Streamlining Contract Management to Put Clients First

As a stable, independent, family-managed business, Fiducia has supported mid-market firms to navigate change and seize business opportunities in China for over 37 years. Extensive local know-how and network, coupled with technical and international industry expertise has enabled Fiducia to provide a wide variety of advisory and outsourced services, including finance and accounting, trade and technology consultation, strategy advisory, executive search and tax advisory.

Fiducia’s dedication to high-quality, responsive client service recently led the firm to digitally transform key processes, integrating line of business technologies and introducing business process automation. Implementing Laserfiche as a core solution for contract management, Fiducia streamlined the quotation generation and contract approval processes, allowing for more transparency and efficient communication between key company stakeholders and clients. The initiative has also reclaimed time for employees, enabling them to focus more on supporting international clients seeking Fiducia’s business expertise in the region.

“Adopting Laserfiche has helped us streamline our approval process, improving accuracy and efficiency,” says Addison Kwok, Financial Manager at Fiducia. “The process has been centralized in one platform, representing a true digital transformation.”

Seamless Integration with Existing Applications
Service proposals at Fiducia previously required employees to manually input significant amounts of client and project information. Up to 30 different templates were used, and the template depended on the specific scope of the project. Internally-reviewed cost estimates were also completed manually and submitted to finance managers —  a process that required employees to perform their own calculations to determine whether submitted proposals were profitable. Keeping track of these documents also heavily relied on manual tasks performed by service managers, the managing director, finance managers and clients. The time-intensive process hindered productivity and growth, ultimately slowing project turnaround times and creating silos across the organization.

The firm identified a lack of a centralized repository and content management system as one key issue. Projects and documentation were spread across a number of different applications and file locations, resulting in misplaced documents and various copies of the same proposal stored in different staff members’ computer drives or inboxes.

In order to accelerate proposal generation and continue upholding the firm’s high standards of service, the Fiducia team knew they needed to standardize the way information was shared across the organization. A new system would also need the ability to integrate with existing applications that were key in managing client details and creating project proposals.

Fiducia implemented a Laserfiche enterprise content management system to centralize account information, integrating the platform with the firm’s Salesforce CRM to support seamless contract management. Laserfiche also enabled Fiducia to create an automated workflow to eliminate much of the manual tasks and data entry that was previously required to generate proposals and get them approved.

Service managers begin by loading client information from Salesforce via dropdown menus into a Laserfiche form, which automatically allocates Fiducia team members to respective projects. After submitting the necessary client details, Laserfiche generates an initial proposal and financial breakdown, which includes service scope and cost. The Laserfiche workflow then automatically routes the proposal to the managing director and an assigned financial manager for approval with a priority-based deadline within Fiducia’s Laserfiche repository.

Following internal and external approval, the contract signing process can be initiated: Using DocuSign, clients can either sign the proposal or reject it. If signed, the final project proposal is then delivered to both the service manager and managing director. If approved with signatures and initials by both parties, the project proposal and final approved copy are then appropriately labelled, indexed and archived in Laserfiche.

This approval process can be completed by the managing director and Fiducia members whether or not they are in the office, since the Laserfiche mobile app enables them to complete approvals remotely from any device.

Within a few months of implementation, Laserfiche has helped to streamline Fiducia’s initial quotation generation process, facilitating the creation of service contracts and financial forms.  Automating key steps in quotation creation and contract approval processes has also enabled more efficient collaboration between internal and external parties, representing a savings of around 150 hours per year.

Improving Staff and Client Experience
In addition to making key process improvements, Fiducia has used Laserfiche to modernize the way the firm manages documents with access controls that have improved information governance across the organization. Integration between Laserfiche and applications such as Docusign and Salesforce has resulted in an overall better experience for clients and employees, who can now better focus on navigating the business landscape.

Fiducia’s digital transformation has also contributed to business continuity and staff confidence in the wake of COVID-19. The ability to access documents and processes from home, and perform remote approvals has been especially beneficial during work-from-home arrangements resulting from the pandemic.

Following the streamlining of their quotation generation and approval processes, Fiducia has plans to deploy Laserfiche in supplier-focused processes as well — this project will pair Laserfiche and ABBYY, a third-party scanning solution, to capture and subsequently organize important company information and content. This project represents Fiducia’s continued commitment to process automation and digital transformation.

Shufro Rose Embraces Process Automation to Keep the Focus on Clients

SITUATION

• Shufro Rose needed a platform to automate key processes and integrate with the firm’s tech stack.
• The firm wanted to standardize the experience for advisors so that they could continue providing the highest standard of service to clients.

RESULTS

• Built a digital infrastructure strategy with Laserfiche that has enabled the firm to thrive through change
• Improved back-office efficiencies that make employees’ lives easier
• Kept client-facing staff focused on clients

Wealth management firms need consistent, standardized processes to scale their businesses successfully. When Shufro Rose began looking for ways to digitize its workflows, its customer relationship management tool was unable to produce the robust audit trails or perform the sophisticated workflow logic the firm needed to support its growth. It turned to Laserfiche to manage its books and records document repository and manage its workflows.

Today, the New York City-based independent wealth management firm manages approximately $2 billion in assets across 1,200 households and roughly 2,700 accounts. As it has grown, it has also steadily converted more and more of its business processes to digital workflows that integrate tools such as Tamarac and Docusign with Laserfiche.

“[Laserfiche is] our books and records document repository, storing all the client paperwork we’re required to have by regulation, but it also serves as an operational workload tool for things like account opening, moving money, so that our client-facing and operational teams can work as efficiently and effectively as possible.”

— Vibhaw Arya, chief operating officer at Shufro Rose

Building Flexible Workflows Driven By Front-End Needs

Laserfiche allows Shufro Rose to design automated workflows that make its front-end and back-end processes more efficient simultaneously. The firm approaches digitizing a process by starting with a front-end client request. That requires the team to think about the data points it needs to move forward each step of the way. The ability to integrate the process with Tamarac means the firm can pre-populate information it already has, minimizing data entry errors and enabling advisors and their staff to focus on client service, and obtaining only the information they still need.

Digitizing the firm’s money movement process was an early target. The ability to create electronic forms using Laserfiche, which are pre-populated with information saves administrative time and energy. The process also employs sophisticated logic to mitigate risk dynamically, based on the type of transaction taking place. For example, a request to write a first-party check from an investment account with all the information on file and documented can be approved without as much intervention as a client request to wire funds to a car dealership. In the latter case, the firm would need a letter of authorization on file, and may also need to get approvals from the portfolio manager and chief compliance officer.

Using workflows built with Laserfiche, Shufro Rose was able to automate the sending of approval requests as appropriate depending on the situation. The system prompts the appropriate people for secure, electronic approvals, reducing bottlenecks that could slow the process. Because the workflow automatically produces and files a paper trail in the Laserfiche repository, the firm’s record-keeping and compliance requirements are met without the need for additional intervention by staff.

“The repository is our books and records,” said Arya. “We have it all within one platform that keeps it all together and ensures we’ve got full audit trails.”

One of the firm’s significant Laserfiche initiatives has been to streamline the account opening process. This process originally relied heavily upon manual data entry and manually scanning numerous account documents. Shufro Rose created an electronic account opening form in Laserfiche that captures all client information necessary to open a new account in a consistent digital format. A Laserfiche workflow then automatically routes information to relevant operations and client service personnel for execution and review. Any required signatures required for account opening are executed through an integration with DocuSign.

Supporting Compliance and Risk Management

As Shufro Rose turned its attention to other business processes, it uncovered additional benefits to its operations. “The other thing Laserfiche Forms helps us do, given that it’s very checkbox-oriented and data-entry oriented, it also helps us create the operational procedures within Laserfiche itself—it’s become our digital operations management in a lot of ways,” said Arya.

Operational procedures are automatically documented because they live on the Laserfiche form used for the process. Because the process is digital, it’s also consistent. With workflow logic built into the process, steps don’t get forgotten or skipped. And the firm is able to keep track of things at all times using dashboards to monitor the status of requests. “It actually helps us onboard new employees as we’re trying to grow—it becomes a type of training tool, because the process helps you drive what’s needed,” Arya said.

Managing Increasing Complexity

With the help of its Laserfiche implementation partner, Accelerated Information Systems, Shufro Rose has been able to take advantage of the flexibility provided by Laserfiche’s API functions to automate more complex processes.

When teams initiate requests for gift letters, produced when clients donate stock, often to unlock tax benefits, Laserfiche uses an API connection to pull in the historical prices of the stock or stocks being gifted. The process then automatically generates the gift letter to send to the client, which the client can then pass to their tax accountant. At the end of the process, the paperwork and audit trail are filed in the Laserfiche repository without the need to scan paperwork manually.

More Benefits to Unlock

As Shufro Rose continues to grow, it has additional enhancements already in the pipeline. In 2023, it plans to automate the creation of investment policy statements for new and existing accounts, as well as the complex process of splitting existing accounts, for example, when transferring IRA account assets to beneficiaries.

“Shufro Rose’s approach to digital transformation is firmly rooted in its dedication to serving clients,” said Zaheer Master, president of Accelerated Information Systems, the solution provider that implemented Laserfiche at Shufro Rose. “The firm’s vision and use of Laserfiche has positioned it for success, even in times of dramatic change.”

Improving back-office efficiencies makes employees’ lives easier and keeps client-facing staff focused on activities that produce value for clients. With compliance functions automated and processes well documented, operations can run more smoothly without compromising on risk mitigation. “There are so many intangible values that have come out of this process,” Arya said. As organizations scale, process automation can ensure those benefits multiply.

A Quick Shift to Remote Learning

When the COVID-19 outbreak hit the U.S., the team at Linn-Benton Community College sprang into action. To protect the health and safety of students, faculty, staff and community, the college had to get classes online and prepare faculty, staff and students to work, teach and learn remotely. Linn-Benton Community College, which works closely with Laserfiche solution provider CDI, previously used Laserfiche to automate more than 200 processes across campus, but this unprecedented challenge would put the organization’s digital operations to the test.

Using Laserfiche as a key tool for communication and collaboration, the IT team has been working tirelessly to ensure everyone has access to the information, systems and processes necessary to keep business moving at the college, and enable classes for the spring semester to begin remotely April 6.

“Our No. 1 priority is health and safety,” said Michael Quiner, CIO at Linn-Benton Community College. “I know it has been extremely difficult and stressful for everyone, but we can help to protect students, staff and faculty, by having people work from home, and having students learn from home. To be able to use technology to enable that — I think that’s pretty amazing.”

Enabling a Quick Shift to Remote Work and Learning

Linn-Benton Community College serves more than 10,000 students, with almost 600 faculty members, and over 300 staff members. As concerns around the COVID-19 outbreak grew, the college braced for unprecedented change.

“I don’t think anyone’s seen or experienced anything like this before,” said Quiner. “But I believe that the team we have at Linn-Benton Community College is very innovative, and we are used to leveraging technology to enable agility and flexibility.”

On March 19, Oregon Governor Kate Brown issued an executive order to immediately implement measures for significantly reducing in-person operations at Oregon colleges and universities. The order also advised colleges and universities to continue learning and teaching operations, but to shift to remote or online delivery.

The immediate challenge was communication. With staff and faculty working both on- and off-campus, and the situation changing by the day, the college needed to make sure everyone knew where everyone else was, and how to get in touch if needed. The college’s institutional research department quickly created an automated process in Laserfiche that emails everyone employed by Linn-Benton Community College each morning, prompting them to fill out a form to indicate where they were working that day and the best way to get in contact with them. “That information is automatically posted in a web portal so people know how to contact each other,” Quiner said.

Next, to quickly transition everyone to operate remotely, staff needed to request remote access to systems they typically use on campus. “This seems simple, but it’s a big workflow that involves staff who have to install software on people’s machines and staff to provision accounts, and more,” said Quiner. The college again used Laserfiche Forms to enable staff to make these requests digitally, and route them to the relevant parties.

“The main benefit of using Laserfiche has been that we’re able to quickly create an automated process, and have that process save all the necessary documentation, contain all the right information, and be seen by the right people so that we can get these activities done right the first time,” Quiner added.

At the same time the college was managing the enormous shift, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA or Act) was passed, requiring certain employers to provide employees with paid sick leave or expanded family and medical leave for specified reasons related to COVID-19. From the passage of the act to the time when organizations were expected to comply was very short.

A cross-departmental team from human resources and IT quickly tackled the challenge and created a work process which has seven unique forms, six decision points, and 16 process tasks. This was made available to college employees inside of 48 hours.

“Laserfiche allows us to keep the college in compliance during a fast-moving situation while dealing with constantly shifting requirements, interruptions, and urgent priority requests,” Quiner added.

Additionally, Linn-Benton Community College modified an existing Laserfiche Form to track the equipment being loaned out to staff and faculty, and enable people to request other equipment they might need. “Before, we were just using this form for staff to request if they needed something new,” Quiner said. “We adapted the existing form so that we could track loaner equipment, and we can still see what additional or alternative support our staff needs.”

Accelerating Transformation

The rapidly changing COVID-19 situation continues to pose challenges for all organizations that are transitioning employees to work from home, and working to standardize and digitize business processes to enable business continuity.

“While this has been extremely difficult for everyone, Laserfiche is helping make an impossible task possible,” Quiner said of the experience.

And while student, staff and faculty health and safety remains the college’s top priority, Quiner explained that the organization’s digital transformation efforts will continue.

“Transformation is the idea that we can use technology tools to better leverage our staff’s time,” he said. “We’ve only started to transform. There are so many exciting things — for example, robotic process automation — that we’re dipping our toes into, that will take a lot of the repetitive work from our staff so we can concentrate on supporting each other and supporting our students.”

Future plans include automating time sheets, and employee onboarding and offboarding processes. Quiner is also interested in working with other community colleges in the region to share data and collaborate on processes, so that the larger community of educational organizations can build on each other’s success.

“We’re saving a huge amount of our staff’s time — and not just IT staff but college staff, too — by using business process automation, and moving documents to the right location using Laserfiche Forms,” said Quiner. “Tools like business process automation and RPA can help us get away from chasing down forms or responding to emails, and enable our staff and faculty can do what they were hired to do, which is to make better people, better families and better communities through education.”

Download The Ultimate Guide to Business Continuity Planning for tools and strategies to keep your business moving in times of uncertainty.

Coopesa’s Digital Transformation Takes Flight

The digital transformation of the aviation industry continues to create new ways for airline carriers, leasing companies and aircraft service organizations to compete.

While aviation has traditionally lagged behind other industries in digital innovation, Coopesa RL — a provider of service and skilled personnel to the aviation industry since 1963 — has prioritized investing in new technology to transform its business. Most recently, Coopesa used Laserfiche to digitize and automate its documentation processes, which has resulted in a reduction in employee hours spent on updating and tracking down paperwork, better oversight of documents and processes, and a boost in productivity. Additionally, the improvements have shortened the average time planes are grounded for service, enabling Coopesa to offer more value to clients.

“Every day, more and more airlines, competitors and suppliers are transitioning to a digital environment,” says Herbert Cabrera, IT director at Coopesa. “Additionally, many of our mechanics are millennials; they are very willing to work in a sophisticated digital ecosystem. We recognize the need to provide the tools that will empower them to be as effective and productive as possible.”

Safety and Compliance in the Cockpit

Based in Costa Rica, Coopesa offers major maintenance, inspections, modifications, upgrades, refurbishments and painting for the world’s aviation fleets and leasing companies. The company has three hangars, and plans to open a new facility that will accommodate additional offices, back shops and the service of even more narrow- and wide-body planes. As the company evolves its offerings, Coopesa has also embarked on a journey to digitally transform its business as well.

Coopesa’s IT team identified an opportunity to digitize the process of documentation, which is required for every task involved with aircraft repair and maintenance. Documentation enables the company to comply with numerous regulatory requirements from more than 13 aviation regulatory agencies in the region — plus requirements from clients’ countries. Traditionally very manual and paper-heavy, documentation for a single service could take up to three days.

Some of the challenges Coopesa faced as a result of manual, paper-heavy documentation processes included:
  • A lack of transparency and accountability, and an inability to assess the status of projects.
  • Significant amount of manual effort involved with finding, reviewing and approving documentation.
  • Limited ability to make informed business decisions about resource allocation and other strategic concerns.

The company sought a user-friendly, customizable solution that could help employees digitally and securely document service activities and purchases, as well as reduce the manual tasks involved with managing and updating documentation.

“In order to keep up with our growing clientele while continuing to honor our commitment to quality, safety and compliance with regulatory requirements, we turned to Laserfiche digital document management and business process automation,” Cabrera says. “Laserfiche helps us to meet one of our biggest challenges: complying with civil aviation control entities in each of our clients’ countries as well as our own.”

Laserfiche Takes Coopesa to New Heights

Using Laserfiche, Coopesa digitized critical documents related to services and automated many of the tasks related to reviewing, approving and updating documentation. The company also automated the process of material purchase documentation, which must be kept for two to five years for auditing, depending on material type and client requirements.

“Digitizing these processes allows us to avoid manual review of thousands of documents, and mitigated the risk of lost documents that previously had to be physically transferred between offices. We also have a full audit trail for all documents; everything is completely traceable. This digital experience puts us on par with the largest repair shops in the world.”

—Herbert Cabrera, IT director at Coopesa

The company has plans to integrate Laserfiche with other internal systems, to centralize information and enable employees to more easily locate certificates and other critical documents, no matter where they are stored. Another project on the horizon is the digitization of personnel files, which also require strict controls and security.

“For many years, the aviation maintenance industry was reluctant to adopt technological solutions, but now there is a new digital ecosystem,” says Cabrera. “Laserfiche has enabled us to not only participate but act as a leader in the digital transformation of the aviation industry.”

Offering First-Class Customer Experience

Coopesa’s Laserfiche initiatives have significantly reduced costs related to the printing, storage and transportation of paper documents. More importantly, the documentation process — which previously took up to three days — now only takes one to two hours. Clients automatically receive notifications immediately when they have corresponding tasks to complete.

“Streamlining this process is incredibly valuable,” says Cabrera. “We can shorten our turnaround time, while our clients can quickly schedule the return of their aircraft to operation. This has a positive effect on our revenue as well as the customer experience.”

The increase in transparency across the organization also allows for better planning. Staff are empowered with information regarding hangar space, technician and other resource availability to fulfill clients’ service and maintenance needs in the most efficient manner possible. Managers are also better able to measure performance and productivity by examining process data.

Another important benefit: Employees have reclaimed time from tedious, manual processes to be dedicated to more specialized tasks related to quality control and customer service.

“Our biggest satisfaction is seeing aircraft take off from our facilities, and operating safely and reliably,” adds Cabrera. “We will continue to invest in the technology solutions that enable us to be our clients’ partners in maintenance, and to meet their needs with high-value and competitive solutions for service.”

Learn more about why digital transformation is key to success in this white paper – download “Leading for Innovation and Growth: Five Strategies for Driving Digital Transformation.”

Tecnoglass Powers Collaboration to Deliver Industry Leading Products and Services

Tecnoglass is a leading glass and window manufacturer, and the first Colombian company to be listed on the NASDAQ. Since its beginnings in 1984, the company has gained recognition for delivering high-quality products, competitive prices and timely delivery. In more recent years, Tecnoglass experienced tremendous growth, doubling revenue since 2014 thanks to the company’s vertically integrated business and strong, innovative product offerings.

To remain on the forefront of the industry and continue to meet customer expectations, Tecnoglass introduced automation to its operations. This transfomation has affected not only the fabrication of products, but also core business processes across the enterprise.

At the heart of Tecnoglass’s digitization and business process automation initiatives is Laserfiche, which the company uses to store critical documents, manage records and enable collaboration between employees and with external suppliers. This Laserfiche-enabled digital transformation has benefited the entire organization, increasing accountability, improving compliance and accelerating business across all units. Today, Tecnoglass continues on its growth trajectory using Laserfiche to eliminate repetitive, time-intensive manual tasks, and enable employees to maintain focus on fulfilling customers’ quality and service expectations and remaining competitive in the marketplace.

Positioned for Growth

In December 2013, Tecnoglass debuted on NASDAQ. Shortly after, the organization sought a better way to manage documents, since the company’s legacy system was no longer robust enough to meet the demands of a rapidly growing business and could not be integrated with other core technologies.

“Records were disorganized, and stored in warehouses making them difficult to find,” said Plinio Florez, document management coordinator at Tecnoglass. “This led to high storage costs and labor costs associated with searching for documents. It was almost impossible to consult files for decision-making, which delayed critical processes.”

Tecnoglass also faced challenges collaborating with suppliers. The legacy supplier registration process was manually driven and paper-based, which led to lost documents, and difficulties with authorizing suppliers and making payments.

The Tecnoglass team found that Laserfiche could meet the company’s document management needs as well as enable the automation of key business processes such as supplier registration and accounts payable. The Laserfiche platform was also easily integrated with Tecnoglass’s ERP system, helping to centralize data and operations.

Tecnoglass also enlisted the help of Colombia-based Laserfiche Solution Provider, Gestech, for the implementation. “Having local support was another important part of our decision making process,” said Florez.

“Laserfiche was the perfect choice to take Tecnoglass into the next phase of growth and expansion,” said Jaime Barrios Perez, CEO of Gestech. “By using Laserfiche to centralize information, and digitize and automate processes, Tecnoglass created a more seamless experience for employees and suppliers that is closely aligned with the company’s modern, global vision.”

Getting Ahead by Going Digital-First

The most immediate change Tecnoglass made was to digitize documents and store the electronic files in a Laserfiche repository, making information easier to process and share with outside parties when needed.

“We had to change the mentality of employees, which was that documents are only safe if they’re ‘physically available,’” said Florez. “To the contrary, by digitizing paperwork, we have enhanced controls and mitigated risk of information loss.”

Digitization made an impact across the company, especially in the foreign trade department, which manages significant amounts of Tecnoglass’s transactions and activities. The company was able to save nearly $73,000,000 Colombian pesos in costs related to shipping and processing paperwork alone. Today, the company’s Laserfiche repository houses more than 10 million files, all easily searchable by authorized employees.

Moving toward a digital-first environment also made collaboration with outside parties easier. The paper-driven legacy supplier registration process was replaced with a Laserfiche electronic form and automated workflow. By digitizing and automating the process, the company eliminated lost paperwork and accelerated registration, improving the experience for both Tecnoglass employees and the company’s suppliers.

Using Laserfiche, Tecnoglass employees can now easily search and retrieve documents without having to step foot in a warehouse. This has resulted in faster decision making, as well as a faster response times to internal and external audits — such as those related to Sarbanes-Oxley Act, ISO standards and the company’s Authorized Economic Operator certification, for which Tecnoglass has committed to both physical and IT security and safety standards throughout its supply chain by meeting requirements set forth by the Colombian Tax and Customs National Authority (DIAN).

“Laserfiche has helped tremendously with the company’s compliance with legal and industry requirements. Having the search functions at our fingertips has eliminated headaches for many of our employees, and automating processes has eliminated repetitive, error-prone manual tasks like data entry, allowing employees to focus on more productive work.”

—Tecnoglass General Counsel Andrea Zambrano

Accelerating Across the Enterprise

The company’s success with Laserfiche continues to spread throughout the organization since initial implementation. Additional departments have automated key processes including accounts payable, supplier updates, correspondence management, user profile confirmation and document loan control.

“Departments that have benefited from the implementation of Laserfiche include: purchases, treasury, accounting, document management, foreign trade, warehouse and internal control, all of which mainly needed a solution that allowed them to optimize time, space and the fulfillment of obligations to third-parties,” said Zambrano. “We have created and opened up new channels of communication with third parties, such as our suppliers. We’re now able to notify suppliers when we have an issue with a document or bill — prevent billing errors and delays — and we give our suppliers more convenient methods for updating data online.”

Tecnoglass’s Laserfiche implementation has created a more integrated work environment, where processes are standardized and transparent, enabling the company’s management team to more easily optimize resources and personnel. Employees and departments are accountable, which has led to better collaboration and better communication, even with third parties.

“Adopting Laserfiche technology opened up new possibilities for our organization that were previously dismissed,” said Zambrano. “It turns out we just did not have the foundation and practices in place that would enable more innovation. Once we started implementing automated workflows, we eliminated silos and our operations became more connected. We continue to work on integrating workflows and centralizing data and processes. Laserfiche is an extremely powerful tool for our organization.”

Ready to scale up and drive digital transformation enterprise-wide? Download our white paper, “Leading for Innovation and Growth: Five Strategies for Driving Digital Transformation.”

Barranquilla Chamber of Commerce Supports Economic Growth Through Online Services

Barranquilla is a cosmopolitan city and one of the largest ports in the northern Caribbean Coast region of Colombia. Rapid urban growth and economic development has transformed the region into a tourism hub and an active business community.

The Barranquilla Chamber of Commerce provides its services to over 72,000 companies that operate in northern Colombia and is tasked with fielding thousands of registry-related requests annually. To help support the area’s dynamic development, the chamber used Laserfiche to digitally transform its operations by giving affiliates the ability to access key services online. The initiative met government requirements and initially eliminated approximately $50,000 in annual costs related to document scanning. Additionally, the chamber’s use of Laserfiche created new opportunities to offer affiliates more convenient, faster online services by automating other core processes.

Changing With the Times

While the Barranquilla Chamber of Commerce prides itself on promoting the competitiveness and economic prosperity of the region, in 2015, the chamber’s processes were not keeping pace with the area’s accelerated growth. That year, the Colombian government mandated that chamber services must be made accessible online in order to meet modern business expectations and enable the country to compete in today’s global economy.

“One of our biggest customer service challenges was to take our traditional services on-site and make them available over the internet,” said Jorge Andon, public registry lawyer for the chamber. “We needed a platform that could satisfy the registry related requests of our more than 70,000 affiliates in a fast and safe way.”

The chamber’s services include enabling citizens to make requests related to the legal creation of businesses, modifying and renewing company information, and dissolving companies.

Previously, to access these services, citizens were required to travel or mail in the necessary documents to the chamber’s office in Barranquilla. For example, to create a company, citizens need to file documents—such as statutes of incorporation and standardized forms—which are received and reviewed by a lawyer who ensures they meet legal requirements. If they do, the documents are registered and the company is created. If information was incomplete or did not meet legal requirements, the process was delayed—documents had to be returned to requesting party, revised as needed and re-submitted to the chamber.

“Document returns constituted around 20% of our operation, which added up to many working hours,” Andon said.

In addition to streamlining these requests, the chamber also needed to make certain documents available online as part of the government’s initiative to increase access to public information.

After assessing a number of solutions, the chamber selected Laserfiche, which would enable the organization to digitally transform how it provides services while offering a centralized place to manage documents and make them available to the public. “Laserfiche met our expectations in regards to information security and integration with other core applications,” Andon added. “We also found that Laserfiche is characterized by innovative solutions in the field of document management software. Having a certified Laserfiche Solution Provider located in Barranquilla was another strong determinant.”

“As a Colombian-based business with many customers, we understand the challenges the Barranquilla Chamber of Commerce faced,” said Jaime Barrios Perez, CEO of Gestech, the Laserfiche Solution Provider that supports the chamber’s implementation. “Laserfiche is a great platform for the chamber since it meets the organization’s current digital transformation needs, while also enabling them to create new solutions and maintain scalability for future growth.

Streamlining Services for Affiliates and Employees

The chamber brought its paper-based registration process online by building a Laserfiche public portal, where affiliates can submit electronic forms to register for business licenses, update operational information and submit other requests.

Rather than having to fill out pages of paperwork and produce physical copies of documents for chamber employees to scan, affiliates can now log into the chamber’s online portal and complete a Laserfiche Form to request the desired service. There, affiliates can also upload documents related to their business’s public registry—such as articles of incorporation and bylaws; appointments of directors and administrators; or bankruptcy or liquidation documentation.

To streamline the process for chamber employees, the chamber used Laserfiche to design an automated workflow which routes information to a public registry lawyer for review. If documents meet legal requirements, the lawyer will approve them and Laserfiche will send the affiliate a tax and service bill, which can be paid online or on-site.

“The ability to request services online has brought an array of benefits for users, such as reduction in travel expenses, and reduced service response times,” Andon says.

Once payment is made, documents are inscribed in the public registry (performed by an application that is integrated with Laserfiche) and available to the public online through a Laserfiche portal. As part of the workflow, Laserfiche sends a notification letter to the affiliate once documents are inscribed. If documents don’t meet legal requirements, however, Laserfiche will notify the affiliate, and the system allows the affiliate to then upload corrected documents using the same filing number within one month.

“By reducing document returns, we also reduce reprocessing requests. As a lawyer, if I have a filing and I return it, then the chamber has to receive it again, and review it again, and scan it again,” Andon says. “Being able to reduce the percentage of documents returned is saving us time, effort and money.”

The automated process has dramatically accelerated the chamber’s response time, enabling better customer service.

“Some chambers of commerce take up to 10 to 15 days to process some registration requests and we take less than 24 hours to process them. Other chambers are now starting to look at us to see what we’re doing to solve these problems and deliver such fast service.”

—Jorge Andon, Barranquilla Chamber of Commerce Public Registry Lawyer

Growing Opportunity for Colombian Business

As a result of the Laserfiche solution, organization-wide savings include a reduction in employee time spent receiving, scanning and returning documents. The chamber has also enabled users to correct large documents without returning them by using Laserfiche’s version control function—which allows the organization to modify documents while keeping a record of changes as well as the intact originals. Improved process management has reduced the risk of complaints and consequential fines imposed by the regulatory commission.

Since the chamber’s success with affiliate service requests, it has implemented Laserfiche in almost every department, including accounting/finance, human resources, legal, operations, sales, executive, information technology, marketing and records management.

“The chamber saves approximately $50,000 per year as a direct result of our online services,” Andon says. “We have also seen increasing ROI at the organization-wide level that is yet to be determined.”

The automated processes have also enabled the chamber to become more data-driven. Using reporting and analytics features in Laserfiche, the chamber creates real-time reports on process health that have led to faster decision making, and improved customer service even further. This has led to reputational improvement of the organization at the national level.

“We implemented Laserfiche in the chamber for two particular reasons: to offer registration services online and to publish our public documents online so people could access them,” Andon explains. “But the benefits we received were much more than just that. Problems we’ve had in the chamber for years—we could solve them in just a couple of weeks. Designing and implementing processes in Laserfiche is so easy. If you can imagine it, you can do it.”

To learn more about implementing technology for enterprise-wide change, click here to download a free eBook, “5 Strategies for Driving Digital Transformation.”

New Caney Independent School District’s District-Wide Digital Transformation of Student and Employee Records

New Caney Independent School District, located in the Houston metropolitan area, manages over 15,000 students across 18 schools and facilities. With a growth rate of 7% per year, the district’s enrollment and hiring began rapidly expanding—along with its student records archives, and process and compliance challenges.

When Superintendent Kenn Franklin joined the district, his vision for paperless processes began a five-year plan to completely digitize the district’s records and operations. After receiving a Laserfiche demonstration, New Caney ISD was convinced it could realize this vision through the solution’s robust search, electronic forms and workflow automation.

“Laserfiche is one system with endless capabilities,” said Tammy Yarbrough, records management officer at New Caney Independent School District. “The solution’s user-friendly implementation enabled our small records team to create a searchable, secure database quickly—without investing significant time and resources into learning and training on the system.”

Creating More Efficient Employee Contracts

The district’s initial goal for using Laserfiche centered around updating its HR contract processes. Using Laserfiche Forms, Yarbrough’s team digitized the creation, review and approval of employee contracts, as well as other HR documents like incident reporting, performance evaluations and salary placements. The initiative was a quick win that solidified Laserfiche’s position as a core software system for the district’s administrative operations.

“The deputy superintendent was amazed at the system’s capabilities,” Yarbrough says. “At a meeting about a district issue, he looked at my boss and said, ‘I don’t know what you need to do, but you need to make this ‘Fiche-y.’ We then created a process to help analyze and review the data.”

Digitizing Student Folders Simplifies Compliance

Before Laserfiche, the district lacked a uniform approach to file management. To remedy this, the district digitized over 17,000 cumulative student folders and created electronic folders organized by campus, grade level and student document categories and types.

For both new and archived records, Laserfiche can automatically apply document security by document type and employee role, giving New Caney the ability to assign and track nuanced levels of record access across the district. Additionally, records retention schedules help enable administrators to ensure that student files are destroyed at the right time and help enforce proper compliance throughout the records’ lifecycle.

Yarbrough’s team now uses Laserfiche Forms to build solutions for every student and staff need. Administrators, teachers and staff can also quickly upload documents including new report cards, health forms, attendance notes, athletics physicals and more into the digital student folder. The result is a more accurate, holistic student file that can be accessed on-demand through a web portal.

“With Laserfiche, we will never have lost files,” Yarbrough emphasizes.

Expediting Student Enrollment and Record Transfer

By digitizing student files and forms, the district drastically improved the student enrollment process for both parents and staff. Parents now complete enrollment forms online in the district’s student information system, Skyward, and Laserfiche Workflow automatically files them in the relevant folders in the repository. For returning students, a database lookup populates the students’ information from the previous school year—reducing the number of forms that students and parents have to complete and lessening the document management burden on administrators.

Total enrollment processing time has been reduced by 75%. Additionally, all enrollment forms are available district-wide within 24 hours of submission. Beyond these benefits, the district’s student data is more accurate since Laserfiche eliminated much of the manual data entry and folder creation.

Because all student records are digital, file transfers with other school districts are also expedited. Instead of copying and mailing or scanning an entire paper folder, New Caney ISD created a Laserfiche Form that automatically exports student folders and uploads the files to the Texas Records Exchange, a state-run system for school registrars to electronically request and receive records for students attending Texas public schools. Thousands of pages are transferred seamlessly in just a few minutes.

Benefits
  • The district digitized more than 370,000 HR records, and over 2 million student records and enrollment processes without IT expertise.
  • The district saved over $330,000 by choosing to implement Laserfiche instead of outsourcing records scanning and storage.
  • Student enrollment processing, which formerly took two hours per student, now takes less than 30 minutes, and all forms are available for teachers, counselors and registrars district-wide within 24 hours.
  • Transferring student files from the district’s registrar to state education agencies and other school districts now takes just two minutes instead of 45.
  • Laserfiche has helped the district’s compliance with FERPA and HIPAA regulations, and enabled the district to control and track records access using granular records security.
  • Records retention schedules enable administrators to ensure that files are destroyed on time.
  • Teachers and administrators can now access records from anywhere with an internet connection, rather than being required to physically retrieve documents from a records warehouse.

The success of the initial Laserfiche implementation has led to rapid adoption across all the district’s administrative units. The records team is currently working through a three-month backlog of Laserfiche project requests.

“When others see what Laserfiche can do, they want more,” Yarbrough says. “We can provide administrators with immediate solutions to district issues, like employee onboarding, class coding, and enrollment and implement solutions in a matter of days by using forms and document management. When they ask for something, we can drop everything and can fix it quickly with Laserfiche.”

An Effortless New Hire Process

The Osceola County Sheriff’s Office transformed its Human Resources division by shifting from paper-based methods to become a digital agency using Laserfiche software. The digitization initiative increased efficiency, time management and accuracy, revolutionizing the ways in which the Sheriff’s Office stored documents, communicated within its department, and implemented its onboarding process with new employees.

Seamless Recruiting Tools

The Osceola County Sheriff’s Office is a local law enforcement agency based in central Florida. The agency is the largest and chief law enforcement agency in the county, with 850 employees within the department.

Before Laserfiche, the agency grappled with a diminished amount of storage room and needed a more effective solution for managing documents. Interdepartmental communication problems led to delays in the application process and, at times, lost documents when paper forms were mailed.

The agency first turned to Laserfiche to create a pre-employment application that is accessible to the public through the county’s website. The initial results were staggering, with application intake tripling from about 50 applications per month to now as many as 150 per month.

“We’re facing a nationwide shortage of police officers,” said Haylee Glasscock, Human Resources Technician, Osceola County’s Sheriff’s Office. “Making our application easily accessible online has helped with our recruiting efforts and was a good move for our agency. The application is extensive—it used to be 25 paper pages. With Laserfiche, we now can host recruiting fairs since the online application allows people to apply right then and there. Other applicants may apply via a secure link. In 2012, we had 446 paper applications. In the first year we had Laserfiche, we had 1,305.”

There are multiple job application forms the agency utilizes depending on the applicant, including a criminal history version which is longer compared to one created for recent graduates planning to move into the role of a deputy.

“With paper applications, people would leave fields blank; we had to call them to come in and fill out the information,” said Glasscock. “Now we no longer have incompletes and it saves us time. We can also have people upload files, photos of tattoos, and more—all within the application.”

After an applicant applies online, Laserfiche’s business process automation capabilities allow the agency to perform a paperless background check and file sign-off through its chain of command. Laserfiche simultaneously sends automatic email notifications to keep the applicant updated on the review process—a game-changer compared to years past, when updates on the Review Board date were sent through the mail.

Effortless New Hire Process

Once the application process is complete and an applicant receives an offer, the Sheriff’s Office uses Laserfiche to onboard new employees with digital forms. Laserfiche enables chain-of-command administration staff to sign off on specific files using conditions in a workflow. Relevant personnel say whether the file looks acceptable, and if so, it moves on to the next person. The process is smooth, accurate and far less time-consuming than the previous method of filling out a handwritten form as the official offer document with the salary and start date included.

The Sheriff’s Office’s Human Resources division is now a paperless environment thanks to implementing Laserfiche software. All employee personnel and medical files are stored in the repository and are easily accessible to HR staff. Additionally, Laserfiche has been integrated within the agency’s personnel management system. The software automatically pulls an employee’s information from the personnel management system, including his/her ID number, and completely fills out the template information—improving speed and accuracy.

“We like that information is accessible at our fingertips,” said Glasscock. “The training department now has one full-time staff assistant and a part-time student. They’re able to quickly find documents, email them to deputies if needed, and they’re easily viewed. Having those training files not in boxes anymore really helps them.”

The Sheriff’s Office also digitized the employee transfer form. Laserfiche automatically routes the form to the appropriate reviewer within the agency. The form has been further simplified by the use of variables, look-up tables (integrated with the organization’s computer-aided dispatch software and active directory), as well as field rules.

“Our recruiting department uses Laserfiche every day and a couple of agencies have reached out to me to see if we can share our process with them,” added Glasscock.

Since turning to Laserfiche, the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office has become more productive, effective and efficient. The agency digitized and secured more than 2,500 employee personnel files using Laserfiche software. Moreover, all new hire files are created digitally. The agency can process and prepare files for approval much faster, and automated email notifications mean that staff no longer need to call other departments as frequently to follow up on forms.

The agency realized an initial savings of $2,000 by eliminating supplies for new employee files, as well thousands more in departmental time-savings. Beyond cost savings, the Sheriff’s Office opened the door to a more digital, automated agency. By implementing innovative solutions like its Laserfiche digital records management program, the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office fosters a culture of efficiency and agility to better position the agency for success in a competitive hiring market.

City University, Hong Kong

City University of Hong Kong created a shared services platform for human resources and finance using Laserfiche.

Kensington Mortgages Automates Core Business Processes to Elevate Customer Experience

Kensington Mortgage Company implemented Laserfiche organization-wide and integrated it with multiple line-of-business applications.

My name is Farid Amin. I am a Solutions Architect at Kensington Mortgages. In my role I design, develop and implement to automate business processes across the operational areas using enterprise-level robotic and business process automation software tools.

Now in our 25th year, Kensington Mortgages is UK’s leading non-bank specialist mortgage provider and We manage over 11 billion pounds in assets. We have over 500 employees throughout the country, predominantly at our head office in Maidenhead.

In 2012, we needed to replace our aging document management system. It was becoming slow and unreliable. The core weakness of the system was that the historical documents were stored in a huge jukebox of some 250 optical discs run by a robotic arm and a subset of DVD drives.

As we grew, we had more documents to manage. We also had changing regulations, which meant we Needed access to those documents very, very quickly while we had customers on the phone. Therefore, we had to replace our system that would cater for our business needs.

Laserfiche fulfilled these requirements and we had foresight that its rich functionality of its various components could be utilized in other use cases and could be expanded across the business in later years. Today, we have over 56 million documents spanning over 7 terabytes of network storage.

We have 300 users that utilize Laserfiche day-in-day-out to serve and manage our accounts. The users’ feedback has been very positive. Laserfiche just runs in the background, unassumingly, and therefore as far as they’re concerned, it’s a system available all the time for them to carry out their work.

In 2016, we expanded the use of Laserfiche to business process automation and it has been a resounding success. Today we have business processes automated not just in servicing, but in finance and sales.

In 2019, we implemented our document online project. This has allowed our customers to view their documents online. We developed, in-house, a microservice using the Laserfiche SDK, which allows those customers to view their documents directly from the repository.

So here’s a system that has a use, but has got a whole lot of other tools that could benefit any organization. So Laserfiche has been in production for over 7 years and has provided service to us with stability and integrity.