“Expanding When Others Are Contracting,” you may remember, was a strategy Laserfiche CEO Nien-Ling Wacker outlined last December of “Hiring the Best People, Going Back to Existing Customers and Sharpening Your Message.”

eDocsAlaska founder Pam Barnes did just that. She hired additional staff, including a full-time technical staff member and an office manager. “It was definitely a leap of faith, but I took it,” she says. “But that growth helped me respond to my market, and positioned me for upcoming opportunities.” To sharpen her message, she adds, she attended Laserfiche Advanced Sales training and sent her team to technical trainings as well.

With time to dig deeper into the needs of her existing customers, she was able to land her first Rio upgrade, expanding the Laserfiche system used by the Anchorage-based South Central Foundation (SCF), which manages and administers a kaleidoscope of programs, research, grants and health services dedicated to the wellness of Alaska’s indigenous peoples, enterprise-wide.

SCF purchased Laserfiche in 2006 as a pilot for two departments; other departments and divisions became interested over time. By 2008, she says, Workflow made sense. “A huge pain point within SCF’s business was its contracts approval process,” Barnes begins. “The complete review process spanned 17 potential approvers, but they couldn’t track documents within the process across their huge campus, resulting in delays. [That approval process] touches every different department—including HR, Compliance and Legal—and managers trying to get contracts approved in a timely manner were all feeling the pain.”

Working with Laserfiche Presales Engineer Jonathan Kim, Barnes analyzed SCF’s contracts approval process and the types of documentation it involved, and developed and presented a customized Workflow solution. “My rule is to demo Laserfiche always using the client’s documents—never a general presentation—because in gathering the appropriate documents, I learn exactly what they really need to see,” Barnes says. The targeted demonstration clearly illustrated how the process would benefit from automation within Laserfiche, winning the support of administrators and users alike. “Momentum was building,” she says. But, as she’d soon learn, there’s a difference between “building” and “built”—about 18 months, in fact.

“I did four demos over a year-and-a-half period. It felt more like ten,” Barnes laughs. “I’d get a call from the person spearheading the initiative, and he’d say, ‘You’ll never believe this, but the team wants to see it again.’ But in that process of reproving Workflow over and over, the customer came to a real understanding of the product and a real belief and comfort with what it could do.”

The upside of such an exhaustive sale cycle was that it created excitement about Laserfiche to other departments—and a demand for an enterprise-wide Rio system. “I originally quoted [the upgrade] as just a couple more databases, Workflow and some more users. But then other departments started seeing the potential for the software and the idea sort of built its own momentum—this whole enterprise-wide global capability. Really, Rio sold itself, because it wasn’t much more than what I’d originally proposed once these other departments became interested,” she says. “Now with the ability to have multiple workflows, and the multiple servers to set up test environments, Rio just makes sense.”

Especially to SCF’s IT Department. “When they realized they could get the SDK [formerly Toolkit] and build their own applications,” she says, “that was key to them being able to take this and run.”

In retrospect, Barnes credits the Rio sale to a combination of her expertise and having the patience to allow SCF to grow into the need for a larger system. “I don’t think I could have placed Laserfiche into 15 departments as an initial sale there,” she admits. “Some companies are a slow ship to turn. But once I bring it in and it succeeds brilliantly, that small initial implementation expands into a whole new crop of opportunities in five years.”

As Workflow broadens the Laserfiche footprint in SCF, she says the crop’s growing that much faster. “Right now, we’re dealing with the immediate need—the contract workflow we quoted as part of the purchase, and implementation in five different departments,” Barnes says. “But already we’re seeing this momentum with other departments and groups managing programs for bettering native health that want the system, so we’re excited about the potential ahead!” And with new technical staff, constant contact with her customers and her sharpened skills—patience chief amongst them—Barnes and eDocsAlaska are ready for the potential ahead as well.

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Laserfiche
Staff

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

Posted on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 10:47 am under VAR of the Month. You can comment on this post.