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.

So the Petroleum Agency of South Africa (PASA) went on a global sales trip of sorts last year, trying to interest outside oil companies in the country’s natural gas reserves. PASA representatives visited Johannesburg, London, Houston, TX, and Long Beach, CA, and now the agency has plenty of potential investors applying for exploration acreage. The problem, however, was managing all the associated paperwork.

“Before we undertook this project, we had 14 companies interested in exploring natural oil and gas deposits in our country, and now we have 60,” says PASA’s Sithembiso Ngubane. “We have to make sure they all play by the rules.”

Yet at the same time, PASA did not want to discourage interested applicants with burdensome paperwork, so it needed to make its application process as fast as it was thorough.

In each application, performance bonds have to be signed and credit histories also must be documented. Each company permitted to drill must also donate $150,000 for educational programs aimed at educating South Africans in exploration-related sciences.

And any company that’s allowed to sink exploratory wells must provide a plan to clean-up and restore damaged areas, in the event of a disaster. Mineral rights and royalty agreements must also be secured in iron-clad contracts.

There are many documents in each application that, once filled out, need to be instantly accessible to make sure all those agreements are adhered to when the exploration starts, Ngubane says.

From the start, it was clear that an electronic document management system was needed to keep it all straight. Any such system had to have a workflow module capacity with Web-based portal software options and sufficient security features to enable the database to go online without allowing public access. The system that could deliver all that at a reasonable price tag, Ngubane says, was Laserfiche.

It took a year before South Africa’s official record keeping agency, the National Archive and Records Service, would sign off on PASA’s plan to digitize its documents and records.

Ngubane says Laserfiche provided a secure database to manage PASA’s information assets, as well as streamline its processes. “Keeping all the contractual specifics in a friendly and secure electronic database will keep everybody aware of the agreements and commitments made,” he adds. “This way if there is a dispute over agreements, we can quickly pull the pertinent documents out of Laserfiche to settle it.”

With Laserfiche it is also more difficult for missed obligations to go unnoticed by PASA staff. When performance timelines are broken, Laserfiche notifies the system operator accordingly when the applicant’s file is opened, Ngubane says.

The system is still very much a work in progress. A GIS integration module is being developed that will tie spatial information into PASA’s current Laserfiche database. Once this takes place, PASA hopes to offer interested companies the ability to preliminarily explore South Africa’s oil and natural gas prospects online.

An electronic library of geology, hydrology, topography and myriad other data surveys that PASA scanned into Laserfiche will also be tied into the spatial information module, all of which will be made available to qualified prospectors through a secure Web-based portal. That will let tech savvy prospectors know early on if field exploration in South Africa is warranted.

Using Laserfiche, PASA will benefit from a much quicker turnaround time in responding to inquiries, another strong selling point for potential customers. And Laserfiche could eventually help cut millions off the cost of extracting natural oil and gas in South Africa, making the country even more attractive to prospectors—a big return on a comparatively small investment.

Instead of having to keep several copies of all its agreements on hand in each location, the company chose a digital document management solution from Laserfiche. Now, all the company’s information is stored electronically and, thanks to Laserfiche WebLink, is easily accessible to staff on the company¹s intranet.

Systems Engineer Ernie Pinchette says that once staff began using WebLink, they realized how much it would streamline their work processes and help them work more efficiently. They also realized that, with a few customizations, it would be even more effective.

“We wanted our system to be able to do multiple keyword searches, with the specific words highlighted in the documents, as in the standard Laserfiche Client. We also wanted to see the hit list and the individual documents in the same browser window,” Pinchette explains.

Pinchette was concerned that these customizations would involve significant investments of time and money. However, the Laserfiche reseller who installed Reliant’s system pointed out that neither was the case. In fact, these enhancements were included in the latest version of WebLink, which Reliant promptly installed.

Pinchette says that the new version of WebLink has made searching through the company’s 40,000-plus documents easier than ever. “The new version has definitely been a big advantage for us,” he adds.