Not all of the Lone Star State is cattle country. There are over 600,000 commercial- and personal-use boats cruising the Texas coastline. For the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s Boat Titling and Registration Division, that means managing an equal number of registration forms and operating permits.
All those documents have been digitized and archived in a Web-accessible Laserfiche system, which, according to IT manager Julia Gilmore, has helped the division conserve both staff and natural resources. “It gives us more expedient access to all our available data,” she says. “It’s great not just for us, but also for other state agencies, such as law enforcement. If they need to check the history of a vessel or captain, they have immediate access.”

It’s all possible thanks to Laserfiche WebLink™. Texas marine patrols, and other authorized users, can instantly access boat registration and licensing information on suspect vessels—whether they’re on the high seas or on terra firma.

Laserfiche has also dramatically improved operational efficiency at the division office, says Gilmore. Registration and licensing files can be up to 50 pages long, and every week, the division receives dozens of requests for such files. Before installing Laserfiche, staff had to manually retrieve, copy and then fax or mail requested files—often to multiple recipients. Now, they instantly call up electronic versions, then e-mail them to requestors.

“Once the documents are in the Laserfiche system, requests are so easy to process, ” Gilmore says. “It saves a lot of time and effort in logistics alone.”

That’s not discounting the positive environmental impact the division has made since installing Laserfiche in 2003. In addition to active documents, the division stores licenses and registration documents dating back ten years, in accordance with Texas law. That translated into piles of paper and microfilm, which have been gradually reduced as more and more of these documents are stored and processed electronically.

Says Gilmore, “We’ve cut down dramatically on the amount of information we provide in hard-copy form, so there has been a big reduction in the amount of paper we use. That’s the primary benefit to our environment that Laserfiche has enabled.”

Of course, the division’s ultimate goal is to provide better public service. And Laserfiche has certainly helped in that department. “Now we can provide assistance right over the phone,” Gilmore says. “When a customer calls, we can get their information right then and there, whereas we once had to pull the information and call them back. That’s the thing I like most about Laserfiche, that it’s so easy to use.”

Posted on Sunday, December 23rd, 2007 at 2:36 pm under Customer Stories, State Government, UserNews. You can comment on this article. trackback from your own site.