Laserfiche conducted a global survey in cooperation with the Economist  Intelligence Unit and found that during challenging economic times, it is easy for leadership to justify strict controls. However, leadership teams also need to understand where employees need flexibility to ensure good business decisions and productivity. If you are interested in seeing a copy of the completed survey and white paper, please go to http://www.laserfiche.com/landing/economist.html?from=lfhome.

Laserfiche’s support for SharePoint Server 2010 maximizes the strengths of both systems. SharePoint Server 2010 provides a unified business collaboration platform, while Laserfiche provides document imaging and turnkey transactional content management for core business processes.

Whether you already have SharePoint, already have Laserfiche, or don’t have either Meera Mehta’s words are powerful:

1) Accelerate deployment

2) Simplify workflow design

3) Minimize the need for customization and development

So if your organization finds itself looking for ways to leverage SharePoint in accounts payable, case management, contract management, HR onboarding or other critical business processes, visit our Agile ECM page to learn how Laserfiche can help.

The purpose of our group is to provide and promote best practices to Hampton Roads Laserfiche Users so that we can more efficiently and effectively meet the needs of our customers.
Hampton Roads User Group Mission Statement

User Groups have become the rage with Laserfiche, and thank goodness! What an invaluable resource for learning more about this information technology specialty, keeping up with your network (‘cause there’s never enough time!) and maybe even offering some of your time and talent to provide leadership for your group.

Public and private agencies are hungry for easy to implement initiatives for Laserfiche, easy fixes to everyday problems and practical knowledge and experience about the different Laserfiche applications. You can find these ideas and more in your User Group.

Empower your User Group to share what they know, learn what they want, and provide access to information and resources to meet their needs.

Some of the ways in which the Hampton Roads User Group is empowered include:

• All presentations are provided based on member input and requests. We (the group leaders and our VAR) develop and deliver what the members ask for.
• All members are contributors to the Hampton Roads User Group Website. Members can keep their contact information current, and post or join in the newly established Discussion Board.
• Current leadership welcomes members who are interested in expanding their role to become a group leader. All User Groups require some degree of coordination, communication and overall support.

This approach – empowering the users – has made this group’s experience meaningful and fun for the members, the group leadership and the VAR.

Remember – It’s YOUR User Group!!

While we have ROI white papers for financial services and healthcare, here are some examples of Laserfiche customers thinking creatively to save money, time and resources by running smarter.

Brownsburg, IN: After ten years using Laserfiche, Brownsburg upgraded to a Laserfiche Avante system last year and hasn’t looked back. Although right now the Town’s Boards and Commissions is only using one workflow, the Committee has already produced ROI figures showing that single workflow will pay for their system expansion in just 2 ½ years – although staff expect a faster ROI once they develop additional workflows in more departments. What are some of those workflows? Automating permitting in the Planning and Building department, automating the HR onboarding process and moving court-bound information from the Police Department to the County Prosecutor’s Office, to name just three.

Cambridge Financial: At Cambridge Financial, thanks to capture and processing automation through Laserfiche Quick Fields, staffers can process 35-60 pages a minute, with an error rate of less than 0.5%. Internal accounting reconciliations that used to take up to 14 days are now completed in a single day. The efficiency is so cost-effective, the firm’s IT director says Cambridge has realized its ROI in less than one year after implementing Laserfiche.

D.L. Evans Bank: Using Laserfiche, D.L. Evans was able to reduce audit time, streamline lending and realize a 33% reduction in hard copy document production and an 85% reduction in paper storage.

Elk River Police Department: Laserfiche has helped the ERPD eliminate 251 reams of paper, which was 2.2 tons of paper or 54 adult trees. The Department’s Chief estimates the paper alone cost well over a $1,000 a year, not to mention the storage costs of four shelves required to house all this paper. By his estimates, the ERPD spent over $17,000 a year and needed 3.5 full-time employees just to process and store the paperwork generated by the department’s 24,000 cases each year.

Fertility Centers of Illinois: FCI initially used Laserfiche for EOB management, and then moved to a hybrid EMR approach where they integrated Laserfiche with their EMR for total paperless chart management. Nine of their centers have switched to managing all their patient charts in Laserfiche – which saved $75 in shipping costs per chart.

Hamilton, ON, Police Service: HPS’ Records Supervisor points to $200,000 saved annually, due to downsizing 4 civilian staff in the Records Business Centre, as officers are able to access vital information directly. And redacting documents in Laserfiche saves “a fortune in paper and time,” he adds, helping staff more easily meet file requests from the Courts and outside agencies.

RMS: Using Laserfiche, medical device manufacturer RME has cut their formerly 8-10 week processing time to 72 hours. Laserfiche also accelerates shared business processes across its plants in Minnesota and Tennessee.

Saco, ME: City employees in every department have embraced an ecological and economical paradigm shift in how the city does business and offers services, setting a standard for e-government so high that its regional neighbors are beginning to look into it as well. Saco’s savings so far total over $10,000 a year, but as Laserfiche Administrator Fran Beaulieu points out, “We also look at the value of the system for not departments, but individual value to users. Service to constituents is a big factor.”

Texas A&M University Corpus Christi: TAMU-CC used Laserfiche to develop their Report Upload Bifurcation Engine (R.U.B.E.), which processes continuous BPP/FAMIS report files and splits them into individual ‘reportlets’ before filing them into Laserfiche – which saves 2 reams of paper daily.

Texas A&M University Department of Entomology: Since implementing Laserfiche, the department has removed almost 40 file cabinets, creating enough space for a new office and laboratory. Even better, they expected to receive an initial ROI of $54,000, but actually achieved an ROI of $272,000. (This doesn’t include the over $22,000 they save each month!) All told, in five years, the department estimates they will save nearly $1.4 million from their Laserfiche implementation.

Westminster, CA: Westminster chose Laserfiche as an enterprise solution to replace a previous solution that had only been rolled out in the City Clerk’s Office – and that required all documents to be entirely re-scanned to append additional pages. In their formal needs assessment, the City discovered that Laserfiche would ultimately save the city over $273,000 by freeing up enough office space to create a total of 13 workstations.

Xpyria Investment Advisors: Xpyria is using Laserfiche to automate two formerly paper-intensive processes, and as a result, has saved over $4,000 annually in hard costs and 72 hours of labor.

I’d love to hear how you’re saving money from your Laserfiche system. Please leave a comment and let us know!

But then we were looking at a new program, new processes and new documents for this Housing Affordability Grant program. Applicants send in a signed application with a copy of their federal return, which we must retain. When they are entered in the database designed for this process, a “cover sheet” is printed and placed on top. Since the cover sheet is the same format for all the documents, it was an easy Quick Fields fit. But we didn’t want to have to try to OCR the name and other data into the Laserfiche document template, because it’s already available in the program’s database and user entry or even OCR entry would potentially lead to errors and repairing. 100% accuracy could be achieved only by using the database data. So, we have Quick Fields OCR the parcel number and go get the name and other information from the database based on the parcel number match! So simple and yet, without the right tool, a complex programmatic issue!

More to come very soon about a Virginia Statewide User Group Seminar Dec 1st in Chesterfield, VA. Stay tuned ….

Our schedule was similar to Regional Training, starting with a workshop followed by a number of training sessions. Speaking to a large room of people, explaining the benefits of moving to a digital document management system, we answered questions and allayed fears of many people that were considering purchasing Laserfiche. We provided a lot of information and addressed many of their pressing questions, which dealt primarily with security and records management. Of course, search and retrieval is important, as it can replace the practice of sending four men to the basement in search of a file, only to have them give up after a couple of unsuccessful hours spent searching.

More important than the answers we gave, however, was the simple fact that we traveled there to discuss our system live and in person. Many Western industries are setting up local vendors in western Africa, but very few of them are willing to actually send representatives. Our presence in front of people from Ghana, Nigeria, and Tanzania showed a commitment to the region and made Laserfiche much more than a faceless California corporate entity.

After the initial workshop, the training began, starting with Records Management. I was surprised to see how big an issue this really is out there, but new laws keep coming out to ensure information is retained and managed appropriately. It was such a hot topic, in fact, that we opened the room for additional people to just sit and watch because all of our training machines were taken. After the session, Steve Hackney was approached by a potential customer who was happy that Laserfiche easily met all of his needs.

As the week progressed, we taught courses from our standard offerings, and even condensed some of them in order to pack in more classes to make the most of our time. We were happy to see that everybody in class was able to keep up with the material. English is the official language of Ghana, but the influences of the various tribal languages give it a flair all its own. We had to keep the idioms to a minimum, and we caught ourselves using certain analogies that did not make as much sense out there as they do here. Other big cultural adjustments were to ‘Africa time’—everybody shows up a bit later than the official starting time—and the frequent power outages.

In the evenings we had the chance to soak up some Ghanaian culture through music, food, and conversation. Throughout the whole training, Joseph and his team made sure that we were comfortable and well taken care of. His generosity and hospitality lent much to the success of this event and really showed off the friendliness that West Africa—and Ghana in particular—is known for. Everywhere we went, people with large smiles welcomed us and happily shared their culture with us.

Training will cover electronic records, both scanned documents as well as other electronically stored records (such as databases, Word files, Excel, etc). Retention and destruction requirements and using the retention schedules will all be included as well.

One of our members, Corey Smith, from the Library of Virginia, has provided some information that provides excellent background and will help everyone attending come prepared with specific, pertinent questions.

Corey says:

“As your primary interest is with electronic records that are scanned and in a database, I would like to mention that records follow the same retention period regardless of format. Caveats come into play as retention periods differ and some records may not be the best candidate for a particular format. For example, a record with a 50 yr retention would not be recommended to kept on a CD. The life expectancy of a CD is only 20 yrs. Because of this, anything with a permanent retention or with a long retention would not be recommended for a CD format.

“On our LVA Website, you can access our updated Electronic Records Guidelines that can hopefully provide some additional information for your benefit.

“To give you an idea of what’s considered personal identifying information, under section “C” of 18.2-186.3 in the Code of Virginia, it defines certain types of personal identifying information.”

If you’re in the Central Virginia area, we hope to see you at our User Group meeting!

Our Agenda:

• Welcome/introductions
• Group business & info
• Lightning Talks (Mini-Success Stories) – each person has up to 3 minutes to talk about something cool they learned or did with Laserfiche recently
• Library of Virginia presentation, followed by questions from attendees

For directions to the meeting, visit the Albemarle Website. Of course refreshments will be provided!

In typical fashion, the meeting provided those 3 key elements to the success of everything: food, folks, and fun. But in the midst of all of this frivolity, a lot of information was shared, too.

Debbie Wolff started the meeting out with a discussion on budget-saving/cost-cutting measures which can be realized through business process optimizations. This discussion led to some ideas about ways the group could discuss this topic regularly, including through our established user group Website.

We then moved on to a permitting demonstration by Jonathan Kim, a Presales Engineer with Laserfiche. His Web demonstration consisted of walking us through the process of applying for a permit to install a new water heater, from citizen, to government, and back again, using Laserfiche Workflow to automate the process. What a great advantage it was for both Laserfiche and our User Group to have someone on the west coast do a demonstration for us on the east coast without having to go through airport security!

We wrapped the meeting up with some updates from one of our local value-added resellers, Unity Business Systems, as well as some updates on what was “going on” at Laserfiche by way of Melissa Henley, lead marketing writer at Laserfiche as well as one of our user group’s strongest cheerleaders.

The great attendance and positive response at the meeting, as well as an exciting agenda for our next gathering have all signs pointing towards a bright future.

All aboard!

The actual degree of damage to the historical documents housed in the building is still unknown, with a substantial part of the written records of the city’s history believed to have been destroyed. In fact, recent accounts estimate that 90% of the archive’s records were buried in the collapse and may not be recoverable. The archive’s director estimates that they’ve only digitized a “tiny fraction” of their holdings, which includes the private estate of Nobel Prize-winning author Heinrich Boell.

The historical archive was one of the oldest in Germany, holding 26,000 linear meters of records which included:

• 65,000 charters from 922 AD to the present.
• 104,000 maps and plans.
• 50,000 posters.
• 800 estates, literary remains and other special collections.
• 500,000 photographs of Cologne’s history.

It’s events like these that reiterate the importance of having a contingency plan for your most important records. For instance …

• Do you know what a disaster is? Here’s a hint: it’s not just earthquakes, fires and floods anymore.
• Do you have a plan to handle a disaster? You’d better, because 25% of businesses that close during a disaster won’t reopen.
• Do you know the difference between disaster recovery planning and business continuity planning?
• Do you know how to design and implement a business continuity plan? With only 6% of IT budgets allotted to business continuity, it’s important to know how to do this – and do it effectively.

Our business continuity white paper gives you more information on using document management as a crucial part of developing a business continuity plan for your organization. It’s important to be prepared, because you never know what’s around the corner.

Wouldn’t this be a lot easier with a document management system?

And it isn’t just “ER.” Everytime I watch the detectives on “Cold Case” sorting through boxes of documents pulled from cold storage, or Melinda on “Ghost Whisperer” visiting the dusty, jam-packed city archives, it’s hard not to see what a benefit Laserfiche would be to them.

We’ve already seen how detectives are using Laserfiche to work toward solving cold cases. How city clerks use Laserfiche to provide dust-free access to city records – sometimes even over the Web. And even how emergency rooms use Laserfiche to streamline billing – and recapture lost revenue.

Unfortunately, I think that a character sitting at a computer and retrieving the information they need with two or three clicks doesn’t quite have the dramatic value or ambience of a dark, underground document archive filled with boxes – and a few ghosts, too. (Although I’d venture a guess that most of the city archives out there aren’t dark, damp or filled with ghosts. Maybe just filled with boxes of paper.)

Have you seen any scenarios “in the wild” of TV or movies where Laserfiche would help? Or am I the only one that watches “The Dark Knight,” looks at Harvey Dent’s office, and thinks, “Man, he could really benefit from Laserfiche“?

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.

Bakersfield, CA Bakersfield uses Laserfiche in all 19 of its city departments, as well as to provide documents to citizens over the Web. Thanks to Laserfiche, most public information requests are “D.I.Y.,” so when staff leave or retire, they don’t have to be replaced with new hires. And because the city has integrated Laserfiche with their GIS application, ArcIMS from ESRI, and their ERP application, Sungard Naviline, the savings are even more apparent. “With Laserfiche, you get more bang for the buck than with other imaging systems,” IT Director Bob Trammell says. “And when you make Laserfiche available to all your city departments, not just the City Clerk, that’s when you really begin to realize the benefits.”

BC Biomedical By scanning in the more than 10,000 patient requisitions received daily, BC Biomedical eliminated more than 25 hours a day spent filing original documentation. “The old way of doing things around here was extremely time-consuming and ineffective. Laserfiche has allowed us to multitask across several departments. I cannot stress enough how reliable, fast and easy the system is,” saysBusiness Systems Analyst/Project Manager Chris Fiorucci.

Bloss and Dillard, Inc. Quick Fields automatically creates the repository’s folder structure, files documents in the appropriate folders and sends policies to the appropriate underwriters. Without Quick Fields, staff would have to manually locate each folder after scanning it into Laserfiche. This automation saved 20 minutes per policy, resulting in more than $23,000 in saved labor costs.

Eaton County, MI, Prosecutor’s Office After implementing Laserfiche, the prosecutor’s office withdrew their request for an additional legal secretary, only one month after beginning to scan felony files. Additionally, they saved more than $10,000 in clerical staffing costs, and decreased office supply usage by nearly 35%. “These additional savings are annual, not one-time savings,” Jeffrey L. Sauter, the county’s prosecuting attorney comments. “In fact, I expect my supplies budget to decrease even more next year.”

Elk River, MN, Police Department Chief Jeffrey Beahen and his department saved more than $17,000 just in paper costs while realizing more energy and resources savings than they expected. When combined with budget cuts and man hours spent on other tasks, the savings really add up.

Feenan Financial Group Firm founder Tom Feenan discovered that he was spending $13,000 per year to rent space for file cabinets. Since implementing Laserfiche, they’ve eliminated the file cabinets and used that space as an office for a revenue-producing advisor.

Iredell Memorial Hospital Before Laserfiche, Iredell had to write off $40,000 per month due to lost and misplaced records. Now? They’ve reduced paper usage by 80% and eliminated lost records—and the write-offs that go along with them.

Meg Green & Associates Todd Battaglia, partner with Meg Green & Associates, a firm which manages $600 million in assets, saves $35,000 to $40,000 per year with Laserfiche. In addition, Laserfiche saves the firm an additional $8,000 a year by reducing filing space, so they could turn a former file room into an office for an advisor.

Rehmann Financial For this dually-registered RIA firm with 13 offices in 2 states, Laserfiche has streamlined workflow enterprise-wide, but it’s their compliance department that’s seen the most immediate, discernible benefits. As Operations Manager Amy Flourry explains, “Our compliance staff are now doing audits remotely, whereas before they would have to travel to all the other offices. We’re saving on mileage, hotel costs, time out of the office, meals—a whole laundry list of expenses that we’ve reduced just by using Laserfiche.”

Surrey, BC The city of Surrey Planning and Development Department issues 100 building permits per week, generating anywhere from 60 to 100 records related to each property and a minimum of 6,000 records weekly. By using Laserfiche, the department estimates they’ve reduced search and retrieval costs alone by $30,000 to $50,000 annually.

Wichita, KS Using Laserfiche as the foundation of their Web-based accident reporting system, the city of Wichita saved 50 to 60 staff hours and was able to raise fees by delivering an online service with immediate value. Wichita now charges $16 for each report, and charges to insurance companies have also increased from $2 to $16 per report.

Xpyria Investment Advisors Xpyria, an investment advisory firm that works with high-net-worth individuals, didn’t just save money by using Laserfiche to eliminate off-site storage. “We always figured we’d have to hire more people to create the efficiency we needed,” President and CEO Joseph Salpietro remembers. “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.”

Have you realized tremendous savings from your Laserfiche system? Let us know! We’re always interested in hearing from the Laserfiche community. If you’d like to share your story, I encourage you to comment on this post or e-mail me at melissa.henley@laserfiche.com.

Remember: the savings are out there.

Repositories and licenses cost money. So does scanning. How can we best use our existing resources?

Change your repository settings!

Changing your repository options, specifically the ‘logout automatically’ option, will prevent your users from becoming license hogs. That person who logs in and then leaves for lunch will be logged off automatically, freeing up a license for another user.

In Hampton, we’ve adopted a 1:5 user license ratio for both FX and RX licenses. Due to the fact that licenses are concurrent, we believe that it’s reasonable to expect that any user, particularly retrieve or read-only users, will access Laserfiche, find what they need and then exit the system.

What kind of scanning devices do you have available?

While scanners are “the” option when it comes to high quantity document capture, almost all types of copy machines have scanning capability and can easily scan to e-mail. Ask your IT Department or manufacturer representative to set the image to either tiff or pdf and add all users to the email setting.

Even if all of your office staff are not Laserfiche users, being able to copy/scan to e-mail prevents the proliferation of paper, which could be another significant cost savings for you.

Do all of your users know, understand and use Laserfiche’s e-mail utility?

This again will decrease the proliferation of paper in your office and to your clients or the public.

Are you fully utilizing your LSAP?

Your time is valuable to your employer and we all pay for software support. When you have questions, contact your reseller and employ their assistance with answers and best practices. You don’t have to figure it out on your own.

What’s in Laserfiche?

If Laserfiche has become the new dumping ground (in addition to your network, pc’s, and ancillary devices…) then your data – and your server – could use some basic management.

1. Purge your data; set up your Records Management Edition if you have it – practice good records management!
2. Check your folder structure.
3. Manage your volumes.
4. Use your Column Display wisely.

See Laserfiche’s “Performance Tuning for Laserfiche Systems” (available on the Support Site) for more information.

Please share your efficiencies! We all need insightful tips and tricks to maximize our resources.

Better still, I continue to get a steady stream of new requests from individuals interested in joining in next time, guaranteeing an even bigger affair when we meet again on May 7th at the same location.

I would be remiss if I didn’t take a moment to thank those who made this first event a successful one:

• Debbie Wolff from City of Hampton, who is serving as the co-chair of our group.
• Jan Stringer from International Cooperating Ministries in Hampton, who helped provide the goodies.
• John Lane from Unity Business Systems, our Value Added Reseller, who provided some of our freebies.
• Cameron Waite from the City of Norfolk, who helped with the minutes and note-taking.
• Rosalind Collins from the City of Charlottesville, who lent ideas about our possible group structure and logistics.
• Melissa Henley and Brian Lim from Laserfiche, who provided support and helped create our logo.

These are exciting times for us in Hampton Roads, and we look forward to these meetings as a cost-effective and beneficial way for us to share ideas, talk about best practices, and train each other.

Alex started working with me right out of college. I had only met his mother once.

This put me in a reflective mood. Life is so precarious. A day earlier, Alex told me, his parents, had been happily preparing for a vacation in New Mexico. The next, his mother was gone.

A few years ago, Jeff Huang, our PSG manager, lost his mother when she completely unexpectedly suffered a heart attack. I never really knew either of Alex’s or Jeff’s mothers. But they left their legacy, their human footprint, as I like to call it, in their sons. These women raised such considerate, caring and sensitive young men, they must have truly enjoyed their lives to have such a positive influence on their sons.

In my years as a professional I notice that a lot of us can’t wait to finish one project just to get it done and start on another. We are always looking to the future for what’s next. Hence, a lot of the time, we chase the future and miss the fun of the project itself.

As I try to find the meaning in what has happened, I am reminded of just how much we can’t predict the future. All we have is today.
Enjoy the process, enjoy the journey, enjoy the life.

Me giving my speech to the Conference in Lebanon. I was inspired by the strikingly beautiful setting, the vitality of the people, and the spirit of community.

We’re here at the Laserfiche International Conference in Beirut. We have more than 150 attendees in a very strikingly beautiful setting overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.

Speaking of which, the food here is incredible, especially the fresh seafood. Lebanon is truly a kaleidoscope of cultures and experiences. There are war-damaged buildings in the middle of shiny new modern buildings, all interwoven into a busy cosmopolitan center. We had dinner a couple of nights in really lively Western-style nightclubs, full of sharply dressed young people.

Out for another incredible dinner with our host, Mitri Doumet, and Laserfiche’s Sean Tang

In my speech at the conference here I spoke about how moved I was by the human spirit of the Lebanese people. They are so resilient and tenacious. Over the years, their buildings have been bombed, but they pick up and rebuild and move on. This is their home, this is their community.

It reminded me of how Florida, New Orleans and Texas rebuild and thrive after the hurricanes. Or how Southern California picks up after an earthquake. Because when people are part of a community, they help each other solve problems and succeed. It’s what I’m so proud of about our company, that we have such a strong community of people who use our software to solve problems and help each other.

Byblos, the oldest port in the world, now home to a fleet of small fishing boats. We also visited the Jeita Grotto, but no cameras were allowed there.

Our host, Mitri Doumet, the president of BMB, and his wife Rita took us to their home to meet their six children, who range in age from 4 to 17. They are a very happy and close-knit family.

Mitri and Rita took us to see the Jeita Grotto, which is a true seventh wonder of the world. It is this limestone cave that has been sculpted into an absolutely incredible sight by thousands of years of slow flowing water. We also visited Byblos, which is the oldest port in the world. It doesn’t seem like much of a port by today’s standards; it’s basically a tiny harbor full of little fishing boats now.

We’re going to Dubai tomorrow to visit some our new customers in the municipality of Dubai. We’ll have more pictures and stories soon!

Nien-Ling and Chris Wacker with Martha Rodillas and Debbie Richards, ECS

This is the second year we attended the State of Hawai’i’s Municipal Attorney’s Training Conference in Kona. This year was even more significant because the day we arrived, we found out Laserfiche had been made the standard for the County for document management! It’s good news for us, but I think it really speaks to how the user community has embraced Laserfiche here.

I had chance to catch up with our friends Lincoln Ashida and Martha Rodillas from the County of Hawai’i Office of the Corporation Counsel. They, along with Fatima Hicks, (who was actually back at the office on the other side of the island but there in spirit) have all been very enthusiastic supporters of Laserfiche. In fact, Fatima and Martha both wrote about it earlier this year.

That’s what I love most about Hawai’i: the people. They live and let live. They’re very kind. They’re always very grateful. One thing’s for sure, they feed us very well—lots of delicious homemade Hawaiian food. I can’t remember the names of the dishes exactly; I just kept eating.

Steve Hackney with Martha and the staff of the Office of the Corporation Counsel

I was basically supposed to be at the conference as a participant. Our Steve Hackney was conducting the training. He wrote a really nice post about it here.

In one of the classes I sat next to some attendees from the County of Hawai’i’s Prosecutor’s Office. During one of the breaks we started talking and they shared with me that they were having a hard time figuring out where to start. I suggested that they just do what the Corporation Counsel did. They explained that the Corporation Counsel handled civil cases. The Prosecutor’s Office handles more complicated criminal cases that generate a lot more paperwork because they interact with a lot more people—the police department, various courts, various lawyers. It shows you how much I know about lawyers.

What I was hearing was actually pretty typical of new-users, that trepidation that comes from feeling overwhelmed. It can be paralyzing. I offered a couple of pieces of advice to the Prosecutor’s Office that I’d give to any implementation consultant.

Nien-Ling and Chris with ECS’ Debbie Richards with staff from the Prosecutor’s Office

First, prioritize. Break the implementation down into phases. I told the Prosecutor’s Office, “Right now, don’t get bogged down with how the police department is going to use the system. Maybe you still give them paper for now. Just think about who in your own office is going to use Laserfiche the most. Make their job easier.” That’s really why they got the system in the first place.

Second, you have to be sensitive to the paradigm shift that takes place from the paper world to the digital world. Listen to your new users describe what they’ll need to do, but remember, they’re talking about improving what they already do with paper. You have to anticipate what they will be able to do with all the capabilities of the digital world, because they don’t know yet.

A few weeks later, I received an e-mail from Martha: the Prosecutor’s Office is using Laserfiche to scan all its closed cases to get started. They’ve been talking to the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office in Eaton County, MI, where Jeffrey Sauter and his staff have been happy to share their experience and success. That’s all I can ask for, for that community spirit.

So thank you for reading my first blog. Next, I’ll be traveling to the Laserfiche International Conference and Training in Lebanon and then to Dubai (which is now actually using Laserfiche itself; you can read about it here). I’ll have a lot of pictures and stories to share soon.

Little did I know that my acceptance of the invitation with open arms would be, in turn, reciprocated with a wonderful reception by the conference attendees and hosts. Nien Ling, who also attended the conference, felt the hospitality and the sense of community, commenting that “They really treat us like family.”

The primary goal of the conference is to provide municipal attorneys an opportunity to convene in a relaxed and informative environment. Much of the information comes in the form of sharing knowledge, or as the local Hawaiians say, “talking story.” The conference is well organized, thanks to the hard work of Martha Rodillas, Lincoln Ashida and the entire Corporation Counsel staff. Because it is so well organized, attendees are free to spend time learning and “talking story” without stressing out about logistics.

While here at the conference, I have come to the conclusion that the success of Laserfiche in the county of Hawaii can be attributed to two factors. The first can be best articulated by the people that use it every day: “it is so powerful AND easy to use,” a combination that is notoriously hard to come by in enterprise-level software. The second reason Laserfiche has been so successful in Hawaii can be directly attributed to the sense of community among everyone that I have met. When one person finds something that works, they are compelled to share that knowledge with their neighbors, so the benefit of using Laserfiche has spread to many departments throughout the state. In fact, Laserfiche was recently adopted as the accepted document management software by the county’s standardization committee, which means Laserfiche can be purchased by any government agency without going through the normally tedious procurement process.

Overall, the conference was a great success. Many new connections were made among the attendees, information was shared and, in my case, many new friends were made. Thank you to the gracious hosts of the conference for the invitation and if, in the future, you ever need a Laserfiche representative at your conference please put me at the top of the list!

According to the Wall Street Journal Business Technology blog, a recent Emerson Network Power survey showed that only 31% of the respondents had a business continuity plan to prepare for such disruptions, yet nearly 80% said they had experienced at least one power outage in 2007, and two-thirds said they expected another one to occur within 12 months.

Did you know that you can use Laserfiche as the foundation of your organization’s business continuity plan? Despite the recent floods in the Midwest, law firm Arenson & Zimmerman used Laserfiche to continue working, even though power at their offices would be out for at least four weeks. The weekend after the flooding began, staff set up remote computer connections for all attorneys and support staff so they could work from off-site locations.

Without Laserfiche, staff members would have had to carry large boxes of files down nine flights of stairs while holding flashlights. “Although the stair climbing would have put us all in much better physical shape, Laserfiche has allowed us to spend our time producing billable work,” concluded legal assistant Laurie L. Chappell. “Laserfiche definitely helped keep us going during this difficult time.”

What if your offices lost power for four weeks? Do you know how you could use Laserfiche to keep working? Download our white paper, “How Digital Document Management Streamlines Business Continuity Planning,” to learn more about how you can better prepare for disaster, whether it’s a power outage, an earthquake or a tornado.

Changing to electronic files isn’t a revolutionary idea; many private industries have already made the switch. But our change has been a revolutionary improvement in how we do the People’s business, and is a harbinger of the future for many other prosecutor offices.

I think it’s important to show my colleagues that there’s a better way to do business. So, on our Website, we include information on why we chose Laserfiche, how it works, the benefits and our tips and suggestions for success. There’s a frequently asked questions section that answers questions like “How do you handle discovery?” and “What happens if your computer crashes?” We had such a positive response to that page that we created and posted videos about how we work, so other prosecutors’ offices can see the benefits of Laserfiche first hand.

One of the other things I do is talk about Laserfiche whenever I can. We host on-site visits from other prosecutors’ offices interested in seeing how “paperless” we really are. (Instead of six file cabinets, we now only need a single drawer – and it doesn’t even hold paper. We use it to hold evidence CDs.) The fact that we haven’t lost a single file in over three years is earth-shattering to other prosecutors.

I also present at industry conferences. Last year, I lectured for the National College of District Attorneys (NCDA) and the National District Attorneys Association (NDAA) National Advocacy Center about our paperless file management system. During these presentations, I show screenshots of our Laserfiche repository and explain our various work processes. I also like to show photos of the “before” and “after” in our office. It’s a great way to spread the word that there’s a better way to work than with paper.

I am very excited about Audit Trail. It will not only allow us to track who is doing what in Laserfiche, but also to add the watermarks to the printed and e-mailed documents that we have been needing desperately. As a District Attorney’s office, having the correct information on the document (like when it was printed) can be very helpful when you’re going to produce documents for discovery.

I now have a new goal. That is to learn SQL 2005 Reports so I can actually write reports for the Audit Trail…Always something new to learn.

Suzanne Brean

Linn County District Attorney’s Office

Linn County, Oregon

I recently got a question from Patricia Anglin, a user in St. John, New Brunswick, about our filing structure. In St. John, the city was expanding Laserfiche from their Office of the Common Clerk to their Building Inspections and Finance Department, and Patricia asked for my advice on how best to set up their template fields.

While the province of New Brunswick has a “Municipal Records Authority” to help develop a filing structure, unfortunately, here in Ontario, we don’t have any standards to follow that would help us develop a filing structure. That type of direction would actually be of some assistance to us!

As far as templates and fields in Laserfiche, our Finance Division uses the following fields:

• Document Type (this contains a drop-down menu to select how to fill this field out)
• Year
• Month
• Company/Name
• Subdivision

While this works for us, my best advice is to think about the type of information you are scanning and more importantly, what bits of information would be useful for future searches? These are the fields you want to set up. To take it one step further, whatever fields you choose to create, use as many drop-down menus as you can since this will aid any future searches someone might perform.

For example, if you are setting up a field called “Month”, set up a drop-down list with the 12 months to select from. That way it will be consistent. Otherwise, someone searching for a document who tries to fill in this field to help with this search won’t know if they are to put in “January”, “Jan”, “Jan.”, “01″, etc. If you are filling in information into a field and then want to search for it later, you have to match it keystroke for keystroke, so drop-downs are incredibly helpful to ensure consistency.

Of course, there is more than one way to do a search. But if you’re trying to use the benefit of templates and fields, drop-downs can be a great aid. So just think about how someone might search for this information in the future and you will be the best one to come up with your own naming conventions.

I’m interested if anyone else has advice on how best to set up a filing structure, or what naming conventions they use.

• How many areas in your organization use Laserfiche and in what capacity?
• The article implies that it’s important to set up a logical file structure. Do you feel this is important?
• Has WebLink significantly reduced the number of requests for documents that your staff receives from citizens, because they can get it themselves from the Web?
• At the end of the article, you state that “there are things we should have done differently.” What are these things?
• Finally, is there any other advice you could provide to someone like us, who is just getting started with Laserfiche?

I know these are pretty common questions about Laserfiche, so I thought other users might benefit from hearing how I answered Dale’s questions.

Just about every department within our municipality uses Laserfiche to some degree, mostly for scanning of certain types of records or, in some cases, all incoming correspondence. For example, our clerk’s office scans all by-laws, agreements, council agendas and council minutes. Other departments, like our planning office, scan all incoming correspondence.

It’s important to set up a logical file structure because after a few years of use, when you search for a document that has a certain word or phrase and Laserfiche finds 143 documents that contain that phrase, people get frustrated that they now have to sort through all those hits to find the one they were really looking for. So setting up a file structure that might mirror your paper filing system or setting up various fields that can be filled out when scanning the document will help narrow down those searches so you find what you’re looking for a lot more quickly.

WebLink has been a great addition to Laserfiche. It’s one add-on that really works well for us. I believe it does reduce the number of documents we give out, mainly our council agenda. We used to have several requests here in the office from the public every week before a council meeting from people wanting to pick up a hard copy. Now, we hardly ever give out hard copies.

When we set up our Laserfiche system, the main thing we should have done differently was set up our electronic file structure to mirror our paper filing structure. This brings a certain familiarity about the system to new users. If they know how to find a file in a cabinet, well now they can look through the same cabinet (in this case, folder) within Laserfiche to find a record. There are several ways to find a document, and a simple browse through the folders is just one of them. Another is using the search functions to look for key words and phrases and again, as discussed earlier, using template fields to help narrow search results so it’s simple to find exactly what you’re looking for. These are all things that need to be thought of ahead of time, and this is what was lacking with our system and where I would have taken some extra time in the beginning to really plan what we needed to do.

If you’re just getting started with Laserfiche, having a Laserfiche “Champion” in each department helps quite a bit. In other words, you need to find someone that might be more of a frequent user to get some extra training and really be someone that others can turn to if they are having trouble searching or scanning. This helps promote its use and also gives you someone to watch to make sure documents are properly scanned into their respective folders and not just dumped into the system for someone else to try and find later.

The key strength of the Laserfiche community, as Nien-Ling says, is how we work together to solve common problems. I’d be interested to hear if any of you have advice for new users on how to get their systems off to a strong start.

My current plan is to stand up new hardware as a Laserfiche 8 server. I am not sure that our size warrants a separate server for Weblink and Web Access, but it might. If WebAccess 8 truly is a client replacement I may end up with most of my Client users switching to WebAccess. SQL and file storage on separate boxes, of course.

Having a new LF8 server will allow our migration to occur over a much longer period of time than an in-place upgrade. (I’m not sure if in-place upgrades are even POSSIBLE from 7 to 8.)

This will also allow us to work (with our VAR) on rewriting our custom code and rewriting our Workflows. The new possibilities of Workflow are very exciting, but it will take some work to re-create our old workflows. Of course, this gives us an opportunity to remake them better – faster – stronger! (smarter?)

In the end we should have a nicely tuned and updated Laserfiche 8 implementation.

What are your plans, and what timeline are you thinking about?

We discovered that files can be quickly imported into Laserfiche by making a few simple changes to the user options for handling new documents. When the “Always show Document Metadata dialog” box within the New Document Options window is deselected, the user is not prompted for action each time a document is processed, which saves valuable staff and processing time (path: Tools/Options/New Documents).

After making the appropriate changes to the user options, we simply pulled the PDF files from the main server to the desired Laserfiche location (copy and paste). The files were reselected, OCRed and indexed (process: select all files/choose “Snapshot” from the “Action” menu/click “OK”). Once the OCR and indexing functions were complete, the files were once again selected and the electronic documents removed to reveal fully OCRed and indexed Laserfiche images/TIFs (process: select all files/choose “Delete Electronic Files” from the “Action” menu).

We are currently working on implementing Phase II of Laserfiche within our Litigation Division. This is a very exciting time for our staff! Litigation files can be quite a challenge due to its complex and voluminous size but we have faith that Laserfiche is up for the challenge to make Phase II a success! We are already off to a great start. The Bates Numbering feature is really big for us! At times, a file can have over 1,000 pages that need numbering – the process of using Bates Numbering surely beats hearing that old “Bates” clunker machine 1,000+ times in one day! The use of the redaction tool has also proved beneficial to confidential information that must be kept hidden. If anyone has experience with legal files using Laserfiche, we’d love to hear from you!

Laserfiche has truly helped our department purge many, many boxes of files. In fact, we were able to donate several filing cabinets to a local high school that lost their filing cabinets in a fire.

What’s next for our department? We are working on using Digital Signatures for our documents. We are very excited about this new technology as it will open many new doors for our staff members.

One more exciting event for our office is our 6th Annual Municipal Attorney’s Training Conference to be held at the beautiful Hilton Waikoloa Village. We are fortunate to have Steve Hackney from the Laserfiche Institute conduct training sessions for our users. We are thrilled to have this valuable training brought to our island. Many of our County employees are interested in attending and plan to walk away with some knowledge that will benefit them in their daily work lives using Laserfiche! Welcome to Hawai`i, Steve!

Our office is just as active with our Laserfiche program as the volcanoes are erupting on our island!

Till next time…..aloha & mahalo!

As we celebrate King Kamehameha holiday today, we officially unveiled the release of Laserfiche Weblink for the Clerk-Council Office. It is yet another exciting milestone in our project to implement Laserfiche to 7 departments here in our County . That’s right ; an enterprise plan to roll it out  to 7 key departments in a year and we are almost there !  Wwwhheeewww….. So how did we do it? That will be in my next blog. A lot of credit goes to my IT colleagues who tirelessly worked with me in making this happen.

Now back to Weblink…. Check out our press release about Laserfiche Weblink. This media release was sent to all Big Island newspapers plus the 2 big newspapers based in Honolulu with state wide circulation. It is actually published today in the Hilo newspaper. Talk about coverage…..

Mahalo ( Hawaiian 101… that means ‘Thank You’ ) to Alex Huang for his Weblink customization class in the recent Laserfiche User Conference. I certainly used all that he taught in customizing our Weblink site.

What’s coming up in the horizon for me ? I am hosting a site visit from another Hawaii County whose IT folks have been wanting to meet with us regarding our Laserfiche system… Yeah, well, that’s another blog too….

Every year, we award Laserfiche users with Run Smarter awards in five categories: government, financial services, healthcare, education and commercial. The only requirement to enter is that you’re using Laserfiche to improve efficiency in your organization!

Run Smarter award winners receive a scholarship and three night accommodations at the Laserfiche Institute Conference, which will take place January 12-14, 2009, at the Hilton Los Angeles Airport. We’ll also write an article about them that will be in the Laserfiche UserNews, and, probably best of all, they’ll get a beautiful, one-of-a-kind congratulatory plaque!

So don’t wait, because the entry deadline is July 31, 2008.

To enter, visit www.laserfiche.com/runsmarter. If you have questions, feel free to contact me at melissa.henley@laserfiche.com.