One of the reasons Scot Fraser and the IKON Office Solutions team chose to focus on implementing digital document management solutions in British Columbia’s school districts was out of loyalty to the teachers who helped them succeed.

“I lived in the Kootenay-Columbia area from grade six until high school,” says Fraser, now Enterprise Solutions Manager at IKON. “I attended five schools in the area. The teachers and the school system were great. My most influential teacher was my grade seven teacher, Mr. Truant. I owe him a lot. I wish I could see him again and thank him for helping me immensely through a difficult year where I attended three different schools.”

This devotion to supporting educators led IKON to help school districts throughout British Columbia digitize their paper records and speed their workflows. School District No. 20 (SD20), located in the interior of British Columbia, Canada, serves a number of communities throughout the province. Thanks to IKON, it’s also discovered the benefits of Laserfiche.

When SD20 began looking for a digital document management solution, it was to maximize their extremely limited storage space. “Our biggest concern was too much paper,” says Greg Luterbach, Director of HR and IT for SD20. “The volume of paper was consuming more space than we had. It was very time-consuming to track things down, which made it difficult to respond to requests in a timely manner because we couldn’t access information quickly.”

The school district had identified three departments where the Laserfiche solution would provide nearly immediate benefits: the accounts payable department, the human resources department and Board operations. In the accounts payable department, lack of physical storage space was a concern, as was access to previous invoices for issues like warranty coverage. The storage and access to personnel files for both active and inactive employees was cumbersome. Payroll clerks needed to retrieve files from off-site storage on a regular basis, but due to the time and effort required to actually locate the file, this task became low-priority. In addition, there was an identified need to be able to search through Board agendas and minutes for previous data and decisions.

Laserfiche serves as a centralized repository for both hard copy and electronic documents, enabling space savings, a faster retrieval time and the ability to share files electronically among district employees. Christine Barrett, Solutions Consultant at IKON, believes that preparation and planning were key to the implementation’s success. “By doing the work up front, the implementation plan was fairly straightforward and we were able to meet the project’s objectives and timeframe,” she says. “Most people don’t realize that the time you spend planning and preparing in the beginning is the key to a smooth and stress-free implementation.”

Luterbach agrees with Barrett’s assessment. “The implementation went very well,” he remembers. “IKON did the backfile scanning for our HR records, while we just scanned day-forward records in the payroll and Board operations. Staff had some initial concerns regarding the time it took to digitize and profile documents in the system, but it didn’t take long for people to realize the benefits of accessing information from their desks.

“There was a nearly instant payback,” he continues. “I’d say it only took weeks for us to see a difference.”

In the human resources department, SD20 leveraged key Laserfiche features to minimize manual indexing of active employee files. With a simple data extract, the IKON implementation team pulled a list of key index fields like employee names and identification numbers from the school district software, which were used to create cover sheets with all the index fields SD20 required for employee file retrieval. The implementation team scanned the files with the matching cover sheets, which electronically pulled the files into the Laserfiche repository. Quick Fields™ and Zone OCR automatically indexed and stored the files, minimizing the time and effort required for digital archival.

Now, instead of having to get files from off-site storage or attempt to answer queries from memory, staff simply open a digital copy of the paperwork they need right on their desktop computers. “The best thing is that we’re much more confident in our answers to questions,” Luterbach says. “We can answer most questions while people are waiting, saving the time it would have taken to locate the information and then call them back. Now, we base our answers on facts. We just open up Laserfiche, click Search, find the document and answer the question. Our efficiency is up, and our confidence is, too.”

Staff has embraced the new system. “We really feel like we’re more efficient, more effective and more confident,” Luterbach says. “We have reliable access to information right from our desks, and that’s what we needed.”

Luterbach believes school districts of all sizes can benefit from a Laserfiche solution. “We’ve found our document management system to be highly effective,” he says. “We’ve been very happy as far as technology goes—the system has been rock-solid, and we’ve had good support from both IKON and Laserfiche in regards to any of our minor issues. The most important thing for school districts is instant access to information—and everyone benefits from that.”

When it comes to information access, Luterbach believes SD20’s Laserfiche system has been an overwhelmingly positive addition to the district office. “Laserfiche empowers people with click-convenient access to the information they need,” he says. “We’re really happy with it.”

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Melissa Bender Henley is the lead writer for the Laserfiche marketing department. She is also the editor of the Global Financial Post.

Tags: Canada, Education, Local Government

Posted on Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 at 10:49 am under Customer Stories, State and Local Government. You can comment on this post.