IT Systems Analyst Gary Agira

If Gary Agira’s story were a movie, the story would include the Ugandan IT Systems Analyst navigating government bureaucracy, stubborn workers, and perhaps most dramatically, a national registry and warehouse overflowing with 34 million government documents—to bring them all into the digital world. It’d be a charmingly idiosyncratic story, but still a universal one: document management as a metaphor for progress, with Agira’s unwavering belief in the power of technology as he moves a nation and a workforce into the digital age.

But this isn’t a movie, and the real Gary Agira is the IT Systems Analyst for Uganda’s Privatization & Utility Sector Reform Project (PUSRP). The PUSRP is the department of the Ministry of Finance and Planning charged with the epic task of overhauling the way the African nation archives, stores and perhaps most profoundly of all, actually works with records to support the divestiture and reform of 42 public enterprises. It’s all part of an initiative to move Uganda’s economy forward.
Full story »

Charlottesville, VA is consistently voted one of America’s best cities to live, marked as it is by its deep history (birthplace of three U.S. presidents) and its college-town charm (home to the University of Virginia). But when it came to records management, Charlottesville’s paper history held little charm for the city staff left dealing with its outdated and overgrown filing system.

“Life before Laserfiche was full of frustration,” remembers Rosalind Collins, Deputy Commissioner of the Revenue and Laserfiche Administrator for the City of Charlottesville.
Full story »

RB Document Solutions Ltd. (RBDSL) has been named VAR of the Month twice in one year, increasing sales 122%, despite a global financial crisis that hit its market of financial advisers hardest.
Full story »

When Banks Hardwoods, Inc. (BHI) was started in 1985, a single office housed its handful of employees in Elkhart, Indiana. In those days, expansion meant adding a manufacturing facility to kiln dry and plane the premium lumber it supplied to area builders.

Today, Banks Hardwoods has two manufacturing facilities in Michigan, another in Wisconsin, and a sales office in Arkansas employing upwards of 175 people. But as the business grew, says Dana Kennedy, Banks Hardwoods’ Controller, sawdust wasn’t the only wood by-product piling up around the organization.

“All this expansion means a huge amount of paperwork,” she says, “and the need for constant communication between the divisions.” When the company added its third division in Newberry, Michigan and saw a 20% increase in customers as a result, she felt the paper jam.
Full story »

For Mohave County, AZ, the third time was the charm for the county’s Records Manager to successfully implement Laserfiche enterprise-wide.

The dry-witted comedian Steven Wright once joked, “I’m so far ahead of my time, nobody’s there yet.” Mohave County Records Manager Chuck Chlarson can relate. He saw his two predecessors try without much success to implement an enterprise-wide records management system—despite a state mandate to do so—because of a lack of technical support and user buy-in. But as Chlarson has found, in Mohave County, being the third Records Manager is the ticket to success.
Full story »

While this year’s business climate can seem daunting, Dayn Pefferle, President of Campbell, CA-based resellers Peelle Technologies is optimistic. In fact, Pefferle sees the challenge of the current economy as an opportunity. Simply put, the more careful a client is to research a solution, the more likely they are to go with Peelle.

“We expect the condition of the economy to actually fuel our sales for two reasons,” Pefferle begins. “Number one, prospects will be putting extra effort in making sure they make the most responsible product selection. We believe that the more discovery and research is done, the probability of selecting our business becomes greater. Number two, we fully expect to see an increase in businesses seeking our products and services to reduce their costs and streamline their operations.”
Full story »

Running smarter sometimes means pacing yourself.

That’s the lesson from 2008 Run Smarter Award winner Thurston County, WA. Until implementing Laserfiche in 2007, the rustic county, peppered as it is with forests and Puget Sound waters, was beset with what could best be described as information management logjams.

But in less than two years, Thurston County has evolved its use of Laserfiche from a pilot project handling backlog conversion to the backbone of a department-by-department phenomenon. In short, Thurston County has realized the very essence of what it means to Run Smarter.
Full story »

Newspapers are used to working on tight deadlines, but nothing could have prepared 2008 Run Smarter Award winners the Star Tribune for the time-crunch the Minneapolis newspaper faced when it needed to replace its legacy document imaging system—one with no support or upgrade path—with one that could migrate massive databases from shared servers in less than a year. Full story »

“One team, one vision, advancing health.”

That’s BC Biomedical’s motto. And since implementing Laserfiche four years ago to manage its sprawling information network spread out over 47 patient service centers (PSCs), you can add “embracing technology” to its motto. Full story »

Compared to other cities in Nevada, Boulder City is something of an anomaly. Unlike nearby Las Vegas and the rest of Henderson County, BC is relatively quaint, with a population of just 15,000.

“We’re close to Las Vegas, we’re close to the Hoover Dam, but we’re surrounded by 200 miles of land. It’s like a buffer around us,” explains City Clerk Pamella Malmstrom. “Clark County has been one the fastest growing counties in the country. We’ve taken steps to not grow so rapidly.”

But even as modest Boulder City seems buffered from the noisy neon of its neighbors, it still faced the same information management concerns as every other city in the state. Especially since late 2007, when the state legislature passed a resolution mandating that all government agencies in Nevada be able to honor requests for public records within five working days. Full story »

November VAR of the Month Arguz Document Imaging and Storage Services has the distinction of installing Latin America’s very first Rio system, to the Instituto Nacional de Migracion (INAMI), Mexico’s Immigration Department.

Since Arguz became a Laserfiche reseller in 2001, the mark of its success has been servicing enterprise-scale government solutions across Mexico.
Full story »

“Police departments in general create a lot of paperwork and kill a lot of trees,” says Jeffrey Beahen, Chief of Police for Elk River, MN.

But Beahen’s department is saving trees and racking up awards—including one for Excellence in Innovation in Information Technology from the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) just this year.

“Our peers are John Hopkins University, the San Diego Police Department, the Canadian Research Center and the Dutch National Police,” Beahen notes proudly. “And little old Elk River is up on the porch with the big dogs.”

Elk Rapids, home to 24,000 and located on the outskirts of greater Minneapolis, got up on that porch thanks to Beahen’s vision of giving his officers every technological advantage available—with Laserfiche playing a vital role in both that vision and that advantage.

Full story »