April VAR of the Month: SMARTfiles
The SMARTfiles customer base features a range of educational institutions, including a number of colleges and universities in their home state of Texas.
April 2nd, 2008 Comment on this article
SMARTfiles became a Laserfiche® VAR in 2003 and qualified for the Winners Circle for the first time in 2006—which turned out to be a sign of bigger things to come. Since then, the firm has become the leading Laserfiche VAR in the education sector, with multiple enterprise installations to its credit.
“Focusing on education has given us a strong feel for those organizations’ pain points, which has enabled us to develop Laserfiche-based solutions that lead to significant business process improvements,” says the firm’s Tom Bienski. “We’ve established excellent partnerships with our current customers, which leads to good word-of-mouth. In some cases, our prospects are pre-sold on Laserfiche before we even walk through the door.”
The SMARTfiles customer base features a range of educational institutions, including a number of colleges and universities in their home state of Texas. SMARTfiles’ goal is to provide these organizations with a comprehensive document management solution that simplifies compliance with the many rules, regulations and standard procedures affecting educational institutions. “We walk our clients through the entire process, from planning to final implementation—while allowing them to take full ownership of the solution,” Bienski says. “Our implementations are based on strategic document management plans that address pre-implementation, installation, training and future growth. We also place heavy emphasis on helping customers develop internal operating procedures related to data ownership and custodianship.”
SMARTfiles’ recent implementations include several enterprise-wide solutions featuring both client-server and Web-based Laserfiche products. “Each of these installations has been interesting and exciting,” Bienski says. “One recent installation stands out. Using Quick Fields™ and Workflow™, we helped a large institution simplify its hiring process. Job applications are now scanned into Laserfiche and then automatically routed to the correct person. This has streamlined the document flow immensely, and improved their entire hiring process.”
Looking ahead, SMARTfiles will continue to concentrate on educational institutions and will continue to develop strong business partnerships with their clients. As part of that relationship, they’re committed to being as knowledgeable as possible about the ever-changing rules and regulations affecting educational institutions and how they protect and manage information.
Based in Bryan, TX, SMARTfiles operates mainly in the Southwest. The core members of SMARTfiles—Tom and Vicki Bienski, Chuck Beard, Henry Marshall and Bryan Gauthier—have extensive experience in the document imaging industry. Over the years, they’ve also gained experience in education by serving on local school boards and becoming involved in parent-teacher organizations.