Scaling a Global Nonprofit as It Strives to End World Hunger

The rapid pace of technology innovation is transforming how organizations manage contracts and collaborate with customers, vendors and partners to drive business results. Heifer International, a global nonprofit organization, is finding ways to use technology tools alongside farm animals and crops to help fight hunger and poverty. Heifer specializes in providing sustainable agriculture and commerce to impoverished communities around the world—and its operations depend on being able to quickly review, approve and access legal contracts. “Helping just one family could take dozens of vendors, several government organizations, hundreds of legal contracts and extensive collaboration,” says Bob Bloom, Heifer International Chief Financial Officer. “This is where technology intervenes to save lives. The vision is to streamline Heifer’s processes and use Laserfiche to manage contracts and track documents for projects that impact millions of families throughout the world.”

Today, more than 1 billion people live in poverty, as defined by the World Bank’s international benchmark of living under $1.90 per day. For over 70 years, Heifer has worked to lift people above that threshold, building thriving, self-sustaining communities with an innovative model that has grown to encompass 30 countries worldwide. It has helped more than 25 million families while attracting high-profile partners including major, multi-national corporations. Projects include an East Africa Dairy Development initiative that affects Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. In Nepal, Heifer empowers women farmers. And, closer to home, Heifer helped launch the Grass Roots Farmers’ Cooperative and Foodshed Farms, which support small-scale, sustainable Arkansas farmers by connecting them to profitable markets.
Formed with support of Heifer International’s Seeds of Change Initiative, the purpose of the Arkansas Sustainable Livestock Cooperative is to operate a processing and marketing cooperative that supports profitable, environmentally conscious, and socially responsible Arkansas livestock farmers. The ASLC promotes local food systems that produce nutritious foods while reinvigorating rural economies.

While its achievements have been no small feat, Heifer is committed not only to alleviating world hunger—but to eradicating it completely. “Our goal is to take 4 million families out of poverty by 2020,” says Bob Bloom, Chief Financial Officer. In order to achieve this, Heifer’s leadership team decided to scale up the organization’s work and diversify revenue streams. Before they could do that, however, the organization had to increase efficiency through technology such as enterprise content management (ECM) software. “We needed to manage our content better. It’s a key component to our global platform strategy.”

A Tech Transformation

In 2010, Heifer began to reassess its core systems including document management. “We have a much different scope today, one that requires a lot more capability in terms of how we manage and report on these projects,” says Bloom, who oversees all financial, treasury, information technology and human resource activities for the organization. “We developed a strategy to increase our scale, diversify our revenue and build a supporting technology platform to enable us to track, report and provide transparency.” Scaling up requires a new level of reporting and accountability as donors target large-scale projects in specific communities. Some projects require multiple corporate sponsors. Dedicated to remaining steadfast in its transparency and compliance, Heifer must be vigilant in monitoring projects that often involve hundreds of contracts, memorandums of understanding, teaming agreements and other project-related documents. Combined with additional marketing materials, field stories and videos, Heifer faced a content overload. The organization’s new strategy included selecting Laserfiche ECM software in 2014 to address issues that Bloom and his team identified, including:
  • Thousands of contracts pending review, with no automated system to track varying versions or the status of reviews and approvals
  • Content spread across offices and project locations, which perpetuated silos and hindered growth

Heifer needed to leverage content and knowledge across projects. Staff in remote locations who worked with families in the developing world needed the ability to collaborate with headquarters staff in Little Rock, AR. “Ideas weren’t being shared across the organization,” Bloom explains. Although Heifer relies on strong relationships between team members and communities, and networks of local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), it is now embracing the idea of moving toward a digital workplace—where offline relationships are strengthened with online cooperation. “We need innovation,” Bloom says. “We need technologies that can help us achieve our mission better, faster.”
Heifer’s legal department folder structure

Laserfiche ECM software enables staff to streamline contract management processes using electronic forms and robust workflow automation solutions. Heifer also automated the Network Account Request process to grant, revoke and change access to its core applications using Laserfiche Forms and Workflow. This has helped to facilitate compliance and protect sensitive information. Bloom has outlined key areas in which Laserfiche ECM software could further improve efficiencies at Heifer:
  • Partner agreements: Continuing to automate processing partner agreements by using Laserfiche Workflow with third party suppliers, vendors and local government agencies
  • Records management: Improving document management and records management processes, breaking down silos, and increasing accountability and transparency
  • Personnel change requests: Managing personnel change requests (i.e., job role changes, etc.) quickly to help it scale up internal staff resources

“Our vision for Laserfiche is to allow all of our field workers, regardless of which country they are in, to be able to interact with documents, find records and submit forms—all from their mobile devices,” explains Cedric Lambert, IT Director at Heifer. The integration has helped the organization on its path to reaching more families and communities, and elevating existing projects, helping communities to help themselves. “We are fairly new on the journey, but we are very excited about what we can do here,” Bloom shares. “Automating our internal business processes using Laserfiche electronic forms and workflow is part of our technology transformation that enables our mission in fighting hunger and poverty.” Click here to learn how Laserfiche ECM software can help your organization streamline contract management and leverage information across the entire enterprise.

D.L. Evans Automates Compliance and Records Management

SITUATION

• Needed an electronic document repository to store scanned documents
• Paper-driven operations were becoming overly expensive and time-intensive to manage

RESULTS

• Estimated $1 million in annual savings
• Enhanced employee experience
• Foundation for an optimized omnichannel experience for customers

D.L. Evans Bank is a century-old organization with over $3.2 billion in assets and dozens of branches across Idaho and Utah. As a true community bank, D.L. Evans offers a variety of personal, business and investment services while maintaining a simple mission: Help people.

To remain responsive to customer needs while addressing the banking industry’s ever-changing compliance requirements, D.L. Evans has built a strong digital ecosystem that includes Laserfiche as a key component. Laserfiche acts as the bank’s information backbone and main processing system, integrating with its core applications to support growth and scale. 

“We’re a $3.5 billion-in-assets institution today, up from $175 million around 25 years ago — a big part of that has been possible because of Laserfiche,” said Gerardo Munoz, D.L. Evans CIO.

“Over time, our use of Laserfiche evolved from document management to a business-critical system,” said Munoz. “Every process can be refined and automated, and Laserfiche was able to help with that.”

As a part of this evolution, the bank leverages Laserfiche’s integration tools to connect Laserfiche to other core systems including its eSignature application, core banking software, CRM and loan origination program. Munoz and his team even use Laserfiche Connector as an integration tool to bridge applications for operations that do not use Laserfiche at all.

“Our Laserfiche repository has over 80 million documents in it, so it’s as critical to us as our core banking system,” Munoz said. “Laserfiche is the second-most critical application that we use in our institution.”

Beyond the time and cost efficiency gains, D.L. Evans counts Laserfiche as a trusted system due to its robust records management capabilities. As a financial institution, the can’t afford to make mistakes with its record management procedures, which are heavily regulated by FDIC rules.

Laserfiche has helped minimize FDIC violations by standardizing how records are kept and updated; for example, retention rules notify compliance officers when a policy document needs to be updated and versioning enables policy reviewers to know if they are working with the most up to date copy of a document.

Auditing has also been streamlined. Whenever the FDIC requests a records audit, D.L. Evans’ team is able to promptly retrieve and present the electronic documents and files in question. “Laserfiche has brought audit time down from four weeks to two,” explains Munoz. “This is actually a bigger improvement than it sounds because as we’ve grown, we now have twice as many loans to audit.”

Transforming the Employee Experience

In addition to making information easier to access, Laserfiche has enhanced the employee experience by standardizing and automating review and approval. Furthermore, integrations eliminate much of the manual data entry and application switching that waste employee time and cognitive energy.

“Just about every process needs some level of automation. The fact that automation can standardize procedures and processes is a major reason to do it. Using Laserfiche to do that has helped us save time and money, as well as prevent a lot of mistakes.” — Gerardo Munoz, D.L. Evans CIO

The bank recently reimagined the loan process, starting with vehicular loans, using Laserfiche. The integration between Laserfiche and Meridian — the bank’s loan origination program — allows many of the previously manual tasks associated with loans to be entirely managed through a Laserfiche form and automated business process. 

A Laserfiche form reads information directly from the loan application program and creates the loan packet, routes it through approvals and files everything in a centralized location.

This process also leverages a Laserfiche-DocuSign integration, enabling customers to submit signed documents that are automatically filed in the correct folder in Laserfiche, eliminating that task for loan officers.

“Rather than hire more loan processors, we are trying to automate the process so we can be more proactive,” Munoz said. “It also gives our loan officers better visibility and trackability into all activities.”

Similar automations are used to create new accounts, where information gathering and routing is managed by Laserfiche. As a result, bank employees can spend more time on the activities that require a human touch, such as customer service.

Another process that sounds deceptively quick and easy, but in reality can require multiple manual steps, is that of replacing a lost or stolen credit card. To accelerate these activities, the bank built a solution on an integration between Laserfiche and its CRM, 360 View. This enables representatives to easily create a service ticket in the CRM to start the replacement process for a customer. When a customer reports a lost or stolen credit card, a representative uses Laserfiche to automatically populate the service ticket with the customer’s information and then route the ticket to the appropriate reviewers and approvers. The improvement has reduced processing time by 66% — from six weeks to two weeks.

Laserfiche has also played an important role in mergers, as the bank is able to easily bring documents and data into their systems from acquired organizations. In one merger, Munoz explained, the bank avoided a $50,000 cost and monthslong wait to have a professional services firm convert and import documents.

“It took me two hours to write a workflow and the documents were converted in a week,” he said.

A True Community Bank

While most of the bank’s Laserfiche initiatives are considered back-office solutions, D.L. Evans customers directly benefit from the increased efficiency. “Laserfiche helps us be more productive and provide faster responses to our customers,” Munoz said.

The customer experience continues to be a guiding light for the D.L. Evans team, which was all-hands-on-deck during the COVID-19 pandemic. The bank’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan process was developed over a weekend, and staff — including the entire executive team — were trained on how to process PPP loans in a matter of hours.

“We even had our CEO processing PPP loans,” Munoz said. “Everything worked seamlessly and was processed through the proper channels. Afterward, all the documentation was there, and customers were satisfied.”

Thanks to the IT team’s quick response with Laserfiche and the entire staff’s commitment, D.L. Evans was the largest PPP provider in the state of Idaho.

Today, the bank provides other forms of community service, including its scholarship program. Students can submit a Laserfiche form for D.L. Evans’s Education Pays program — a drawing which rewards high-performing students with laptops — or its Scholarship Program, which awards thousands of dollars each year to high school seniors to attend any accredited college, university or trade school in the U.S.

Looking to the future, D.L. Evans is committed to creating a more cohesive, omnichannel experience for its customers. Laserfiche initiatives on the horizon include creating a self-service customer portal of Laserfiche Forms, enabling quicker and easier, 24/7 access to various services.

“All things considered, Laserfiche saves us about $1 million every year since we’ve implemented it,” says Munoz. “Laserfiche has never been one of those products that just sits on the shelf and doesn’t get used.”

Click here to learn how your financial firm can automate records management and compliance.

How College of the Desert Modernized Student Forms to Reduce Application Processing Time by 40%

Enhancing Student Success by Digitizing Enrollment and Financial Aid Forms

College of the Desert in Palm Desert is one of the 112 institutions in the community college system of California. With an enrollment of 13,000 students, as many as 20,000 to 30,000 documents are processed annually at the college. Using a paper-based application and filing system, the college was servicing a high volume of commuter students with inconvenient and inconsistent enrollment processes.

“With paper forms, students had to travel up to three hours to submit documents or complete their student files,” says Dr. Annebelle Nery, Executive Dean, Enrollment Services. “Student lines at the counter were very long. Once students got to the front of the line, they were extremely frustrated because we’d either lost their documents or the documents were stuck in processing—but where exactly, we weren’t sure.

Information requests were funneled through as many as five departments in order to compile a complete and accurate student file. Records systems were siloed from the college’s student information system (SIS), and staff members had to search multiple locations to find a complete student file.

Standardizing Records Access Across Campus

To improve operational efficiency, the college  replaced 20 different paper forms with Laserfiche electronic forms that are instantly accessible through a student’s online portal.

Students can now view, complete, sign and submit degree applications, change of major requests and other student forms all from one online portal. Once a form is submitted, Laserfiche automatically:
  • Routes it to required employees and departments for processing.
  • Emails status updates to the student throughout the review process.
  • Attaches documents to the corresponding student file in the SIS.
Associating metadata fields with electronic forms track the exact status of each application at every step of records processing.

Today, every student form at College of the Desert is received electronically through Laserfiche. The college also automated more than 50 business processes, including:
  • Petitions
  • Concurrent enrollment
  • Enrollment verification
  • Name change
  • Request to add a class
  • Information releases

All departments now access and use a centrally managed document management system, reducing overall costs for maintenance and IT support. Staff members aren’t just sharing information more efficiently with students—they’re collaborating across departments to reduce excessive paper volume and needless filing efforts.

Improving Student Satisfaction and Accreditation with Document Management Software

With Laserfiche, the admissions and records and financial services departments now require 40% less time to process applications and petitions. Inquiries from students and lines at the service counters have decreased significantly now that students receive email notifications about their applications.

“The frustrated phone calls from students are down and now we’re getting calls from other departments that want to use Laserfiche,” says Dr. Nery.

These improvements have not gone unnoticed:
  • The college met accreditation standards by being able to offer its main campus services to extension centers and online students.
  • Student satisfaction levels have risen sharply and even the Board of Trustees has complimented the college on its Laserfiche initiative.
  • Recently, the college received the Models of Efficiency Award from University Business Magazine, which recognizes institutions with business savvy and technological expertise.

Looking to digitize student records and paperwork processing at your institution? Schedule your free demo of Laserfiche Forms for colleges and universities. 

Managing New Social Work Caseloads

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) sent many government and county social service agencies scrambling to process the sudden increase in welfare assistance applications. For Olmstead County, Minnesota, the new law catalyzed the need for a more responsive case management paperwork process in the County’s Community Services (OCCS) unit. “The ACA scared us to death, because we didn’t have a document management product at the time. The State of Minnesota has a very complex eligibility system for assistance benefits. There’s a lot of variance in the paperwork,” said Olmsted County Community Services Director Paul Fleissner. Without a technology solution, the county anticipated needing to hire 12 full-time employees to handle the expected caseload increase. “We already handled hundreds of thousands, even millions, of pages per year. We had piles of paper everywhere and would occasionally lose a page or file. We needed to find a way to operate more efficiently.”
Paul Fleissner, Olmsted County’s Community Services (OCCS) Director
Rob Ronnenberg, Olmsted County’s Continuous Improvement Manager

OCCS’ need to improve its efficiency was supported by Olmsted County’s LEAP (Lean Efforts and Automated Processes) Initiative. The LEAP Initiative uses the Lean methodology—creating greater value with fewer resources—in combination with Laserfiche software to create efficient and sustainable operations throughout the county. “With ACA, the staff and funding we needed just weren’t going to be there,” said Rob Ronnenberg, Continuous Improvement Manager. “We needed a better way to do things. To provide the same level of services, we had to be 5% more productive with 5% less funding.”

Implementing Digital Case Management

Before Laserfiche software could be implemented in OCCS with the LEAP Initiative, the LEAP team had to show county administrators and commissioners that it fully understood OCCS’ needs and that document management software was the appropriate solution. “Right from the start, it wasn’t the IT director saying, ‘I have a new toy I want to play with,’” said David Nault, ITS manager. “All 12 county departments and the state district courts signed a service-level agreement and came to the IT department saying, ‘We need your help to implement this.’” With everyone highly motivated to do away with paper processes before ACA came into effect, the department implemented Laserfiche quickly. OCCS scanned 15,000 paper case files and converted paper information to electronic data, and the results were immediate. The new ECM-powered process allowed OCCS to:
  • Increase case worker productivity by 20%
  • Hire only three additional case workers instead of the estimated 12
  • Eliminate nearly 125 filing cabinets

“The number one result was improved staff productivity. Everyone felt Laserfiche made their jobs easier,” Fleissner said. “Time spent filing papers, shuffling papers, sorting and distributing mail or scanning files for telecommuters, was replaced with the task of scanning each document once and never touching paper again.”

Ronnenberg added, “Telling social workers that they don’t have to skip their lunch — that they can take a 15-minute breather and still ensure that their clients are taken care of — that’s powerful.” Overall, Olmsted County believes that investing in technology is a sound strategy for the future. “We as government can be more efficient. There are tools out there to do it, and it’s worth the investment,” says Fleissner. “I think there’s a great return on investment story to be told when you automate the right way, for the right reasons and in the right business areas.” Want to improve case management in your office? Schedule a demo of Laserfiche software for case management today!

City of O’Fallon

O’Fallon implemented a Laserfiche WebLink public portal to provide citizens with around-the-clock access to public information.

“Our municipal website is like having City Hall open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,” says Deputy Clerk Maryanne Fair. “My office is only open from 8:00 A.M. until 5:00 P.M., but even after hours, people can still find what they need.”

The city customized Laserfiche with a file tree structure broken down into nine main entries covering different departments in City Hall. Each of those was then broken down again into folders for each department. According to IT Director John Presley, this file structure makes information easier to find for casual searchers, as curious residents searching city documents account for a lot of the traffic on the site.

City Clerk Phil Goodwin says, “Basic research questions have gone down by as much as two-thirds because people are already finding the info they need on their own.”

Freedom from FOIA Requests

Freedom of Information Act requests used to be an unpleasant subject around the offices of O’Fallon City Hall. FOIA requests, as they are better known, can be vexing for the city clerks who must respond to them. When submitted by laypersons in the community, they can be poorly worded and difficult to understand and respond to. When professionals file FOIA requests, they can be tedious and complex tasks requiring dozens—even hundreds—of hours to fulfill.

So, when a couple of attorneys filed a FOIA request for documents related to an O’Fallon construction project last year, the request looked like it would take two staffers a month each to fulfill. Then one of those staffers suggested sending the attorneys to the city’s Laserfiche WebLink public portal instead.

That was the last staff heard of that FOIA request.

“We sent them an email about Laserfiche WebLink and they did the rest,” Presley says. “They found everything they needed right there. It turned out to be a tremendous time saver for us—and for them.”

Presley points out the cost-effectiveness of having documents available through the Laserfiche WebLink public portal. “That FOIA request would have taken two staffers a full month to fill without Laserfiche WebLink,” he says. “With Laserfiche WebLink, the attorneys could search our documents themselves, which saved us thousands of dollars for just that one request.”

FOIA requests have dropped by at least 50 percent since the Laserfiche WebLink portal has been available, and a lot of the traffic comes from contractors doing business with the city, Presley says. They can submit RFPs much more quickly using Laserfiche WebLink because they can call up old contracts and cut and paste much of the perquisite text.

An Eye to the Future

The public is clearly responding to the increased access to government records. City Hall staffers are getting emails from potential FOIA filers saying they already found what they needed on Laserfiche WebLink, Presley says.

It’s not just O’Fallon residents and businesses benefitting.

“With the volume of usage we’re seeing, Laserfiche WebLink has paid for itself tenfold in staff time savings,” he says. “Now staff can concentrate on their primary role of running the city instead of running around and pulling documents for FOIA requests. FOIA used to be a real unpleasant word around City Hall. Now the subject doesn’t even come up.”

The site’s popularity has prompted O’Fallon to start planning to integrate the city’s GIS application with Laserfiche, opening public access to a vast store of government maps.

Emirates National Oil Company

Since its establishment in 1993, Emirates National Oil Company (ENOC) has provided the energy behind Dubai’s phenomenal growth. With clients ranging from military bases to big-name manufacturing agencies across the United Arab Emirates (UAE), ENOC touches almost every facet of the Emirate’s development and puts its name firmly on the overseas arena. Today, ENOC owns directly and indirectly more than twenty subsidiaries.

ENOC operates through five business segments:
  • Supply, Trading & Processing: Condensate and gas processing and oil trading.
  • Terminals: Storage for various petroleum and chemical products.
  • Marketing: Marketing of aviation fuel, lubes, chemicals and industrials products.
  • Retail: Retailing fuel and non-fuel services at retail stations.
  • Exploration & Production: Development and production of oil and gas.

ENOC first began investigating enterprise content management (ECM) for one of its subsidiaries, Emirates Petroleum Product Company (EPPCO), which was having a hard time managing customer documents. Piles of paperwork were scattered on different employees’ desks, making it hard to locate documents on demand and promptly respond to customer requests.

Although a number of departments within ENOC were already using Microsoft SharePoint, it didn’t meet EPPCO’s needs due to its lack of a scanning solution. After hearing about Laserfiche through Laserfiche reseller Global Technology Services (GTS), ENOC conducted a thorough evaluation of the software to see if it would meet EPPCO’s needs.

According to Ram Mohan Narayanan, Manager of Planning and Performance Management in ENOC’s IT department, “We did an onsite study of the Laserfiche implementation at the Abu Dhabi Water & Electricity Company, where GTS had implemented Laserfiche to archive customer billing documents. It was clear that Laserfiche had provided a great advantage for the utility company, which gave us the confidence to go with Laserfiche.”

The fact that Laserfiche is fully supported in Arabic also played a role in ENOC’s selection process.

Improving Customer Service

To better manage its customer documents, EPPCO was the first part of the organization to implement Laserfiche. EPPCO serves 75 million customers each year through its network of more than 170 ENOC/EPPCO service stations across the UAE.

EPPCO has built its brand on innovation. As such, it launched the first fuel card in the UAE in 1991. To ensure the continued success of the fuel card program, EPPCO’s card marketing department wanted to accelerate customer service. With roughly 300 new documents coming in each day, storing everything in file cabinets was costly and inefficient, and employees were having difficulty finding the right paper documents to process them in a timely manner.

By implementing Laserfiche to store customer request documents and automate the document approval process, Card Marketing is now able to deliver much faster customer service. In addition, it has integrated Laserfiche with a variety of other software applications to improve the customer experience as follows:
  • By integrating with its interactive voice response (IVR) software, EPPCO has enabled its fuel card customers to fax their invoices through the IVR system.
  • These invoices are generated in an Oracle management application and moved into Laserfiche as PDF files.
  • Monthly statements are automatically sent from Laserfiche to customers via an integration with RightFax.

In addition, an IVR-based request from the customer triggers a that automatically sends the PDF invoice to the customer on demand.

“Not only have we improved our customer service, but we’ve reduced our papers expenses,” said Narayanan.

Increasing Efficiency across ENOC

The use of Laserfiche soon spread beyond EPPCO to a number of departments within ENOC. In the past, ENOC had relied on file cabinets to store paper documents. Imaged documents, meanwhile, were stored on a shared “U:\” drive, and electronic content was managed in SharePoint.

This lack of a centralized content management strategy was inefficient, costly and prevented the automation of paper-based business processes. ENOC needed a standard systems architecture and methodology for enterprise-wide content management.

In particular, ENOC’s internal audit department has saved time and money by automating the submission of its Employee Acknowledgement and of Interest forms, which all 1,500 ENOC employees need to sign and submit to the department each year.

Narayanan explains that the Laserfiche SharePoint Integration, a two-way integration that enables paper-based capture and DoD 5015.2-certified records management in a SharePoint environment, allows employees to scan these forms directly into SharePoint, where they are converted into PDFs and automatically filed in the correct HR folders in the Laserfiche repository.

In addition to the benefits Laserfiche has brought to the internal audit department:
  • The HR department uses as a secure, centralized location for all employee documents.
  • The department validates, stores and distributes supplier invoices to their respective PO owners using Laserfiche Workflow
  • Procurement uses to create and store contracts and vendor management documents.
  • The chief executive and general manager office use Laserfiche to track and store all incoming and outgoing correspondence.

Narayanan estimates that ENOC realized a full return on its Laserfiche investment in just eight months. “By using Laserfiche to scan and store paper files, we save at least 6,000 hours of staff time a year, which translates to US $240,000. We’ve also been able to eliminate US $28,800 in paper storage costs per year.”

Sina Khoory, ENOC’s Group IT Manager, adds, “Using Laserfiche Rio, EPPCO and a number of departments in the ENOC group have gained centralized control over our data. Rio’s powerful tools and the Laserfiche SharePoint Integration have simplified information sharing and automated operations between departments.”

What’s the difference between wet, digital and electronic signatures?

What do you imagine when you hear the word “signature?” 50 years ago we might all have had the same answer, but today, “ink on paper” isn’t the only option for authorizing a document or transaction.

Here’s what you need to know about the three main signature categories (wet, digital and electronic signatures) and how they facilitate (or impede) business processes.

What is a wet signature?

A wet signature is created when a person physically marks a document. In some cultures this is done by writing a name in a stylized, cursive format (or even a simple “X”) on a piece of paper. Other cultures use name seals to the same effect. In both cases, the word “wet” implies that the signature requires time to dry, as it was made with ink or wax.
Various written signatures.

What is an electronic signature?

Various legal definitions exist for electronic signatures, but the term most generally refers to the acknowledgement or adoption of an electronic message, transaction or document. Some examples include:
  • A typed name at the end of an email
  • A typed name on an electronic form or document
  • An image of a handwritten signature on a transmitted fax
  • A personal identification number (PIN) entered into a bank ATM
  • Clicking “agree” or “disagree” on an electronic “terms and agreements” contract
  • A handwritten but digitally captured signature made on a touch device, such as a tablet or smartphone (sometimes referred to as a “dynamic signature”)
  • A digital signature gathered by an eSign application like Adobe Sign.

What is a digital signature?

Sometimes referred to as a cryptographic signature, a digital signature is considered the most “secure” type of electronic signature. It includes a certificate of authority, such as a Windows certificate, to ensure the validity of the signatory (the signature’s author and owner).

The parties on either side of a digital signature can also detect whether the signed document was altered or changed in any way that would invalidate it. In addition, electronic messages are signed with the sender’s private decryption key and verified by anyone who can access the sender’s public encryption key; this further ensures that both parties are who they say they are and that the content of the message has not been changed or intercepted.
Image showing how private keys can digitally sign messages that can then be read using public key.

Digital and electronic signatures are often used synonymously, but most types of electronic signatures do not have the security features of true digital signatures.

Some common uses for digital signatures include electronic tax forms, applications for business permits and online college applications.

Are different signatures required for different purposes?

The use of wet, electronic or digital signatures is left to the discretion of each party. Since the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (ESIGN) went into effect in 2000, digital and electronic signatures have held the same legal standing as wet signatures. Nevertheless, some organizations and individuals still prefer handwritten signatures.

The ESIGN act does preserve the right of a party to use or accept wet signatures even if the documentation in question is electronic. It is up to each organization to create its own policy around signatures.

How does each type of signature affect business processes?

Many document-based business processes require signatures, such as the approval of contracts, invoices and employee evaluation forms. Wet signatures tend to slow these processes down because of their dependence on the physical exchange of paper, but even electronic signatures can become impediments when someone fails to sign a document in a timely manner.

Organizations operate at peak efficiency when electronic signatures are incorporated into an automated business process. For example, as the following video shows, if a manager forgets to sign an invoice, an automated system can send her an email reminder after a period of time has passed.

 
One of the fastest ways to get started with incorporating digital signatures into your automated business processes is to use a solution marketplace. These marketplaces offer an extensive range of pre-built solutions, templates and integrations for users of a particular platform. For example, Laserfiche offers an Adobe Sign integration on its marketplace.

Learn how digital and electronic signatures can be incorporated into your contract management process. Download the free guide!
Download the guide to automating contract review and approvals.

 

Colorado Department of Natural Resources

Colorado’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) manages a wealth of information across eight divisions, including:
  • Colorado Division of Forestry
  • Colorado Division of Parks and Wildlife
  • Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining, and Safety
  • Colorado Division of Water Resources
  • Colorado Geological Survey
  • Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC)
  • Colorado State Land Board
  • Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB)

According to Susan Lesovsky, Application Support Manager for the CWCB, the DNR purchased a Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM) system in 2005 to replace a legacy IBM system that lacked an out-of-the box web interface, optical character recognition (OCR) functionality and the ability to automate business processes. “Our old system was pretty much limited to search and retrieval,” she explains.

She notes that a top priority for implementing Laserfiche was making it easier for citizens to stay informed about government activities. “Ultimately, our customer is the public, and our success is measured on how we provide and process information for them,” Lesovsky says.

To that end, the DNR upgraded to Laserfiche Rio in 2009. According to Lesovsky, “Laserfiche Rio has allowed us to increase the transparency of information to the public, and it’s done it in such a way that we don’t have to worry about connections or cost.”

In particular, she describes the benefits of upgrading to Laserfiche Rio as:

Laserfiche Rio Enables Citizens to Cut through Red Tape

Lesovsky notes that Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper recently called for every department in state government to reduce red tape. Good government, he says, is characterized by “efficiency, effectiveness and elegance.”

“As one of only two recommended content management systems for the state, Laserfiche epitomizes all three E’s,” Lesovsky says.

She explains how easy it is for citizens to access documents such as the CWCB’s meeting documents:
  • The current year’s materials are available on the Board’s website in a table that provides direct links to PDFs stored in Laserfiche.
  • Archived materials are accessible through a custom search box (created using the WebLink Designer) on the lower right side of same page or through this link.
  • The custom search box is limited to three fields (title, date range and document type) to streamline access and reduce user confusion. (Custom search components have been included throughout the CWCB’s website to help direct the public’s search for Board-related documents.)

Colorado’s Decision Support Systems website also includes custom search boxes throughout its Website, such as the one at the top of this page that searches according to document type and a few other parameters, while a set of “Google-like” search results based on document type displays below thanks to an encoded URL string.

“We used the WebLink Designer to create custom searches because we noticed that our users would get overwhelmed when presented with a long list of templates and fields,” says Lesovsky. “Each custom search focuses on a particular program area or topic and uses a limited set of search criteria within the associated template.”

Quick, easy and efficient searches support Hickenlooper’s goal of driving the “three E’s” into government operations. Lesovsky explains, “In the past, people had to come to our offices to request information. Laserfiche WebLink provides a simple and elegant way for the public to get immediate access to the information they need whenever they need it.”

Integrations Make ECM “Mission-Critical”

By integrating Laserfiche WebLink with other software applications, the DNR has been able to make information even more accessible. For example, by integrating Laserfiche with ESRI ArcGIS, staff can click on a stream and retrieve associated court documents, while public users can quickly access information associated with flooding and flood hazards in the state.

To see the public-facing integration in action:
  1. Visit Colorado’s Flood Decision Support System page
  2. Click on the Flood DSS Map Viewer.
  3. Agree to the disclaimer.
  4. Click the Documents tab in the top menu.
  5. Enter your search criteria in the pop-up window. For example, select:
  6. Group: Historical Flooding.
  7. Document: Historical flood photographs.
  8. Type: Photographs.
  9. Hit the search button.
  10. A new window displays the results (produced on-the-fly by an encoded URL string) in a grid format.

It’s the integrations with applications like ESRI ArcGIS that make Laserfiche “mission-critical.” According to Lesovsky, “When you integrate Laserfiche with business-specific systems, you embed it into your existing workflow processes and it becomes integral to how you operate.”

ECM Enables Electronic Forms Processing

Laserfiche Rio has been a particularly effective ECM solution for the DNR because different divisions can configure it to meet their unique needs. For example, the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) uses Laserfiche to enable an eForm application that provides an interface for oil and gas operators to enter and submit permit forms and supporting documents. There are currently six active forms and three in development.

According to Ken Robertson, Application Developer for the COGCC, “Uploaded files are stored in our production web server. Once the operators submit the form to our internal server, we export the attachments to Laserfiche.”

He explains that the public can view the files directly from the production web server or wait until the files are imported to Laserfiche and use Laserfiche WebLink to access them. Furthermore, he outlines how the COGCC has used the Laserfiche SDK to create customized Laserfiche scripts and programs.

Robertson says, “For those attachments still sitting in our production web server, we created a Windows service to check queued files in the Web server every 15 minutes and use the Laserfiche Toolkit [SDK] for .NET to import files to the Laserfiche repository server. In the meantime, we also collect the Laserfiche reference numbers in our attachment table so that system (eForm) can provide a Laserfiche WebLink download page for users to view the attachments.”

He notes that there is a separate application that allows oil and gas operators to upload well logs, which are imported into Laserfiche using Laserfiche Import Agent, a tool that captures and processes electronic documents. Scanning staff members use Laserfiche Quick Fields to index other types of electronic documents.

The biggest benefit of processing permits and well logs with Laserfiche is time. Robertson says, “We used to shuffle files from one person to another until they were approved, and then we scanned everything into the system. Having the operators upload their attachments to their documents saves an average of 15 minutes of scanning and indexing time for our staff, not to mention the time saved on data entry.”

He goes on to explain that having everything available electronically at the beginning of the process allows multiple people to work on the same forms simultaneously, further reducing processing time.

“Not only do we save time,” Robertson says, “but the approval process is now more transparent for the public.”

Lesovsky adds, “Laserfiche is powerful, flexible and easy to work with. Even though all our divisions use the same system, we can all use it a little differently.”

Looking Ahead

Lesovsky is particularly excited to use Laserfiche to harvest data across organizations. She explains that the CWCB has already conducted a feasibility study and has a grant in place to make it happen.

“Colorado State University has an ECM solution other than Laserfiche but a healthy collection of water information. The Colorado Water Resources Development & Power Authority and the Colorado River Water Conservation District currently use Laserfiche, with repositories of useful water documents. By hooking our systems together and using common metadata, we’ll be able to search for information across all four entities and gain a more complete picture of accessible water information in the state.”

She says that the DNR is also working on integrating Laserfiche and SharePoint. “Most of our divisions use SharePoint for their external websites. Right now, people have to conduct separate searches if they want to find content stored in both Laserfiche and SharePoint. What we’re looking to do is enable searches that return results from both systems at the same time.”

All in all, she says, “Laserfiche Rio is a great tool. The bottleneck now is just finding the time to make it do everything we want it to do.”

City of Lakewood, CO

Back in 2001, staff from the planning and public works department at the City of Lakewood, CO, created the Digital Archives Group (DAG) to find more efficient ways to manage 30 years’ worth of maps, plats and plans. Members from the Planning and Public Works, Community Resources, the City Clerk’s Office Central Records Division and the IT department participated in DAG.

Led by Stormwater Quality Coordinator Alan Searcy, Central Records Administrator Sharon Blackstock, and Imaging Technician Greg Buchanan, DAG evolved into an ad hoc governance committee, setting recordkeeping and retention policies for each department, as well as standardizing document indexing for interdepartmental use. “My goal in the beginning,” says Searcy, “was to get as much ‘buy-in’ as possible for our fledgling imaging program. Working together on interdepartmental projects is a proven recipe for success in Lakewood.” The Digital Archives Group is a prime example of that fact.

DAG initiated the purchase of Laserfiche in 2001 from Colorado-based reseller Phil Landreth of S. Corporation, with several departments sharing the cost. “Laserfiche was the most user-friendly solution we looked at, and we knew that was going to be very important,” Blackstock says. “Laserfiche also had a very strong presence in cities around our size (population: 145,000), so we knew that support for local government operations was in place.”

Although Laserfiche was first used only by the Engineering Division and the City Clerk’s Office, it eventually spread to other departments. As new departments joined in the project, they sent representatives to DAG meetings.

Initially, Laserfiche was used for archiving permanent records and closed case files. After a couple of years, the finance department became the first to manage active records with Laserfiche by scanning sales tax returns. More active records management followed as Laserfiche use began spreading to DAG members’ departments. Eventually most of Lakewood’s 10 departments adopted Laserfiche, each relying on DAG’s training and best practices to scan and manage their own records.

“With every new project, people really welcome our support and suggestions. We all listen to each other and are willing to hear new ideas,” Buchanan says. “At the same time, people don’t just say, ‘I’m going to do this’ and call up IT—DAG helps define the project and gives the go-ahead.” The City Clerk’s Office created Buchanan’s position as Imaging Technician in 2002 to facilitate Laserfiche projects by assisting departments in training users and developing and managing scanning projects.

Today, DAG’s goals are being met—long-term records are being archived and protected, concurrent retrieval of imaged records is possible, and storage space for maps, plats and plans has been reduced. What’s more, interdepartmental cooperation has resulted in a citywide sense of pride and ownership of Laserfiche.

Breaking Down Silos to Build an Agile Enterprise

IT Software Services Manager Tom Charkut credits DAG with addressing the training element in the early days “in a way IT just couldn’t.” But by 2005, Charkut says, “There were so many departments using Laserfiche that it just made sense to centralize the software maintenance and support.” IT took over Laserfiche system administration in 2006, as well as the software maintenance costs.

The City of Lakewood’s IT staff of 27 supports more than 1,000 city employees. “We’re a small team with big shoes to fill,” Charkut admits. Filling big shoes with different sizes and styles, he says, requires an agile development philosophy.

According to Charkut, one key component to solving the diverse but often overlapping information needs of Lakewood’s business units was using the Laserfiche SDK and its Microsoft-standard .NET API to integrate with legacy business applications. “Since Laserfiche was an enterprise-wide system,” he says, “we needed to figure out how to integrate it with our other line-of-business systems.”

A recent example is an integration between Laserfiche and Planning and Public Works’ new building permit system. “The user will be in the permit system, and using the permit number, he’ll click on a ‘documents’ button we developed that shows him the documents in Laserfiche,” he explains. “If he needs to email those documents, then we send URLs linking to those documents using Laserfiche Web Access. Laserfiche gives us the ability to arrange the information so it’s at the user’s fingertips.”

The user, Charkut notes, never leaves the permitting application. What’s more, the additional content is referenced from its single, centralized Laserfiche repository. Similarly, integration with the city’s GeoSmart GIS application geo-enables searches for employees across various systems whether it’s for code enforcement cases or service requests from residents, as well as for any documents—including plats, plans and forms—already in Laserfiche.

“For us, Laserfiche integration has helped break down silos,” Charkut says. “It’s all about decentralized capture, centralized storage and an enterprise library.”

What a Transparent Web We Weave

Now, as the city maps out an overhaul of Lakewood’s web strategy, Laserfiche is one of the ingredients. “Our web strategy in the past has been a patchwork of stuff. Just last year we said, ‘We have to do something about this—we’re getting 5,000 hits a day,’” says Charkut. “Part of our plan is to promote government transparency through the use of web self-service, including access to records contained in the Laserfiche system.”

Lakewood also finds itself in the middle of an electronic records management inventory and assessment, where consultants are actually suggesting new and future uses of Laserfiche. Building on DAG’s solid support foundation and Lakewood IT’s agile, integrated web strategies, the city is now assessing whether and when to upgrade to Laserfiche Rio, with its scalable, flexible user and module licensing—as well as its unlimited servers—to meet the needs of more and more departments, business processes and users, both internally and externally, from a single enterprise application.

“We are evaluating the ROI of Laserfiche Rio,” jokes Charkut. “We will assess that model on a 7- to 10-year timeframe.”

Upcoming Laserfiche Projects
  1. Employee Relations for employee benefits and claim management.
  2. Finance for sales and use tax applications management.
  3. Planning and Public Works to manage planning case documents from submittal to archival.
  4. Municipal Court for case file management.
  5. Utility crews and inspectors of right-of-way and buildings to access plans, records and other information stored in Laserfiche from the field.

County of Essex

“What started as a niche application in the County Clerk’s Office has now become an enterprise infrastructure investment,” says Wendy St. Amour, Essex County’s IT Manager.

The county implemented Laserfiche back in 2000 because “managing paper records in an organization of our size was an arduous, time-consuming and expensive task. Complying with a myriad of new government regulations and increasingly less physical space made it even more difficult,” explains St. Amour, adding that manual workflow processes were inefficient and time consuming.

She notes that the county “makes a point of making the right decision upfront,” and that based on a combination of good references from other municipalities, user-friendly technology and an affordable price, Laserfiche won the RFP process.

Initially implemented in the County Clerk’s Office, Laserfiche immediately began providing benefits.

Mary Brennan, the county’s Director of Council Services/Clerk, explains, “As the county clerk, it’s my job to respond to requests for information. With Laserfiche, I never have to venture down into the dreaded basement vault to search for and retrieve records. By giving me a way to find documents quickly, Laserfiche has saved a tremendous amount of time over the years.”

Evolution of a Shared Service

What started as a solution for the County Clerk’s Office soon spread—not just to additional departments such as Engineering and Finance, but to seven municipalities within the County as well.

“Since we purchased Laserfiche in 2000, all seven of the municipalities in Essex County have implemented the software,” says Brennan. “The Municipality of Leamington was actually included in our RFP. The others saw the success we were having, heard similar success stories from other municipalities and decided that Laserfiche would be beneficial for them, too.”

At first, the municipalities maintained and administered their own Laserfiche systems. Over time, however, they began to understand the advantages of sharing, including the ability to leverage economies of scale, take advantage of a wider knowledge base and gain access to additional ECM functionality.

Brennan explains that Essex County dipped its toe into the shared service pool by jointly purchasing and using Laserfiche WebLink as a public information portal together with all seven of its lower-tier municipalities. The online portal provides residents with access to government material such as:
  • Agendas
  • Bylaws
  • Meeting minutes
  • Historical documents
  • Studies requiring public consultation

“Laserfiche WebLink is great because all interested stakeholders can easily view public documents with the click of a mouse,” Brennan explains. “Plus, it saves our staff the work of converting documents to PDFs and manually posting them on our website.”

St. Amour notes that, with eight organizations using Laserfiche, the knowledge base staff amassed was substantial. “The ability to share knowledge and expertise with each other has proven to be very beneficial. That, coupled with the cost savings of sharing one enterprise system, gave us the confidence to upgrade to Laserfiche Rio.”

After consulting with MC Imaging Technologies, Essex County’s Laserfiche reseller, the county and its lower-tier municipalities all agreed that purchasing and deploying Laserfiche Rio as a shared service was the best way to empower employees and capitalize on everything the software has to offer.

“The ability to use unlimited servers is what made our expansion to Laserfiche Rio possible, because each lower-tier municipality uses its own server while taking advantage of the additional functionality Laserfiche Rio offers, such as Laserfiche Workflow,” says St. Amour.

“By taking a shared-service approach, we can develop a process once, and with a few small changes, eight different organizations can benefit from it,” she adds.

Enterprise Efficiency in Action

St. Amour notes that the county and its municipalities benefit from integration between Laserfiche, ESRI ArcGIS and Geocortex, an interactive mapping tool. Cathy Paduch, GIS Technician for Essex County, explains, “The integration allows staff to access documents associated with any spatial asset simply by clicking on a point on a map. This saves time and eliminates the need to store documents in multiple locations.”

Imagery supplied by the county is leveraged by many departments in local municipalities and is also available for public consumption over the web. Residents can take advantage of an interactive map to locate schools, recreational buildings, municipal institutions, hospitals, churches and police and fire stations—along with associated documents available via Laserfiche WebLink. Paduch notes that protected information such as property tax information is only available to staff.

Mike Sherwood, GIS Technician, adds that the custom script the county created dynamically searches Laserfiche and returns a list of the number and type of documents associated with any given location. “We don’t have to do any maintenance on the GIS side to keep the integration working,” he says.

Although designed and administered by county employees, staff across all seven of Essex’s municipalities benefit from the integration. “It allows all levels of staff from administration, emergency services and engineering departments to easily locate documents,” Paduch explains.

St. Amour adds, “The ease and efficiency of being able to track down and locate multiple documents associated to spatial data within the map interface is a great time saver.”

Looking Ahead

Although Essex County has only recently implemented Laserfiche Rio, St. Amour says that the county’s priority is automating business processes using Laserfiche Workflow. “Our first priority will be to automate our agendas; then we’ll take a hard look at how we can make our accounts payable and HR processes more efficient.”

Overall, implementing Laserfiche ECM as a shared service across the county and its lower-tier municipalities has enabled Essex to leverage economies of scale, gain access to additional ECM functionality and decrease the amount of time staff spends on manual tasks such as filing and finding paper documents.

“We’ve already realized a significant ROI from using Laserfiche,” says St. Amour. “Now that we have Laserfiche Rio, we can’t wait to start reaping the benefits of business process automation!”