Few people would be glad to hear that tax collectors have found a way to do their job faster and more efficiently. But for staff at the Fresno County, CA, Tax Assessor’s Office, the streamlined workflow and anytime/anywhere document access made possible by Laserfiche have indeed been something to smile about.

The principal force behind these newly-optimized business processes is Laserfiche Web Access. More than just an Internet-based link to a private document repository, Web Access is a true thin client, offering the same functionality and ease-of-use of the standard Laserfiche Client, through a Microsoft Internet Explorer–based interface. Staff can not only access documents online, but edit existing documents and add new ones to the repository. Because they can do their job anywhere, they can do it faster—and citizens receive their tax assessments much sooner.

“It’s been very helpful to us,” says Timothy Leming, the county’s assistant assessor-recorder. “It removes the constant delays and human error involved in moving boxes of paper from one station to the next, and we’re saving significant time by not searching for paper documents. It’s all right there online to work on, when we need to, where we need to.”

It all started three years ago, when Leming implemented Laserfiche in the Assessor’s Office and began digitizing years’ worth of tax documents stored on microfilm. Following the lead of hundreds of government offices across the country, staff were soon abandoning their filing cabinets, scanning active and archived documents into the Laserfiche repository.

The next step was integrating Laserfiche with a workflow module. With this system, working documents are automatically routed between staff members according to pre-established processes for determining tax rates for property owners. Thanks to Web Access, staff members can now complete their portion of the review process without being tethered to their desks. Using Laserfiche’s annotation tools, staff can even stamp documents electronically when they’re ready to be sent back to the property owner. “There are often annotations and addendums we have to add to these documents, and now we can do this electronically,” says Leming. “It allows us to integrate document viewing and processing with the automated workflow.”

A similar system is planned for the property transfer arm of the Assessor’s Office, which recently installed its own Laserfiche system. That office had been running five months behind on its paperwork before implementing Laserfiche. Now, Leming says, the paperwork cycle takes five days to complete.

“Determining change of ownership is the first step in the reassessment process. When that’s behind schedule, everything else is behind, too, so Laserfiche has been a great success for us in that department,” says Leming.

Tags: Web Access

Posted on Friday, November 23rd, 2007 at 3:10 pm under UserNews. You can comment on this article. trackback from your own site.