Iberdrola Renewables is one of North America’s leading providers of structured energy solutions for wholesale and large commercial and industrial customers. With over 9,300 megawatts of renewable energy in operation globally - and more than 2,800 megawatts of that being wind power located in the U.S. - the Portland, OR-based company is currently the world’s leading provider of wind power. Last year, Iberdrola Renewables created 15,000 jobs worldwide, while investing $2.2 billion in wind power in the US alone – up from $1.54 billion in 2007 – to become the second largest provider of wind power in the US since entering the market in 2006.

But the rapid growth of its renewable energy division in the last few years led to challenges managing its documents and records. “With each new energy project, we were increasing the number of relationships with private land owners, commercial suppliers, and government agencies,” explains Sean Malowney, a Senior Business Systems Analyst at the company. “This translated into a growing volume of invoices and contracts.”

Malowney led the company’s search for a robust but equally secure document and records management solution, one that would fulfill—indeed, reconcile—the company’s need for central, secured control over its records and documents, but still allow staff and administrators the local flexibility to be able to manage, automate and use them in their processes. The system would have to scan and store information according to the specific retention schedules and regulatory requirements endemic to an energy company. But to be used efficiently, it would also have to align with existing with line-of-business applications to complement how staff were already working. Malowney made a list of system requirements: work seamlessly with terminal services, offer Web-based client access, allow for writing custom workflow activities, accommodate an extensible SQL database and integrate with Microsoft® Windows® Active Directory security.

Malowney and his team chose Laserfiche Records Management Edition (RME) for its transparent, DoD 5015.2-certified records management platform, as well as Laserfiche Workflow for its .NET 3.0 framework, one that would enable seamless integration with the company’s existing line-of-business applications. “The DoD 5015.2 certification really underscored the records management credentials of the product,” says Malowney. “We felt confident that we would not encounter limitations in the software after implementation.” Plus, he adds, “Laserfiche not only satisfied our requirements, but was priced at a significant discount to the other solutions we looked at.”

Implementation capitalized on the automated capture capabilities of the Laserfiche Quick Fields module for scanning invoices. “Our deployment strategy has been to convert the most structured departments, like Accounts Payable, first, going for quick wins with extremely high ROI,” Malowney explains. Now, when new invoices enter the system, e-mail notifications are automatically sent to the responsible parties for review. These notifications contain a summary of the metadata and a link back to the document via the Laserfiche Web Access module for approval.

Likewise, automating the life cycle of contracts is now both more transparent and secure. “We’re not limited to filing legal documents just alphabetically anymore,” Malowney explains. “We can use dozens of metadata fields, which allows grouping by counterparty, contract type, effective date, status, and so on, depending on who and how the information needs to be retrieved and used.” Standard SQL server reporting generates a monthly “contracts calendar” highlighting agreements that are about to expire. Additionally, Laserfiche’s integration with Active Directory enables the company’s helpdesk to make consistent—and precise—security decisions using the same tools that manage the rest of the organization.

“We seem to come up with new and clever uses for the software all the time,” says Malowney. “Now we have five departments managing records in Laserfiche, and this has made information much more accessible within the organization.”

Now Malowney is in the process of automating Iberdrola Renewables’ records management using Laserfiche RME’s full capabilities, with plans to bring the company’s audited systems into Laserfiche for regulatory compliance by year’s end. As the company’s website puts it, “Structure yields flexibility,” and Laserfiche RME has given Iberdrola Renewables a powerful balance of both.

Author Info

Laserfiche
Staff

Hobey Echlin is a Writer/Researcher in the Laserfiche Marketing department and is active in the Laserfiche Luminaries program.

Tags: contract management, energy, records management

Posted on Friday, May 15th, 2009 at 10:13 am under Customer Stories, Energy, Other Industries. You can comment on this post.