The Isle of Man Moves to Digital-First Government Services

In recent years, the Isle of Man has undertaken modernisation efforts to the benefit of citizens, bringing more services online and increasing efficiency using Laserfiche for digital records management, electronic forms and workflow automation. The Laserfiche initiatives have created a foundation upon which to build a digital-first government, enhancing the experience for anyone seeking services, whether they are private citizens or businesses.

The Isle of Man Central Registry’s digital transformation efforts unexpectedly became a key factor in its ability to keep business moving during the COVID-19 pandemic.  “Having Laserfiche installed, and integrated with government’s online service, was a godsend for the Land and Deeds Registries and all of our customers as it enabled us to continue to provide a full service throughout the lockdown period,” said Registrar General Ed Clague. “In conjunction with government online services, we operated successfully throughout the lockdowns.”

Building a Foundation with Digital Records Management

The Isle of Man sits at the heart of the British Isles with a population of 86,000. As a self-governing British Crown Dependency, the Isle of Man’s parliament is the world’s oldest, dating back more than 1,000 years. The Island’s Central Registry is responsible for maintaining and administering services related to a family of registries including the Civil Registry, Companies Registry, Deeds Registry, Land Registry, and Public Record Office.

Prior to implementing Laserfiche, the land and deeds registries had a mixed way of managing records, which comprised manual search and retrieval, and a bespoke legacy system that was not internet-enabled and approaching end-of-life.

“The biggest motivation for us to move to Laserfiche was its off-the-shelf capabilities, which reduces the risk of having to retire another legacy system in the future, and provides us with a demonstrable upgrade path,” Clague said. “Most importantly, Laserfiche gives us a platform for further digital services. It’s a perfect system for our requirements.”

By transitioning from the registry’s legacy records system to Laserfiche digital records management, the organisation safeguards and centralizes historic records and ultimately provides better customer service via improved efficiency and easier access to information by the people who need it. The ability to provide documents to people who have requested them online and on-demand also reinforces the Isle of Man’s commitment to open government; the organisation aims to make more of its records available online within the coming years.

The digitalisation initiative also supports the Isle of Man’s compliance practices, which have become increasingly important with the introduction of GDPR in 2018. The Isle of Man aims to maintain its reputation for meeting high international standards in its compliance practices, making sure that data is as accurate, reliable and up to date as possible.

“We want to be early adopters of international guidelines; we want to make sure that IT systems can keep up as well,” Clague said. “Our goal is to enable the organisation to evolve with international standards, and we want our practices to be demonstrable, while keeping compliance overhead low.”

While the registry’s initial phase of Laserfiche implementation included digitalisation and data migration, the organisation began seeing even more benefit when Laserfiche was integrated with the Isle of Man’s GIS platform based on Esri’s ArcGIS, as well as the government’s payment gateway in order to streamline land and deeds processes and to create a public search portal for land and deeds. The registry has worked with Laserfiche Solution Provider Manx Business Solutions for implementation, selecting the company for its expertise and experience after evaluating a number of partners.

“People make the project. We have worked with MBS and they have been a fantastic team to work with: a solution-orientated team which listens carefully to our needs and suggesting options,” Clague explained. “MBS is knowledgeable, personable, professional, and flexible at all times. To varying degrees, almost my entire team has worked with MBS at some point of the project — and I’m pleased to say this view is universally shared. I take this opportunity to thank the MBS team, for the work it has done and work it continues to provide — keep up the good work.”

The Isle of Man’s public portal now allows people to access a Laserfiche online 24/7 to purchase deeds. Through the Laserfiche integration with ESRI, the Land Registry also enables customers to search an online map for properties, and view all available documents related to those properties.

“The Isle of Man’s new Land Registry solution based on our ArcGIS technology required a document management element,” said Nart Tamash, solution architect at ESRI UK. “This is where the team at MBS and Laserfiche came into play which enabled us to deliver an end-to-end solution to the Isle of Man’s Central Registry by integrating our off-the-shelf web-based products. The most exciting thing is that this pattern is repeatable, and customisable thanks to our APIs, across many organisations and use cases that require a world class mapping and document management system.”

Quinn Legal, a leading law firm on the Isle of Man, has saved significant time utilising the Laserfiche driven Land and Deeds Registry process. Historically, the firm’s staff would have had to visit the registry on a daily basis whereas now, most of their business can be undertaken online.

“This came into its own when COVID struck, with the Island of Man going into lockdown,” said Neil Quilliam, senior conveyancer at Quinn Legal. “Quinn Legal staff were able to seamlessly continue with their daily interaction with the Land and Deeds Registry online.”

Continuous Innovation to Enhance the Employee and Citizen Experience

When lockdowns took effect, the Central Registry had to close its office to visitors in person, however, it was able to provide a digital alternative for all its services.

“Our implementation of Laserfiche was very timely,” Clague said. “This is the new normal now — we still have customers who visit the office — they may not be able to access digital forms at home for various reasons — but for the most part people now prefer to access our services online. The number of people visiting the office has dropped by 90% if not more. It’s been a massive benefit.”

Along with the rest of the world during COVID-19 surges and mandates, the Central Registry has experienced a growing demand for access to information in real-time online and digital services. By providing those digital services, the Isle of Man has been able to reduce physical foot traffic and simultaneously increase efficiency in its processes, reclaiming time that staff has used to improve the experience for both government employees and the people they serve.

“Governments can get caught in a vicious cycle when trying to do more with less, but we’ve created a virtuous circle. We’ve freed up time by digitalising, and the more that we digitalise, the more we can serve our customers. It’s allowed us to maintain and improve our services at no additional cost, even during lockdowns.”

—Ed Clague, Registrar General, Isle of Man Central Registry

“We are not resting on our laurels,” Clague added. “We want the ability to innovate and move forward. We will be using Laserfiche as a fundamental component in transforming our business. We will be moving more of our services online. We will be protecting our critical business records. And we will be improving our working environment and improving our efficiency.”

Learn more about how to prepare your organization for any unexpected circumstances with a solid business continuity plan. Download The Ultimate Guide to Business Continuity Planning now.

Glasgow Credit Union Digitally Transforms the Member Experience and Supports Business Resilience

Glasgow Credit Union is one of the largest credit unions in Europe, serving the greater Glasgow area with a service scope focusing on savings and loans. Experiencing steady growth, the organization used Laserfiche to power a number of digital transformation initiatives aimed at reducing reliance on manual processes and ensuring that the organization could scale while maintaining the high-quality customer experience for which the credit union is known.

The organization initially implemented Laserfiche in 2016 as a document management platform, integrating it with Glasgow’s CRM system to improve access to information for customers and employees. Since then, Laserfiche has helped achieve business process automation to digitize and streamline loan processing. With a completely automated lending platform, clients are offered more competitive lending services, enabling customers to complete loan approvals in under an hour.

“Laserfiche is quite central to all we do,” said Paul McFarlane, chief technology officer at Glasgow Credit Union.

Additionally, Glasgow Credit Union’s digital initiatives have supported business continuity during the COVID-19 pandemic, enabling the organization to rapidly pivot to more digitally focused services. This aligns with expansion and scalability needs: Since implementing Laserfiche, membership has expanded to around 55,000 customers, representing nearly GBP 200 million (US$277 million*) in assets.

A Customer-Focused, Streamlined Lending Process

Founded in 1989, Glasgow Credit Union has grown substantially over the past four decades but its aim has remained the same: helping members and ensuring they have access to friendly, professional financial services that meet their needs. As member expectations have evolved, the credit union has prioritized digital transformation to provide the best possible member experience.

“It’s not just us, but in our sector, we didn’t have a lot of scalability in a lot of our processes,” McFarlane said. “So our application journey, specifically to onboard a member and apply for a loan, was quite a cumbersome process because it was paper-heavy and there was a lot of manual tasks. … There was no automation. Initially there were no web services as well.”

Using Laserfiche, the organization created an automated lending platform which digitized and centralized loan applications, increasing accessibility of information for staff; and ultimately accelerated loan processing for clients. With the understanding that an easy and fast new member onboarding is fundamental to a member’s experience, the credit union also digitized and streamlined the member onboarding process by integrating Laserfiche with its existing financial management application, Curtains, along with DocuSign. New members can now join the credit union and apply for funds within 15 minutes — a process that used to take up to three days.

With an eye toward enhancing the full client experience, Glasgow Credit Union also launched an initiative to streamline the borrowing process. This required as fast a turnaround as possible for customer loans to be issued once their loan applications were accepted. Previously handling around 24,000 loan agreements each year, the company manually processed and archived 120,000 sheets of paper. Customers were manually notified by staff at each stage of the loan journey, resulting in 10,000 resource hours each year.

“The feedback from members was phenomenal — the speed, the efficiency, the fact that we didn’t have to wait for the post to deliver the paper, and how easy it was to do business with us after we had improved those processes,” said McFarlane.

The Glasgow Credit Union team re-engineered and automated the loan agreement process so that loans could be completed in under an hour rather than several days. Approximately 80% of applications were completed digitally prior to the pandemic. COVID-19 increased reliance on digital processes, however, and today, nearly all loan applications are now submitted and processed in a digital manner, benefiting both clients and staff in terms of efficiency and turnaround.

“Our work with Laserfiche wasn’t about preparing for something like COVID — I don’t think anybody was preparing for something like COVID,” McFarlane explained. “Our decision to digitalize was all about efficiency; it was about speed and providing a better, slicker service to our members. But if we hadn’t done that, it would have been a different conversation that we’re having today.”

Improving the Customer Journey

Digitization has also benefited Glasgow Credit Union members by providing the ability to initiate joining and borrowing processes even after office business hours. An automated self-serve channel allows the processes to be kicked off without staff supervision. After initiating an application process, Laserfiche integrations with third party applications — DocuSign, Curtains, and a bespoke front-end platform — seamlessly drive the loan application process through a workflow from the initial application stage to final pay out.

Documents are delivered back to customers for signing, bringing them to the next application stage. The automated process saves more than 150 employee hours each week. Employees have reclaimed this time to focus on other parts of the business, expanding operational capacity.

“We’ve got Laserfiche integrated with our core technologies, so users can view documents through our front-end that are pulled from the Laserfiche platform, without having to open up separate applications,” said McFarlane. “Employees find it quite easy that they’re not having to work across multiple platforms.”

Underlying Glasgow Credit Union’s integration and process automation initiatives, the organization has robust records management practices — a critical element to success in the financial services industry. Laserfiche has supported the organization’s information governance, enabling the credit union to manage the full life cycle of documents and supporting compliance with European data protection regulations.

During the first year after deploying Laserfiche, Glasgow Credit Union experienced an income growth exceeding GBP 1 million (US$1.31 million*), as well as a GBP 40 million (US$52.44 million*) increase in loan volumes from 2017 to 2018. Followed by this business growth, the credit union’s team now feels they have an infinite operational capacity for loan processing. After four years, Glasgow Credit Union has achieved ROI equating to their original investment in the Laserfiche platform. Factoring in resource savings and improved customer journey times, the credit union has a scalable model that has resulted in significant growth in business.

As a central, business-critical software solution, Laserfiche has helped Glasgow Credit Union with existing scalability and project prioritization goals, as well as helped to respond to customer needs during the COVID-19 pandemic. Beyond member onboarding and loan applications, the organization is looking to implement Laserfiche in a similar capacity in mortgage applications and other business units.

“I’m amazed at the simplicity of integrating Laserfiche with our existing processes and other pieces of business-critical technology,” said McFarlane. “Our vision is to be the lender of choice within our marketplace in Glasgow – Laserfiche has helped us achieve that.”

*USD conversion subject to current exchange rate.

Find out more about how Laserfiche helps to transform credit unions here.

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Hitachi Capital FSI Improves Risk Management and Automates Key Processes

Winner of the Laserfiche Run Smarter® Award for its outstanding demonstration of enterprise-wide change management.

“In the modern business landscape, keeping pace with workplace trends and rapidly evolving technology gives organizations a competitive edge,” said Chris Wacker, CEO of Laserfiche. “With its Laserfiche initiative, Hitachi Capital Vehicle Solutions gives its employees the tools and knowledge they need to play larger role in their company’s success.”

As a division of Hitachi Capital (UK) PLC, Hitachi Capital Vehicle Solutions has been funding cars and commercial vehicles in the UK for more than 30 years. The organization used Laserfiche to automate many internal functions, including lease/proposal processing and records management. The cross-departmental initiative improved risk management while eliminating many manual tasks for staff, reducing the time to complete key processes, such as purchasing, from over a week to just minutes.

“Clear goals, strategic vision and the right technology enabled our organization to increase efficiency by an estimated 2,600 percent,” said Eamon O’Brien, Information Systems Configuration Manager at Hitachi Capital (UK) PLC. “We’re honored to be recognized for the initiative that’s had a huge impact on our business’s success and positions us to meet our growth targets.”

The Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District Digitizes to Enhance Records Management and Remote Collaboration Capabilities

The Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District (MSD) provides comprehensive wastewater and stormwater management services to over 1.3 million people in St. Louis and surrounding areas. In recent years, the organization transformed its document management processes and file sharing, transitioning to Laserfiche Cloud. Using solutions such as Laserfiche Direct Share, MSD modernized the internal and external user experience while increasing efficiency and supporting information governance. As a result of investing in a robust digital infrastructure, MSD also adapted quickly to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, equipping employees with tools to work remotely.

“The ease of adoption has been accelerated because Laserfiche is so easy to use,” said John Daly, information governance manager at MSD. “You don’t have to be a records management information governance expert to succeed with it.”

Testing the Waters for a Digital Future

Since 1954, MSD’s mission has been to protect the public’s health, safety and water environment by responsibly providing wastewater and stormwater management. While its mission hasn’t changed, MSD has identified opportunities for improving operations, empowering its employees and delivering consistent, high-quality customer service.

As local governments, agencies and special districts grow in size and services, the ability to share information and collaborate while also maintaining information governance becomes increasingly important. MSD implemented Laserfiche Cloud to enhance information sharing both internally and externally, while facilitating regulatory compliance, safeguarding electronic records and simplifying records management with Laserfiche’s records management capabilities. Along with automatic updates and easy scalability, Laserfiche Cloud has streamlined document search and retrieval, allowing staff to perform more efficiently and improve the quality of information delivered to stakeholders.

“The biggest impact of MSD’s Laserfiche Cloud initiative has been on employee productivity,” said Daly. “The ability for staff in different departments to access documents organization-wide has saved countless hours previously spent on manually requesting and sharing files.”

As part of this digital transformation initiative, staff are able to preserve critical information dating back decades — in addition to streamlining document management, this increases accessibility of important content while enabling oversight across the organization.

The operational benefits adopting a Laserfiche Cloud system were especially clear during the COVID-19 pandemic, helping staff transition to working remotely and contributing to business resiliency during the major disruption. MSD was able to continue meeting customer needs and keep staff safe at the same time. “With a high level of agility, flexibility and scalability, we couldn’t be happier with Laserfiche Cloud and its role in our organization as a core business application,” added Daly.

Interoperability is also key to MSD’s Laserfiche Cloud system, which includes custom-built integrations with Outlook and DocuSign that facilitate approval processes and improve the user experience. Designed and implemented in partnership with Accelerated Information Systems, MSD’s Laserfiche solution provider, MSD staff can drag-and-drop email directly from Outlook into the Laserfiche repository. All relevant record retention schedules are automatically applied to these uploaded emails, and attachments appear in the file’s metadata just as they would within Outlook.

“It has been extraordinary working with John Daly and the MSD team on their digital transformation,” said Zaheer Master, president at Accelerated Information Systems. “Going from a small, self-hosted Laserfiche implementation to the limitless capabilities of Laserfiche Cloud enabled MSD to better serve their constituents, even while working remotely during COVID-19. As a premier Laserfiche Cloud provider, Accelerated is excited to work with John and MSD to continue to expand their Laserfiche solution.”

“Laserfiche has really opened our eyes to new possibilities we had not even considered before,” said Daly. “We have really noticed an improvement in our overall operations since developing these integrations to automating document management processes.”

A Transparent Pipeline of Content

In addition to addressing the needs of staff members, MSD reimagined the way staff could share documents with people outside of the organization. Rather than rely on traditional methods of information sharing that lacked trackability such as email, USB drives or discs, MSD deployed Laserfiche Direct Share, which allows users to share content from their Laserfiche repository with external customers or community members in an audited and tracked manner.

“Direct Share has been one of the most useful solutions for us at MSD,” said Daly. “For the first time in the history of our organization, we are able to send documents securely and safely, which is a huge game changer.”

MSD has found Direct Share particularly useful for the legal department, which frequently sends and receives large files, and benefits from the visibility and security measures Direct Share provides. MSD attorneys can password-protect links, set the amount of time that recipients can access the document, and manage and track sharing and downloading activities

“I don’t have attorneys calling me anymore, saying, ‘How can I get these case files to someone?’” Daly said. “My phone doesn’t ring as much because now they are using Direct Share to their benefit.”

A Clear Path for Digital Transformation

Using Laserfiche Cloud, MSD continues to modernize processes enterprise-wide to reimagine how employees, vendors and citizens interact with the organization. As part of its commitment to transparency, the district created a Laserfiche-powered public portal on its new website, which gives citizens frictionless access to public documents such as those related to environmental compliance, annual reports, budgets, diversity and more.

Additionally, MSD is working to deploy a number of Laserfiche electronic forms to digitally manage activities such as travel reimbursement, company vehicle requests, badge requests, and business card requests, with more in the works. By digitizing information, forms and processes, MSD is uncovering greater efficiencies while improving the experience for employees and citizens alike.

“For me it’s all about the customer — whether internal or external,” Daly said. “Every day we have the opportunity to make someone’s day better and meeting people’s needs. Every day I’m working, I’m asking what paper-based processes we currently have that could become digital. When customers and employees find information in seconds, rather than minutes, that’s providing us with real organizational value.”

Request a demo to learn more about Smart Invoice Capture and other Laserfiche Cloud features designed to accelerate how business gets done. 

Royal London FSI (Insurance)

In its efforts to move to a digital-first environment, find out how Royal London automated, optimized and transformed their organization

Cabarrus County, North Carolina, Innovates with Chatbots and Laserfiche to Deliver on ERAP Funding

To assist Americans across the country who face economic uncertainty, rental debt and housing insecurity as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. federal government launched the Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP) to provide financial assistance for housing expenses and housing stability services. Along with local governments across the country, Cabarrus County, North Carolina, took on the responsibility of developing an accessible way to determine people’s eligibility and get the funds out as soon as possible.

“The IT team decided that this was going to be the most important thing we were doing,” said Todd Shanley, CIO at Cabarrus County.

The county’s IT team took quick action to put the pieces together, creating an online Laserfiche form that would capture applicants’ information and route it to the relevant departments and systems. The form was integrated with a chatbot to walk people through important eligibility requirements, providing an intuitive experience for what could have been a complex process for applicants.

The solution enabled the county to collect and process hundreds of applications, quickly getting financial relief to people who needed it. The chatbot integration also helped to immediately redirect people who were not eligible, ultimately saving time for county employees who would have had to spend time reviewing hundreds of ineligible applications.

An Intuitive Solution for Capturing Information

Serving more than 200,000 residents over 360 square miles, Cabarrus County has been recognized for its visionary leadership and good stewardship. For nearly a decade, the county has been named a Top Digital County by the Center for Digital Government.

“One of our county priorities is healthy and safe communities; another is sustainable development,” said Debbie Brannan, area manager of technology and innovation at Cabarrus County. As part of these commitments, county employees took immediate action after hearing about ERAP would assist household unable to pay rent or utilities due to COVID-19-related challenges.

“Being in the county manager’s office, I heard about the money coming — $6.5 million,” said Brannan. “We needed to find the citizens who needed that money and get it distributed quickly.”

Beyond this urgent task, Brannan noted that the county would need to document as much as possible in order to ensure distribution was fair, and that the county would meet the federal government’s rules and requirements. “My vision was that there would be an online application, and we’d be able to vet the application as much as possible,” she added. “We also wanted to get relevant information over to our social workers. We have Northwoods [case management software] integrated with Laserfiche, so we also wanted to get that information over, and then get it to finance and into our ERP so we could pay people.”

Leveraging Laserfiche Forms and business process automation, the county pulled together an electronic form to be hosted online, and a workflow to route information to the correct departments.

“Mark [McIntyre, our senior software developer] pulled together a form over the weekend, and by Monday morning, he had it done and built,” Shanley explained. “We tweaked it from there; it was fast.”

In addition to building the Laserfiche form that residents could access online, the county integrated the form with a chatbot, with the goal of guiding applicants through specific eligibility requirements and providing immediate answers so that people did not have to wait just to find out whether they were eligible for ERAP assistance.

“The set of criteria from the government was very lengthy, and some of it was very restrictive,” Shanley explained, adding that people applying for funding or services may not want to read through pages and pages of fine print in order to identify the eligibility requirements. “We provided that criteria upfront through the chatbot, so that people would get immediate feedback — they could respond to these questions and realize they were or were not qualified without having to wait long after they submitted all of their information.”

Going Beyond Expectations

While the chatbot provided a more intuitive way for people to apply for funding, it also redirected would-be applicants who were not eligible for ERAP assistance. This process reclaimed desperately needed time for county government employees, who could focus on providing other critical services during the pandemic. The county has processed more than 500 emergency rental applications in just two months.

“We don’t want people to have to wait two weeks to find out that they’re not eligible,” Shanley said. “We wanted to provide that TurboTax-style environment, which provides customers the information they need in a timely manner.”

The Cabarrus County team also took care to ensure that the form was mobile accessible, to make it usable by as many people as possible. “Accessibility is an issue for some people, but a very large percentage of our population has a smartphone,” Brannan explained. “Even if they don’t have a computer, they can use a smartphone, and they can even upload documents if they need to from their phones or take photos with their phone and upload them.”

“That was probably one of the biggest benefits to this process,” Shanley added. “All of this paperwork that the federal government is requiring — people have that stuff stored in so many different places. Rather than having to have a scanner or having to take everything to a place where they have a scanner, you can just take a picture of it and upload it from your phone.”
Smiling mature middle aged business woman using laptop working on computer sitting at desk. Happy old businesswoman hr holding cv interviewing distance applicant, senior seeker searching job online.

The Future of Citizen Services

Cabarrus County has been using solutions that integrate chatbots and Laserfiche in order to help people use other digital services, including a personal status request (PSR) form for county employees, and a quarterly inspections process for the sheriff’s department. These solutions have enhanced users’ experience by auto-populating data from previous form submissions, cutting down time that people have to spend filling out forms.

“Cabarrus County continues to be a shining example of how enterprise adoption of a technology has exponential benefits to the organization,” said Traci Small, EVP of sales and marketing at MCCi, Cabarrus County’s Laserfiche solution provider. “The county’s deep knowledge of Laserfiche and desire to serve is second-to-none. We have even used this same chatbot technology at MCCi after we saw how well it worked at Cabarrus. We learn just as much from our customers as they do from us. Cabarrus County citizens have a top-notch team as do we in a client partner.”

“The importance of experience — it’s going to change how governments interact with their customers every day,” Shanley said. “People don’t want to submit information and then have to wait. That makes call volumes go up, and there are unintended consequences for governments. If you’re presenting people with overly complicated forms, it could cause someone who really needs help to just give up on the process.”

To date, the county has paid out over $330,000 in ERAP funding to eligible people.

“Without an established workflow application like Laserfiche in place, we would have been in trouble,” Shanley added. “We would have spent months trying to make this work.”

The county continues to digitally transform processes across the organization, with a focus on supporting more accessible, more transparent and more intuitive public services.

“My vision for Laserfiche Forms and our chatbots to present more of a conversation with our employees and citizens,” said Brannan. “We get feedback that people want to come and talk — they don’t want to fill out a form. But if we make our forms conversational, we make them more accessible and easier to understand.”

“We are trying to continue our growth and the growth of opportunities, while providing transparent and accountable government,” Brannan said. “Laserfiche does a good job of helping us do that.”

Read the Center for Digital Government report: “The Way Forward: Insights for Government Leaders on Modernizing Service Delivery” for more on how governments are meeting rapidly changing citizen needs using technology.

Leesburg, Virginia Supports Community and Local Businesses with Laserfiche Cloud

The information technology department for Leesburg, the largest town in Virginia, has a mission to “exceed the Town of Leesburg’s residents’ and employees’ expectations in delivering accessible and reilable technology services — creating a greater good for the local community.” This mission has the department constantly looking ahead to the technology solutions that will allow for the highest standards of customer service, security and system reliability, even in times of change.

The need for greater adaptability led the town to move its enterprise content management (ECM) to Laserfiche Cloud. The cloud-based system has been an invaluable asset to Leesburg government staff as it allowed for flexibility during stay-at-home mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic, but also because it has enabled IT to quickly respond to all types of needs — from internal service requests to public-facing financial relief programs.

The town has been able to expand its digital capabilities beyond the limitations of self-hosted servers with Laserfiche Cloud. This flexible and scalable environment has enabled Leesburg to achieve business continuity while supporting both staff and the community, even as remote and hybrid work becomes more prevalent.

“Laserfiche has helped us to handle data collection digitally and be elastic while responding to major changes within our IT infrastructure as staff work from home,” said Jakub Jedrzejczak, Director of IT at Leesburg. “I’m so impressed by Laserfiche Cloud and its automated features and scalability.”

Automating processes in Laserfiche Cloud has helped Leesburg be more agile, while positioning the town for long-term success. Using Laserfiche’s electronic forms and business process automation capabilities, Leesburg reduced manual tasks under tight schedules and continues to improve the quality of service provided to the community. This has streamlined response times to citizens, businesses and other organizations while enhancing the overall digital experience and maintaining fairness and transparency

Solutions to Support Local Businesses, Nonprofits and Town Staff

“Access to documents was key for us,” Jedrzejczak said. “We had to streamline a lot of internal processes and external services that we offer to support to our community.”

Like many other localities, during the pandemic, Leesburg needed a solution to process $6 million in funding under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act to support eligible businesses and nonprofit organizations.

“Distribution of relief packages is very time sensitive,” Jedrzejczak said. “Businesses and nonprofits can’t afford to wait months for government IT to develop an effective solution, or for us to implement a new system. The faster we can process data, the faster we can provide support to our community.”

Though the town already maintained detailed information on local businesses and nonprofit organizations, the primary challenge for the Leesburg IT department was authenticating existing data and determining eligibility. Laserfiche Cloud was implemented to streamline the authentication and cross-referencing processes based on existing data on thousands of local businesses and nonprofit organizations in the finance department database. Using this data, a dedicated form was set up with required fields relating to license information, employer identification number (EIN) and other conditions. If a business or nonprofit did not meet specific conditions — such as the revenue threshold or funding information — a pop-up notification would appear to indicate that the applicant is ineligible for CARES Act funding. Applications were sorted into separate folders within the Laserfiche repository based on whether they were accepted or not, which were concurrently monitored by town staff to ensure accuracy.

The metadata from the forms submissions helped the Leesburg team determine that over 330 businesses and over 20 nonprofits were eligible for funding. Not having to sort through data manually streamlined this process, reclaiming time for staff members to focus on citizen services at a time when the town needed them most.

The form helped with the quality of CARES Act submissions as well. Applications completed using the Laserfiche online form could not be submitted with incomplete or incorrect information, meaning that staff members did not have to spend time manually verifying missing details, business licenses and misspelled organization names.

“The more that we can guide residents with requests, the faster we can respond to their needs — often in minutes rather than days if the right information in the right format is submitted,” said Jedrzejczak.

The Digital Transformation Domino Effect

Amid changing budgets and uncertain economic conditions, governments must digitize and standardize public services. At the same time, it is also increasingly important for governments to respond to disruptions quickly, using flexible and scalable solutions that enable them to keep information secure. For these reasons, Leesburg is relying on the cloud for core technology systems including ERP, asset management and ECM.

“I can eliminate the need for maintenance, and have a scalable system that has a predictable cost, and I always inherit functionality — that is why we choose Laserfiche Cloud,” Jedrzejczak said. “I don’t have to worry about uptime. I don’t have to worry about the security. I know these two components are being addressed by the Laserfiche Cloud platform. I can focus on the development of the systems and focusing on user needs versus the back end maintenance.”

While town staff work with Laserfiche Solution Provider MCCi for complex projects, Leesburg is preemptively developing solutions in-house, including the electronic forms and digital processes related to the CARES Act. Laserfiche has empowered IT department staff to create a digital town hall where innovative solutions modernize citizen services. This has enabled staff to train new users on the platform based on specific needs and connect with the Laserfiche community to share best practices on ways to streamline business processes to increase efficiencies.

Today, most of the municipality’s departments are using Laserfiche. “We support internal processes, such as in our finance department, as well as external processes,” Jedrzejczak said. “Our town council uses Laserfiche to review documents; our utilities department uses it to gather information from residents, and we process a lot of forms and approvals through Laserfiche.”

Jedrzejczak added that most local governments today experience information overload — too many emails, and too much data to process.

“Information overload is a problem, but Laserfiche helps us with it. We can’t rely on in-person or paper-based communication to gather and process information anymore,” said Jedrzejczak. “There is so much that needs to be digitized — we just can’t have paper driving processes outside the office.”

The town has been in the process of creating a digital town hall to increase access to services even further. Leesburg is also working on integrations between Laserfiche and other core systems that will enable further automation and enhanced collaboration across the organization.

Looking ahead, Leesburg is building on its success by reimagining can continuing to modernize how it delivers services.

Want to gain more insights into modernizing service delivery? Read the Center for Digital Government report: “The Way Forward: Insights for Government Leaders on Modernizing Service Delivery” to understand why technology plays a critical role in generating cost savings, continuing operations and meeting growing constituent demands.

What Is Document Management?

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Laserfiche-Driven Digital Transformation Enables Township of King to Innovate Public Services

The Township of King, located in the Greater Toronto Area in Ontario, Canada, implemented Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM) to store and centralize content, making information more accessible across the organization. Since then, the township’s staff has leveraged the software for digital transformation initiatives that go beyond document management. The township now uses Laserfiche to modernize the government experience, where citizens can access public information and submit online service requests (i.e., permits and licenses) using Laserfiche electronic forms. The township’s staff has also integrated Laserfiche with other core technologies and automated key business processes in order to accelerate service delivery.

Centralizing Content Across Departments

Over the past several years, King has assessed its digital infrastructure with the goals of ensuring employees have access to necessary information, breaking down department siloes and improving efficiency. In 2018, the township built a new municipal center, prompting a large-scale initiative to digitize and centralize content that was previously stored in filing cabinets and banker boxes, and across individual and department network drives.

“We initially looked for a solution for electronic document and records management; we have been moving away from paper, and we wanted to have one central, streamlined filing system for all electronic documents,” said Manager of Legislative Services and Deputy Clerk Denny Timm. “We saw the opportunity and improvements that would be realized if we could increase department collaboration and information sharing.”

With the support of Ricoh Canada, one of the township’s workplace technology solution providers, King implemented Laserfiche as its central digital repository. Laserfiche allowed the township to reclaim time previously spent physically searching for information — which now is accessible at staff’s fingertips. Using Laserfiche, departments have transitioned off network drives, and content has been centralized while simultaneously strengthening the municipality’s information governance program.

“Implementing Laserfiche really allowed us to look at our filing methodology and filing structure from a corporate perspective,” Timm added. “It’s like building a house — you need to build a solid foundation, organize and plan what goes in the rooms, and assign the proper access to those rooms. With Laserfiche, we have one corporate folder structure as our foundation, filled with subfolders and documents, and appropriately assigned access privileges and controls. We now have greater integrity and confidence in our information management system. We know staff are accessing what they need to access, while elevating the protection of personal and confidential information.”

As King saw the benefits of digitizing and centralizing content, they began to learn more about taking their digital transformation to the next level by integrating Laserfiche with other core technologies and using Laserfiche’s electronic forms and business process automation capabilities.

“We saw that Laserfiche was more than just a place to put files,” said Timm. “That’s when we started to view tutorials, speak with our team at Ricoh, and understand that there’s way more capability within the system than we initially thought.”

Next-Level Digital Transformation: Electronic Forms and Process Automation

King’s document management project was a catalyst for the team to reimagine how they could now use the township’s digital information in its mission to deliver citizen services, maximize efficiency and ensure employees are well equipped to respond to customer’s needs. Laserfiche’s electronic forms and business process automation capabilities enabled King to increase access to information and public services. This mindset shift came just in time — before the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the region.

“We were fortunate to have had departments adopt Laserfiche before COVID-19 arrived,” Timm said. “Staff have access to all the information they need in a central resource that they can securely access remotely. Departments also see the immediate savings in administrative work, no longer needing to file paper copies, and now being able to easily search and retrieve information.”

Now, the township is using Laserfiche to actively replace paper forms with electronic forms to make more public services available online — a key benefit during the pandemic. King recently launched a new website where constituents can access applications, permits and other essential items with an integrated payment system, including:
  • Building permit payments
  • Bulky item pickup and garbage bag tags
  • Pet and service animal licenses
  • Fire permits
  • Freedom of information requests
  • Marriage service payments
  • Road occupancy permits
  • Property information requests
  • Tax certificate requests
  • E-Billing registration for property and water bills
  • Temporary sign permits

In addition to increasing access to these forms, staff leveraged Laserfiche business process automation to automate information routing and approvals. Now, when a resident submits an electronic form through the township’s website, the information is automatically sent to the relevant departments and approving parties for review and approvals. By removing the dependence on manual routing, automated processes streamline the flow of information and expedite service delivery, whether employees are in-office or working remotely. Laserfiche’s process reporting and analytics also increase transparency and create opportunities for continuous process improvement.

“We are excited to see our public forms integrate with our repository, too,” said Timm. “Now, forms and information will be automatically filed in the right spot, and our approval process moves to the digital realm — we’re able to track and start looking at the analytics.”

The central repository and automated processes have also supported business continuity during COVID-19 and as the King team navigates the staff changes that all municipalities must manage.

“We have staff retiring, and that previously meant information and institutional knowledge would be lost,” said Supervisor of IT Business Systems Angelo Castillo. “Having everything in Laserfiche provides that single repository that everyone is familiar with. If we use Laserfiche for forms and processes, our staff will be comfortable using them.”

Building a Digital Future

Today, the township continues to build on its success by automating processes across all departments, with a clear vision toward creating a more modern experience for employees and the people they serve. The IT team has plans to further centralize content and processes by using Laserfiche where possible to replace niche software that individual departments may have acquired or are looking to acquire for specific processes. “Laserfiche doesn’t make digital transformation seem overly complicated because the tools are all there — we are equipped to easily automate processes without having to acquire and learn multiple small, specific pieces of software,” Callisto explained. “For example, we just successfully launched and leveraged Laserfiche forms and its business process capabilities to automate our entire Performance Development and Recognition Program (PDRP). By expanding our in-house knowledge of the system, we are beginning to build more complex and corporate wide implementations. These new electronic and automated processes streamline core critical corporate processes, making them easy and accessible to staff.”

The IT division is now aiming to create a self-service model. “The goal is to have each department build their own digital forms and publish them online,” Castillo said. “The subject-matter experts in the individual departments are going to know the processes the best, and with Laserfiche’s ease of use, we know staff are eager to build and implement!”

Into the future, the township plans to further leverage Laserfiche’s process dashboard to analyze information such as the number of permits, applications and licenses received, what time of year is the busiest, etc. “We’re really excited to dive into the data and analytics, and look at them in terms of usage and output,” Timm said. “It’s going to give us a whole new area that we haven’t explored before.”

For more insights into modernizing service delivery and to understand why technology plays a critical role in generating cost savings, continuing operations and meeting growing constituent demands, read the Center for Digital Government’s report: “The Way Forward: Insights for Government Leaders on Modernizing Service Delivery.”

What’s the Difference Between Document and Records Management Systems?

Most document management systems can be considered records management systems, but not all. Thus, a robust DMS can set up your organization for success. Read on to see why knowing the difference between the core concepts of document and records management can help you make the right choice when choosing software for your organization.

Below are definitions of each term, followed by the three key characteristics that distinguish these practices from one another.

What is document management system?


A document management system involves the capture, storage, modification and sharing of physical files within an organization.

Generally speaking, practicing document management offers opportunities to:
  • Reduce lost and misfiled documents.
  • Provide faster search and retrieval of documents.
  • Help better organize existing documents.
  • Improve business processes and organizational efficiency.
  • Reduce the amount of physical space used to store documents, such as file cabinets, boxes and shelving.

Want to know more? Download the document management software buyer’s guide.

What is a records management system?

Records management systems establish policies and standards for maintaining diverse types of records. Some, but not all, documents within an organization become records.

Records management can be thought of as a subset of document management that can also bolster efforts to:
  • Distinguish non-record content from records.
  • Apply required retention periods to records.
  • Identify the owners of records.
  • Determine that a chain of custody and a proper audit trail both exist for each record.
  • Assist in e-discovery issues and applying legal holds to records when needed.
  • Manage the proper and timely disposition of records.
  • Develop and administer records policy and procedures for electronic or paper records.
  • Preserve records throughout their life cycle.

Want to dig deeper? Learn even more about records management here.

What makes document and records management systems different?

Although you may use the same system for document management and records management, these types of content are managed differently. These differences in management practices include: the goal, or purpose of each practice, the information or content involved in each practice, methodology, or the way each practice is performed.

1. Goal

The goal of document management is efficiency. Approving documents faster, reducing manual data entry and automating recurring tasks are some of the many functions of document management that work toward this goal.

The goal of records management is compliance. A well-maintained records management system helps organizations avoid penalties when audited by regulators, auditors and other governing bodies.

Document management and records management share a common goal of business continuity. Shortcomings in either can contribute to organization-wide challenges. However, when both document and records management work toward their goals (efficiency and compliance), organization resiliency is better within your reach.

2. Information

The information of document management is comprised of transient content. Invoices are signed and then sent off to the next approver, older drafts are discarded for revised ones, forms pass from submitter to reviewer and so on.

The information of records management is comprised of historical content. The status of a document is determined by different phases of the records lifecycle, as shown below:
Diagram outlining the records management lifecycle.
Different phases of the records lifecycle

3. Methodology

The methodology of document management is content-driven. As mentioned above, content is the catalyst for all document-related activity. Therefore, document repositories are usually organized with the needs of general users in mind: finding documents by keyword or title, keeping all documents together by employee or project, etc.

In contrast, the methodology of records management is context-driven. Records managers care more about document types (insurance records, employment applications, etc.) than the words written on the actual documents. As a result, retention schedules are the catalyst for records-related activity, as different types of records must be kept for different lengths of time, and under different conditions.

For an overview of how document management can help your organization streamline operations, watch our webinar, ECM 101: An Introduction to Document Management Features.

Discover how to prepare for an audit, protect sensitive records across the enterprise and more in our ebook, The Ultimate Guide to Electronic Records Management.
Download the eBook: The Ultimate Guide to Records Management.