improved.

Most people within your organization probably have ideas about ways to improve your processes. The need to roll out a new system is a perfect time to ask for their input. Offer employees a structured arena, such as a facilitated team brainstorming session, in which to share ideas. Take the best ideas and develop them further.

Reviewing business processes, and deciding how a new system can support those changes, will make your project more meaningful, useful and – in the long run – successful. Your organization is devoting a lot of resources – time, work hours, budgets – to this project. After all, if you simply copy over your existing way of doing business into your new system, all of those resources will not be providing good value.

For example, in many organizations, there are no requirements for wet-ink signatures. Electronic signature technology is fully developed and can be easily incorporated into new system requirements. Use of electronic signatures enables the use of automated workflows, which can automate business processes, significantly reducing cycle time and making staff more efficient.

Build the New System to Support Go-Forward Processes

Why focus effort and resources on old ways of doing things? When you know how you want to operate, you should incorporate those goals into the system requirements, and build the new system to enable what you want to do from now on.

Evaluating what to do with existing files and documents should not begin until your desired way of operating has been defined and set up in the new system.

Identify Repositories and Sources of Documents

Before making decisions about what to move, make sure you have identified where the existing files and documents are located.

Typical locations may include:

  • Shared drives
  • Personal drives
  • Workstation desktops
  • Old imaging systems
  • Enterprise systems that will be retired (regardless of whether internal or external)

It is also important to understand where new content will come from in the future, and set up your system to appropriately deal with these. This may include evaluating which system should hold a document and how other systems that need access to it can link to that single document.

Why Not Move Everything into the New System?

You may be tempted to simply move everything over to the new system and defer evaluating the information until later.

Why isn’t that a good approach?

First, because if you don’t do it now, it probably won’t happen.

More importantly, all documents do not have equal value. Systems – and documents – consume an organization’s resources, including:

  • Storage space
  • Staff time
  • Search time
  • Backup services

Low-value information interferes with the efficiency of business activities because it can quickly accumulate into a mass of excess data. That irrelevant information must be combed to find pertinent information, which bogs down routine processes. Additionally, keeping documents that have already met their retention requirements can create additional risks. Your goal should be to make it easier to find the right information when it is needed.

Deciding What to Move

Who should make decisions about what is high-value information and what should move to the new system? It should be a team decision. Assigning this decision solely to the department that owns the documents risks an inadequate review. Despite the fact that the department probably has the best understanding of what is in those documents, they are not fully informed on other factors such as risk and impact to resources or the enterprise as a whole.

The review team typically consists of representatives from:

  • Information Technology
  • Records Management
  • Risk Management
  • Legal
  • Subject Matter Expert

Factors to consider during the review and evaluation should include:

  • Is the document needed for business decisions?
  • Do multiple departments need the information?
  • Can it be found elsewhere?
  • Is it a duplicate?
  • Is it a “record” (i.e., does it document a position or activity of the organization)?
  • Have retention requirements already been met?
  • Is the information necessary to support current and ongoing activities?
  • Is the file type appropriate (e.g., .docx, .xlsx) or is it a file type that should not be there (e.g., .exe, .gif)?
  • Is it relevant to or part of an investigation, audit or litigation?

Some decisions will be easy, such as eliminating file types that should not be retained. Other decisions will need deeper analysis. The expertise to do this analysis may only be there during the short time that this new system project is going on, so make good use of it while it’s available.

Get Rid of What Isn’t Being Moved

Holding on to documents, files and information whose useful life has passed can become a liability to the organization. Once you have determined that a document isn’t useful or needed in the new system, steps should be taken to properly dispose of it.

  • Retire (decommission) old systems, including whatever is left in their repositories
  • Delete duplicate files
  • Eliminate out-of-date reference materials
  • Purge temporary or trivial information
  • Eliminate personal files – photos, music, videos – that consume large amounts of storage space

Building a document management solution that meets the organization’s current and future needs is a difficult but worthwhile endeavor. Ensuring that the documents and files moved to that system are of value will help to streamline operations and meet the goals of the organization. Put in the time to do it right the first time!

To learn more about how a content management system can help you automate key processes, save time spent locating documents and be better prepared to meet compliance requirements, check out our enterprise content management software buyer’s guide.