Mille Lacs Corporate Ventures (MLCV), created by the tribal government of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, manages the business affairs of the Band. This includes oversight of two casinos, Grand Casino Mille Lacs and Grand Casino Hinckley, which employ nearly 3,000 people and welcome millions of guests each year. The casinos, as well as the rest of the Band’s portfolio, use Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM) to automate and streamline key business processes.

Over the years, the casinos in particular have achieved great economic success thanks to a strong operations infrastructure powered by Laserfiche. That steady growth, however, has led to a very large and complex business environment that is catered to sustaining the needs of the casinos. The MLCV leadership team knew that they needed to create a separate business environment for corporate operations to maintain performance, so they made the decision to migrate MLCV content and processes to Laserfiche Cloud in order to create a more accessible and agile environment for corporate operations.

For the last 10 years, Laserfiche has been instrumental in supporting the Band’s mission of building a sound economic future for generations to come by enabling the Band to standardize, automate and optimize core company processes. Having initially deployed Laserfiche on-premises, the MLCV team was confident that they could leverage Laserfiche Cloud to build an accessible corporate business environment quickly, with the added bonus of familiar technology.

“The digital workplace is constantly evolving, and the obvious next step for us was to start transitioning operations to the cloud,” said Angie Litchy, CIO of Mille Lacs Corporate Ventures. “We selected Laserfiche Cloud because we already had a successful on-prem solution, which means we could easily migrate key workflows and ensure business continuity while we made the transition.”

“Mille Lacs Corporate Ventures has always been at the forefront of using technology to create efficiencies,” said Ned Weizenegger, COO at Laserfiche Solution Provider Minokaw Technologies. “Moving operations to the cloud was a natural next step, and aligns well with MLCV’s vision of improving businesses and communities by infusing passion and ideas.”

Among the first workflows that Mille Lacs Corporate Ventures migrated to the cloud was the contract management process.

“Before our initial Laserfiche solution was implemented, contracts were impossible to get a status on because the process varied from person to person, which created bottlenecks and lost information,” said Andrew McElrath, strategic project manager at Mille Lacs Corporate Ventures. “Laserfiche introduced uniformity and a clear line of authority, which ultimately expedited the entire process from weeks to just hours. It was a priority to ensure that this process wasn’t interrupted as we transitioned operations to the cloud.”

The contract process was migrated to the cloud with few alterations. Today, associates can start the contract process by submitting a Laserfiche Form with the contract for review. The information is automatically routed to the submitter’s supervisor, contract coordinator, COO, CFO and legal counsel for review and approval. The document is then sent to the legal coordinator who prepares the document for final signature by the vendor, and then the countersignature of the MLCV CEO. The legal coordinator also stores a final version in the Laserfiche repository.

“In Laserfiche Cloud, it’s easier for us to determine where requests are in the process at a glance,” McElrath said. “And the transition itself was fairly easy. Our Laserfiche Solution Provider mocked up the forms and process for us, then we would review it and suggest changes. The most important part of the process is to communicate clearly and test thoroughly so that your solution fits your needs once it has been launched.”

Another major benefit of transitioning to the cloud was that it created an opportunity for MLCV leadership to reevaluate the organization’s established processes and make adjustments if needed.

“We have been using and building upon our Laserfiche Workflows for a number of years, and the way our business operates has evolved since that initial implementation,” said McElrath. “We wanted to introduce more efficiency into our processes, so we took a hard look at what we were doing and how we could do it better.”

For example, during the transition, the MLCV team realized that the purchasing process was cumbersome and it could be streamlined further. Migrating to the cloud provided the chance to take another look at the process and simplify it.

Today, associates can access Laserfiche Cloud in order to submit a purchase request. After logging into the online system, the employee navigates to the purchase request page, fills out required fields (such as the purchase amount, purchase order number and vendor IDs), attaches required materials, and submits the request. From there, the request is routed to an approver depending on the cost of the purchase. The appropriate reviewers will then approve or reject the purchase order through the system. If approved, the information is submitted to a purchasing agent who can then follow through with the request.

“The entire process is completed in the cloud,” said McElrath. “Every individual that is included in the workflow can complete their portion of the process from the comfort of their home, from a conference or on an airplane. All they need is a mobile device and access to the internet.”

Mille Lacs Corporate Ventures has migrated many business processes to Laserfiche Cloud including contract management, purchase order requests, annual appraisals, direct deposits, system access requests, tuition reimbursement requests and more. This has been especially helpful since all the company officers now have remote access to one common business platform, enabling the organization to standardize, streamline and expedite major business processes.

Other benefits to transitioning to Laserfiche Cloud include:

“Once you’re invested in Laserfiche as a platform, you start to unlock a lot of the value,” said Litchy. “Now that we have the system, we are invested in leveraging it to its full potential to reach our business goals.”

Find out more about the benefits of managing content and automating business processes in the cloud. Click here to visit our Laserfiche Cloud page and get a free trial.