The Town of Okotoks is the largest town in Alberta, Canada, and provides services to over 30,000 residents. The city operates 20 different business centers that are each responsible for their own document filing. Prior to using a document management system, the city battled isolated information gathering and collaboration, leading to delays in public service delivery and data entry errors.
“The town was looking for a more streamlined solution with a central filing location, easier searching capabilities for the employees and everybody on a broad spectrum,” says Sheila Andrew, HR/Corporate and Strategic Administrator for the Town of Okotoks.
Using Laserfiche’s combined electronic forms, workflow and records management capabilities, the city jump-started an enterprise-wide digital records initiative. One central document repository provided a single point of access for information across the city and standardized each department’s disparate document filing and archiving methods.
The system quickly evolved from just a document storage system. It’s now the town’s primary tool for improving future and ongoing operations. Using Laserfiche Forms, the municipality implemented over 150 forms-based processes for numerous activities, including:
Waste management
HR applications
Permitting and inspection submission, review and approval
Expense report submissions
Records management for land transactions
Digital records archiving
Using metadata, federated search and digital document access, employees across city departments can instantly find and collaborate on the information they need to deliver faster public services.
“We’ve gotten great feedback about how quickly approvals are happening now and the ease of access to forms,” says Andrew. “We only have one location to find forms, instead of lots of different places where people were saving PDFs or filing them.”
Benefits:
The permitting department has saved, on average, two months of administrative staff work a year.
Fire Department and Inspection teams can complete inspections and deliver permits in six to eight months instead of a full year.
The city has increased transparency throughout the document life cycle.
The city processes over 21,000 digital forms in one system.
Staff collaborates more quickly and in a more transparent manner on documents and requests.
As part of Costa Rica’s Ministry of Labor and Social Security, DESAF finances and oversees a broad range of social services across the nation. The agency is responsible for administering the Fund for Social Development and Family Allowances, which allocates budget to 28 different institutions for education, poverty, housing and other programs.
In 2010, new federal regulations required DESAF to modernize its internal processes, and make its legal operations and administrative processes more accessible to its citizens and clients. DESAF, which relied on large physical facilities to store documents and cumbersome manual document searches, implemented Laserfiche to streamline operations and improve client response time.
Beyond Digitization
The agency began using the Laserfiche system to digitize over 32,000 employer files within its Department of Collection Management. With direct access to client files, staff can streamline funding allocation and track employment needs across each agency.
“Initially, the only expectation that we had was digitalizing all of the documents,” says Robert Delgado Castro, Debt Control Analyst for DESAF. “When we began to use the application and all the tools, we found out that we could obtain a lot of complementary usage of the platform.”
By eliminating physical paperwork and manual processes across the agency, staff members can conduct more productive meetings with employers or clients without worrying about missing documents or delaying service.
“In the past, meetings lasted hours and required the review of physical documents,” Castro says. “Now, a meeting is conducted in a digital way without any risk of losing information. What took hours before, now takes just 10 minutes using Laserfiche.”
Benefits:
The new system digitized over 32,000 employer files and provided on-demand access to employment files.
DESAF reduced its reliance on off-site scanning and paper storage.
The debt prescription process was simplified, and wait times were reduced by 50 percent.
The organization streamlined monthly log reports with better data transparency.
Streamlining document access ultimately allows the agency to more quickly allocate the right amount of funding to the right organizations, respond to inquiries from each agency and analyze the efficiency of its social programs across the board.
“I’m sure the relationship between DESAF and Laserfiche will last for many years in the future in order to accomplish our objective, to fight against poverty in a very efficient way,” says Castro.
Click here to learn more about streamlining records management using Laserfiche.
PERI Formwork Scaffolding Engineering Ltd, based in South Africa, is a global manufacturer of formwork and scaffolding and provides consultant, project and engineering services for the construction industry. With wide-reaching operations across 60 global subsidiaries, the firm manages complex payment streams that require efficient processes and quick response times.
“As technology changes, there’s a need to communicate and distribute to customers more efficiently,” says Jacques Lotriet, Business Analyst for PERI’s Financial Efficiency Projects.
The organization previously relied on paper mail to sort, distribute and pay invoices. Collecting payments from customers often took up to two weeks with no guarantees that documents and payments would be returned on time.
With Laserfiche, the company built a web portal that provides customers and staff with web-based access to monthly statements and invoices. The accounting portal significantly decreased the time it takes staff to process invoices, improved the customer experience and helped the company provide more transparent operations for regulatory compliance.
“Feedback from our customers and our staff internally has been extremely positive, especially with the way to quickly and easily access and distribute documents,” says Lotriet.
Benefits:
Reduced accounts receivable and payable processing times from weeks to one day
Enabled customers to view invoices, see reminders and complete online payments entirely online
Saved $75,000 a year in printing and paper costs, creating a return on investment in the first year of Laserfiche use
The ability to quickly model and execute digital business processes helps PERI Scaffolding continually improve its customer experience and remain competitive in its industry.
“It is very versatile,” says Lotriet. “I like to describe it also as a blank canvas. If you can think it up, you can build it. The electronic flow and distribution is also very efficient, and saves a lot of time and money.”
New Zealand’s Hurunui District, with a population of approximately 11,000 spread across 18 towns, offers a rural lifestyle filled with rich culture. Its local government authority excels at developing a sense of community, partnership and well-being.
Hurunui District Council knew that building a strong IT infrastructure was essential to providing the best customer service. The Council began searching for a new solution to replace its legacy document management system (DMS) when the requirements for records management at government organisations changed. The growing amount of information generated proved too much to efficiently handle, control and retain.
According to Scott Linton, the Council’s Information and Technology Services Manager, the Council focused on finding a system with:
The ability to easily integrate with its existing financial and business system, Napier Computer Systems.
Test servers and multiple repositories, versioning capability and records management functionality.
The right price.
Laserfiche provided a versatile enterprise-wide solution. “Being New Zealand’s seventh-largest district by land size, we needed a system with the capability to connect our multiple offices,” explains Linton. “We were really impressed at how easy it was to implement Laserfiche and connect our main office with five satellite locations. It was up and running in no time!”
Using Laserfiche Quick Fields to conserve staff time and IT resources
Three months before the Hurunui District Council put Laserfiche in place, its legacy DMS broke down. “We were worried about what to do with all of our information, but Laserfiche Quick Fields allowed us to quickly migrate the contents of the legacy system into Laserfiche,” says Linton.
The Council used Laserfiche Quick Fields to back scan its records. More than half a million documents were imported directly into Laserfiche from their legacy system using Laserfiche Import Agent and Laserfiche Workflow. “Laserfiche Quick Fields helped to accelerate the process, prevent manual errors, save staff time and produce greater productivity,” Linton says. “In fact, we wouldn’t have been able to do the conversion manually. It would have overwhelmed us.”
The Council is now preparing to transfer approximately 800,000 files from its group drives to the Laserfiche repository.
Managing Council documents and records
Laserfiche’s versioning functionality was an important selection criterion for the Council. “We use versioning to improve service delivery and regulate our information management,” explains Linton. “We use versioning with our Consents documents and it prevents information from getting lost, tracks changes and maintains different versions for different purposes.”
The Council actively uses versioning to manage Resource Consents documents, adding, revising and replacing throughout the year. “It was difficult to organise when we didn’t have a centralised storage location. We didn’t know which document was the newest one, staff members constantly worked on wrong versions and the name of the documents kept changing. It’s been really useful to our staff so we will move forward and implement it with Building Consents documents as well,” Linton says.
The Laserfiche check in/check out process has helped to ensure that:
Only one person can make changes to the report at a time.
The most up-to-date version of each document is stored in the Laserfiche repository.
Automating business processes and accelerating service delivery
The Building Consents Department issues permits to ensure that any building work within the district is lawful, safe and sustainable. Documents about each property, including applications and details, need to be well-maintained and organised so that staff can provide excellent customer service.
“We are currently automating 120,000 Building Consents, Resource Consents and License’s documents using Laserfiche Workflow, which is pulling metadata from the old database and transferring it into the Laserfiche database,” says Linton. “Doing a manual transfer would have been a nightmare.”
Using Laserfiche’s abilities, the Council organised its metadata information as fields and then determined which fields to apply to the documents to enable the most efficient search for users. Laserfiche Workflow then assigns a template of predetermined fields to the documents, automatically pulls the information from the old database and fills out the metadata for each document.
“Each property has its own folder that contains an average of 40-50 pages on the details. Overall, we have around 10,000 folders, so we have tens of thousands of documents that need to be identified and placed with the correct property,” Linton explains. “We applied a Laserfiche template with metadata information such as the building type, number, property ID, evaluation number and address. Laserfiche Workflow then automatically identifies, filters and files the documents in their correct folders.”
According to Linton, “We want to continue expanding Laserfiche as an enterprise-wide, back-end control centre. We want our staff to experience a faster and easier search for documents — it shouldn’t be time-consuming to gather information about a property. With Laserfiche, they will be able to search for a property name or the ID and get the results in seconds.”
Future plans
The Hurunui District Council is looking forward to expanding and extending its Laserfiche implementation. “We are looking to bring in Laserfiche Mobile for building inspectors and compliance officers when they are at on-site visits. We’re also considering implementing Laserfiche Forms to further streamline workflows,” Linton says. “The capabilities of Laserfiche are endless. We haven’t found anything we can’t do with Laserfiche!”
For many organizations, achieving digital transformation is not an overnight process. Fortunately, there are tools to help organizations make significant advances and be better positioned to reap the rewards of a digital workplace. For years, business process management (BPM) technologies have been a core part of many organizations’ digital transformation strategies. As new innovations in the industry emerge, organizations are finding even more opportunities to become digitally adept. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has been gaining popularity as the latest automation tool to drive workplace efficiency and productivity – but how is it different from traditional business process management approaches?
While distinct in their own right, RPA and BPM are complementary to each other and, when deployed together, provide a powerful platform to enable digital transformation organization-wide.
Key Differences between RPA and BPM
As RPA becomes more of a mainstream solution, how does it fit within the context of existing BPM technologies? Let’s investigate the key differences between RPA and BPM.
Difference Between RPA & BPM
Let’s take a step back to outline the definitions of RPA and BPM as distinct methodologies.
Robotic Process Automation is a software technology that enables employees to better focus on high priority tasks by pushing routine, monotonous tasks to software “robots” to complete. These robots work directly across application user interfaces, automatically inputting data and triggering actions across multiple systems acting on the behalf of an employee. As a business user-friendly tool that does not involve any programming, robotic process automation technology enables non-technical professionals to self-serve and configure robots for themselves to solve their own automation challenges.
Definition of BPM
BPM is a strategic approach that concentrates on reshaping an organization’s existing business processes to achieve optimal efficiency and productivity. BPM software is the foundational backbone to facilitate completion of an organization’s projects, providing a variety of tools to help improve and streamline how business processes are performed. BPM software components can include business analytics, workflow engines, business rules, web forms, and collaboration tools. Often large-scale projects, BPM process improvement initiatives can impact an organization’s technology, employees, and customers, bringing about significant transformational returns.
BPM and RPA as a Combined Approach
Given their similar goals of increasing productivity and efficiency, BPM and RPA are not competing approaches and work together in harmony. RPA can be a valuable tool in boosting gains achieved with a traditional BPM system.
In many cases, an organization may not always have the resources and time to fully implement a completely integrated and automated process or have a process that does not require any human involvement. Implementing BPM and RPA together can bring about much greater process automation and value that one technology approach alone may not be as positioned to achieve.
Example of BPM & RPA in Action: Network Access Request
Members of the IT department are involved with a number of highly important responsibilities for the organization but may be hindered by a number of repetitive, manual tasks that do not require complex decision making.
Below is a simplified version of an automated network access request process where an employee submits a request to be granted access to or be removed from a certain software application. After being approved by a supervisor, IT can then review the request and complete the request as appropriate.
In this situation, the process has been automated with a BPM system, but still involves some manual work by IT. Completing the request could involve logging into multiple applications, opening up the appropriate pages to grant access rights, applying the appropriate settings, logging out of the applications, and marking the request as completed.
As an individual request, performing these tasks may not take a significant amount of time, but if it is happening multiple times a day, it can distract from other valuable actions that a skilled IT professional will need to complete.
While IT may want to closely monitor the requests to see who is gaining access to what, the actual actions involved with granting access may not be as important. Adding an RPA bot to perform the manual tasks that will likely need to be repeated multiple times as employees change roles, join the organization, etc., will further optimize the overall process flow and free up the IT staff to focus time on other priority work. It benefits the organization to have IT professionals focus their energy on tasks that actually require human decision-making and nuanced consideration.
Tackling Repetitive, Time-Consuming Work
For professionals, moving between applications to perform specific actions is a common activity. With this so-called “swivel chair” work, employees must constantly switch between multiple systems to complete a particular task in an automated process. Possibly the applications the employees are working with did not have an API available to integrate with or a complete integration was not justified to reduce the employees’ manual work. Manual tasks could include actions such as data entry, searching, copy and pasting, or pulling together reports from different places.
RPA technology helps fill in these types of gaps in a BPM process, allowing organizations to achieve an even higher level of efficiency that may not have been as possible before. Existing systems remain in place, where bots would perform the monotonous actions a person would typically need to perform. Once the bot has completed its task, BPM can take over, pushing follow-up actions and results to the employee to complete or review. Offloading time-consuming, repetitive tasks to bots as part of a BPM solution will help enable employees better focus their talents on more productive work only they can do.
Digital Transformation Driven by BPM and RPA
Although BPM and RPA technologies can be deployed separately in digital transformation initiatives, it is when they are strategically implemented together that their individual benefits are compounded. BPM and RPA complement each other, forming a powerful duo that can help organizations further deliver on their process automation goals. In the future, RPA will become even more of an incorporated part of traditional BPM systems and organizations’ overall digital transformation toolkit.
Laserfiche has long been a provider of powerful BPM tools including workflow, web forms, business reporting and analytics, and capture solutions to streamline and transform business processes.
Key Differences between RPA & BPM [Text Version]
Robotic Process Automation
Business Process Management
Technology
Software Technology
Software “bots” are configured to complete routine, monotonous tasks that an employee would normally have to do
Holistic Technology
Encompasses a wide range of software technology components including business analytics, workflow engine, and more to optimize business processes for maximum value and efficiency
Automation Focus
Manual Tasks
Minimizing manual, repetitive, and rule-based tasks that do not require complex decision making
End-to-End Process Automation
Re-engineering process flows to eliminate bottlenecks, connect systems, and increase productivity enterprise-wide
Deployment Effort
Low
Non-disruptively works across an organization’s existing processes and applications without requiring coding or extensive training
High
A longer-term effort which could require dedicated technical resources, depending on process complexity and depth of integrations
Business Impact
Quick & Immediate
Returns can be realized quickly and cost-effectively, but implementations may not always address underlying process inefficiencies
Significant & Transformational
Wide gains can be achieved in overall productivity, agility, cost reduction, efficiency, and compliance
Getting Started with Laserfiche is your quick start guide to using the platform with ease.
This guide walks you through the most commonly used features to help you easily master the basics
This resource provides a high-level overview of Laserfiche’s interface and platform capabilities, plus bonus tips to make the platform even more intuitive.
In this eBook:
Tour of Laserfiche to get you familiar with the user interface
Quick guide of the most popular features
Tips & tricks to customize the settings for your organization’s needs
Located just north of Detroit, Oakland County, MI, has more than 60 cities, villages and townships with over 1.2 million people living within its borders.
The county’s ongoing commitment to innovation—led by CIO Phil Bertolini, who was inducted to the CIO Hall of Fame in 2017—has resulted in award-winning initiatives such as the G2G Marketplace (an online resource for governments to research, purchase and implement technology solutions and professional services), and Automation Alley, the state’s nonprofit technology and manufacturing business association.
“At the end of the day, my job is about working with a team that provides innovation and collaboration for Oakland County to improve customer service,” Bertolini says.
Oakland County’s IT team recently assessed its document management system, which was becoming time- and cost-intensive to maintain and update in order to keep up with the county’s constant state of digital transformation.
Increasing Information Access and Automating Processes
After evaluating a number of options, the county selected a Laserfiche enterprise content management solution to replace its legacy system. “The Laserfiche team was able to prototype and show us exactly how we would be able to use the software in our organization,” says Kevin Bertram, IT Applications Services Leader. “That was a key factor for us.”
Oakland County is now implementing Laserfiche across departments and business units including the county courts, to provide better access to information and automate key government functions.
“We want to make those processes more efficient, more automatic and better for the public,” says Bill Jobes, Program Manager at Oakland County. “In order to grow, we have to innovate.”
Empowering Employees and Citizens
By using Laserfiche to digitize information and automate processes, Oakland County aims to empower government employees to streamline operations and improve citizen services.
Benefits include:
Reclaimed IT staff time previously spent maintaining and supporting the legacy system
Increased access to information for authorized government employees
Around-the-clock access to public information and services for citizens through online portals
Better reporting and analytics for department leaders, leading to more informed decisions about resource allocation
Enhanced transparency of processes for citizens who want to be kept informed of how their service requests are progressing
“We’re always looking for opportunities to be more effective and really bring that cost for service or cost per unit down,” Bertram says. “Not for a bottom-line profit like in the private sector, but to try to reduce the cost of service to our constituents, and use their tax dollars appropriately and as wisely as possible.”
The North County Transit District manages public transportation operations in the North San Diego County area, including light rail and community rail systems, buses and disability transportation.
“We move approximately 12 million people a year,” says Sonya Finley, Document Control Coordinator. “We’re small in size, but we do a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to transit.”
Maintaining proper access to public records is critical to compliance with regulatory requirements. As a transportation organization, the transit district’s key processes—such as confirming staff members are following standard operating procedures—also ensure the safety of the operation’s millions of passengers.
Moving Away from Shared Drives
In the past, the transit district stored documents on shared drives without a standard organization method, making it difficult for staff to find the right versions for public information requests and new projects. “If you can’t find the documents, you can’t really do business,” Finley says.
To improve staff efficiency, the transit district needed to create a more centralized structure for document management and an organized repository for records retention.
Streamlining Records Retention
Using Laserfiche, the transit district created an organized shared repository for public records as well as department-specific document structures. “If they’re in one centralized place, then my job is a lot easier when it’s time to do a records destruction,” Finley says.
The transit district also used Laserfiche to add in workflows and digital forms to automate processes such as time off requests and new employee onboarding. “The document flows through, and boom, the person gets it. They fill it out and it moves to the next step,” Finley says. “Nothing gets lost on somebody’s desk.”
Benefits include:
Reduced staff time spent finding and retrieving documents for Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests
Quicker submission, review and approvals for contracts, time off requests, staff reports, project approvals and more
A more organized, compliant records retention and destruction process
“When staff comes in the morning, they’re opening Laserfiche; it has become part of our daily routine,” Finley adds. “When we have that approval process, those things get cleared and reviewed in a timelier manner. That ensures that all of our staff and even our contractors are following standard operating procedures, so that we can ensure the safety of our passengers.”
The Arkansas Department of Labor works to ensure workplace safety for more than 3 million citizens each year, overseeing inspections for everything from elevator operations and amusement park rides to child labor, minimum wage and overtime practices.
Structured information access is critical for the departments’ inspectors to review claims quickly and improve workplace safety standards.
Identifying Inefficiencies
“The biggest challenge that we face is making it easy for the people that we service,” says Ken Anderson, Senior Software Analyst for the department. “We want to be able to efficiently serve them and respond to them quickly.”
With claim documents spread across hundreds of filing cabinets, employees previously spent days trying to find the documents they needed during the inspection process. Wage claims could take up to three months to complete.
The department turned to Laserfiche enterprise content management software to reduce the length of inspections by digitizing the wage claim process and provide instant search and retrieval.
Going Digital for Faster Constituent Service
With Laserfiche, the department created an electronic form which enables anyone to submit a wage claim online. The claim is automatically assigned to an investigator for review and stored in the Laserfiche digital repository. Inspectors in the field access Laserfiche on iPads, enabling them to instantly update the claim with new documentation in real-time. Throughout the process, Laserfiche automatically notifies the submitter of the status of their wage claim.
The new process has expedited the department’s public service and produced significant ROI for the use of taxpayer dollars.
Benefits include:
The department can complete wage claims in 36 days instead of 120 days
The department saves $60,000 annually on building and storage space for records
Investigators receive reports from inspectors in field instantly
“Not only is Laserfiche effective within the agency, but it means so much to the person waiting on that check,” Anderson says. “To be able to get it 70 or 90 days sooner is so important to them.”
With over 22,000 students, Linn-Benton Community College is one of the largest community college systems in Oregon.
A growing student population placed increased demands on the college’s Enrollment Services division, which processes around 15,000 applications each year. In order to keep up with the demand, the college needed to expedite transcript review and find an efficient way to inform students about their course options and graduation goals.
Identifying Areas for Efficiency
“Before Laserfiche, it took us about six to eight weeks to complete a transcript evaluation,” says Amy Sikora, Assistant Director of Enrollment Services. “We would get transcripts in from the students, and then they would just sit there unless the student filled out an online request form asking us to evaluate them.
“We had students calling us all the time asking if we received their transcript or if we evaluated their transcript,” Sikora adds. “It was a really clunky process.”
Driving Digital Student Services
The college worked with Laserfiche solution provider CDI to implement a Laserfiche solution for an online transcript evaluation service that:
Allows students to instantly upload transcripts and request an evaluation
Automatically assigns transcripts to a reviewer
Instantly cross-references transcripts with the college’s Banner system
Analyzes and automatically emails enrollment criteria to students with further instructions and outcomes
By applying this process to class petitions, transfer credits, course refunds and more, staff can stay in constant communication with students about their options.
“Students are communicated with every step of the way, which is great because it saves us a ton of phone calls,” says Sikora. “Staff like it because it just does everything for them. It helps in many different ways—for students going into special admissions programs, and even bypassing placement testing can be really beneficial for students.”
Benefits include:
Students can instantly submit and request transcript reviews online and receive personalized instructions on next steps
Average time to review transcripts has been shortened from six weeks to a single week
Staff workloads can be reconfigured in real time based on transcript volume and document types
“The goals were to reduce the time that it takes to evaluate transcripts, keep everybody notified and just have the process flow better,” said Sikora. “Laserfiche solved all those things for us.”
