With over 300,000 residents, Riverside, CA, is already one of California’s largest cities, and with each new tally on the census taker’s clipboard comes more information for city staff to manage. So it’s only logical that Riverside is expanding its Laserfiche enterprise content management system to keep pace. Thanks to the drive of the city clerk, what began as a means for one department to find information more quickly has now become the technology platform for citywide business process improvements, cost savings and better public service.

Like many eventual Laserfiche users, the City of Riverside found itself awash in paper and inefficiency. The city clerk’s office alone used multiple document management systems, which wasted time and resources and caused frequent needle-haystack incidents when staff looked for documents.

“Our system was organized, but also very cumbersome,” recalls City Clerk Colleen Nicol. “We used a data entry-intensive DOS-based program to index city council minutes and record file locations. An even older system identified file locations by topic, meaning staff had to make subjective judgments on where documents had been indexed.”

The time wasted on inefficient search and indexing snowballed into productivity bottlenecks. “The process of filing council meeting minutes took at least two weeks,” says Nicol, “which would be fine—except the city council holds weekly meetings. Inevitably, there were backlogs, which made locating yet-to-be-indexed documents very time-consuming. Before Laserfiche, we were three months behind in data entry and filing.”

Knowing that perpetuating these problematic processes would be detrimental to public service, in 2001, Riverside reviewed a number of potential solutions. Although the systems’ features were comparable, Laserfiche stood out, she says, due to its simplicity and flexibility. “We chose Laserfiche because it’s very user-friendly, and can handle departments of any size,” she explains. “It’s also very cost-effective, especially compared to competing products.”

Laserfiche’s searching power also stood out—literally. “Highlighted search results were another ‘must-have,’” Nicol adds. “We all take this feature for granted now, but Laserfiche was the only product to offer it at the time. It’s equally beneficial to all departments, saving time and frustration when reviewing large documents.”

Staff eagerly anticipated the Laserfiche installation, which Nicol attributes to their thorough understanding of the system’s benefits. “Support for Laserfiche was widespread,” she recalls. “IT, the city manager’s office and department representatives all took part in the selection process. Explaining the benefits to them in advance helped foster support and secure funding when we were ready for purchase and installation.”

Although it’s been many years since Riverside installed Laserfiche, Nicol still has fond memories of the implementation process. “Staff were eager to learn,” she says, “and the technical support we received from Laserfiche made the launch easy. We even had a visit from Laserfiche founder and CEO Nien-Ling Wacker.”

The pleasant installation experience was a harbinger of things to come. Staff began realizing the promised benefits quickly, starting with the bane of many a city clerk’s existence: the aforementioned city council agenda. The Agenda Manager module has completely transformed the agenda compilation and publishing processes. Rather than assembling and hand-delivering bulky paper copies of agenda items, staff members from various departments now submit council reports and attachments online. This has eliminated the routing of draft reports, as well as the confusion that can result from having multiple copies of the same document.

Publishing the agenda is equally smooth. Rather than making multiple paper copies, Nicol simply publishes the agenda online. This saves natural resources, and in the event that someone requests a paper copy, staff can easily submit the agenda for printing electronically instead of calling on their xerography skills. Nicol reports that publishing the weekly agenda using Agenda Manager has eliminated the need to perform quality control on agenda items, number pages by hand and deliver hard-copy agendas to the print shop. On agenda publishing days, all these tasks involved up to eight staff members—but now, one deputy city clerk can easily do it all.

A streamlined agenda process isn’t the only improvement in the clerk’s office. Prior to implementing Laserfiche, staff handled all research requests from other city departments and the public by mail, telephone or in person at city hall. Now, city departments—and thanks to WebLink, the public—can search city council history online, so they can do their own research immediately. Due in part to her efforts with Laserfiche, the International Institute of Municipal Clerks awarded Nicol the designation of Master Municipal Clerk in 2002.

Fueled by Nicol’s enthusiasm, Laserfiche devotion has percolated throughout the city, all the way to Steve Reneker, Riverside’s CIO. As Nicol recalls, Reneker didn’t initially believe that Laserfiche could deliver on his vision of citywide improvements. “At first, he wasn’t convinced that Laserfiche was an enterprise solution,” she says. “However, after looking into Laserfiche’s capabilities and potential for integration, he’s now embraced it as a city-standard solution and is working to take it enterprise-wide.”

In fact, Reneker has become such a champion of Laserfiche that he took the podium as the keynote speaker at the 2008 Laserfiche Institute Conference. “Laserfiche has helped us maximize the value of our other technology investments,” Reneker said this past January. “By improving information access, we deliver better public service citywide.”

Superior service and increased efficiency are alive and well in multiple city departments, including the police department, which securely stores audio and video files and case-related documents in Laserfiche. And by implementing Laserfiche in the finance department, Riverside has dramatically streamlined payment processing. But the city’s really looking forward to implementing Rio, the first packaged enterprise content management system from Laserfiche.

“With Rio, and with all our planned integrations, we’ll expand our Laserfiche user population two- or threefold,” Nicol says. Laserfiche’s industry-best Microsoft SharePoint integration will automate workflow and accelerate business processes. The finance department will integrate Laserfiche with its primary software to add functionality and simplify everyday tasks. And integration with the city’s GIS software will enable city staff and the public to access information related to land parcels online.

Having witnessed the benefits that technology can bring to city government firsthand, Nicol hopes to encourage other cities to achieve the same results. And what better way to inspire her peers than to serve as the vice president of the International Institute of Municipal Clerks? She’s on the ballot for the upcoming election, and, given her ability to move the City of Riverside forward, it’s easy to imagine her guiding other municipalities towards greater efficiency and improved public service.

In the meantime, however, this Laserfiche Luminary and her colleagues throughout the City of Riverside are content enjoying the benefits of their Laserfiche system. “Laserfiche has helped us improve our business processes, reduce staff frustration and provide better public service,” she says. “It’s an excellent product.”

Tags: Enterprise, local government

Posted on Wednesday, July 9th, 2008 at 10:50 am under Government Newsletter, State & Local Government. You can comment on this article. trackback from your own site.