Author Archive: Melissa Henley
About the Author
Laserfiche
Staff
Melissa Bender Henley is the lead writer for the Laserfiche marketing department. She is also the editor of the Global Financial Post.
March 25th, 2009
The Challenge
The Eastleigh Council Revenue and Benefits Department faced a considerable challenge: increasing operational efficiency while transitioning from their rapidly-declining Document and Image Processing System (DIPS). Their current DIPS was slowing down information access and hampering staff productivity, due to an aging, ineffective query function. Whatever system the department chose, however, had to eventually integrate with the council’s planned enterprise-wide customer relationship management (CRM) system.
Lesley Cox, Local Taxation Manager, knew that the revenue and benefits department was working with a limited budget and had to procure the best-quality system available. By implementing a Laserfiche® digital document management solution, she was able to centralise the department’s records in a single repository, saving her staff time and aggravation while simplifying future integration with the council-wide CRM system.
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Tags: international, Local Government, UK
Posted in Customer Stories, Municipal Government, State and Local Government | Be the first to comment »
March 16th, 2009
“We were an early adopter of many technologies, but not document management,” admits Alan Levitz, President and CEO of GCG Financial, Inc. “It was hard for me to envision it working effectively, because I was concerned about flexibility and searchability.”
Levitz’s father, Robert, founded GCG Financial, then called the Greater Chicago Group, Inc. in 1975. Alan joined in 1983, and his brothers David and Rick soon followed. Alan’s now president and CEO; David and Rick are both executive vice presidents. But GCG is hardly a small family operation—the firm manages 83 producers who sell insurance, investment and benefits, most of them split between Bannockburn, and Oakbrook IL, and Denver, CO. “As our offices don’t share the same physical location, it was important to standardize the services we provide to both groups,” says Levitz.
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Tags: compliance, financial advisors, Financial Services, integration
Posted in Customer Stories, Financial Newsletter, Financial Services, Newsletters, RIAs | Be the first to comment »
March 12th, 2009
One of the things we get asked a lot is “How much money can I really save with Laserfiche?” We have two great white papers that show the possibilities – one for financial services and one for healthcare - but, as usual, our customers’ success stories speak for themselves.
We have so many customers out there who use Laserfiche in innovative and creative ways to make their budgets stretch as far as possible. Here are some examples.
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Tags: financial advisors, Financial Services, integration, Local Government, medical billing, ROI, savings
Posted in Blogs, Laserfiche Staff | 3 Comments »
February 24th, 2009
Many financial advisors consider technology an expense, no matter how necessary. Joseph Salpietro of Xpyria Investment Advisors felt the same way, until he came to a crucial realization.
“We always figured we’d have to hire more people to create the efficiency we needed,” he says. “We’d talked about needing two or three administrators over the next five or so years at a cost of, say, $30,000-40,000 each. And when we found out that we didn’t have to hire those people to help us with the paper chase—well, that’s a smart business decision.”
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Tags: compliance, financial advisors, integration, ROI
Posted in Customer Stories, Financial Newsletter, Financial Services, Newsletters, RIAs | Be the first to comment »
February 20th, 2009
With the strict oversight of the Financial Services Authority (FSA), independent financial advisers in the UK require a robust platform for tracking and managing paper records. Rigorous audits and record-retention rules, along with numerous work-process documents, leave independent financial advisors drowning in a sea of paper.
Regal Independent Financial Services Director Neil James and his co-directors were fighting a losing battle against rapidly-filling file cabinets and spiraling storage costs, all the while facing the strict compliance and retention pressures of operating in a highly-regulated environment. With files of up to 250 pages, easy searching was a priority, and physical storage space was at a premium.
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Tags: compliance, financial advisors, Financial Services, ROI, UK, WebLink
Posted in Customer Stories, Financial Services | 2 Comments »
February 3rd, 2009
In Bakersfield, CA, a town known for its agriculture, manufacturing and petroleum extraction and refining is now known for something different: its innovative technology.
As the fastest-growing city in the United States with a population of over 250,000, Bakersfield was experiencing an explosion of records. “We wanted a document management system to store public documents in a secure, easily searchable manner,” says IT Director Bob Trammell. “We chose Laserfiche because of its pricing and how easy it was to search for and retrieve documents.”
“I had already installed Laserfiche in a city where I was previously employed, so I was very familiar with it,” Trammell adds. “That was eleven years ago, and today all 19 departments in the city, as well as thousands of citizens, use Laserfiche.”
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Tags: GIS, integration, State and Local Government, WebLink
Posted in Customer Stories, Government Newsletter, Municipal Government, Newsletters, State and Local Government | 3 Comments »
November 20th, 2008
As one of the fastest growing counties in the nation, Collin County, TX, faced the challenge of managing an increasingly-large number of records generated by a growing population.
According to Records Manager Margaret Anderson, staff in the county’s courts had difficulty finding information, due to disparate systems implemented by each department. “We also had over 15,000 reels of microfilm and 18,450 boxes of paper stored throughout the county,” she says. “Files were everywhere and we couldn’t keep up with the demand. We had to ensure that staff did not unintentionally destroy records that needed to be retained, and we wanted to implement a case management system (CMS). But we also had to manage all the paper.
“Our first step was to select and implement a new case management system for the county court system,” Anderson continues. “The records management system (RMS) we chose needed to interface with this system and provide records management control for closed and disposed case files, as well as support documents.”
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Tags: business continuity, courts, integration, Local Government, records management, RME
Posted in County Government, Courts, Customer Stories, Justice Systems, State and Local Government | Be the first to comment »
November 18th, 2008
When it comes to their firm’s infrastructure, many financial advisors rely on the same paper files they’ve been using since they joined the industry. For some advisors, letting go of their paper is an unfathomable hurdle.
But other advisors—and their firms—recognize the benefits of document management. From immediately eliminating clutter to long-term benefits such as saving time, space and money, the return on investment with document management is quite impressive.
Stage 2 Planning Partners is one of those innovative firms achieving their goals thanks to document management. Founded by Principal Josh Patrick in 1997, the firm offers wealth management services for owners of closely held businesses, individuals and groups, focusing on a variety of strategic and financial issues.
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Tags: compliance, financial advisors, financial planning, Financial Services
Posted in Customer Stories, Financial Newsletter, Financial Services, Newsletters, RIAs | 5 Comments »
November 7th, 2008
Located at the southern shores of Chautauqua Lake, Jamestown, NY, is the largest city in picturesque Chautauqua County. The Jamestown Public Schools serve approximately 5,000 students from pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade at six neighborhood elementary schools, three middle schools and one comprehensive high school.
In 2003, the Jamestown City School District’s human resources department began investigating document management as a possible solution to managing an ever increasing amount of paper. The department’s six employees were responsible for managing personnel records, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, employment applications and reports regarding civil rights, unemployment and workers’ compensation, as well as all files relating to negotiations, arbitrations, grievances and meeting minutes of the district’s seven unions. Full story »
Tags: Agenda Manager, compliance, disaster recovery, Education, Plus, WebLink
Posted in Customer Stories, Education, School Districts | Be the first to comment »
October 28th, 2008
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.
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Tags: Canada, Education, Local Government
Posted in Customer Stories, State and Local Government | Be the first to comment »
October 21st, 2008
For financial advisors at Bond and Devick Financial Network, over twenty years of industry experience had given them a heightened awareness of the problems of a paper-based filing system. File cabinets took up almost 50 square feet of office space, and staff wasted time and money making multiple copies of the same document so advisors could have simultaneous access to information.
“We were dealing with an enormous amount of paper,” remembers Teresa Devick. “And the paper files concerned us greatly, mainly because if our office were ever damaged, our information would be completely unrecoverable.”
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Tags: compliance, disaster recovery, financial advisors, Financial Services
Posted in Customer Stories, Financial Newsletter, Financial Services, RIAs | 1 Comment »
October 7th, 2008
Nestled along the Sheep River Valley in the heart of the Alberta Foothills, the town of Okotoks, AB, is the second-fastest growing community in Canada, with a 46 percent growth rate since 2001.
According to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Okotoks “can fairly call itself the greenest community in Canada, maybe the world,” as it is one of the first municipalities to establish growth targets balancing infrastructure development and environmental conservation. And true to its motto of “Historic Past, Sustainable Future,” Okotoks has received national and international recognition for its environmental initiatives, so it’s no surprise they turned to Laserfiche to reduce paper consumption. Full story »
Tags: Canada, green, Local Government, records management
Posted in Customer Stories, Government Newsletter, Municipal Government, State and Local Government | 1 Comment »
September 15th, 2008

Principal Mark Berger
Advisors at Berger Financial Group, Inc., (BFG) have always taken pride in providing sound advice and stellar client service, but when it came to their filing system, they knew that improvement was crucial.
“We had file cabinets that were using up valuable space,” says Principal Mark Berger, “not to mention the substantial administrative time required to keep each physical file up-to-date. We knew we needed to improve our filing to improve our efficiency.”
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Tags: Financial Services, Quick Fields
Posted in Financial Newsletter, Financial Services, RIAs | 3 Comments »