Although the doctors’ attention is devoted to delivering excellent patient care, they recognize that if the medical group’s finances aren’t in order, their ability to continue serving patients is compromised. Therefore, they’ve charged their business office with employing the best people, processes and technology to optimize the revenue cycle and ensure the profitability of the practice.

Recession Brings Reimbursement Challenges

“The tough economy and changing California regulations have made it more and more difficult to collect payment in a timely manner,” explains Sue Kruger, Office Manager at Tri City. “Medicare and Medi-Cal pay only a fraction of the fee for emergency services, people who’ve lost their jobs and their health insurance oftentimes can’t pay for their care and private payers sometimes drag their heels.”

She notes that the group’s physicians treat an average of 6,000-7,000 patients a month. In terms of Tri City’s revenue:

• 27% comes from Medicare patients.
• 17-18% comes from Medi-Cal.
• A little over half comes from private insurers and self-pay accounts.

“Our employees have to work much harder to collect the same percentage of payment they did three or four years ago,” says Kruger. “If we didn’t have a paperless system, we’d absolutely have had to hire more staff.”

Integrating Content Management with Practice Management

After transitioning to a new practice management system—CPU’s MED/FM—in 2003, Tri City began thinking about how to get even more value out of that system. When CPU introduced an integration with Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM), Tri City jumped on board.

“Handling paper was a big expense that slowed our staff down,” says Kruger. “Our doctors recognized that purchasing Laserfiche would pay off in terms of staff productivity.”

J.R. Juiliano, Tri City’s IT Manager, explains, “We scan everything that’s related to patient encounters into Laserfiche. This includes demographic information, dictations, EOBs and correspondence from insurance companies.”

He notes that the hospital sends information to the medical group via an FTP site. “In the past, we just printed everything onsite.”

This, of course, was problematic on many levels:

• It was expensive.
• It was difficult to store.
• It was tough to retrieve in a timely manner.

“We have to keep patient information for seven years,” says Juiliano. “We used to rent four storage units at a facility that’s ten miles away. We kept a year’s worth of records onsite in a big filing room, but somebody had to go over to the storage units at least once a week.”

Kruger adds, “Efficient medical billing depends on keeping people in their seats so they can be productive. Manual tasks like retrieving paper records just aren’t the best use of employees’ time.”

Today, Tri City automates the document capture, indexing and filing processes with the following tools:

• Laserfiche Snapshot converts the electronic documents from the hospital’s FTP site into TIFF images and processes them using Laserfiche Quick Fields, a high-volume document capture and processing tool that automatically extracts metadata from the documents and files them in the Laserfiche repository—no printing or scanning required.
• Laserfiche Quick Fields also scans and processes paper EOBs and correspondence from insurance companies. Using optical character recognition (OCR), Quick Fields converts the scanned images into editable and searchable text, extracts metadata and files the documents in the repository.
• Laserfiche Import Agent captures and processes electronic faxes.

Verifiers, coders and payment entry staff work with dual screens, so they’re able to view a document on one screen while performing data entry into MED/FM on the other. With the MED/FM integration, documents are automatically attached to the appropriate patient records in the practice management system. When employees type a number into a specific field in MED/FM, Laserfiche opens the corresponding document. This ensures that employees don’t have to launch Laserfiche or toggle between screens to retrieve the documents they require.

Kruger explains that the integration keeps her staff in their seats. “Laserfiche makes our staff so efficient that we haven’t had to hire more people. In fact, we haven’t even replaced everyone who’s left.”

Visibility = Productivity

Documents—whether scanned or electronically imported—are time-stamped when they enter the Laserfiche repository so that the management team can measure staff productivity. Kruger explains, “If something comes in at eleven but doesn’t get finished until 4:30 pm, I can go to the person and ask, ‘What were you doing for those five and a half hours?’”

Juiliano appreciates how easy it is to run and store reports in Laserfiche. With Laserfiche Audit Trail, a monitoring and reporting tool, Tri City can create summaries of all actions taken on a particular document or record, making it much easier to prove compliance with HIPAA. “We can see who changed what when, where and why,” he explains.

In terms of other types of reports, Juliano says, “We run a lot of reports—collections reports, month-end reports, weekly reports. Even if we don’t run the report in Laserfiche, we store it there, which makes it easy to access and compare historical data with present trends.”

Lisa Newland, Tri City’s Assistant Manager, notes that the group’s RAC audits have gone smoothly thanks to Laserfiche’s instant search-and-retrieval capabilities. “Being able to instantly pull the information the RAC auditors want to see makes life so much easier than digging through filing cabinets or storage boxes.”

All in all, says Kruger, “Laserfiche is a great product. I don’t know how we ever got along without it.”

• Colorado Division of Forestry.
• Colorado Division of Parks and Wildlife.
• Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining, and Safety.
• Colorado Division of Water Resources.
• Colorado Geological Survey.
• Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC).
• Colorado State Land Board.
• Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB).

According to Susan Lesovsky, Application Support Manager for the CWCB, the DNR purchased a Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM) system in 2005 to replace a legacy IBM system that lacked an out-of-the box Web interface, optical character recognition (OCR) functionality and the ability to automate business processes. “Our old system was pretty much limited to search-and-retrieval,” she explains.

She notes that a top priority for implementing Laserfiche was making it easier for citizens to stay informed about government activities. “Ultimately, our customer is the public, and our success is measured on how we provide and process information for them,” Lesovsky says.

To that end, the DNR upgraded to Laserfiche Rio in 2009. According to Lesovsky, “Laserfiche Rio has allowed us to increase the transparency of information to the public, and it’s done it in such a way that we don’t have to worry about connections or cost.”

In particular, she describes the benefits of upgrading to Laserfiche Rio as:

• Greater public access to information through the WebLink Public Portal, which provides unlimited connections.
• Scalability through unlimited servers and volume discounts on user licenses to accommodate future growth.
• The bundled functionality of Web Access and Workflow.

Laserfiche Rio Enables Citizens to Cut through Red Tape

Lesovsky notes that Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper recently called for every department in state government to reduce red tape. Good government, he says, is characterized by “efficiency, effectiveness and elegance.”

“As one of only two recommended content management systems for the state, Laserfiche epitomizes all three E’s,” Lesovsky says.

She explains how easy it is for citizens to access documents such as the CWCB’s meeting documents:

• The current year’s materials are available on the Board’s Website in a table that provides direct links to PDFs stored in Laserfiche.
• Archived materials are accessible through a custom search box (created using the WebLink Designer) on the lower right side of same page or through this link.
• The custom search box is limited to three fields (title, date range and document type) to streamline access and reduce user confusion. (Custom search components have been included throughout the CWCB’s Website to help direct the public’s search for Board-related documents.)

Colorado’s Decision Support Systems Website also includes custom search boxes throughout its Website, such as the one at the top of this page that searches according to document type and a few other parameters, while a set of “Google-like” search results based on document type displays below thanks to an encoded URL string.

“We used the WebLink Designer to create custom searches because we noticed that our users would get overwhelmed when presented with a long list of templates and fields,” says Lesovsky. “Each custom search focuses on a particular program area or topic and uses a limited set of search criteria within the associated template.”

Quick, easy and efficient searches support Hickenlooper’s goal of driving the “three E’s” into government operations. Lesovsky explains, “In the past, people had to come to our offices to request information. Laserfiche WebLink provides a simple and elegant way for the public to get immediate access to the information they need whenever they need it.”

Integrations Make ECM “Mission-Critical”

By integrating Laserfiche WebLink with other software applications, the DNR has been able to make information even more accessible. For example, by integrating Laserfiche with ESRI ArcGIS, staff can click on a stream and retrieve associated court documents, while public users can quickly access information associated with flooding and flood hazards in the state.

To see the public-facing integration in action:

• Visit Colorado’s Flood Decision Support System page.
• Click on the Flood DSS Map Viewer.
• Agree to the disclaimer.
• Click the Documents tab in the top menu.
• Enter your search criteria in the pop-up window. For example, select:
  • Group: Historical Flooding.
  • Document: Historical flood photographs.
  • Type: Photographs.
• Hit the search button.
• A new window displays the results (produced on-the-fly by an encoded URL string) in a grid format.

It’s the integrations with applications like ESRI ArcGIS that make Laserfiche “mission-critical.” According to Lesovsky, “When you integrate Laserfiche with business-specific systems, you embed it into your existing workflow processes and it becomes integral to how you operate.”

ECM Enables Electronic Forms Processing

Laserfiche Rio has been a particularly effective ECM solution for the DNR because different divisions can configure it to meet their unique needs. For example, the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) uses Laserfiche to enable an eForm application that provides an interface for oil and gas operators to enter and submit permit forms and supporting documents. There are currently six active forms and three in development.

According to Ken Robertson, Application Developer for the COGCC, “Uploaded files are stored in our production Web server. Once the operators submit the form to our internal server, we export the attachments to Laserfiche.”

He explains that the public can view the files directly from the production Web server or wait until the files are imported to Laserfiche and use WebLink to access them. Furthermore, he outlines how the COGCC has used the Laserfiche SDK to create customized Laserfiche scripts and programs.

Robertson says, “For those attachments still sitting in our production Web server, we created a Windows service to check queued files in the Web server every 15 minutes and use the Laserfiche Toolkit [SDK] for .NET to import files to the Laserfiche repository server. In the meantime, we also collect the Laserfiche reference numbers in our attachment table so that system (eForm) can provide a WebLink download page for users to view the attachments.”

He notes that there is a separate application that allows oil and gas operators to upload well logs, which are imported into Laserfiche using Laserfiche Import Agent, a tool that captures and processes electronic documents. Scanning staff members use Laserfiche Quick Fields to index other types of electronic documents.

The biggest benefit of processing permits and well logs with Laserfiche is time. Robertson says, “We used to shuffle files from one person to another until they were approved, and then we scanned everything into the system. Having the operators upload their attachments to their documents saves an average of 15 minutes of scanning and indexing time for our staff, not to mention the time saved on data entry.”

He goes on to explain that having everything available electronically at the beginning of the process allows multiple people to work on the same forms simultaneously, further reducing processing time.

“Not only do we save time,” Robertson says, “but the approval process is now more transparent for the public.”

Lesovsky adds, “Laserfiche is powerful, flexible and easy to work with. Even though all our divisions use the same system, we can all use it a little differently.”

Looking Ahead

Lesovsky is particularly excited to use Laserfiche to harvest data across organizations. She explains that the CWCB has already conducted a feasibility study and has a grant in place to make it happen.

“Colorado State University has an ECM solution other than Laserfiche but a healthy collection of water information. The Colorado Water Resources Development & Power Authority and the Colorado River Water Conservation District currently use Laserfiche, with repositories of useful water documents. By hooking our systems together and using common metadata, we’ll be able to search for information across all four entities and gain a more complete picture of accessible water information in the state.”

She says that the DNR is also working on integrating Laserfiche and SharePoint. “Most of our divisions use SharePoint for their external Websites. Right now, people have to conduct separate searches if they want to find content stored in both Laserfiche and SharePoint. What we’re looking to do is enable searches that return results from both systems at the same time.”

All in all, she says, “Laserfiche Rio is a great tool. The bottleneck now is just finding the time to make it do everything we want it to do.”

Although both Arkansas’ supreme court and court of appeals have recently begun broadcasting—and archiving—live oral arguments on their Website, it is the courts’ use of enterprise content management (ECM) technology that has caught the Supreme Court’s eye.

“We’d had a document imaging system in place for several years, but it hadn’t been used much,” says Frederick. “Only a few techs even knew how to access it, and the search and retrieval capability for records wasn’t particularly useful. We had to ask ourselves, ‘Why scan anything if you can’t use the system?’”

He continues, “Our principal selection criteria for an ECM solution included the ability to manage content, automate processes, enable easy access to records and raise visibility for the legal community and the public.”

He notes that, ultimately, it was the unlimited servers included with Laserfiche Rio that won over the courts’ IT Department. “Both courts issue opinions of high interest that are heavily accessed, so we wanted to make sure we had failovers and test servers in place to accommodate that.”

Laserfiche Enables Electronic Opinions

In 2009, Arkansas became the first state to establish electronic reporting as the official medium for appellate court opinions. Substantial cost savings resulting from the transition provided the opportunity to implement Laserfiche.

“Before that, the appellate court opinions had always been officially reported in bound volumes,” says Frederick. “However, the volumes were produced and distributed approximately four times a year, which meant there was significant lag time between issuance of an opinion and its appearance in its official format.”

With declining subscription rates, higher production costs and advancing technology, the court determined that its current method of publication was no longer acceptable. “Although court systems in general have been slow to enter the digital age, we have to remember that we work for the public, and they’re used to finding information quickly on the Internet,” explains Frederick.

“One of the driving forces that led to the implementation of Laserfiche was to provide the official version of the opinions to everyone free of cost. The substantial savings realized by terminating the bound volume method was also a considerable advantage,” he says.

Using Laserfiche WebLink, a Web portal that provides instant, read-only access to documents over the Internet, the Arkansas Supreme Court and Arkansas Court of Appeals publish their latest opinions in PDF format on their Website.

“Most court records and paper copies of opinions are retained indefinitely,” notes Frederick. “In addition, we are required by statute to keep three copies of each bound volume; the final published volume count was 375 when we made the transition. From that standpoint, the storage of electronic records is far more efficient.”

In terms of search and retrieval, “metadata is a gift,” Frederick says. The Reporter of Decisions established the courts’ file structure, templates and fields, which allow anyone to access the opinions using one or more of the following criteria:

• Date.
• Court.
• Order number.
• Justice/Judge.
• Session.
• Session term.

Current Integrations, Future Plans

After enabling live video streaming by implementing a Granicus software solution, the court integrated it with Laserfiche to enable the public and legal community to access archived video footage along with a copy of the opinion tied to the case in question. “We’ve made great efforts to become more transparent,” says Frederick. “By integrating Granicus with Laserfiche, we’ve created a comprehensive digital public record that’s accessible to anyone over the Web.”

The court is currently working on integrating Laserfiche with its court management system (CMS) so that court personnel can access documents stored in Laserfiche when they’re viewing a particular case in the CMS.

Although the courts haven’t yet taken full advantage of Laserfiche Workflow, a business process management tool included with Laserfiche Rio, they may use Workflow to route drafts of their opinions to:

• The deciding panel (court of appeals, typically three judges) for review and annotations.
• The Reporter of Decisions for editing, publication and retention.

“Flow is a big buzzword right now, so knowing that we can use Laserfiche to automate more of our processes presents tremendous possibilities,” says Frederick.

Change Management Methodology for Curing “Parchment Disorder”

“One thing I’ve noticed after working in IT across a variety of industries is that the public sector is a little more cautious when it comes to adopting new technology,” says Frederick. “Some people still get comfort in being able to touch a piece of paper, so educating and training everyone on the value of Laserfiche has been interesting.”

In terms of change management, Frederick’s philosophy is that history always denotes the future. “As we were moving to electronic publication, we focused on the input from the Reporter of Decisions and the parameters set by the supreme court. Full integration would have been more easily put in place had we also gotten input from the court about the opinion writing process upfront.”

As Frederick and his team prepare to use Laserfiche to enable attorneys to e-file briefs and other documents that make up the appellate court record, they are training the judges, judicial clerks and administrative assistants first. “The better we understand what each court needs, the more successful the transition will be,” he says.

Frederick explains that e-filing will eliminate the need for lawyers to bring 16 copies of their briefs to court. More importantly, it will allow both courts to quickly find specific pieces of information contained within those briefs, thanks to chapter and marker breaks within electronic briefs, as well as Laserfiche’s sophisticated search capabilities.

“Digitizing will lower our costs and increase our clearance rates,” says Frederick. “Training people ahead of time is a key factor for recognizing the value that Laserfiche has to offer.”

Located just outside of Los Angeles, CA, the City of Long Beach turned to technology to cut costs—and create innovative ways to improve citizen service delivery. In fact, Long Beach has been so successful at leveraging technology that it has just been named one of the top ten digital cities in the U.S. with a population of 250,000 or more by the Center for Digital Government.

“The City of Long Beach takes great pride in our use of technology to be more efficient and make City Hall more accessible and responsive to the community,” says Mayor Bob Foster.

According to Curtis Tani, Director of Technology Services, the effort to reduce costs without compromising service delivery has been three-pronged:

• Consolidate information and communication technology (ICT) services.
• Increase transparency and collaboration across the enterprise.
• Digitize processes, forms and workflow.

“The Mayor, the City Council and City staff understood the value that technology could bring the city and were open to change at the foundational level to allow Long Beach to become a technology leader,” says Tani. “They understood that the shortfalls in our budget challenged operational efficiencies and gave the Technology Services Department the freedom to lead initiatives to make Long Beach a digital community.”

IT’s Strategy: Consolidate and Standardize

Long Beach has worked hard to consolidate technology functions to create budget efficiencies while still providing enough flexibility for each department to run efficiently. “By bringing our IT staff into one office and centralizing IT oversight, we’ve been able to decrease overall staffing costs as well as the number of overlapping technology investments,” Tani explains.

For example, in 2009, Long Beach chose to replace its existing IBM FileNet system in various departments with a Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM) system that could be used across the city. “We selected Laserfiche to create more consistency, efficiency and transparency, while saving the city many thousands of dollars in equipment and maintenance fees,” Tani says.

In fact, by implementing a single Laserfiche system, the city cut its annual ECM support costs by 50%. “Our strategy is to implement shared services to capitalize on existing funding and consolidate services,” explains Tani. “Our ECM system is just one example of this.”

Other cost-saving IT consolidation efforts include:

• A new, enterprise-wide Internet-based phone system expected to generate $165,000 in annual savings.
• Virtual servers and workstations expected to generate $100,000 in energy and hardware savings over three years.
• Cluster databases that have reduced licensing and hardware fees.

ECM and Open Government

In April 2011, the Long Beach City Council adopted an open government policy identifying transparency as a core function of local government. To that end, making information more accessible by staff and citizens alike has been a top priority.

“Long Beach is dedicated to fostering and promoting open and transparent government where everyone in our community can easily participate and be engaged,” explains Long Beach City Clerk Larry Herrera. “As one of the largest cities in California, we are committed to exploring best practices, adopting new technologies that simplify and speed up all work processes and providing a level of customer service that is unmatched.”

Herrera notes that the City Clerk’s office uses Laserfiche to streamline paperwork and processes, helping the city deliver higher service at a lower cost. “In 2002, we needed 28 people to provide the public with quick, accurate and effective answers to their questions about our community. Today, with a staff of 17, our level of customer service is better than ever before.”

Over the past year and a half, the city has spent approximately $120,000 for offsite record storage. Staff had to manually retrieve paper records to answer requests, leading to delays in service and extra costs. As more and more records are added to Laserfiche, information access is improved and storage costs are expected to decrease.

On a daily basis, the City Clerk’s office scans thousands of records into Laserfiche. Just a few of the document types available in Laserfiche include:

• City contracts.
• Campaign finance reports.
• Statements of economic interest.
• Council agendas and staff reports.
• Election ballots.
• Sample ballots.
• Voted returns.

Last spring, the city made all city contracts executed as of the first of the year available to the public through Laserfiche WebLink, a read-only public portal. With 24/7 online viewing access, city residents, contractors and employees no longer have to submit public records act (PRA) requests for these items, simplifying access and saving time for both requestors and the City Clerk’s staff.

ECM across the Enterprise

In addition to the City Clerk’s office, the Long Beach Police Department (LBPD) relies heavily on Laserfiche, using the ECM system to make information such as gang injunctions, citations, restraining orders, field interview cards and accident reports available to officers in their patrol cars.

LBPD Police Chief Jim McDonnell notes that since implementing an improved gang injunction system using Laserfiche, gang violence in Long Beach has decreased. In 2010, the first year of using the new gang injunction system, gang-related murders dropped by 53.8%. “By pairing technology with optimized policies and procedures, we’ve been able to reduce violent crime in the face of severe budget constraints. Our officers were able to spend less time on administrative tasks and reinvest this time to keeping the streets safe.”

According to Jonathan Stafford, Administrator of LBPD’s Records and Technology Division, “We were delighted when the city decided to standardize on Laserfiche. We were confident that the simplicity and flexibility of the system would enable us to be more efficient by streamlining our processes.”

Other departments that have undergone concerted efforts to digitize paper processes include:

• Financial Management.
• Human Resources.
• Development Services.

For example, in 2011 the city expanded the types of permits and licenses that can be obtained online via the Website to include garage sale permits, temporary preferential parking permits, oversized vehicle parking permits and pet licenses. Technology Services also developed an interactive Fees and Charges Web application that allows the public to easily search for fees based on department, activity or keyword.

Long Beach began streamlining its accounting processes by integrating Laserfiche with its business intelligence (BI) system. Through the integration, images of the accounts payable invoices managed in Laserfiche are available to authorized users through the BI interface. This streamlines the process of researching expenditures by eliminating the need to manually pull the physical copies of the invoices.

Long Beach City Manager Pat West explains, “Our goal is to virtualize and streamline the access and flow of records and information within the city, while ensuring security. We have been pleased with the Laserfiche system, because it easily expands and adapts to the technological and human factor needs of various departments while providing central control that is needed to ensure accountability.”

Elements of Success

According to Tani, “All the right elements were aligned for the success of our technology initiatives. City leadership, staff and citizens were onboard with the transition and willing to go above and beyond to make our efforts to centralize and standardize Long Beach’s approach to technology successful.”

In addition to the Laserfiche projects outlined above, a few of the innovative ways the citizens of Long Beach can now use technology include:

• Submitting service requests for sidewalk, graffiti and pothole repair through Long Beach’s Website or via the city’s iPhone and Android apps.
• Watching live and archived City Council meetings on the Internet, iPhone or iPad.
• Obtaining time-sensitive information such as road closures or missing persons from the police via Web, social media, live text and/or e-mail alerts.
• Using social media to access enhanced content including traffic and construction alerts, videos, news, pictures and other information.

Tani also notes that having buy-in from the community was essential to the city’s IT transformation. “We had overwhelmingly positive responses to different application launches—both from the media and end users.” He explains that the media provided ample coverage of different applications and technology tools for both public safety and general city services, and that the community was willing to try the new applications and processes and provide their feedback.

“Ultimately, increasing the dialogue between city officials and the community is what has given the city’s technology initiatives energy and poised them for success and sustainability,” he says.

As a result of the collaboration between city leadership, staff and citizens, Long Beach has used technology to position itself as a leader for the future.

With approximately 150,000 residents, Franklin County comprises 52 different departments, including the Commissioners’ Office, Human Resources, Human Services and Risk Management, to name just a few. Yonker notes that these departments “operate like 52 separate businesses under the same umbrella.”

In this kind of environment, it’s especially important to establish enterprise-wide IT standards to promote consistency and cross-departmental collaboration, Yonker says. However, it’s often difficult to find technology that’s agile enough to meet the needs of many different departments and flexible enough to adapt quickly and cost-effectively to changing conditions.

“It’s hard to convince all the different departments that they can all use the same system,” says Yonker. “Because of that, we didn’t start out thinking Laserfiche was going to be enterprise technology. But after the enterprise content management seed was planted in one department, suddenly all our departments wanted to know more.”

The Beginning

Franklin County first purchased Laserfiche back in 2001. “We had some younger Commissioners come in, and they were more familiar with technology and the benefits it could have for Franklin County than previous Commissions had been,” explains Jean Byers, deputy chief clerk in the Commissioners’ Office. “They selected Laserfiche for its instant search capabilities, as well as the fact that we could install it directly on the computers already in use.”

She continues, “We immediately realized tremendous benefits from Laserfiche. Documents that used to take days to find became available with the click of a button. It used to take hours to find specific text within meeting minutes that were hundreds of pages long, but with Laserfiche it only took seconds.”

The new technology also made it easy to share documents with colleagues, and due to a similar look and feel as Windows, Laserfiche quickly became popular with both management and staff.

The Evolution of an Enterprise Standard

As Laserfiche took root in the Commissioners’ Office, other departments began to take notice. With their focus on compliance and prudent financial management, both the Fiscal Office and the Controller’s Office deployed Laserfiche in 2004.

“Laserfiche is great for accounts payable (A/P) functions and auditing,” says Yonker. “For A/P, instant document retrieval speeds and simplifies the review and approval of invoices. And with electronically stored documents, employees can quickly and easily pull the files needed to satisfy an auditor’s request, with no need to spend hours digging through file cabinets. That’s a pretty impressive efficiency boost right there.”

Yonker notes that rolling Laserfiche out to additional departments was an easier sell than other system expansions because there was buy-in from the top right from the start.

“Whenever County purchases exceed a certain amount, they need to be approved by the Commissioners,” he explains. “Because the Commissioners were already very familiar with the value of using Laserfiche, they never hesitated to give the go-ahead when other departments wanted to get on board.”

The next departments to raise their hands and ask for Laserfiche were Human Services, which was particularly excited about Laserfiche from a disaster recovery standpoint, and Human Resources. Both departments implemented the software in 2006.

Human Resources

The first thing the HR department did after implementing Laserfiche was to start scanning personnel files into the system. It took some time to develop an appropriate folder structure that separated employees’ employment records from their confidential medical records and discipline files, and then it took about a year to get everything scanned in.

“We probably spent between 4-6 months in the planning phase, but getting those personnel files into Laserfiche properly has had an enormous payback for us,” says John Aguirre, Director of HR at Franklin County.

A few of the benefits include:

• Reduced paper consumption. “We used to photocopy 100,000s of pages of job applications a year for review by our elected officials,” says Aguirre. “We almost never make hard copies of documents anymore since our officials have access to everything they need in Laserfiche.”
• Instant search and retrieval. “The ability to locate documents quickly is great for me,” explains Aguirre. “Not a day goes by that I don’t get a request from one of our directors for material from an employee’s personnel file for various purposes. Laserfiche makes it easy for me to satisfy their requests and quickly e-mail them exactly what they need to see.”
• Higher staff productivity. “With Laserfiche, we can do more with less and accomplish more functions with the remaining staff, which is important in this economy. When one of our part-time HR reps left the County, we didn’t need to find a replacement because Laserfiche makes everybody more efficient. Retrieving documents is as easy as opening a Web page.”
• Reduced need for document storage. “Prior to implementing Laserfiche, we had a large ‘Electreiver’ file cabinet in the office that stored approximately 1,500 files and rotated them on chains. It was always breaking down and causing us headaches. Once we started digitizing our documents, we were able to get rid of that monster, along with five standing file cabinets. We now use that space for our receptionist’s desk and our Laserfiche scanner, so our office is much less cramped,” says Aguirre.
• Easier audits. “Auditors love Laserfiche because it’s so fast and easy to use. It’s also clear to them that we’re meeting compliance mandates with regards to our folder structure and the security surrounding confidential medical records, etc. In addition, my department no longer has to stop working in order to organize for the audits.”

Aguirre notes that in addition to managing personnel files in Laserfiche, his department has also added recruitment documentation and union and arbitration files to the system, which has led to quicker resolution of some grievances. In addition, HR is currently most of the way through scanning employees’ benefits files and leave of absence documents into the repository, and it has recently started on payroll documentation.

“Laserfiche is so secure in terms of access rights and privileges that we’re comfortable using it for everything we’ve got,” Aguirre says. “For example, I’m the only person in the HR Department who can view the union files, and I’m also the only one with deletion rights. I know that unauthorized staff can’t see confidential information, and I know that no one’s going to tamper with our files. The role-based security provides real peace of mind.”

Laserfiche Rolls across the Enterprise

With some technologies, organizations hit a tipping point for enterprise adoption. For Franklin County, that tipping point for Laserfiche was the implementation in HR.

“After HR deployed Laserfiche, everybody started to ask for it,” Yonker recounts. “People saw how successful the HR implementation was, and they began to talk about what the benefits for their departments could be.”

As Laserfiche was adopted by more and more departments, the types of content stored in the system grew more and more diverse:

• Emergency Services uses Laserfiche to manage notes from its 911 calls and cases.
• Franklin County Jail stores inmate records and requests in the Laserfiche repository.
• Planning, which is tasked with fostering the proper growth of communities within Franklin County, manages new development records with Laserfiche.
• Open Records, with its goal of making government transparent to County citizens, makes plans, drafts and studies stored in Laserfiche available to the public.
• Real Estate manages audit reports and past voting results using the ECM system. It is also able to respond to 13,000 queries a week in a fast and efficient manner thanks to Laserfiche’s ability to e-mail digital documents.

With 26 departments already using Laserfiche, Franklin County recently upgraded to Laserfiche Rio to bring 24 additional departments onto the system. According to Yonker, “Court Administration will be the last big department to make the transition, and we’re going to integrate Laserfiche with the state’s case management system for them.”

Although the IT Department had not initially planned to implement Laserfiche as the county-wide standard for ECM, it’s now grateful to have that consistency in place. “We got rid of a couple departments’ antiquated imaging systems in order to move them onto Laserfiche, which makes my staff more efficient because it only has to administer the one ECM system. It’s also easier from a user training perspective, since everybody’s using the same thing,” Yonker says.

According to Rochelle Waldoch, Compliance and Records Manager at Ramsey County, the need for more efficient paper-based business processes drove the county to investigate enterprise content management (ECM). “The Human Services Department had always been a paper-heavy department, but as caseloads grew, we started having difficulty with sharing paper files. In addition, client information was siloed, so employees had to collect the same data over and over again. It wasn’t an efficient process, and it needed to change.”

She notes, however, that the county wasn’t interested in deploying a departmental ECM solution. “If the Information Services Department was going to invest the time and resources in implementing ECM, the solution we chose needed to provide a standard systems architecture and methodology for managing all types of documents across the county—not just in one department.”

Needs Analysis and Selection Process

To that end, Waldoch and Toyia Arvin, EDMS Business Analyst, worked with county staff to analyze business processes and document needs in every department. This analysis included:

• Interviews with more than 500 county employees.
• Document inventories completed by each department.
• A review of each department’s network shared folder directory structures.
• An inventory of software applications used by each department.

Armed with the results of the needs analysis, Waldoch and Arvin authored the county’s RFP. “Prior to implementing Laserfiche, we were using the DocuWare system to store a variety of document types, but it didn’t have the advanced workflow or capture functionality necessary to streamline business processes enterprise-wide,” explains Waldoch.

In terms of the selection process, Arvin says, “Laserfiche was beyond impressive when we were doing our RFP. Laserfiche Rio offered a familiar, Windows-like interface for our users; included all of the components we needed to achieve ECM success across the county, including Workflow, Records Management and unlimited servers; and received excellent recommendations when we did our reference checks.”

Central Control, Departmental Flexibility

Ramsey County implemented a 2,000-user Laserfiche Rio system in the summer of 2010. It is supported centrally by a four-person team within the IS Department. To date, the team has transferred more than eight million documents stored in the old DocuWare system to Laserfiche and brought a variety of departments onboard, including:

• Administrative
  o Boards and Committees. Documents such as agendas, ordinances and proclamations are OCRed and stored in Laserfiche, streamlining search.
  o Budgeting and Accounting. Using DataNOW Affinity, Laserfiche is integrated with ASPEN (PeopleSoft) accounting software. Users can locate transactions in ASPEN and then automatically index, store and/or retrieve associated documents.
  o Human Resources. Personnel files are managed in Laserfiche. Laserfiche security restricts file access to authorized users.
• Elections. Laserfiche allows the department to save staff time and money on tasks such as making copies, redacting private information and responding to public data requests.
• Human Services. Laserfiche streamlines case management for divisions such as Child Care, Financial Assistance Services and Workforce Solutions.

Waldoch and Arvin note that the Elections and Administrative implementations have gone smoothly. “Because there was an election recount coming up, Elections employees did their homework before their initial meeting with us. They brought a lot of document samples and mapped out what kind of folder structure they wanted, which documents would need to be barcoded, what information would need to be redacted and so on,” says Arvin.

“Because of that, we were able to get them up and running in a week,” she adds. “Working with Crabtree, we’d do a build, show it to them that day, and then tweak it based on their feedback. They’d been thorough upfront with their planning, so there weren’t a lot of changes that needed to be made.”

Efficient Case Management Commences

Implementation in Human Services, which started out with a 75-user pilot project (including 28 case managers), has taken a little more time. “Elections is a small department with a limited number of document types,” explains Waldoch. “Human Services, on the other hand, is a huge department with hundreds of users and hundreds of forms—and a heavy need for Workflow.”

To determine how to configure the Client repository that Human Services uses, Arvin sat down with key Human Services employees to better understand their processes. “Subject matter experts in each of the three areas of the pilot analyzed their current folder structure by reviewing case files. Together, we analyzed the tabs contained in the paper files and came up with a nine-sided file structure that could meet the needs of all the various Human Services divisions,” she says.

“The goal of implementing Laserfiche within Human Services is to allow case workers to collect information from clients once and share it electronically throughout all program areas,” explains Waldoch. “Electronic client files decrease delays in processing benefits since case workers have, via Workflow, near-immediate knowledge of document receipt.

“In addition, supervisors have greater visibility into the workload and productivity of their employees. With Laserfiche, they’re able to run queries showing them what’s being processed and what’s still waiting in the queue.”

Also adding to the department’s increased efficiency is an integration using LincWare’s LincDoc to create a Case Creation Form for the Client repository. “LincDoc makes two calls—one to a State system (SMI) and one to a County system (CAFÉ) —to pull the information needed to create a new case in Laserfiche,” Arvin says. “Automating this process saves staff time.”

After a case is created, it goes through the following steps:

• The case receives “Appointment Pending” status in Laserfiche. When the client arrives for the appointment, CAFÉ alerts the worker to the arrival. An intake worker assigns the case to him- or herself by changing a template field, and Workflow routes the file to that person’s New Cases Queue.
• The intake worker meets with the client to collect additional information. Once the information has been captured into Laserfiche, Workflow routes the case to Case Assignment, where a clerk assigns the case to the ongoing case worker.
• Workflow sends a New Case Notification to the ongoing worker, who “acknowledges” the case by changing a template field. The case is then visible in the worker’s Active Cases queue. The worker then manages the case for ongoing benefits.
• Once a case is closed, its status is changed from “Active” to “Closed,” and the case is routed to the Records Department for long-term retention.

Arvin notes that creating workflows for Human Services wasn’t as simple as she’d first imagined. “The biggest lesson I learned is that you shouldn’t try to replicate paper processes in an electronic workflow. We built a workflow this way only to find out that a chunk of it was unnecessary, so we had to ask the Laserfiche engineers to go back and build it again.”

In terms of additional functionality, the IS team is currently in the process of enabling electronic signatures, electronic forms and barcoding, all of which will simplify working with Human Services clients.

In terms of additional Human Services divisions, the team is working to:

• Transition 340 Financial Assistance Services employees from read-only to full-client users, allowing them to expand their use of the system beyond search and retrieval.
• Integrate Laserfiche (via DataNOW Affinity) with MAXIS, the state-based case management system.
• Integrate Laserfiche with vxVista, the Mental Health Center’s electronic health system, so that users can automatically retrieve information from Laserfiche while looking at patient cases in vxVista.

“Although we have a long way to go before we’d consider Human Services a mature Laserfiche implementation, we’re definitely on the right track,” Waldoch says.

Change Management Methodology

“A lot of counties have to force content management into their departments, but we don’t have that problem here, due in large part to our extensive training program,” Arvin explains.

For the Human Services Department, the Laserfiche team involved all pilot participants in the project from early on. “The more involved people are in designing their own solutions, the more bought-in they’ll be when it comes time to use it,” she says. “We also had some strong advocates who’d previously worked in other counties that use ECM, so that was certainly a stroke in our favor.”

Once the Laserfiche pilot had been implemented, non-pilot employees started receiving information from Laserfiche on disk so that they’d become familiar with the way information was organized and presented. The team also created a lot of training documentation (available online), including videos of how to perform tasks in Laserfiche featuring the cast of The Flintstones. “Just because something is technical doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with it,” Waldoch says. “If people are laughing, they’re paying attention.”

In-person training classes are conducted by unit, so that employees see the information and steps that are relevant to them. When needed, the Laserfiche team conducts individual training sessions as well. The Laserfiche team also plans to create a county-wide Laserfiche User Group to facilitate knowledge sharing between departments in the future.

Future Plans

Although Laserfiche is currently being used by several departments to enhance internal productivity, in the future, Ramsey County wants to use Laserfiche to directly help its citizens as well. It plans to do this by making information available to its constituents via a public portal, increasing transparency, and also by giving constituents the ability to complete and submit forms online. “We’re here to serve the public,” Waldoch explains. “We want them to get as much benefit from Laserfiche as our staff does.”

In conclusion, Waldoch says, “Laserfiche is a powerful enterprise system that’s already having a great impact in a number of departments.”

Rather than implementing separate solutions for the clinical and non-clinical sides of the house, MCCMHS officials recognized that enterprise content management (ECM) would be the most efficient and cost-effective way to answer its document-related challenges.

ECM Supports EHR

MCCMHS’ search brought the organization to Jeff Nelson of Bolt Document Management, a Laserfiche reseller based in Elkhart, IN. “Initially the objective was for the Laserfiche system to act as a bridge between legacy information and future digital content,” Nelson remembers. “At the same time, implementation of Laserfiche allowed MCCMHS to address areas where working with paper was simply inefficient.”

In 2003 Pat Latimer, the former project manager, led the effort to implement a 118-user Laserfiche system in the agency’s centralized scanning bureau. Staff began migrating and adding patient histories and signature forms for use in conjunction with patient records, which were being generated from Avatar by Crystal Reports and then scanned into Laserfiche.

Dave McElfish, Director of Technology, says that although the original idea was for clinical staff to simultaneously access patient information from Laserfiche and the practice management system, “the reality was, even though we purchased Avatar with the idea of integrating it with Laserfiche, when we explored it further, it was going to be cost prohibitive on the Avatar side of the project.”

In the meantime, Laserfiche deployment had been extended to MCCMHS’s HR and finance departments, which likewise began migrating backfiles to ease storage costs and give staff the ability to retrieve information on command. System use has since grown to the point that the Laserfiche repository now houses over 800,000 documents.

More recently, McElfish says clinical staff have once again expressed interest in being able to access to information from Avatar and Laserfiche at the same time, even going so far as to revisit the idea of using Avatar’s add-on imaging module. “After much consideration, our clinical staff felt that would put us no further ahead in our goal for a true, single database to model our EHR from,” McElfish says. “The reality is that Laserfiche is designed to manage unstructured data, so in that respect it’s closer to that single database because we are able to include unstructured data, such as lab reports and doctor’s notes.”

Going Mobile

McElfish adds that MCCMHS has been speaking with Nelson and Bolt to explore ways to simplify and streamline how data is entered and accessed between Avatar and Laserfiche. McElfish says staff is especially encouraged by the release of Laserfiche Mobile, which could be used to grant clinical staff in the field comprehensive access to patient data via Web Access. He says several options are being considered, including taking advantage of the Laserfiche Q3 Promotion to upgrade the agency’s current system to Avante and receive Web Access (which is required to use the Laserfiche Mobile app) for free.

“We know that allowing staff to access information from Laserfiche on iPads in the field would be a huge boost in our productivity,” says McElfish.

An Avante upgrade would provide lot of potential for automation as well. McElfish notes that Nelson and Bolt have recently been discussing implementing distributed capture processes for paperless faxes and digital signatures via virtual rubberstamps, all routed by Workflow through the agency’s central scanning office for oversight.

Looking ahead, he is understandably pragmatic. “Although Laserfiche is not our primary practice management system, it represents a critical and necessary content management tool that complements Avatar.

“We’ll continue to have paper and documents that need signatures, and the simplest, most cost-effective way to incorporate them into our EMR strategy is to use Laserfiche. There are digital signature solutions and other options, but Laserfiche lets us use what we already have,” McElfish adds. “Our goal was and is to have a single database to model our EHR from, and Laserfiche has provided us with the portability and flexibility to move forward with that goal from a solid foundation.”

“The staff was really good in sitting down and critically looking at how they do business with their documents,” Filippi says. “Because of that, they were able to come up with the identifying fields that process 95% of their documents.”

In a series of narrated screen shots, Filippi provides an overview of the process, along with some best-practice advice:

1. Avoid inputting information from the same document at the same time.
2. Use best practices and practical needs to manage metadata.
3. How the Property Transfers Division configured their template.
4. 67 database fields shared across 26 document templates.
5. “People love stamps here.”
6. Processing ‘Claims for Reassessment Exclusion’ forms.
7. Extracting data from the form.
8. Create templates first to help determine fields.
9. How tokens use fields to name documents.
10. Include the document type in its name for future associated use.
11. Can’t find something? Check the folder path.
12. Use Zone OCR to extract data from a specific area of a document.

*****

1. Avoid inputting information from the same document at the same time.

“When you first open Laserfiche Quick Fields, it tells you the recent sessions you already opened based on your log-in ID. If someone is using that session, you can’t open it—which is good because you’re avoiding the cross-scanning, as I call it,” says Filippi. “You might have people trying to input information from the same document at the same time. Some users don’t like it because they say, ‘Well, it cuts down on productivity,’ but you have to think of the bigger picture here: We want to make sure we have accurate document data in our repository. That overrides everything else, so I’m glad Laserfiche considered that in the software’s design too.”

2. Use best practices and practical needs to manage metadata.

“Metadata management is a good source of one-stop shopping for us to identify what we’re using, what we have as far as templates and fields, and where we can cross reference data and information in our document repository,” says Filippi. The Assessor Recorder’s 26 templates below were developed in-house working with department staff to determine their respective best practices and practical needs. “Everything you see is what we’ve created internally going through the processes, testing and then streamlining.”

3. How the Property Transfers Division configured its template.

“Property Transfers has decided to do ‘one-stop shopping,’ so this is their template,” explains Filippi. “All the field names on the left are common to every single document type they use. What’s really important is on the right under ‘required.’ When staff scans these documents through Quick Fields, the only field that needs to be inputted at the time of capture is the document number. Good or bad, that’s how they’ve maximized their efficiency. They’re identifying their best business processes to help them sort and go to these documents.”

4. 67 database fields shared across 26 document templates.

The Assessor Recorder’s Office uses 67 different types of fields to process and index documents—social security numbers, permit numbers, names, notice dates and so on. “Laserfiche has hundreds and hundreds of field capabilities you use to name your documents or manage your repository with,” Filippi says. “Pretty much everything in our repository that is searchable has a field and is listed here.”

5. “People love stamps here.”

In addition to fields and tags, departments use stamps electronically affixed to a document that employees have customized to their needs and preferences. “As you can see, there’s quite a few of these. I’d like to see less,” Filippi laughs, “but people love stamps here.”

6. Processing ‘Claims for Reassessment Exclusion’ forms.

‘Claim for Reassessment Exclusion’ forms are required by Proposition 58, which exempts a property from tax reassessment when it passes between parents and children. On the left, the ‘Page Processing’ list displays the ‘menu’ of adjustments and refinements that will be made to the document. This session, for instance:

• Runs optical character recognition (OCR – see slide 12 below) to capture the assessor’s parcel number.
• Rotates the document upright.
• Removes blank pages.

“You only have to do this once—when Quick Fields identifies this document type, it will process it according to that configuration,” Filippi says. “Laserfiche has given us a lot of options on how to process documents at the time of capture.”

7. Extracting data from the form.

Says Filippi of the ‘Fields’ highlighted on the right, “When the users created this document, they identified that these pieces of information—the year, the document number, the APN and so on—are all critical to identifying, processing and efficiently moving this document through their business processes.”

8. Create templates first to help determine fields.

Before determining fields, Filippi recommends, “The first step is to create a template for a particular document type,” or a ‘blueprint,’ as he calls it. “Then, from those templates, you get an idea of your fields,” he says. “The important thing is to understand the document types first, which are identified by your templates. And then, what fields you need in each of those documents to make them do what you need them to do.”

9. How tokens use fields to name documents.

The specific metadata fields in the ‘Property Transfers’ template will be used to name the document via a token, seen here in the ‘Default document name’ window ‘Fields.’ “When you see the ‘%’ sign, this is an actual script format that Laserfiche recommends to capture what you’re seeing right now. For ‘document number,’ the syntax is ‘%, bracket, field, doc number.’ Every time we run a session, we tell it, ‘capture this information in the document so our people don’t have to key it.’”

10. Include the document type in its name for future associated use.

“When you look up the document, you’ll see that it’s named according to the document number, the year and ‘Proposition 58.’ Now, the reason we do this—and this is just our business process—is to get to a point that whenever you type in a document APN, that eight-digit number will get every associated document that comes up with it, including a Prop 58. Some people say, ‘Why are you putting the name in again?’ Well, that’s why we do it,” says Filippi, adding, “Whatever fields you have, you can include up here. But this Division, in this document type-case, has decided only to put document number, year and the name.”

11. Can’t find something? Check the folder path.

When a file can’t be found, Filippi says check the ‘Properties’ column, a “one-stop shop for diagnosing problems,” as he calls it. “If you can’t find your document when you scan or capture, this ‘Properties’ tab on the right is the first place you should look. Most of the time, the folder path is wrong.”

12. Use Zone OCR to extract data from a specific area of a document.

Zone OCR is what allows ASR to pull data from a specific area of a document type, in this case the assessor’s parcel number (APN). Filippi says there was “some trial and error involved initially” with how big an area to OCR, eventually reducing the zone from the entire document to just the APN. The Department has since reduced its error rate from 20% to about 3%. “So if you know that your critical data is always going to be in one area of a given document, then I would suggest you maximize that ability,” he says. “Our clerical staff doesn’t have to key this information.”

Filippi points to this as another example of how Quick Fields is “really well thought out from a user perspective—you can tell it which pages to OCR. Again, it all depends on how you want it to work to suit your processes in-house. The critical components of the software have been really well thought out. But, you’ve got enough options to really make it your own. And that’s why it’s really been so huge for us here!”

During tax season, staff regularly doubles from 15 to 30, owing to the sheer volume of work—and paperwork—associated with tax preparation. But as HFG’s businesses steadily grew, the firm had also steadily outgrown what Chief Operating Officer Ali Mroue calls its “Stone Age document management system.”

In 2004, the firm had implemented the proprietary and non-SQL based system, which was an add-on module for the firm’s Intuit Lacerte tax preparation software, “purely for storage,” he says. Data transfer to PDF was difficult and error-prone, and “we were essentially scanning to create a back-up for the actual physical file. But that was unreliable—we lost data once, and it had no security or audit trail of any sort.”

From just paperless to purposeful: An ECM vision takes shape

By 2010, HFG files containing 10 years of data were simply too big to manage and too hard to find. “We’d already added a scanning clerk and a designated file clerk, but it was quickly becoming an operational nightmare, with more staff to manage and more documents getting misplaced,” Mroue remembers.

The irony is that when the firm’s search for a proper enterprise content management (ECM) solution brought Mroue to Laserfiche, it was not the first time. “We first looked into Laserfiche in 2006, but back then, we weren’t looking at ECM in terms of business process automation or any bigger-picture operational improvements,” he says. “We just wanted to get rid of the paper.”

Working with Patrick Welsch of Laserfiche reseller Cities Digital, Mroue began to see how integral ECM deployment was to not only keep up with, but also anticipate, Hewitt’s projected growth. “We looked at a few solutions, and they all did things in their own way. Only Laserfiche offered the flexibility to develop our own folder structures and templates—and we’d be able to change them depending on requirements without calling in a consultant,” Mroue says.

“Plus, we required that Laserfiche integrate with our Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Intuit Lacerte tax software, as well as send Microsoft Office documents directly to Laserfiche. We wanted everything to mesh together, other systems either didn’t integrate, or if they did, it was going be complicated and expensive.”

Ease and familiarity of use speeds an already speedy deployment

HFG purchased a 15-user Laserfiche Avante system with Web Access (for deployment to its Ventura County office) and Audit Trail in December of 2010. With April 15 on the horizon, initial deployment focused on the tax preparation side of HFG’s business, beginning with a substantial backlog conversion of paper files. “Considering the holidays, it took around 30 days to deploy, customize and integrate the system. We had one day of training for full-time staff. And it took me 30 minutes to train the part time staff on how they’d be using Laserfiche,” Mroue recalls. The ease of deployment was significant, he adds—based in no small part on Laserfiche’s ability to mirror the firm’s familiar paper filing structures. Tax worksheets are automatically sent to Laserfiche with a single click from Microsoft Office programs, while all forms from the Intuit Lacerte system are sent to Laserfiche using Snapshot.

“We were able to mimic our exact process in the Laserfiche system. Nothing changed for staff; I told them, ‘The client file doesn’t exist—it’s now a client folder.’ That made it easy for the employees to understand the change. Instead of people getting up and moving files from cabinets, it ‘jumps’ by itself,” Mroue says.

Workflow makes a $20,000/1,000 hour difference

The jumping-by-itself, Mroue continues, is the result of implementing Laserfiche Workflow. “A file used to jump between seven sets of hands, from client meeting to the client delivery,” he begins. “File clerk/ front desk staff/preparer/checker/scanner/processor/mail clerk, and back to the file clerk.”

“Now, using Workflow, the front desk sets up the appointment and creates the file for the preparer, and it’s just ‘click’ the field, ‘approve,’ ‘approve,’ ‘approve,’ all the way through the process. If something isn’t approved, it is sent back automatically with a ‘sticky note’ on the document in Laserfiche. Nobody has to leave their desk, and I can monitor the whole process and see where everything is so I know what’s getting done. It just raises the level of efficiency and accountability,” he adds.

“Operationally, we had the best tax season ever, especially for me since I could monitor every detail of the business and everyone’s performance from my screen,” Mroue says. “We delivered content on a CD instead of paper, so we used five boxes of paper instead of 50, plus we saved a lot on postage. We also saved the cost of our part time clerks—which is about $20,000 a year. We made our ROI in the first year alone. But the biggest savings was the preparers’ time—at least 10 minutes for every hour. When you add that up, that’s literally a thousand hours our staff can spend working with more clients.”

Coincidentally, the firm’s Laserfiche installation and training took place right around the time of the annual Empower 2011 Laserfiche Institute Conference in January, inspiring an even quicker adoption. “Everyone from our office agreed the Conference was pretty amazing in the amount of knowledge provided,” Mroue adds. “I was actually able to continue writing the Workflow automations for our tax preparation process at the Conference.”

Expanding deployment, saving more clicks with image-enablement integration

As of June 2011, the firm has extended scanning to Al Hewitt, Inc., its RIA firm. “Our goal is to eliminate all the files in our office by the end of August—which will free up a big space,” Mroue says.

For next tax season, Mroue says HFG will utilize Cities Digital’s Unfetterfiche to image-enable their Lacerte system with a single hot key. Deployment for the Al Hewitt, Inc./RIA side of the business is also being mapped out. “Each client file has about six folders, so that transition will be immensely beneficial,” he says.

“We’re taking things step by step,” Mroue adds. “One thing we’ve learned from this process is that in order for the transition to a totally paperless environment to be successful, users have to accept it and want to use it. Laserfiche has the flexibility to make that happen.”

For his part, however, Mroue is very satisfied. “From an IT standpoint, Laserfiche is easy to maneuver and to develop and change. You’re not going back and asking the VAR for help all the time, so it won’t cost you money down the road,” he says. “We’re already thinking about upgrading the system and adding more users.”

When Eastmont Towers’ Health Care Administrator Beth Nelsen RN, CHPN, began exploring enterprise content management systems, she soon discovered that “paperless” meant a lot more than just empty file cabinets. “First, we looked at outsourcing to a company that would scan our records onto disks,” remembers Nelsen, “but we were concerned about how we’d be able to use the information once it was digitally stored.”

Not to mention, outsourcing may have gotten rid of the paper—but it created an entirely new set of compliance concerns. Nelsen next began to explore solutions the agency could configure, use and administer in-house.

Quick Fields and Workflow: impressive possibilities

Kathy Gentile of Laserfiche reseller Bishop Business Equipment had worked with Eastmont Towers as an MFP hardware provider. Gentile, Bishop’s Laserfiche Document Management Specialist, invited Records Management staff from the agency to attend a workshop to see Laserfiche in action. Nelsen and her staff saw how Laserfiche Quick Fields could create files on the fly. Once files were created, Workflow could then notify decision makers of pending approvals and track those approvals throughout multiple business processes.

Nelsen was impressed. “We fell in love with Workflow,” she says, citing how it could help the agency:

• Transmit insurance information to the billing office.
• Send lab results to physicians.
• Route medication orders to the pharmacy.

“We’re a multidisciplinary team caring for people across a continuum, so that ability to share documents between departments, reduce paperwork and improve communication would greatly increase efficiency and positively impact patient care,” she adds.

Thus inspired, Nelsen and her team purchased a 30-user Laserfiche Rio pilot system and have spent the first half of this year preparing to roll it out. “Laserfiche Rio made the most sense in terms of meeting our immediate needs. It includes Workflow and the Records Management component to work with our EMR, as well as unlimited servers.

“As we progress, we can just add users to grow the system to meet our future needs and goals. Scalability was a big factor in choosing Laserfiche Rio,” Nelsen explains.

Goodbye filing cabinets, hello automated patient charting

Eastmont Towers’ medical records staff is now halfway through a backlog conversion process that Nelsen anticipates will eliminate at least four filing cabinets by the end of the year. Meanwhile, Nelsen and her staff have been analyzing business processes to guide the upcoming implementation. “After we had our initial training, we sat down to map out what exactly we do with our documents, where they are sent and why,” she says.

Initial focus has been on automating the patient charting process to compile and distribute client records and information as they enter Eastmont Towers from hospitals and other healthcare agencies. “We have several departments we need to route various information to, so we needed a way to streamline and simplify everything coming in and have it work with our EMR so staff could find everything in one place,” explains Nelsen.

Eastmont Towers is currently working with Gentile and Laserfiche consultants Our Support Services to automate and streamline the patient charting process:

• When a patient transfers to Eastmont’s Skilled Nursing facility, Quick Fields generates a chart by recognizing document types from an Excel spreadsheet.
• Quick Fields then populates metadata template fields according to patient name and ID number.
• Quick Fields then builds the folder structure out according to what documents fall under respective chart headings.
• Workflow then notifies the pharmacy and dietician according to document type (nutrition information, etc.).

Prior to implementing Laserfiche, paper files all had chart tab dividers. Every time a document was added to that tab, all documents had to be removed from the file so new information could be filed in the appropriate spot, then documents would be replaced in the folder and the folder refiled. A new feature in Laserfiche 8.2, dynamic fields, greatly simplifies this process, Gentile explains.

“When a ‘tab’ item is selected from the ‘Chart Tab’ field drop down, the ‘Chart Doc Type’ drop down list automatically populates to correspond with the documents that fall under that ‘Chart Tab’ category,” she says. “It’s saved staff a lot of time.”

Immediate practicalities, limitless possibilities

As Nelsen and her team continue to come up with ideas for future process automation, she sees even more potential for Laserfiche. “We wanted something that was would be fairly easy for the end user to learn but that also could streamline our processes better, and Laserfiche has met and exceeded our expectations,” she says.

Next up, she says, are integrations with the agency’s Keane clinical and financial software to support current EMR deployment and refine and automate processes in the Accounting Department. “We see a lot of value in having an ECM system that’s flexible and adaptable enough to meet clinical and non-clinical needs throughout our agency,” Nelsen adds.

“We have a lot of time and resources invested in our existing technology, so it’s important that Laserfiche enables us to build on the progress we’ve already made without interrupting the ways we’re used to working. Plus, the way Rio’s set up, we can keep building with it, which is very appealing to us. Technology’s always changing and Laserfiche is a great tool to adapt along with it.”

Screenshot of Eastmont Towers' table used to populate the template's dynamic fields by chart type.

The drop-down menu where users select Chart Doc Type to automatically populate the list with specific documents, instead of having to manually sort through tab dividers to find the paper file.

At the same time, Chelsea had been experiencing what Hyland terms “a slowdown” with some departments—IT and the Inspectional Services Department (ISD) among them—facing staff reductions of up to 15–25%. For Joseph Cooney, Director of Inspectional Services, servicing the FOIA/public records requests his department received every week from real estate agents and lawyers was affecting overall service levels. “We’re down enough staff that to devote one or two people to spend a whole day finding and copying paperwork to fulfill requests was just brutal,” says Cooney.

Filling a need, launching a vision

In 2009, Chelsea IT and ISD combined efforts to go before the Chelsea City Council to propose implementing an enterprise content management (ECM) system to address the problem. “It was a pretty easy sell,” recalls Hyland. His vision was to acquire a system that eventually all departments would use, with ISD leading the way. “ISD had the immediate need and the 100-year-old documents that made the case for digitization that drove the project.”

Out of the three vendor responses to the city’s RFP, it was the Laserfiche Avante ECM system proposed by Mike McDonough of area reseller Duplitron that met all the city’s requirements the most cost-effectively. “Several cities in our area were also already using Laserfiche,” Hyland notes. Faced with his own staff reductions, Hyland was especially encouraged by the idea of using Web Access to deploy, administer and eventually expand the system. “We have a virtualized environment, so the Web-based client made the most sense for us,” Hyland says. “The less desktop installation we need, the more resourceful it is for my staff, and Web-based deployment means more users can use the system from any browser in our intranet.”

For his part, Cooney was won over when Chelsea’s Deputy City Manager, a resident of neighboring city Peabody, showed him how that city’s Laserfiche Web Portal made public information instantly searchable and available from its website. “He literally typed in his name and every document came with his name in it came up right away. I was like, ‘That’s awesome. I’m sold.’”

Searchable, viewable, sendable

In April of 2009, the city purchased a 10-user Laserfiche Avante system with Import Agent and Web Access. Initial deployment targeted the ISD’s overflowing storerooms. Cooney’s staff began scanning in the 45 filing cabinets of building, electrical, zoning, etc. inspections, ranging from bulky legal size file jackets to 3×5 cards. Laserfiche in turn made all the documents, regardless of size, age or number of pages, immediately searchable by address and viewable as a series of thumbnail images. The improvement for Cooney and his staff was immediate. “We could literally be on the phone with a request, type in the address, ask, ‘What’s your email?’ And ‘Boom, boom, boom, see ya later’—it’s sent and done,’” says Cooney. “All our inspection notices coming in now are scanned in. We’re not bogged down at all.”

Building on the ISD’s initial success, deployment has followed to the City Clerk’s office, which has merged with the Licensing office to further consolidate and optimize departmental functions and systems. Planned implementations include the city’s Law Department, which, like ISD two years ago, has nowhere to go but the attic of City Hall with its file cabinet overflow. Hyland expects more to follow. “We envisioned the system to be something more and more departments will be using,” he says, noting that this makes sense not only from an IT resource perspective, but also in terms of establishing a single point of control for governance. “Our next step would be to securely open up our information to the community.”

Turning ‘physical ROI’ into a practical framework for increased efficiency and governance

To that end, Chelsea is considering a potential upgrade to Laserfiche Rio, which would include a WebLink Public Portal, similar to the one used in neighboring Peabody. With the ISD success as a cornerstone, he says, the idea at least has a fighting chance. “The reality is that using Laserfiche has given us a ‘physical ROI’ in terms of getting rid of hundreds of filing cabinets, so we have that foundation and momentum to work from.” With modest IT resources and city staff often wearing many hats (City Clerk Deborah Clayman also serves as de facto Records Manager, for instance), a Rio upgrade would offer Chelsea bite-sized benefits of an ECM strategy (incremental deployment/licensing; increased governance; simplified records management; test server environments) without the city—or Hyland’s modest staff—biting off more than they can chew.

The possibilities are many—from simply having a single, centralized repository for documents generated by all city departments to replacing its current PDF-based online documents available with links to view documents (with appropriate redactions) right from subdirectories in the Laserfiche repository. There are also other potential projects, from image-enabling the Police Department’s CAD/RMS system through its current SharePoint deployment to linking the city’s cloud-based GIS system to the centralized Laserfiche repository. Hyland is as hopeful as he is realistic. “Right now our concept of ‘workflows’ are limited to file-sharing,” he says. “But I think when once we get all the departments online, we’ll be able talk about how that will work for us and what ECM can do project by project.”

By 2004, handling all that paper manually had become so inefficient that the ASR Office’s Property Transfers Division was five months behind in processing documents, illustrating just how antiquated, inflexible and relatively unresponsive policies and procedures had become.

This led to the implementation of a Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM) system in 2006. Utilizing Quick Fields to intelligently capture and process years of tax documents previously stored on microfilm, the impact was sweeping and immediate. Using Web Access, staff could now find and complete the review process without being tethered to their desks. Property transfers that took five months to process now only took 15 days. Reviewers could also stamp documents using electronic annotations. “On average, search and retrieval time per employee used to be two hours a week. Now, it’s less than 25 minutes a week,” says Vito Filippi, Systems and Procedures Analyst.

Quick Fields finds vroom for improvements

In fact, Filippi says, applying Laserfiche to the ASR Office’s operational framework exposed just how much more room there was for improvement. “We realized our people were supporting the processes instead of the processes supporting the needs of the department,” he explains. Between budget cuts, consolidation and attrition––from over 200 staff in 2008 to what would become its present 149 employees––the loss of institutional knowledge underscored the siloed, disconnected nature of how business was done, especially as the demand for services increased.

A Laserfiche upgrade in 2009 introduced the expanded capture functionality of Quick Fields––and a closer look at the status quo. “When we moved from Laserfiche 7 to 8.1 [in 2009], the enhancements to the Search function and Quick Fields capabilities––because that’s what we use the most––really were the catalysts that got us asking ‘How can we improve our processes?’” says Filippi. “The templates and ability to run batch sessions overnight had such an impact on how we were indexing that we began to analyze what we were doing in the first place. We were able to drill down our processes to where the bottlenecks were and apply Quick Fields to assist us in finding efficiencies.”

The ensuing improvements were game changing:

1. Changes of Ownerships that took 5–15 days now take 48–72 hours. The Property Transfers division is now 90% paperless.
2. The Personal Property area of the Business division now receives and processes 20% of its 30,000 business property statements within Laserfiche.
3. The Business Property Division saw a 20% reduction in paper statements processed.

“Adapting Quick Fields is to the different processes that we have at both the micro- and macro-level has been especially effective,” says Filippi.

Enterprise, naturally; Process automation, repeatedly

In the fall of 2010, Fresno County upgraded to Laserfiche Rio, including a WebLink Public Portal, which has both expanded the depth of efficiencies while formalizing an e-governance and enterprise risk management strategy. Filippi is confident that the upgrade and new features will go a long way to ensuring the sustainability of core business processes that meet service expectations in the years to come.

The decision to upgrade to Rio, he says, was based on its inherent scalability and bundled functionality—including Audit Trail and the Records Management Edition. “Rio made sense for how we’ve seen Laserfiche evolve,” Filippi says––that and the fact that the county can now use Laserfiche Workflow to automate review and approval processes. “We know we’re going to get the biggest bang for our buck from Workflow.” One process in particular, he continues, will be Business Property audits. “We’ve got airlines such as Sky West and agricultural companies like Dole that we are mandated to assess and audit annually. These audits can easily run 300–400 pages. Each part has to be reviewed by an auditor, which could be verifying an audit page by page or just going to a summary page. With Workflow, by the time the audit comes to them, they can go straight to the final calculations page and review the numbers from the junior auditor. That’s going to have a huge impact on productivity and efficiency.”

The combination of Quick Fields and Workflow will also enable an intelligent capture process that the ASR Office will use to reduce paper use in 85% of state-mandated forms and questionnaires sent out annually to agricultural businesses within the county. “We used to have 35,000 pieces of paper that needed to be opened and processed manually. Each piece of paper would have to cross three different skill sets and touch half a dozen individuals in three divisions. In the near future, one person will capture the document as soon as it arrives using the import feature in Snapshot, and then Quick Fields will pull the data off the questionnaires in real time and auto index it. Now, it’s in our system in 30 minutes.”

The WebLink portal will make ASR documents available online, transferring “ownership,” as Filippi puts it, of documents to citizens. “It’s not only efficient in terms of responsiveness, but it also makes government more transparent,” he says.

The move to Rio, he says, has not only been cost-effective, but supports an overall governance and enterprise risk management strategy. “Governance means different things depending on whom you’re talking to, but it’s essentially how we’re making information secure and available, responding to our citizens and maintaining transparency as efficiently and effectively as possible,” Filippi notes. “We’re no longer dependent on the county’s central IT department to administer, support and respond to our business requirements, and now we have the tools to gather the metrics that allow us to improve productivity and performance. It makes us more agile and responsive, whether that’s to citizens’ requests or to state mandates.”

Future plans include making ECM functionality available as a shared service for use county-wide. For instance, the Real Property division is collaborating with local city governments to move all the Permitting and Plans to electronic formats for processing within Laserfiche at the ASR Office using Quick Fields. Besides the four departments already using Laserfiche (ASR, Auditor-Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector, Department of Public Works and the Sheriff), the Behavioral Health Services department and Department of Social Services are both looking into implementing Laserfiche as well. Filippi, for one, is confident more will follow: “It’s been a very organic and positive process. Now the technology supports our business needs, not vice versa.”

Implementing ahead of inclement weather

Meyer says the move toward ECM was a proactive one. “For us, it was the general idea that we could increase efficiency by saving time and money while continuing to improve client service that first got us interested in an ECM. Also, the disaster recovery aspect really attracted us.”

As both an advisor and the firm’s IT Manager, Meyer brought a unique perspective to the search for an ECM. “Naturally, being in the financial services industry, auditing, security and compliance were simply ‘must haves.’ After that, flexibility and scalability were important to us in an ECM—we wanted a system that could grow with us over time as our business evolved,” he says.

The firm looked at several ECM solutions, including cloud-based options, before deciding on Laserfiche. “Laserfiche was the most feature-rich of the solutions we looked at in terms of the comprehensive functionality it offered,” he recalls. “Quick Fields, Bar Code Plug-In, Zone OCR, Audit Trail, Workflow—these were all appealing because they either directly or indirectly addressed our ‘must haves,’” he says. At the same time, Meyer continues, Laserfiche would improve day-to-day operations. “We wanted to reduce costs, and we found from talking to other firms using Laserfiche and reading about the software that, first, Laserfiche saves time—employees spend less time searching for documents. Second, it saves on paper and printing costs; and third, it saves on storage costs of client files and other documents.”

Last, but not least, Meyer adds, Laserfiche is a name synonymous with ECM in the financial services industry. “Having a tried-and-true, trusted name in document management was important to us as well,” he says. “The system was already approved by our broker dealer, Commonwealth Financial Network, which was also a plus.”

Laserfiche’s impact was felt not long after implementation. “The savings in time and paper realized after just one quarter was significant,” Meyer recalls. “We used to scan a copy of each quarterly report to a PDF using a multi-function copy machine (MFP). Someone would have to manually rename and file each report. At that time, we also kept a duplicate copy on file. Using Quick Fields and the Bar Code Plug-In, we were able to scan all of our reports and have them renamed and filed instantly. We also eliminated the need to keep a physical copy.”

Soon, hundreds of client files dating back to 1985 were scanned into Laserfiche, eliminating the need for several bookshelves and filing cabinets. While Meyer admits it was “a paradigm shift” for some employees to move from a paper-based system to a paperless one, after they experienced how they could literally file things automatically and then find them instantly, they embraced the concept completely. The transition brought peace of mind—and cost savings.

“There’s a reassurance in knowing that all of our important documents are stored electronically and backed up off-site, ensuring access to the data even if something were to happen to our office,” Meyer says, adding, “employees now have the option of accessing documents remotely [over Fure’s secured network], so they can work from anywhere.”

A key component to true enterprise consolidation of the firm’s information was working with reseller Cities Digital to integrate Laserfiche with CRM solution Junxure. “Before Laserfiche, we used to have some digital files in the CRM, some paper documents in a large client file and some documents in different filing cabinets; it was very disjointed,” he recalls. “Now, with the two systems integrated, we have one centralized location for statements, account paperwork, estate plans, correspondence and all relevant material related to a client.”

Automating compliance with Workflow

In addition, Laserfiche Workflow automates several business processes—chief among them logging client letters for compliance review. “We no longer need to make copies, depend on a person to manually log each letter, compile all letters into a binder for review and signatures or fax the letters every week,” Meyer says of the familiar process. “We used to create three copies of every single client letter we sent out. Now, we simply scan one copy right at our MFP, which Laserfiche Import Agent OCRs and applies metadata to before moving it into Laserfiche.”

Then, Workflow renames the document and applies the correct metadata by referencing Fure’s Junxure SQL database. The document is then routed to the correct folders automatically, which a Fure senior advisor is then able to review and sign—all electronically. “Once the workflow is completed, it even e-mails the signed document to Commonwealth’s compliance department,” Meyer adds. “Import Agent and Workflow, with some custom scripts built by Cities Digital and an electronic signature pad, have taken that process completely paperless with one touch of the button on our MFP.”

Audit preparation has likewise benefitted from the centralization and automation—utilizing functionality as simple as a robust search and as comprehensive as Audit Trail. “Laserfiche allows us to pull the necessary documents together for an auditor extremely quickly instead of going through file cabinets,” Meyer says. “The security and auditing of documents is also important as we are able to prove the integrity of our documents; any activity or change with a document is right there.”

The Laserfiche advantage: weather-proofed is ‘future-proofed’

For a family-oriented firm like Fure, the little improvements add up as well. “We can train new hires much more quickly—the system is that intuitive. We’re not having to give tours of file drawers or a bank of cabinets anymore.”

Meyer says he can recommend Laserfiche on two levels: “From an IT standpoint, the program is very easy to administer, and the flexibility of Laserfiche and the highly customizable security options allowed me to tailor the program to fit our needs as far as setting up template fields, adding users and ensuring compliance,” he says. “From a user standpoint, Laserfiche allows our financial planning team to access client documents and pinpoint what we need, when we need it, which translates into more time spent with clients and generating revenue and less time on tracking things down. That’s the real benefit—the reclaimed time and effort.”

Still, for all the operational benefits he can identify, Meyer credits the long-term value of Laserfiche to fitting so well with the firm’s holistic business philosophy. “Having a powerful ECM system like Laserfiche allows our business to adjust to the changing environment that many small businesses in any industry face,” he says.

“The more agile and flexible your technology system can be, the more ‘future-proofed’ you can become,” Meyer adds. “While it’s very hard to predict exactly where compliance, government regulations, clients’ needs and technology will be in the future, Laserfiche allows us to prepare as much as possible. Staying on course, no matter which way the wind blows, means having to adapt as conditions change without compromising on the final destination.”

Before then, IT Director Lewis Paskin recalls PBC’s paper-based processes becoming overly cumbersome as the company grew, while escalating costs were adversely affecting profitability. There were shipping costs to receive charts; clerical costs to collate charts; and labor costs to copy, sort, log and distribute charts for coding, data entry and accounts receivable. “Adding to the paper overload were insurance claims that resulted in inbound Explanation of Benefits [EOB], patient payments, receipts, checks and correspondence—all of which needed to be opened, logged, accounted for and dispensed with daily,” Paskin says. “There were also significant paper costs from producing coding sheets for charts, making multiple copies of EOBs and eventually the long term offsite storage costs, as well as the HIPAA concerns that come with having all this copied and ‘travelling’ paper.”

Paskin led an internal committee to assess PBC’s needs in an enterprise content management (ECM) solution and began to search around four key features:

• Security.
• Accessibility.
• Accountability.
• Simplicity of user interface.

“We needed to make sure that billing records were easily retrievable, that protected health information was secure and that we could account for all our documents,” Paskin explains. “But we also needed a solution that was cost-effective and scalable. Our immediate goal was to be able to store billing records electronically, but our long term goal was a completely paperless workflow.”

Finding an ECM solution that fit—and would keep on fitting

PBC’s search soon took them to Laserfiche, and specifically to Laserfiche reseller JPI Data Resource. Paskin, for one, was initially skeptical. “When they said Laserfiche could dynamically create folders and structures as well as automatically extract text from documents, I told them I’d be shocked if it could. But it did,” he laughs.

“The Laserfiche product fulfilled our requirements,” Paskin continues, “but it was how it did it—the fact that it was really simple but also very powerful in terms of processing information—that’s how we knew it made sense for us. We have some of the least technical and most technical people working with our information, sometimes in a similar capacity. So, seeing how a staff member could just drop a document in a scanner and how Quick Fields automatically pulls and files all the metadata, or how Workflow would mean our users wouldn’t have to leave their desks, this was functionality we’d see improvements with immediately.”

Working with JPI’s Joseph Gutierrez, Paskin and his PBC team designed a 20-user Laserfiche system including Audit Trail; Workflow and Quick Fields; Bar Code and Zone OCR; Scan Connect and Snapshot for capture; and set up five different scanning stations. Installation, Paskin notes, was completed in less than a day, while user training took less than three days.

Paskin credits the comprehensive capture methods with making the transition to an automated environment a smooth one. “We’ve found that working with whatever file format a hospital is using with minimal modification is our best way to retrieve data,” Paskin says. “We do a lot of scanning directly into Laserfiche from our hospital clients’ facilities, which makes for a wide differential in chart documents. Some hospitals send charts with barcodes, others use file names, some just send text, but through the various Laserfiche applications we ferret out a way to get the data into the system.”

The biggest improvement, he notes, has been in processing paper. “Staff now simply scan those documents, either separated by bar-coded index sheets or by utilizing Zone OCR, into Laserfiche. Quick Fields reads the patient’s name and ID from the bar codes and automatically indexes the scanned files and fills in all the necessary document metadata.”

The effect was as impressive as it was immediate. “We were able to migrate one of our largest volume clients to a completely paperless environment in less than a week. Then we started bringing our other client applications online,” Paskin says.

Scanning volume soon hit 50,000 pages a day. “We scanned over 200,000 documents containing over 2.5 million pages in just under one year,” he adds.

The process(es) of coding and billing, better and more efficiently

The impact on PBC’s business processes was transformative:

• Laserfiche Import Agent constantly monitors the multiple directories PBC has set up to receive files.
• Laserfiche Quick Fields then extracts and sorts data, which triggers Workflow to route files to the respective departments that need to touch the document before it moves forward and is finally archived.
• If any predefined criterion is missing, Workflow automatically reroutes the record to the appropriate department for further follow up.

Previously, PBC’s coders signed out up to three days’ worth of charts and held them at their desks until coding was completed. Charts were then passed in bulk to the insurance review department, then on to data entry for manual entry to initiate billing before eventually being archived in a file room and sent to an offsite storage facility. Now, PBC coders work and code offsite, accessing information over a secure connection to PBC’s terminal servers.

“An entire team of people no longer need to work in the office—everything’s accessed and managed centrally through Laserfiche,” adds Paskin. As the coders finish a chart, it automatically moves through the workflow to the next department, speeding up and evening out the process from inbound chart to billing.

“We have over 10 different client applications that reside in Laserfiche—five of which are hospital-related, and three that are used by our Accounts Receivable (AR) department to look up claim denials, track work batches and store EOBs. We’re using it in more than five distinct departments including coding, claims processing, AR, finance and Human Resources; it’s our document management back-end for all our lines of business,” Paskin says.

This centralized control has improved oversight to monitor productivity as well as to ensure HIPAA compliance. Using Audit Trail, a document ID number can trace the file’s history. “We can see who changed what—and when—for every document,” says Paskin.

Another benefit, Paskin adds, is the ability to use SAP Crystal Reports tools to help monitor PBC’s workflow. “We have about 15–20 reports that go out daily—one of which is referred to as our ‘bucket report.’ When we receive a medical chart, getting it coded and billed quickly is key to cash flow. The bucket reports tell us how many charts are sitting in a user’s folder. Because all this data is in a single, centralized repository, it’s easy to create reports,” says Paskin. “I credit Joe and JPI with understanding our business well enough to show us how we should have our information structured.”

Automating the billing process itself, Paskin notes, “works essentially the same way it does in the Laserfiche brochure that JPI showed us initially. Again, everything’s in a single and straightforward database. We simply wrote Java and Web-related scripts to pull the account number, CPT and diagnosis codes to automate the actual billing process. Of course, there was controlled testing for about two weeks before we went live, but that was it.”

Now, PBC’s business processes are synonymous with Laserfiche—and significantly improved. Paskin points to processing the hundreds of charts sent to PBC on any given day. “That used to take three employees a full day to process manually; now it takes one person about 15 minutes.

“Our original vision was a paperless workflow, and we’ve pretty much achieved that. We have over 800,000 documents representing 10 million pages, and that all happened within the past 2 ½ years,” he adds. “We have redeployed 60% of our FTE’s required to produce a claim, and no longer need a night shift to keep up with the workload. Considering how far we’ve come, it’s pretty amazing.”

For more information, read Laserfiche’s ECM for Third Party Medical Billing brochure.

Read more about PBC.

Besides the already low user adoption rate, the county faced stringent formatting for annual submission of digital copies of its land management records (“fee book pages”) to the state’s County Land Records Information Services (CLRIS) agency—now the Iowa Land Records System (ILR)—utilizing an application provided by the state to upload images. Or at least it was supposed to.

“We were never able to get this integration set up with our old system,” Koehler admits. “We had to pay the ILR an extra $2,500 in fees because we were simply unable to submit our images to the state.”

Agility in Action, Part 1: A New System for Less Than an Upgrade

By January of 2010, Koehler faced a challenge—and a choice. The county was on version 5 of EMC Application Xtender (AX), and it was being phased out by provider EMC/Documentum. So not only was Koehler’s team facing a mandatory upgrade, but also a service agreement renewal. And they were still likely facing $2,500 annually in fees to the state for fee book page submission.

“We were looking at a substantial enough reinvestment to retain our current system that it made sense to start looking at other solutions,” he says.

Koehler researched other CLRIS/ILR-approved systems and discovered Laserfiche via Advanced Systems, Inc. (ASI) based nearby in Waterloo, IA, which had a relationship with the county from servicing its printer and copiers. ASI solutions consultant Steve Lewis showed Koehler how Laserfiche’s Quick Fields Zone OCR component could capture and index information from specific areas of land records forms, which could then be used to submit images to ILR utilizing the state’s uploading application.

What’s more, implementing Laserfiche could address all of the county’s information management needs in a single system—at less cost than upgrading their existing system.

Agility in Action, Part 2: Deployment to Six Departments in Two Months

In March 2010, Bremer County purchased a 24-user Laserfiche Avante system with Quick Fields advanced capture, Import Agent and SDK. Just two months later, Laserfiche was successfully deployed to six county departments:

• Auditor
• Treasurer
• Attorney
• Recorder
• Assessor
• Building and Zoning

Each department was equipped with a scan station that Shane Peterson, solutions engineer at Advanced Systems, set up to automatically recognize and retrieve index information based on the standard forms used by each department.

The impact on scanning efficiency was immediate: in the Assessor’s office, four stacks of tax credit forms two feet tall were scanned and indexed within a few days. “Quick Fields automated all our scanning processes in all our departments,” Koehler says.

Agility in Action, Part 3: Six Months of Scanning in Less Than a Week

To illustrate the scale of improvement, Koehler uses the example of Bremer County’s Zoning Department. “Zoning was six months behind on their scanning,” he begins. “It would have taken staff over a month and a half to scan in all those documents using our old system. Instead, using Quick Fields, we were able to get those documents scanned in less than a week.”

At the same time, Koehler adds, staff who had given up on the previous system and scanning in general have warmed up to Laserfiche. “I am starting to see more people getting rid of the paper and using Laserfiche,” he says.

The end result of significantly improved scanning, Koehler says, is the reclaimed staff time. “We can devote the man hours we save from scanning for other projects.”

Agility in Action, Part 4: Integration Saves $2,500 in Fines

By November of 2010, Bremer County was submitting land records’ fee book pages automatically to the ILR, thanks to a combination of Quick Fields, Laserfiche Workflow and a custom integration developed by ASI:

• When staff in the Recorder’s Office scan land records, Quick Fields automatically retrieves index information from the image utilizing Zone OCR and Pattern Matching.
• Workflow then sends the image from a processing folder to a completed folder in the Laserfiche repository, where a custom integration exports the image and index information into an XML file.
• The XML file is then used to send the image to the state.
• This index information is then searchable by both the county and the state to tie the image to other pertinent index information about the land record.

Koehler says this process is not only more efficient, but more cost-effective, too. “We’re no longer charged $2,500 in fines for not providing the digital documents to the state that was such a problem with our old system,” he says.

Agility in Action, Part 5: Adding the Sheriff’s Office and More

The newest chapter of Bremer County’s information management overhaul has been the 2011 addition of five more named users for the Sheriff’s Office, which will use its own repository to catalogue video, photographs, ticketing, incident reports and other documents. The expanded implementation will include Laserfiche Web Access to enable the county attorney to retrieve information without going to the Sheriff’s Office to request that a detective put files on a disk for the attorney to review.

Koehler notes that with the addition of the Sheriff’s Office comes enhanced document security concerns. “We’ll be utilizing the auto-redaction capabilities of Quick Fields for more sensitive information, but we’re also able to manage the system from a central point of control,” he says.

Laserfiche use, Koehler predicts, will keep growing with each departmental success story. “The remaining three departments that don’t use Laserfiche are seeing how much the other departments love its ease of use and speed, so they’re starting to ask how they can use it too.”

By 2007, CapitalCare’s decade of growth had the side effect of generating more paperwork than the group’s 14 offices could efficiently manage—at least not the way they had been. “We were on our fourth expansion in our central office building in Albany; our offices were running out of storage and our CBO had rooms of files and boxes everywhere. So we asked ourselves, ‘Why all this space for storage? Why all this time to find things?’” says Charles Hagstrand, CIO of CapitalCare. “After 10 years, we needed a solution to move us forward.”

Hagstrand envisioned a true enterprise content management (ECM) solution from the start, one that could manage CapitalCare’s spectrum of information needs, including 700,000 patient encounters a year being stored remotely to over 280,000 EOB documents generated annually, as well as other documents and business records associated with its various practices. Eventually shared back-office business processes would be automated, beginning with AP processing.

“Initially we looked at a lot of vendors who had products that handled specific document types, but we were looking for something that wouldn’t pigeonhole us,” recalls Hagstrand. “You see a lot of departmental applications in larger organizations. We wanted a single system that could fit a variety of needs in different departments, and that ultimately could grow with us.”Hagstrand found what CapitalCare was looking for when his evaluation team discovered Laserfiche through reseller JPI Data Resource. “It was the product’s versatility that really won us over,” he says. “We liked that Workflow was a push technology that could keep things moving more effectively.”

Adds Jason Wicks, business analyst, “Laserfiche was like one-stop shopping as far as addressing the range of projects we were looking at, from HR files to Accounting and through-processing contracts and invoices. It’s very flexible.”

Wicks worked with JPI and CapitalCare department heads to design and deploy a pilot 20-user Laserfiche system with Records Management Edition (RME) and Workflow. They mapped out a multi-phase implementation that would eventually include using RME to automate retention and compliance, as well as Workflow to route invoices from CapitalCare’s central business offices in Albany to the group’s various remote locations for AP processing.

The first order of business was addressing Hagstrand’s storage and access concerns. “We took the approach that we should start by working with the items that didn’t involve Workflow first,” Wicks says.

Implementation began with backlog conversion of a decade’s worth of historical files in the HR and Medical Management departments, “just taking paper and getting it in Laserfiche to get people used to archiving,” as Wicks puts it.

The impact was immediate. “Our first touch is our site managers who are working with our patient encounters—that totals over 700,000 documents a year,” Wicks explains. “We used to have to process those in our central business office, then send them back out to the sites to store for seven years. Now they’re all inputted when received from the site and accessed as needed through Laserfiche.”

Standardizing to streamline AP processing

The next phase of implementation deployed Workflow to help automate AP processing for CapitalCare’s accounting department—which has seen the number of sites it supports grow from 14 to 27 in the four years since Laserfiche was acquired in 2007.

“Before Laserfiche, AP processing wasn’t very efficient, nor was there a common practice for approving invoices,” Wicks explains. “Some bills were received at the site, approved and forwarded; others came to the CBO and were distributed for approval and return. Laserfiche allowed us to standardize the process, and that’s been a big time saver.”

Thanks to Laserfiche, turnaround time for AP processing was reduced from 7–10 days to 2–3:

• Invoices are now captured and sorted centrally using Quick Fields in CapitalCare’s Albany office.
• Workflow then automatically routes the invoices to the appropriate site managers, who are notified through email that they have a document to approve with a shortcut link to retrieve the document.
• Working in conjunction with a custom file export tool developed by JPI, approved documents are then automatically pushed from Laserfiche to CapitalCare’s Great Plains accounting system via QuickLinks and PaperSave.

“Accounting now knows what documents need approval and which documents are in a queue once the site has approved the document,” Wicks says. A backup copy of the exported document is created using Workflow, which, after 30 days, is automatically deleted by a Workflow activity.

The next phase, Wicks adds, will be to establish a centralized shared service center, where invoices will be processed directly from the central business office. “Workflow will set up queues for each of our sites’ accounting departments to process invoices,” he says.

An overall benefit, Wicks says, has come from the time saved making action items more available to site staff. “Although we have a separate solution to store patient medical information for continuity, middle management at each site—typically one or two employees—utilizes Laserfiche to access past patient encounters, approving invoices and coding corrections, and this has eliminated a lot of lag time.”

The future of the future: Workflow

Future projects are already slated—including implementing RME. “The functionality of Records Management Edition will assist with purging documents once they have reached their shelf life, while Audit Trail will help keep us in compliance,” Wicks says.

Hagstrand says even the IS Department has its own ideas for how to utilize the system. “We’re actually hoping to use Laserfiche to manage our service agreements, so we’ll be able to run queries and see what’s going to expire in the next year.”

“The system keeps evolving as we bring on more documents and processes,” add Wicks, pointing out that Workflow will play a more leading role in future deployment. “I’d say we’re at the grassroots of pushing information between sites and departments. Right now, I’m looking at any situation where we have an opportunity to push documents and how we can utilize Laserfiche to automate additional functions between our practices and our central business office,” he continues, noting a recent meeting with a business unit to discuss improving billing and coding through automation. “Workflow has really worked out for us because we can take the visual process of scanning documents and apply that to designing workflows—it’s very intuitive.”

This versatility, says Wicks, is why Laserfiche use continues to evolve. That, and Wicks makes sure CapitalCare’s 50 named users know just what’s possible using the system that solved their initial storage problems.

Says Wicks, “We need to do more education within the company to say ‘This is a lot more than just a scanning solution’ and hold a ‘Did you know?’ session.”

Level Four also operates as an Office of Supervisory Jurisdiction (OSJ) for Lincoln Financial Securities. From its corporate offices in Plano, Texas, Level Four works with branded offices in Irvine, CA; Austin, TX; and Lubbock, TX, as well as numerous self-branded offices throughout the United States.

With the growing footprint of the company came a growing amount of records, documents and files to be managed. So much so, that by 2004, Level Four’s corporate offices had a conspicuous presence: eight lateral file cabinets worth of client files, corporate invoices, compliance papers and financial records. “It seemed like the file cabinets had more office space than some of our senior advisors,” jokes Joe Globensky, Level Four’s chief financial officer (CFO).

The paperless vision—and the compliance concerns

Level Four began to look into the possibilities of going paperless using an enterprise content management (ECM) solution—but not without some concerns. “Our foremost requirement was that the solution needed to meet industry compliance standards so regulators and our broker-dealer at the time would accept the solution and see it as something that would allow our business to increase scale,” Globensky says. “’Would we be able to produce the records in a timely fashion, and could we show that documents, once stored, could not be altered? How would we back up files?’ These were the kinds of questions they had, and frankly, we had them to an extent as well. In an industry geared toward paper, we had to consider how our operations were going to be affected, positively or negatively.”

Fueled by a mix of practicality and pragmatism, Level Four didn’t have to look very far to find what they were looking for. “Several similar firms in the neighboring Dallas-Ft. Worth area were already using Laserfiche,” Globensky recalls. “We spoke with them and they had had the same concerns we did and none had any problems with Laserfiche. Especially the security—the fact that Laserfiche was used by the government and could meet Department of Defense security specifications was the main reason we chose it.

“When we factored in the amount of time and space we’d be saving, it made even more sense in terms of cost-efficiency,” he adds.
Initial implementation began in 2004 with a two-month backlog conversion of Level Four’s existing files. “Once we had everything in Laserfiche, it was our only source of document storage for our staff of five—we were essentially paperless,” Globensky says.

The effect on operations was swift and positive. “The system was pretty easy to use after only some introductory training. We noted improvements in day-to-day operations almost immediately in terms of the ease and speed of looking up files and documents,” Globensky remembers. “But what really stood out to us was how multiple users could be using the system at the same time, pulling up information, something that used to take 15-20 minutes—if the file wasn’t already on someone’s desk or misfiled—literally while they were on the phone with someone. ”

Growing the business, growing the solution, easing the audits

In 2007, Level Four moved its broker-dealer affiliation to Lincoln Financial Securities. Lincoln had concerns similar to what Level Four had back in 2004. The difference, Globensky says, is that Level Four had such a solid track record using Laserfiche, that Lincoln’s concerns were more a formality than a doubt. “They wanted to see our procedures on storing documents, backing up records, document access and again how this would allow for growth.”

The answer, it turns out, was “very much so.” By 2008, Level Four had opened its first branded office outside of Texas, and Laserfiche went right along with it. “As we’ve grown throughout the country, and experienced audits from a number of different organizations, remote deployment made a lot of sense,” Globensky says. “As the OSJ, we’re required to have copies of the files in our remote offices. Because our remote offices are a part of our Laserfiche system, they don’t need to keep paper files, which helps us keep track of everything from a single, secure hub, but also frees up their office space as well.”

Another benefit, Globensky adds, is more hassle-free audit preparation. “The ability to offer Laserfiche remotely has helped our offices be more prepared for compliance audits, either by the OSJ, broker/dealer or industry regulators,” he says.

Now, it’s the auditors themselves who have been remarking on the effectiveness of using Laserfiche. “We’ve received numerous comments from auditors about how easy Laserfiche makes the auditing process, how quickly we’re able to produce documents and how organized the office seems to be because of Laserfiche,” Globensky says.

Level, headed forward

As efficient as auditors think Laserfiche is, Globensky thinks it’s even more so.

“We haven’t necessarily put a hard number to what our ROI is, we just know the amount of time it saves us anytime we need to pull information from a file,” he says. “We provide a wide range of support services aimed at keeping our advisors in front of their clients, instead of being buried in non-revenue generating activities, and Laserfiche is a big part of that.”

And, he adds, Laserfiche is continuing to be a big part of Level Four’s pattern of sustained growth as well.

“In the beginning, our main reason for purchasing Laserfiche was to get rid of paper. But after a while, it’s not just about ‘getting rid’ of paper—it’s about how much more you do with your information, like being able to access it remotely, prepare for audits and still save on office space,” Globensky says.

“Going forward, we plan to work with our technology partners to ensure we’re getting the most out of our Laserfiche system, including streamlining our operations, using the system to its complete functionality and relying less on manual functions,” he concludes.

“We were about to cross the $25,000,000 AUM threshold for SEC registration. With that milestone also came the millstone of an SEC audit sometime during that first year of registration,” says Margaret Hubbard, CPA.

The firm identified a link between compliance and operational efficiency, and outlined their requirements accordingly:

1. SEC compliance proof.
2. Easy access to files.
3. Managing the sheer weight and volume of records even as a small firm.

The answer came later that year at a TD Ameritrade Institutional Conference Hubbard attended.

“Speakers there were talking about an industry-wide need for electronic document management and it rang true with us, both in terms of operational efficiency as well as simplifying compliance,” Hubbard recalls. Researching what other firms were using led Hubbard to Laserfiche. “We wanted a large, reputable solution provider with a lot of experience and excellent references,” she explains. “The biggest draw was that the U.S. government was using Laserfiche.”

Implementation took place over two days in late 2005. With five years of confirmations, monthly brokerage reports, forms and correspondence to input, as well as current paper-based processes to streamline, EMM looked to Laserfiche Quick Fields, especially its zone optical character recognition (Zone OCR) tools, to automate the capture process. Laserfiche installation was completed in a day, while fine-tuning the Quick Fields capture process took another day. “The operational improvement was immediate,” says Hubbard.

“Quick Fields became our file clerk”

“We had been manually filing every confirmation as it arrived by mail. After installing Laserfiche, we had the brokerage houses switch us to electronic delivery. Quick Fields became our file clerk,” says Hubbard.

EMM now receives a monthly download of client statements from its brokerage houses, which Quick Fields reads, processes and imports into each client’s Laserfiche file. “We used to get a heavy package by mail much later in the month than the current downloads are available. That took time and resources to sort through and file. If we ever needed to access a record, we had to locate the big fat file book by month, manually cross-index between alpha name and account number and then manually find the report by account number,” she explains.

“Now we get the information earlier, file it faster, find it instantly when needed, have a nice clear electronic copy if we need to print it out—which is rarely—and we don’t have to hurt ourselves moving all those bankers’ boxes.”

With Laserfiche now doing the heavy lifting, so to speak, the firm was able to use part-time help to complete backlog scanning and conversion of the five years’ worth of existing files over the course of the following year. That first year also marked another milestone/millstone: the first SEC audit of the newly-registered firm. Before Laserfiche, the process would have involved compiling paper files manually, taking staff time and resources that, to a small firm, significantly impact or distract from revenue-generating day-to-day operations.

With Laserfiche, Hubbard says, preparation was as simple as using the system’s comprehensive search functionality to respond to the auditor. “Our original need was really to successfully complete the SEC audit process, and that was more than met within a year of implementation when we had a very clean audit,” she says. “The auditor only stayed onsite half a day because we were able to almost instantly hand her everything she requested. We were able to clearly demonstrate our compliance with all regulations. Laserfiche was essential to that demonstration.”

Hubbard says the firm is encouraged with the improvements to both its day-to-day operations as well as the relative ease with which it proves compliance. EMM is now planning to implement a new CRM system (likely Junxure, according to Hubbard) in the second quarter of this year. A major selection consideration is the ease with which the chosen CRM system integrates with Laserfiche. “We’ve been consulting with Laserfiche and our reseller [Bits and Bytes Document Solutions of Dacula, GA] to help with our selection to make sure it integrates with our existing applications including our portfolio management software, Schwab Performance Technologies® PortfolioCenter®, and Microsoft® Outlook®.”

Proving the wisdom of implementing proven technology

Hubbard admits that the firm’s steps toward more automated business processes have belied a conservative approach to technology. But, she says, that’s all the part of the long-term vision: to be innovative—just with proven innovations.

“We seek to be second-generation adopters in terms of determining the best technology we need for our next level of growth,” she says. “We want solutions others have tested through trial and error so we don’t have to. None of us in our firm are techies, so we’ve learned we get more out of technology by working with proven solutions.”

The way Hubbard sees it, Laserfiche provides a modest-sized firm like EMM with the best of both worlds: industry-recognized success with the scalability to do more as the need arises and uses evolve. “Laserfiche has provided more power than we have been able to harness, and that’s exactly where we want to be. We discover more uses for the system monthly, and we’re confident that Laserfiche can more than keep up with our needs as we keep growing.”

“Rodney recognized that although SharePoint could do many great things for our organization, DoD 5015.2-certified records management wasn’t one of them,” says Ellis, who today is a senior web analyst for the Port Authority.

“SharePoint,” she explains, “with all of its many features is so much more robust than a network drive. In particular, the Port Authority uses document workspaces heavily, because they make it easy to collaborate on works in progress such as contracts. However, once you go beyond about 10,000 documents, you’ve got a real mess on your hands.”

According to Ellis, the Port Authority didn’t want to lose the collaboration features inherent in SharePoint, nor did it want to take a familiar interface away from the staff, so it needed to make sure that the ECM solution it selected had a seamless SharePoint integration. “I was the lead on the team that built our RFP,” Ellis says. “In the end, we had more than 400 requirements and 24 vendors vying for our business. The SharePoint integration was our top concern.”

Other important selection criteria included:

• Robust records management functionality.
• The ability to electronically store a wide range of file types, including AutoCAD drawings.
• Open architecture allowing integration with line-of-business applications such as CRM.
• Availability of workflow functionality for process improvements—and a reduced paper flow.

“Before we implemented Laserfiche, our records management plan was very inefficient,” Ellis explains. “We’d print out documents, process them by hand and then file them in cabinets. We had a whole warehouse dedicated to file storage, containing all kinds of old documents in Bankers Boxes stacked nearly to the ceiling that we didn’t have time to properly manage.”

Laserfiche + SharePoint = Transparency

By integrating Laserfiche with SharePoint, the Port Authority now has the ability to collaborate on documents, retain them electronically, and efficiently manage and dispose of digital records—all while giving users access to content through the SharePoint interface.

“Laserfiche has dramatically reduced the flow of paper throughout the organization,” says Ellis. “It’s opened up space for new offices and enabled us to tear down an entire warehouse for profitable use!”

But the cost and space savings aren’t the most significant benefits the Port Authority has realized as a result of its Laserfiche implementation. By acting as integrative middleware, Laserfiche allows users at the organization to access information in the environment with which they’re already familiar: SharePoint.

“The Port Authority’s had SharePoint for close to ten years, so people are pretty familiar with it,” says Ellis. “Most of our users won’t even know they’re using Laserfiche. With the integration, our content is searchable on an enterprise level, and the results are returned to users transparently through SharePoint. It enables us to access all our information from one central location without having to train our users on a new system.”

Laserfiche + SharePoint = Operational Efficiency

With Laserfiche in place, the Port Authority has started using it to streamline business processes. First on the list? The RFP and vendor selection process.

The Port Authority was established in 1952 as a political subdivision of the Commonwealth of Virginia for the purpose of stimulating commerce in the ports of the Commonwealth, promoting the shipment of goods and cargoes through the ports, improving the navigable tidal waters within the Commonwealth, and in general to perform any act or function which may be useful in developing, improving or increasing the commerce of the ports of the Commonwealth. As such, it contracts with dozens of vendors each year.

In the past, the RFP and vendor selection process was manual and paper-based:

• Proposals were submitted in hard copy and photocopies for each member of the selection committee.
• After a contract had been finalized, paper copies were made for the Contracts and Finance Departments, and also distributed to the contract administrators.
• Because copies of the contracts documents weren’t centralized, it was difficult to locate the most current version of any given contract or amendment.

With the help of Unity ECM, the Port Authority’s Laserfiche reseller, the organization has transformed the entire process as follows:

• Proposals are submitted electronically and automatically routed into SharePoint.
• Proposals are posted to a workspace in SharePoint for contract evaluation, scoring, changes and selection.
• Once the collaboration phase is finished and the contract is finalized, it is automatically pulled into Laserfiche, where it is retained according to contract retention schedules.
• From SharePoint, users can access the contract by clicking on a URL that takes them directly to the document stored in Laserfiche. The URL placeholder in SharePoint ensures that the data is synchronized between the two systems, simplifying version control.
• When searching for a contract, users run a search in SharePoint that seamlessly provides results from both the Laserfiche and SharePoint repositories.

“Even employees who aren’t technologically inclined appreciate the efficiency of our new process,” says Ellis. “In general, having real-time information available in a central location has been one of the most important process improvements our organization has received as a benefit of this project.”

Overcoming Implementation Hurdles

One implementation hurdle that Ellis hopes to help other people avoid when integrating Laserfiche with SharePoint has to do with Kerberos, a network authentication protocol that, according to Ellis, is “widely used but poorly documented.”

The Laserfiche/SharePoint integration tools are optimally designed for a single-server deployment, but according to Ellis, the Port Authority “has Laserfiche and SharePoint set up on a multi-server farm that consists of five different servers: the Laserfiche Application Server, Laserfiche SQL Server, SharePoint (MOSS) Server, SharePoint SQL Server and a server for Laserfiche Web Access. Prior to implementing Laserfiche, we didn’t realize that—because we have multiple servers—the integration wouldn’t work without a great deal of manual configuration and without using Kerberos. We had a few frustrating days before we figured that out.

“In the end,” she adds, “we had to enlist a senior network administrator to assist us by adding the SPNs on the domain controllers, since adding them to the Laserfiche or SharePoint servers doesn’t solve the issue.

“My two big pieces of advice for other organizations that want to deploy the Laserfiche/SharePoint integration are to get to know your Active Directory and SharePoint experts really well (if you’re not either one) and use the Laserfiche Support Site. Read those Knowledge Base articles!”

Even the hassle surrounding the Kerberos issue, however, didn’t dampen Ellis’ enthusiasm for Laserfiche. “If I had to do it all over again the same way, I’d do it all over again, hands-down,” she says. “Both our users and our executives are impressed with the efficiency and effectiveness the Laserfiche/SharePoint integration affords the organization. Putting a secure, centralized and powerful Laserfiche repository behind SharePoint has given everybody much better access to the information they need to do their jobs well.”

She ticks off a few of the benefits that give Laserfiche a leg up on the competition: “First, Laserfiche is easy to use, because it looks and functions like Windows and Google. Second, it’s stable and easy for the IT Department to maintain. Third, it has an open API that makes it easy to integrate with our other applications.”

These benefits, Duckett notes, are vital to Shakopee, which has a two-person IT Department supporting approximately 125 city staff in nine different departments. In fact, if Laserfiche wasn’t easy to use, maintain and integrate, the city wouldn’t have considered shaking up its approach to enterprise content management (ECM) by upgrading from four concurrent users to a 50-user Avante system.

Leading Up to the Upgrade

“We first implemented Laserfiche in 2005, using it to manage building permits through an integration with our PIMS building permit software,” Duckett explains, outlining how the process works:

- “We print barcoded permits that our records clerk scans into Laserfiche Quick Fields, which is an automated data capture solution.
- “Within Quick Fields we have an ODBC connection that connects to the PIMS database.
- “Quick Fields pattern matches the permit address, permit type and permit ID and automatically archives the document in the Laserfiche repository.”

She also notes that the city has long used Laserfiche to manage council agenda packets and other miscellaneous items, some of which are made available to the public through Laserfiche WebLink, a Web browser-based thin client that provides read-only access to public information.

The desire to upgrade the system came last year, when the Police Department hopped on the Laserfiche bandwagon. “In October 2010,” Duckett says, “the Police Department started using Laserfiche for evidence photos, and we integrated Laserfiche with New World, the PD’s case management system, to enable officers to automatically open photos that pertain to specific cases.”

The integration works as follows:

- Officers access an incident report in New World.
- By right-clicking on the New World screen, a box with a “Search Laserfiche” button pops up.
- Clicking the button launches Laserfiche and automatically takes the user directly to the right case folder, where he can view the evidence photos.

Jennifer Boudreau, Shakopee’s Police Records Technician, explains that one way the PD leverages the integration is to track graffiti, making it easier for officers to identify all instances of a tagger’s work so the city can recoup clean-up costs.

She also notes that Laserfiche allows officers to access photos in the field from their squad cars, which is something they couldn’t do in the past. “It’s an officer safety issue,” she says. “For example, if the officers come across a tagger with a known gang affiliation, they can treat that individual with more caution.”

Boudreau notes that in the past, search options were limited. With Laserfiche, officers can search photos by case number, but they can also search based on the metadata associated with each photo. This makes it easier to discern patterns that might not have otherwise been apparent.

Now that Shakopee has upgraded to Laserfiche Avante, the Police Department is looking forward to scanning all case files into the system. “Right now, case documents are contained in a paper file, which eliminates collaboration and the ability to work on the case at the same time as someone else,” says Boudreau. “As a result, we end up doing a lot of photocopying, which wastes paper. It can also get confusing to have so many copies of the same document floating around, because you never know which is the most current, complete version.”

Further, she explains that Laserfiche will be able to store more than copies of paper documents; where applicable, electronic case files will also contain audio files, squad car video and so on.

Since the Upgrade

Less than a month after implementing its 50-user Avante system, Shakopee has already brought the Finance Department onboard. It now uses Laserfiche Quick Fields to scan barcoded accounts payable documents into the repository, where they’re instantly searchable from the desktop.

“With the upgrade to Avante, which for us included the ‘Barcode and Validation’ and ‘Real Time Lookup and Validation’ packages, we can now use the pattern matching feature in Quick Fields, which automatically creates the folder structure in Laserfiche,” explains Duckett. “This creates a more efficient and seamless process for the users who scan documents into the system.”

She adds that once the Police Department starts using Laserfiche for its case files, it will use Quick Fields for its scanning, as well.

The next department to start using Laserfiche will likely be HR, which wants to use the system to digitize employee records and automate the hiring process using Laserfiche Workflow, a business process management tool that automatically performs specified actions (such as document routing) based on organizations’ unique business rules.

According to Duckett, this is just the beginning. “We hope to have every department using Laserfiche by this time next year.”

Additional Integrations

With the New World integration well underway, and the integration with the city’s PIMS building permit software already in place, Shakopee has big plans for linking Laserfiche to additional city applications. “Next, we plan to integrate Laserfiche with GeoLink, our GIS/mapping application,” says Duckett. “When you click on a land parcel, you’ll be able to launch Laserfiche and pull up all the documents associated with that particular piece of land.”

This functionality will be useful for multiple departments, including:

• The Police Department, which will use it for crime mapping.
• The Fire Department, which will be able to quickly retrieve building plans during emergencies.
• The Public Works Department, which will gain easy access to sewer information.

She goes on to explain that the city is also looking to integrate Laserfiche with JDE, Shakopee’s finance, payroll and HR software. “By integrating these two systems—and taking advantage of Laserfiche Workflow—we’ll be able to simplify the payment cycle with electronic invoices and purchase orders that can be automatically routed through the approval process. Once we digitize our HR records, we’ll be able to automate the hiring process as well.”

From Duckett’s perspective as an IT professional, the best thing about the planned integrations is how easy they’ll be to set up. “Because Laserfiche is used across so many cities and government entities, there are a lot of proven, pre-built integrations available to us at no additional cost.”

Avante = Affordability

In terms of cost-effectiveness, Duckett also appreciates how affordable it was to upgrade to Avante. “If we’d stayed with a concurrent user system and simply purchased the additional functionality and users we needed, it would have cost us $40,000 more than the upgrade to Avante,” she explains. “Plus, our named users now have 24/7 access to information, which is important from a productivity standpoint.”

She concludes, “Although it’s early in the implementation process, we’re starting to see financial and efficiency savings in the Finance, Building and Police Departments. Once we extend Laserfiche to all city departments and start creating workflows, we expect to save a lot more on paper and printing costs, and we also expect to greatly enhance employee efficiency.

“It’s our goal to have Laserfiche installed on every desktop in the city. We envision that it’ll be used as often as our e-mail client, providing instant access to records, streamlining business processes and allowing us to move data across multiple platforms.”

“Technical innovation and efficiency are important to our citizens,” says Steve Barden, Systems Development Supervisor for Durham County, “and they’re a top priority for the IT Department as well.”

Over the past year and a half, one of the major strategic projects for Durham County’s IT Department has been upgrading and standardizing its enterprise content management (ECM) infrastructure. “In the past, ECM was viewed as a departmental application,” explains Barden. “We came to realize, however, that this is an inefficient and resource-intensive approach, so I stepped in as project manager to coordinate the various installations and get everyone on the same page.”

With Laserfiche already in place in four county departments, the choice of systems upon which to standardize was simple.

“We have 32 different departments across the county,” says Barden. “DSS, HR, Public Health and Legal were already using Laserfiche, so it made sense to stick with the system they were already familiar with. It was more a question of getting them all onto the same version of Laserfiche before rolling it out to additional departments like IT and Purchasing.”

Laserfiche Rio, with its unlimited servers and ability to give IT central control over the system while still allowing each department to customize it to their own unique needs, made the most sense from an enterprise standpoint. Today, Durham County has a 605-user Rio system, along with Quick Fields and Laserfiche Records Management Edition.

In the Beginning

Durham County’s first purchase of Laserfiche occurred back in 2006, when DSS decided that case management would be easier if files could be saved in an electronic, rather than a paper, format. To date, DSS has scanned and stored the following records in Laserfiche:

• Case files.
• Food & Nutrition Services.
• Child Welfare.

In addition, it’s currently about halfway through the conversion of its Medicaid records. “DSS will be moving into the county’s new Human Services Building at the end of 2012, and our goal is to be completely paperless by then,” explains Sharon Hirsch, Assistant Director of Customer Accountability for Durham County’s DSS Department. “It’ll make the move a lot easier,” she adds, “and there’s also no room in the new building for document storage, so that’s extra incentive to make sure all our records are accessible on the desktop.”

In fact, accessibility is Hirsch’s favorite thing about Laserfiche. “In the past, staff members had to request paper records from the Records Management team, and it sometimes took them a few days to deliver the requested documentation. Today, our staff has immediate, point-and-click access to the records they need. It’s a huge time saver.”

Hirsch also notes that it’s easier for supervisors to review active case files thanks to Laserfiche. “Active files used to be locked up in file cabinets by individual case workers. Laserfiche gives the supervisors greater visibility into work as it’s being done, so they’re able to correct any errors or oversights earlier in the process.”

Seeing the success DSS was having with Laserfiche, the HR, Public Health and Legal Departments soon implemented the system for themselves.

Branching Out

…into Legal

According to Nina Bullock, Administrative Assistant to the County Attorney, the Legal Department was tired of making multiple copies of documents like medical records and transcripts, which could number thousands of pages. “It was a constant strain on both material and staff resources,” she says.

The Laserfiche implementation has been particularly useful for the Legal Department in regard to document duplication and distribution. “Instead of copying and couriering documents to interested parties, we’re now able to e-mail them or send the documents on a CD.”

Additionally, the county’s lawyers no longer have to drag boxes of paper into court. Instead, they simply bring their laptops and access documents through Laserfiche. “Because staff no longer has to transport heavy files to court or move heavy boxes to retrieve closed files, the risk for injuries, particularly back injuries, has been greatly reduced,” says Bullock. “Back injuries are the most expensive costs for the Risk Management Division’s Workers’ Compensation claims. Changing the way the county works in this manner is setting a precedent that will potentially mitigate Workers’ Compensation claims by millions in the next few years.”

Other cost savings, she explains, have been substantial as well. “From fiscal 2007-2008, our expenditures on paper, toner cartridges, printer replacements and other related costs have decreased by 59% as a result of implementing Laserfiche. As our process becomes more streamlined and court systems become more technologically equipped to receive case filings electronically, we anticipate that these costs will decrease even more.

“So far,” she adds, “these savings have allowed us to avoid cutting staff for two years in a row!”

In addition, Bullock notes that use of Laserfiche has saved the Legal Department’s support staff approximately 10-15 hours per week, totaling roughly 3,500 hours a year. In particular, she appreciates that staff no longer has to spend days painstakingly stamping Bates Numbering onto each page of an evidentiary document; instead, Quick Fields does it automatically.

She explains, “With Laserfiche, our work product is better and our volume is higher, because the time we save on repetitive, manual tasks has been redirected to more substantive aspects of our jobs.”

Bullock believes that the benefits of Laserfiche—including lower costs, higher staff efficiency and increased confidentiality of client information—will continue to improve the department’s performance for years to come.

…into Public Health

For the Public Health Department, eliminating the need for document storage has driven the adoption of Laserfiche. “In February 2011, the department is moving into the county’s new Human Services Building, where there’s no space to store medical records,” explains Marcia Robinson, Local Public Health Administrator for Durham County.

“Prior to Laserfiche,” she adds, “we were storing current records in a 10’4” x 16’9” room, and we were archiving old records offsite with Iron Mountain. The process of finding, copying and filing records was both expensive and time intensive.”

Although the department has saved a significant amount of money on charts, labels, paper, document storage and toner, the real benefit has been the boost in customer service. According to Robinson, “Our medical records clerk no longer has to spend hours making copies to respond to requests from clinicians, practitioners, lawyers and other providers. She now has the option to e-mail the information directly from Laserfiche, eliminating backlogs and providing much more up-to-date files than she could when we were using paper records.”

She continues, “With Laserfiche, staff saves roughly 15 minutes per client during the registration process, reducing wait time and increasing our clinicians’ ability to serve more clients. Laserfiche also prevents many lost staff hours spent on chart preparation, along with the frustrations of searching for misfiled, misplaced and misnumbered charts.”

Overall, Robinson believes that Laserfiche is crucial to the department’s ability to respond efficiently and effectively to the needs of its clients. “In this time of budget constraints,” she says, “our investment in Laserfiche has paid great dividends.”

Overcoming the Limits of a Departmental Approach

Although these departments were all realizing great benefits from their use of Laserfiche, the lack of an enterprise approach to ECM was a problem.

Barden explains that there were two different resellers managing four separate Laserfiche deployments within Durham County. “Each department had a lot of flexibility to use the system as they saw fit,” he says, “but the IT Department didn’t have a lot of control over what was going on.”

For example, there was one repository on a drive that was never backed up, and a number of indexes that weren’t being backed up, either. In addition, Barden discovered that DSS had been scanning documents without using OCR, which made it difficult to find information contained in the repository. “When the IT Department doesn’t have central control over an organization’s ECM system, you run the risk of losing important information and other similar problems.”

Barden notes that the implementation hasn’t been without its flaws, but credits One Source Document Solutions, Durham County’s Laserfiche reseller, with being available to assist with any issues that arise.

“Although people aren’t always thrilled to let go of their paper,” he says, “in the long term we know that standardizing on Laserfiche is going to help the entire organization be more sustainable, more efficient and more available to our citizens. I had no idea what I was getting into when this project started, but it’s been gratifying to play a role in transforming the way the county does business.”

Mergers and acquisitions account for much of SEPT’s growth, but innovation, says Dominic Malvern, Head of Information Systems Development, accounts for much of its ongoing success. “It’s never been a stereotypical government ‘Mental Health Organization,” Malvern says.

In fact, when SEPT transitioned from a purely state-funded trust to a more privatized “Foundation Trust,” one of its primary initiatives was to partner with Adobe to develop an EMR system using its LiveCycle products supported by a Laserfiche ECM system from Laserfiche reseller ScanDoc/Fortus. Malvern saw the chance to hit the ground running with a pilot project in the trust’s Forensic Services Department, which was moving to a new building as part of a modernization program.

“It was the ideal opportunity for us to modernize how our live patient records were accessed, as it was apparent that continuing with a manual process was not in keeping with the state of the art service we provide to our patients,” he says. That process, he adds, had remained manual by default because the legacy imaging system in Forensics didn’t meet the Trust requirement for working with live patient records.

“A single patient record could run for several years, sometimes through a person’s entire adult life, so it would extend into several volumes,” he explains. “Constant patient monitoring meant frequent updates to records for many reasons such as observation or treatment plans, sometimes every 15 minutes.”

A Pilot That Needed To Fly 24-7

When choosing a department to establish proof-of-concept before deploying a full-scale EMR system, SEPT couldn’t have chosen a more challenging one than Forensics Services—or one in which the impact of a successful ECM implementation would be so pronounced.

Malvern worked with ScanDoc’s Steve Livermore to implement a Laserfiche pilot system for active patient records management system using:

• Quick Fields advanced capture to input, sort and file the steady stream of patient information.
• Workflow to automatically route information for reviews, approval and distribution.
• Web Access to allow both remote deployment and access to the system over SEPT’s broad geographic service area and affiliated agencies.

SEPT implemented a clinical pilot project in 2009 and, over the course of a year, the new system kept up with the staff’s round-the-clock demands, amassing over 500,000 documents in the Laserfiche repository in the process.

Malvern says the real breakthrough operationally was having a system aligned with the increasing need for information sharing between regional service offices. “Increasingly we have to work on a multi-disciplinary and multi-agency basis, so having shared but secure access to patient records and notes is vital,” he says.

From an IT perspective, Web Access gave the organization one more tool to centrally control system administration while capitalizing on Laserfiche’s flexibility to configure various access levels remotely.

“Being able to deploy the system through our server or using Web browser options allowed us to control the type of access we wanted to make available,” says Malvern. “Web-based deployment is key because of the ease of maintenance when working with such a large group of users. Updates and upgrades would be unwieldy to deploy with a large number of single desktop clients.”

Going from EMR to ECM Saves $1.5M

The vision to extend Laserfiche from its supporting role in SEPT’s EMR project to a full-scale ECM deployment came with the support of ScanDoc/Fortus’ Livermore, who helped Malvern make the case to SEPT’s directors to implement Laserfiche for the trust’s non-clinical side.

“Once I heard the directors were looking at other solutions, and knowing what Laserfiche was capable of, it seemed a waste to restrict its application to purely clinical processes,” says Malvern. “Of course, it seemed an even bigger waste to spend further public money on more software that would be superfluous when we had a perfectly good system that would likely be better than anything else on the market.”

Now moving ahead with full-scale deployment of its Rio system to what will eventually be 3,000+ users, SEPT is effectively standardizing its information management on Laserfiche, eliminating the need for multiple departmental systems—and their corresponding service agreements and upgrades.

“Initially Laserfiche was envisaged solely as a clinical and medical records solution, but we have now realized that it can be a complete multi-functional document management system for the whole organization,” he says.

“We’ve begun implementation in non-clinical areas such Human Resources and Finance, as well as Vehicle Service Management, where we’re using Quick Fields and Workflow to automate our lease applications.” Additionally, another major project is underway to use Laserfiche to meet Information Governance Corporate Records retention regulations.

“From a roll-out prospective, it makes life much easier to have one multi-tasking system that all employees are trained on no matter what their function. It makes live support a far more streamlined and efficient activity,” he explains.

Malvern says the efficiency—and cost-savings—are starting to add up. “Within 18 months to two years we’ll be able to replace all our legacy imaging systems with Laserfiche. Implementing Laserfiche and its enterprise licensing enables SEPT to discontinue several annual contracts and service agreements. It also delivers savings on labor and print costs for information requests, as well as paper document archive and retrieval services. Realistically, this will save us US$1.5 million over the next three fiscal years,” he says.

Key to this transition, Burns believed, was leveraging business technology to minimize both the operational and risk management costs of working directly with advisors. “As a growing company, technology was the way to get more done with a smaller headcount,” he says.

Burns consulted Joel Bruckenstein, founder of Technology Tools for Today (T3), the multimedia practice management resource for the financial services industry. “Joel really had the vision. He said, ‘You guys could be a virtual firm,’ and that really resonated with us. Joel’s thinking was that we couldn’t afford to work with paper,” Burns remembers.

“We wanted to keep our fees low enough that we’d be extremely competitive—we’re less expensive than 90% of bond funds. To achieve that, manual processes just weren’t going to work.”

Part of the Solution

Bruckenstein suggested Laserfiche agile ECM. “For what they wanted to do, Laserfiche was the missing piece: they’d be paperless, and they’d have a solid workflow engine to share and secure information with their Portfolio Management System (PMS) and Client Relationship Management (CRM) system. Plus, they’d have that compliance piece,” he says.

“Laserfiche made sense because it could integrate with Microsoft Dynamics, which Tamarac was already integrated with, and do it quickly and easily enough that there wouldn’t be a lot of cost and lead-time,” Bruckenstein adds.

For his part, Burns saw the value of having “that compliance piece” when Asset Dedication purchased a Laserfiche Avante system in September of 2010. “By integrating Laserfiche with our Web-based technologies, we have a document management system that can talk to the cloud, and where the information we need to keep secure for compliance and auditing stays on our own server,” he says. “Regulators come in and, once they see that we have Laserfiche set up the way we told them, they have confidence in it the same way we do. We’ve been able to make the commitment to be paperless, but in a way that makes it easy for auditors to see that we’re following the guidelines.”

.NET Gain: A World-Class System without a World-Class Price Tag

Burns sees long-term value in building a system agile enough to maximize the firm’s infrastructural investment as the firm grows. “BondDesk has this world-class bond inventory and trade order management system, so we needed to marry that to a world-class equity portfolio management system like Tamarac. On top of that, they’ve bundled it with Microsoft Dynamics CRM through Tamarac’s Advisor 9, so we’ve got all these systems that all talk to each other and for the most part it’s a single log-in,” he explains. “Now, on the back-end, we can access every document we need because SharePoint talks to Dynamics and Laserfiche talks to SharePoint. Everything’s still on a Microsoft .NET framework, so we can add and subtract layers without it turning into a huge project with a hefty price tag.”

This agility has already translated into substantial savings. “We have been able to drive development costs way down—we can post a few Web services and we can integrate for $2,000 rather than $200,000,” says Burns. “Our risk is so low, we can just pop something out to replace it. When we upgrade to SharePoint 2010, the transition process will be minimal.”

Burns notes this interoperability translates to a more seamless user experience, no matter who’s using the system: a client, an advisor services representative or another staff member. “Once someone signs onto the system, they can do everything they need to without leaving the program they’re using. I don’t want people having to learn 20 systems—I want that single sign-on; I want it to be that fast,” he says.

“The way we look at technology is that it’s going to work if it can adapt it to the way we work, not the other way around.”

New Account Formation Made Advisor-, Client- and Business-Friendly

Burns points to Asset Dedication’s automated account formation process using its AdvisorSpace portal. “As we developed our AdvisorSpace portal, having everything on the .NET platform has really allowed us to fill in the gaps and make the experience seamless, and a lot of the back-end processes automatic,” he explains. “We were able to control the experience and avoid making more work for ourselves.”

An example of this is the new account formation process, including the client meeting that takes place leading up to it and the contract management that follows it. An advisor meeting with a client logs into the AdvisorSpace portal using an iPad. From there, he can access marketing documents through SharePoint. He can submit a request to run a proposal, which the SharePoint workflow engine routes back to the advisor. Then, he can initiate a client agreement using DocuSign. The contract is then automatically e-mailed to the advisor and Asset Dedication managers—until they sign off, when it’s automatically stored in Laserfiche.

“We step in a little bit, but essentially the whole back end operates seamlessly,” Burns says.

Technology Attracts Talent

As the firm grows, Burns sees the value of having a tightly integrated technology platform to attract new talent. “When advisors do their due diligence and ask, ‘What are you using?’ and we say, ‘Tamarac, MS Dynamics and Laserfiche,’ that’s just one more thing they can check off their list. We’re using proven technology in an innovative way.”

The value of that innovation, he says, in addition to reducing development costs, ensuring compliance and offering more convenient, comprehensive client services, is saving time. “For every one of us, time is money. So the more time you’re spending on basic operations, the less time you’re working with clients and the less revenue you’re generating,” Burns says.

“Our business model is based on using incredibly complex technology to drive very sophisticated processes in a way that is very intuitive to understand. For us, Laserfiche is an obvious natural partner.”

With so many specialties—and specialists—IMC’s Board of Directors wanted to use electronic medical records (EMR) software to improve operational processes, encouraged by the promise of ARRA stimulus money to help fund it. But IMC’s Practice Administrator, Christine L. Holliman, CMPE, took a more pragmatic view of the situation.

“All vendors talk about the efficiencies of an EMR and the increase in the levels of coding that can be achieved from full implementation,” she says. “As my physicians are many different ages, the idea of transitioning to a full-blown EMR was daunting, to say the least.”

And expensive, especially in light of what Holliman perceived as a fundamental lack of functionality. “The document management portions of the leading EMR systems we looked at, including Greenway, Centricity and Allscripts, didn’t utilize OCR [optical character recognition] technology or any other shortcuts for actually scanning and filing documents,” Hillman notes. “Most EMR systems require manually sorting and dragging and dropping individual documents either back to an order or back to a patient record—very cost prohibitive in my opinion.”

Holliman focused on finding an enterprise content management system to establish electronic patient charts (e-charts) first. “Looking for a way to handle the paper felt like the most logical step in streamlining our practice in preparation for an EMR,” she says.

“As most of our physicians are still primary care, the sheer amount of paperwork we receive is just incredible,” Holliman adds. “We’d receive 2 ½ feet of paper a day in faxes, print-outs and mail—and that’s just from one of the two hospitals we work with.” At the same time, she notes, “as a multi-specialty practice with 20 providers, having a system that could allow access to patient records by multiple departments and personnel was critical.”

The 2 ½ Feet of Paper Stops Here

Holliman was introduced to Laserfiche by Jim Bergeron of reseller JPI Data Resource at the 2009 MGMA conference in Denver. She then met Bergeron again at a local HIMSS meeting. Encouraged by Laseriche’s ease of use and its flexible business process management (BPM) automation tools, IMC purchased a 44-user Laserfiche Avante system with Workflow business process management and Quick Fields capture tools to establish electronic patient charts.

“As anyone who has implemented new systems knows, the end users are the biggest variable. If they’re on board, the implementation will be a success,” Holliman says. “With 140 employees with varying computer experience, it was very nice to implement a product that anyone could be taught to use in just a few minutes.”

Key to establishing IMC’s e-charting was automating the way the clinic received patient information from the two hospitals it works with. Using Laserfiche in conjunction with the MD Network, an electronic patient information distribution platform, incoming documentation from hospital visits is processed by Quick Fields’ high-volume capture and processing tools, then automatically filed in Laserfiche according to patient name and date of birth, where it becomes part of patients’ e-charts.

A significant amount of this data is test results, which need to be reviewed by physicians; this review often prompts follow-up instructions and further review. “One of the worries of both physicians and practice managers is if test results have been reviewed and relayed back to the physicians,” says Holliman.

Prior to using Laserfiche, staff had to sort through faxes or independently request each report from the hospital while nurses manually pulled the paper charts. “We always worried that something got filed in a patient’s chart before it was ever reviewed by the physician,” Holliman adds. “We’d see 24 people a day and run tests on 22, and there’d always be that concern that there’s one ultrasound report no one ever saw.”

Flexible Control: Reviewing Test Results as a Condition of Filing Them

To automate the test review process, IMC created separate “inbox” folders in the Laserfiche repository for each physician. Quick Fields recognizes “test results” as a document type and the physician’s name associated with it, which Workflow then uses to route the results to the appropriate doctor and nurse’s folder. Workflow then alerts them they have items in Laserfiche for review. If a review deadline is not met, Holliman herself is notified.

“One of the things we really liked about Laserfiche was that all of our doctors can set their own parameters as far as what they need to see in their inboxes to review,” she says. A GI specialist who ordered a patient test, for instance, wouldn’t need to see an incoming discharge summary, but the patient’s primary care doctor would. The GI specialist would, however, need to review the results of a test he ordered, so only after he has reviewed it do the test and follow-up notes go to the primary care doctor’s inbox for review, and eventually to the patient’s file.

“Just using their inbox, each doctor can ask his or her nurse to follow up on their instructions. Whether it’s an abnormal lab or an abnormal chest X-ray, they can adjust medications or order further testing,” Holliman adds. The whole process is prompted, routed and tracked using Workflow.

The benefit, besides the economy of effort, is peace of mind, she says. “Our doctors can access the same, single inbox and know when they leave at the end of the day that they’ve seen every test result that needed to be dealt with on that day.”

Nurses who used to have to keep a manual log of all tests reviewed and what follow-up was ordered appreciate it as well, because logs can be generated automatically using simple search parameters. Plus, Holliman adds, “Being able to precisely track patient follow-up is a tremendous tool for mitigating medical legal liability costs, as we have an exact record of the doctor’s orders.”

IMC is also utilizing the Laserfiche/MD Network interface to automate other processes, such as recalling the dictation from an office visit. “After a report has been electronically signed, it’s printed in our medical records and stored automatically in Laserfiche. If, for some reason, a nurse on the floor needs that information before it’s been made a part of the patient’s record, she can still retrieve dictation from the last visit.” Likewise, when IMC’s triage nurses type up their notes from a phone conversation, they are automatically uploaded into Laserfiche.

Holliman credits Laserfiche’s ease-of-use as well as the overall efficiency of the system with the success of IMC’s e-charting adoption thus far. “The transition to a new system for people who’ve been utilizing a paper chart is very intimidating, but once they begin to use Laserfiche and see how truly easy it is to find and retrieve documents, they’re actually excited to get started,” adds Holliman.

A Natural Bridge to EMR—That Also Leads to Back Office Efficiency

Now that Laserfiche has made its impact on how doctors receive and act on incoming patient information, the clinic is rolling out Laserfiche for use in its business office, where Workflow will automate A/P processing and HR files updates.

“One thing that’s nice about Laserfiche is that it gives us a set of tools that can be applied to business management as well as practice management, so we’re really able to maximize our investment,” Holliman says.

At the same time, she adds, IMC is an important step closer to EMR adoption. “Laserfiche has definitely acted as an important bridge between where we were and where we want to be, and it’s done so in a way that’s been very natural.”

When the firm built its own broker/dealer in 2008, Chief Administration Officer (CAO) Phillip Fournier and the rest of the Spire management team saw the opportunity to streamline operations. “We knew there would be countless audits, reviews and requests for information from the various entities,” Fournier says.

Coming from other broker/dealers, “we’d experienced lost forms, high overnight charges, delays in getting business processed and audits that required home office staff to keep coming back to us for forms they had misplaced,” he remembers. “We knew we could do it more efficiently—for compliance supervision and oversight, for operational efficiencies, for field reps to access information from everywhere.”

Fournier says right away Spire’s management team had the vision to build a system that included both enterprise content management (ECM) and business process management (BPM). “We were talking about more than going paperless, we were talking about setting up workflows and automating processes,” he says. “Our management team is always trying to remove friction points, like lost documents. We really wanted to be able to say, whether you’re five miles or 500 miles away, you’re submitting your OSJ and principal approvals the same exact way.”

Spire was referred to Laserfiche reseller John Caso of One Source/ADI. “We were impressed that ADI had about 100 financial services customers using Laserfiche,” Fournier says.

Making Work Flow

For 18 months, the Spire team considered options. “We just couldn’t find anything on par with Laserfiche. We were either going to have to build our own homegrown system—or we could just customize a proven and established software solution. And we didn’t want our consultants to be beta testing a homegrown system.”

The firm purchased Laserfiche Avante for its 100 consultants working between 17 offices. “We asked them how they would like the system set up, and then we set about doing it in as few clicks as possible,” says Fournier. For compliance and auditing purposes, each client file would have three different sets of folders: fee-based accounts, commission-based accounts and insurance accounts. One Source/ADI helped design workflows to automate processes for OSJ and principal approvals, branch audits of sales literature and correspondence, as well as security protocols.

Within the first 18 months of implementing Laserfiche, 80% of Spire’s offices were regularly processing content through Laserfiche; today, all of them are. “We use our Laserfiche system for required paperwork for FINRA, but our offices have the capability to scan anything they want, and many scan paperwork for their entire book of clients,” Fournier adds.

Laserfiche data is stored offsite in a data bunker with Equinix to ensure its safety and security, while Spire consultants have instant access to all their forms over a virtual office system. The business continuity advantage this brought to Spire became apparent two winters ago. “We had several snowstorms that shut down the whole Washington D.C. area for two weeks, and we were able to continue working remotely,” says Fournier. “We’ve basically got our information in Fort Knox as opposed to being one burst pipe away from it being lost forever. “

Accelerated Transfer, Halted Costs

Now it doesn’t matter if an office is five or 500 miles away, since Spire’s Operations Department is capable of processing direct and custodial business the same day—removing the delays and costs of overnight shipping.

“Many of our accounts are fee-based, so each day assets are delayed during transfer adds up quickly,” Fournier explains.

The accelerated transfer allows Spire to process business with immediate feedback. If a set of forms is not in good order (NIGO), Workflow pushes it back to the rep’s assistant with an e-mail that tells the assistant exactly what information is missing. “The assistant knows exactly what the situation is and can fix it, so we reprocess business in real-time.”

With no physical forms to lose—they’re scanned directly into Laserfiche and indexed immediately—there are no processing bottlenecks. “One of our biggest complaints at our previous firm was lost forms. An overnight package would show up, and when it was opened, forms would be lost or attached to other forms accidentally,” explains Fournier. “Now, if a form is incorrectly filed, the Laserfiche search and indexing system can find it in seconds.”

From Days to Hours: Audits Made Simple – and Less Onerous

To facilitate auditing, Spire Operations configured a compliance folder in its Laserfiche repository where consultants scan in their required documents—correspondence, advertising and bank statements, among others—that the firm’s Compliance department needs to review.

“Our Compliance Department can be much less onerous in its supervision,” says Fournier. “Much of what we need can be searched, reviewed and saved right in Laserfiche.” Secure access to each folder can be scripted individually, further mitigating compliance risks.

Fournier points to a recent FINRA audit of the firm’s 529 college fund business. “On the fly, the FINRA auditor asked to see all our new 529 accounts opened from April 2008 through April 2010. Using Laserfiche, our staff was able to search through the entire database and provide him a copy of all our new account forms. We had all 300 forms for him on a zip drive in less than an hour. He was really impressed,” he says. “If we had to find all those paper files, it would have required days and countless staff hours to satisfy that one request.”

Quantifying Success

Fournier says Spire gauges the success of using Laserfiche in several ways, starting with the fact that each of its 17 offices saves approximately $3,500 in overnight charges annually. “Add the cost of storage, file cabinets, the business continuity issues of having that paper in the same place as our facilities, hours of file maintenance, lost paperwork, overnighting paperwork to be signed, not to mention the lost dollars due to delays in processing, and the numbers become even more significant.” 

The most significant benefit to Spire, Fournier says, is not hiring extra staff. “We estimate we’re saving two or three bodies because of how we use Laserfiche to automate compliance, operations and trading.

“We knew it would enhance our operations center and create synergies between our field reps and our home office, but the smoothness of the system and the removal of friction has been really remarkable,” he adds. “After only 2 ½ years, if we tried to remove Laserfiche, our reps would revolt.”

When Jonathan Stafford took over as Administrator of LBPD’s Records Division in 2004, he inherited a legacy imaging system built with Kofax and ApplicationXtender. “Even back in 2004, I knew the system was outdated,” says Stafford, whose area of responsibility grew to include LBPD’s Technology Division in 2008. “We were in desperate need of a flexible, easy-to-use content management solution that would grant our officers and employees access to mission-critical information from wherever they happened to be.”

Ed Ivora, Assistant Administrator of LBPD’s Records and Technology Division, notes that the old system “took too much time to manage, administer and troubleshoot. We wanted an easily customizable ECM solution that we could use without advanced engineering degrees.”

In the past, the LBPD had made use of an optical jukebox for digital document storage. “We’d take files off the server and burn them to optical disks,” explains Ivora. “The jukebox was a big piece of hardware that stored 256 disks, but like anything mechanical, it was prone to breaking down.”

Stafford notes that it wasn’t just the unreliability of the jukebox that concerned him, it was also the expense and limited archiving capabilities. “We had a half-a-million dollar archiving solution that didn’t give us a way to dispose of records that had outlived their retention schedules. From an efficiency standpoint, it just didn’t make sense.”

In August 2009, the City of Long Beach chose Laserfiche as its enterprise content management (ECM) standard, which was something Stafford had been pushing for quite some time. “We were delighted when the City decided to standardize on Laserfiche, because it was our first choice for the PD. We knew that the simplicity and flexibility of the system would enable us to be more efficient.”

Curtis Tani, Director of Technology Services for the City of Long Beach, adds, “We selected Laserfiche to create more consistency, efficiency, and transparency, while saving the city thousands of dollars in equipment and maintenance fees.”

In the PD, the transition to Laserfiche—including the migration of three million documents and nearly ten million images from the department’s legacy system—went smoothly. “We were done with the conversion process way before I expected to be,” says Stafford.

All in all, Ivora estimates that installation, including file conversion, was 100% complete within two months.

Adaptability Is Key

Through the migration process, the LBPD was able to add 20 years’ worth of arrest records to the Laserfiche repository, along with 10 years’ worth of crime reports. “What had never been digitized in the past,” says Stafford, “were the field interview cards and case files. So the first new thing we did with Laserfiche was to bring in field interview cards.” According to Stafford, detectives had been pushing him to digitize the FI cards for quite some time, since instant access to them enables them to more easily solve crimes.

When capturing files, the LBPD uses Laserfiche Import Agent, a tool that automatically brings files into Laserfiche from network directories, fax servers and local folders. “Import Agent lets us use the fax servers, MFPs and other Xerox machines we already had in place,” Ivora explains.

Just as the Records & Technology Division didn’t have to invest in new hardware, it also didn’t have to invest in creating all-new folder structures. “Everyone was happy with the way general information—like maps, procedural documents, assault weapon information and so on—was structured and organized in our legacy system,” says Ivora. “Laserfiche is flexible and adaptable enough that we could mirror the old structure in a Laserfiche folder called PD Docs, allowing people to access and view this information in a familiar format.”

He adds, “Laserfiche is great because it’s easy to customize it to our needs.”

Expanding Access to the Field

To date, the LBPD’s repository contains a wide range of electronic and scanned content, including:

• Tickets.
• Restraining orders.
• Arrest reports.
• Timecards.
• Policies and procedures.
• Forms.
• And more.

With Laserfiche, LBPD officers have the ability to retrieve many of these document types directly from their patrol vehicles, whereas in the past they could only view them from computers in the police station. Laserfiche WebLink, a browser-based thin client that provides secure, read-only access to the repository, gives them immediate access to these documents when they’re in the field, saving time and ensuring that they follow the proper procedures and have the most current information on hand.

“One thing I’ve learned over thirteen years of working for the PD is that you have to make things easy for the officers,” says Stafford. “They need to worry about protecting us, not about finding the right paperwork.”

Targeting Gang Members

The PD’s gang injunction program has benefitted tremendously from remote access to the Laserfiche repository. Gang injunctions are court-issued restraining orders prohibiting gang members from participating in specific activities such as loitering, smoking marijuana or wearing gang colors. These injunctions allow officers to arrest named gang members for injunction violations rather than waiting for a more serious crime to occur.

In order to make an arrest based on a gang injunction, officers must first confirm that the gang member in question has previously been served a copy of all court documents related to the injunction. In the past, LBPD officers were forced to call around the PD to confirm proof of service. Tracking down the paperwork was frequently a time-consuming task that resulted in missed opportunities to make arrests.

Today, a tight, three-way integration between Laserfiche, Tiburon (the PD’s records management application) and Business Objects (LBPD’s business intelligence software) gives officers the ability to pull up specific Crystal Reports containing hyperlinks to images stored in the Laserfiche repository. Through Laserfiche WebLink, officers can instantly access the injunction-related information and images needed to make arrests.

“This integration allows us to deliver injunction information to officers in the field in as few clicks as possible,” says Stafford. “The impact has been huge.”

In fact, on November 8, 2010, the LBPD, along with Long Beach’s mayor and prosecutors, announced a massive gang injunction against more than 100 known gang members with ties to the Mexican Mafia. The injunction targets gang members from all over Los Angeles County who commit crimes in Long Beach—not just those based in Long Beach. Without Laserfiche, enforcing this injunction would be difficult, to say the least.

Working Up to Workflow

Although Stafford is happy with the progress LBPD has made with Laserfiche so far, he explains, “We’re going to push this system to automate business processes as well as eliminate our paper files.”

Laserfiche Workflow will be the engine driving the automation of business processes, and the uniform ordering process will be the first one to be transformed.

Currently, officers fill out a paper form when they need new boots or a new shirt. The form must be approved by the officer’s sergeant and then his commander before it moves on to Personnel. After Personnel checks the officer’s order history, the form moves to the Fiscal Department, which forwards it to the uniform service. After that, Fiscal must call the officer and inform him that he may place his order directly with the uniform service.

According to Stafford, “It’s a frustrating, repetitive process that would be much simpler with e-forms and automatic e-mail routing.”

Once the uniform ordering process has been automated, Stafford’s team will tackle police report request process, which will enable employees to more efficiently manage citizens’ and insurance companies’ requests for police reports.

Business-Led Technology

With 1,450 employees in the LBPD, all of whom have access to Laserfiche, Stafford notes that the system’s ability to balance central control with local flexibility is vital.

“We create different repositories for different divisions because they all have their own unique document types and preferred filing methods,” explains Stafford. “Laserfiche gives us central control over system administration and security, while giving each of the divisions control over its own information.”

He continues, “When we were evaluating ECM technology, we knew we wanted a system that would adapt to the needs of our business, not the other way around. Laserfiche is helping us solve crimes and save lives, and it’s doing it in the way we want, not the way a vendor prescribes.”

As he outlines the overall benefits of Laserfiche, including simplicity, user-friendliness and adaptability, Stafford points out that the PD is only one year into a five-year implementation. “We’re getting there,” he says, “but this is just the beginning.”

A former change management analyst at Bank of America, Slack had seen technological innovation drive efficiency, from automating input and reconciliation processes using MS Excel to capitalizing on the use of e-mail and the internet in BofA business processes.

When Slack came to Keane, he began to analyze where automation could have the biggest impact. “I looked at it like this: we’re a small shop, so we don’t have entire divisions or departments. We have people—seven people. So we need to leverage technology as best we can,” he says.

Slack initially focused on the need for a common repository for staff to share thoughts and ideas from their research—and the various media it came from, including:

• Handwritten notes
• E-mails
• Reports from the Web
• Bloomberg charts
• 10-k filings
• And more.

So he launched the search for a content management solution.

On the Hunt

“Our technology support services partner gave us a couple of ideas. I talked to our prime broker, and I talked to compliance experts in the industry about what firms like ours were using,” he recalls. “Laserfiche was one of the five or six referrals we got, so I Googled it.”

Slack was then referred to John Caso of reseller One Source Document Solutions, Inc., which already had a strong presence in North Carolina’s financial services industry. Caso showed Keane staff how Laserfiche could automate the firm’s process for storing and sharing research, as well as its client records.

“Our discussion wasn’t about things like compliance and client service at first. We just wanted a better way to share research other than e-mails in Outlook,” Slack admits. “But when John started asking about our large collection of filing cabinets, he hit upon the biggest need in our office.”

The biggest need was to free up space in Keane’s modest offices. Six file cabinets worth of information—almost one cabinet for each employee—certainly weren’t helping achieve that goal.

“Those six cabinets contained the first eight years of our business. We knew as we kept growing, there would be more and more paperwork,” recalls Slack.

He adds, “Those filing cabinets contained the only copies of our information, so if a fire had ripped through our offices, it would have been quite difficult to replace all the documents, especially for a firm our size. That’s when the discussion turned to business continuity.”

Moving Forward with Laserfiche

The firm purchased an 11-user Laserfiche Avante system in July 2008. The hardest part of implementation, Slack admits, was getting the firm’s small but diverse staff to agree on a standardized naming and filing convention for the research-sharing process. Once the research folders were set up, Slack says, automating the active client folders was the easy part.

“We already had an efficient process and detailed file folders that we were able to mimic in Laserfiche,” he offers. “It may have taken a bit to get the investment folks to retrain their working habits and thought processes, but once they did, learning the Laserfiche product itself was very easy.”

Backlog conversion of a decade’s worth of client information was likewise relatively easy, requiring only a few months of part-time student help. “Now,” Slack says, “we can scan in every document received, file it away in client-specific folders in Laserfiche, and our entire network drive is backed up remotely by our tech support firm. We still file the originals in cabinets, but there are backup copies available.”

Enhancing Client Service

As Keane’s staff began using Laserfiche, it became clear the system’s value was not limited to disaster recovery. “The primary advantage is having all client-specific information available in a heartbeat, accessible from each desktop in our office,” Slack says.

“When clients call with questions, we can pull up those files immediately and provide the answer in that same conversation. Not only that, but we can pull a copy of the document they’re asking about, and e-mail it to the client within seconds—usually while we’re still on the phone with them,” he says. “It’s imperative to have a complete picture in terms of client history, and using Laserfiche, we have that right at our fingertips.”

Slack credits Laserfiche for soothing skittish clients’ fears in the wake of recent market fluctuations. “Our clients aren’t institutions, they’re individuals. They’re not just interested in numbers and charts, they value the kind of relationship we have with them. If we don’t provide good client service, there’s no performance in the world that will keep those clients invested with us,” he says.

“During this last market blip in 2008, it would have been easy for them to get scared and take their money out. Being able to pull up a caller’s information and click and drag it into an e-mail speaks volumes about how much we care for our clients’ wants and needs. It really helped take our client service to the next level.”

Responding to Regulatory Changes

Now, with recent regulatory changes all but guaranteeing more oversight by the SEC and other regulatory agencies, Slack sees Laserfiche playing a more significant role in audit preparation and maintaining compliance logs.

“Dodd-Frank gives oversight authority to the SEC, but it still leaves a lot of gray areas as to some of the specifics that will be required of us. But, we know we’ll be required to register with the SEC by July 2011 and we know that the SEC will come audit us on a regular basis. Laserfiche will help us to be organized and prepared for that inevitability,” Slack says.

“We made the choice to keep all working documents on the network drive, but all other documents in Laserfiche. So, it provides peace of mind knowing that all my documents are easily accessible, effectively filed and efficiently searchable. All the required books and records are there, and can easily be transferred to a CD or zip drive for the SEC’s reference.”

Onward and Upward

Slack sees continuing value in using Laserfiche to adapt not only to new challenges, but new success as well.

“At Keane Capital, we describe ourselves as ‘value investors,’ which also carries over to the way we run our business. The Laserfiche Avante system was a very affordable option for us, but I look at its value as more than cost savings,” Slack explains.

“Laserfiche allows us to grow the business. It scales from one to 1,000 clients in a way that allows us to handle the work using the same efficient processes.”

“Since 1954, our physicians have been refining the way they keep track of patient information,” says Bill Duke, executive director of the practice. “Although we knew we wanted to transition away from paper charts, we wanted our electronic records to mirror the form and format of our paper charts exactly. There aren’t many solutions out there that are flexible enough to do that.”

Duke would know. As the man in charge of the business side of the practice, he led the effort to find and implement a content management system. “Prior to 2007,” he says, “we used paper charts at all three of our locations. Storing so much paper took up a lot of space, and finding the right information took up a lot of staff time. And there was always the possibility that a document could go missing.”

For a practice dedicated to excellence, continued reliance on paper files was not the answer. “Providing state of the art care isn’t just about attracting the best doctors and staying abreast of the latest medical developments,” explains Duke. “It’s also about implementing innovative technology that helps your practice run as smoothly as possible.”

In 2007, Dallas Associated Dermatologists added a document management module to its billing software. The result, Duke says, was less than ideal. “What we got was basically a managed repository—the search functionality was limited, and you pretty much had to know exactly where you’d saved a document in order to locate it again.” It quickly became clear that the practice needed a more robust solution.

“The first time around, I confined my search to software that had been designed specifically for the healthcare community,” Duke explains. “The second time around, I looked further afield.”

Technology that Adapts to the Flow of the Practice

After describing the needs of his practice to a scanning company, Duke was directed to take a look at Laserfiche, a company that creates simple and elegant enterprise content management (ECM) solutions for organizations across a wide range of industries—including healthcare.

“I remember seeing a postcard from Laserfiche that said something to the effect of, ‘Our approach to electronic medical records doesn’t make doctors change the way they work.’ I thought, ‘If that’s true, then that’s exactly what we need,’” he says.

Duke began talking to ImageNet Office Systems, a Laserfiche reseller that’s also based in Dallas, and purchased Laserfiche in 2009. According to Brian Simpson, solutions manager at ImageNet, more and more medical practices are becoming interested in Laserfiche solutions because “they handle the business processes involved in automating the capture and processing of medical records in a way that’s not overwhelming, complicated or cumbersome for doctors and staff, and they do so in a way that addresses business needs outside the scope of an EMR as well.”

“A lot of vendors want to fit a round peg into a square hole by forcing you to use their templates,” Duke adds. “With Laserfiche, we can create our own templates, our own fields and our own classifications for documents. That flexibility gives us control over our output, and it lets our physicians continue to chart in the way that works best for them.”

According to Duke, the doctors at Dallas Associated Dermatologists want to interact with their patients during appointments and have balked at reviewing EMR systems that require them to type their notes into the system while they’re in the room with a patient. “That’s not conducive to building the patient relationship and providing high-quality care” says Duke. “Laserfiche provides us the opportunity to bring our documents to life without having a negative impact on our patient relationships.”

Technology that Accelerates the Flow of the Practice

Since implementing Laserfiche, the practice has been scanning patient records into the system on a day-forward basis. Laserfiche Quick Fields automates chart processing by capturing data from the practice’s various forms and sorting the documents according to custom criteria. Once the information has been indexed and stored in the Laserfiche repository, it is immediately available to Dallas Associated Dermatologists’:

• Doctors and Nurses
• Front Desk
• Appointment/Service Center
• Telephone Triage (Rx refills, Special Request)
• Billing and Collections

“With Laserfiche,” Duke says, “there’s no such thing as a failed scan. Our users can quickly and easily verify the scan or find anything that’s been scanned into the system, using whatever search method they prefer. Nothing is lost, and that helps me sleep better at night.”

In addition to the ease of search and retrieval, the practice also benefits from the business process management (BPM) tools included in the Laserfiche suite. “Workflow automates much of our sign-out process for physician notes,” Duke explains. “Once transcriptions have been imported into Laserfiche, they’re automatically routed to the Transcriptionist folder where they’re linked to their .wav files. We’re also testing how to automate other paper-intensive processes, such as prescription refill approval, using Workflow.”

The practice is also working to implement Laserfiche in areas of the business that are not directly related to patient charts, such as Accounts Payable, Inventory and HR. “EMR systems are focused exclusively on patient records, but Laserfiche is going to allow us to streamline operations across the practice,” says Duke. He anticipates that once the system has been configured to do everything he wants it to do across the practice, the time savings for staff will be huge.

In addition to the forthcoming efficiency gains, the practice is already benefitting from its ability to eliminate document storage. “Space that would have been used to store hardcopy files is now used for revenue-generating activities,” Duke explains.

“Laserfiche lets us do exactly what we want to do, in exactly the way we want to do it. Our staff takes pride in making sure our digital files are in tip-top shape, and we’re always looking for new ways to use Laserfiche to help make us more efficient,” he concludes.

Led by Stormwater Quality Coordinator Alan Searcy, Central Records Administrator Sharon Blackstock, and Imaging Technician Greg Buchanan, DAG evolved into an ad hoc governance committee, setting recordkeeping and retention policies for each department, as well as standardizing document indexing for interdepartmental use. “My goal in the beginning,” says Searcy, “was to get as much ‘buy-in’ as possible for our fledgling imaging program. Working together on interdepartmental projects is a proven recipe for success in Lakewood.” The Digital Archives Group is a prime example of that fact.

DAG initiated the purchase of Laserfiche in 2001 from Colorado-based reseller Phil Landreth of S. Corporation, with several departments sharing in the cost. “Laserfiche was the most user-friendly solution we looked at, and we knew that was going to be very important,” Blackstock says. “Laserfiche also had a very strong presence in cities around our size (population: 145,000), so we knew that support for local government operations was in place.”

Although Laserfiche was first used only by the Engineering Division and the City Clerk’s Office, it eventually spread to other departments. As new departments joined in the project, they sent representatives to DAG meetings.

Initially, Laserfiche was used for archiving permanent records and closed case files. After a couple of years, the Finance Department became the first to manage active records with Laserfiche by scanning sales tax returns. More active records management followed as Laserfiche use began spreading to DAG members’ departments. Eventually most of Lakewood’s 10 departments used Laserfiche, each relying on DAG’s training and best practices to scan and manage their own records.

“With every new project, people really welcome our support and suggestions. We all listen to each other and are willing to hear new ideas,” Buchanan says. “At the same time, people don’t just say, ‘I’m going to do this’ and call up IT—DAG helps define the project and gives the go-ahead.” The City Clerk’s Office created Buchanan’s position as Imaging Technician in 2002 to facilitate Laserfiche projects by assisting departments in training users and developing and managing scanning projects.

Today, DAG’s goals are being met—long-term records are being archived and protected, concurrent retrieval of imaged records is possible, and storage space for maps, plats and plans has been reduced. What’s more, interdepartmental cooperation has resulted in a citywide sense of pride and ownership of Laserfiche.

Breaking Down Silos to Build an Agile Enterprise

IT Software Services Manager Tom Charkut credits DAG with addressing the training element since Lakewood began using Laserfiche in 2001 “in a way IT just couldn’t.” But by 2005, Charkut says, “There were so many departments using Laserfiche that it just made sense to centralize the software maintenance and support.” IT took over Laserfiche system administration in 2006, as well as the software maintenance costs.

The City of Lakewood’s IT staff of 27 supports more than 1,000 city employees. “We’re a small team with big shoes to fill,” Charkut admits. Filling big shoes with different sizes and styles, he says, requires an agile development philosophy.

According to Charkut, one key component in solving the diverse but often overlapping information needs of Lakewood’s business units was utilizing the Laserfiche SDK and its Microsoft-standard .NET API to integrate with legacy business applications. “Since Laserfiche was an enterprise-wide system,” he says, “we needed to figure out how to integrate it with our other line-of-business systems.”

A recent example is an integration between Laserfiche and the Planning and Public Works Department’s new building permit system. “The user will be in the permit system, and using the permit number, they click on a ‘documents’ button we developed that shows them the documents in Laserfiche,” he explains. “If they need to e-mail those documents, then we send URLs linking to those documents using Web Access. Laserfiche gives us the ability to arrange the information so it’s at the user’s fingertips.”

The user, Charkut notes, never leaves the permitting application. What’s more, the additional content is referenced from its single, centralized Laserfiche repository. Similarly, integration with the city’s GeoSmart GIS application geo-enables searches for employees across various systems whether it’s for code enforcement cases or service requests from residents, as well as for any documents—including plats, plans and forms—already in Laserfiche.

“For us, Laserfiche integration has helped break down silos,” Charkut says. “It’s all about decentralized capture, centralized storage and an enterprise library.”

What a Transparent Web We Weave

Now, as the City maps out an overhaul of Lakewood’s Web strategy, Laserfiche is one of the ingredients. “Our Web strategy in the past has been a patchwork of stuff. Just last year we said, ‘We have to do something about this—we’re getting 5,000 hits a day,’” says Charkut. “Part of our plan is to promote government transparency through the use of Web self-service, including access to records contained in the Laserfiche system.”

Lakewood also finds itself in the middle of an electronic records management inventory and assessment, where consultants are actually suggesting new and future uses of Laserfiche. Building on DAG’s solid support foundation and Lakewood IT’s agile, integrated Web strategies, the city is now assessing whether and when to upgrade to Laserfiche Rio, with its scalable, flexible user and module licensing—as well as its unlimited servers—to meet the needs of more and more departments, business processes and users, both internally and externally, from a single enterprise application.

“We are evaluating the ROI of Rio,” jokes Charkut. “We will assess that model on a 7- to 10-year timeframe.”

Part of how TS drives Cary’s business units is to, whenever possible, follow an internal shared services model. The challenge, Stice says, is accommodating “fairly dissimilar” business processes with the same technology foundation, so answering to these unique needs has made agility an important factor in infrastructure investments. “When we look at purchasing new applications, we want them to be flexible enough to meet departmental needs, but able to be tied together with everything else when we need it to be.”

Stice offers the town’s GIS system as an example. “Everything we do is geo-spatial,” he explains. “Addresses are used and shared by departments. But where the Engineering Department does business by project number, Planning uses case numbers.” The challenge, he says, is finding a way to accommodate the unique ways individual departments work with information, while still providing a common foundation to link that information together across departments.

“We want the business to drive the software, not the software to drive the business,” Stice concludes.

The Need: Uniting Content and Contract Management

This was the mindset in 2003 when Rodney Overton, one of Cary’s three business analysts, first looked at content management to manage the over 300 contract documents received annually by the Town Clerk’s Office. Town staff was accessing contract documents by traveling to the clerk’s office, having the clerk look up reference numbers from an AS/400-based Contract Control System (CCS), then locating the paper contract from a labyrinth of file cabinets and making copies. The search was on for a more efficient way.

Overton was aware that many North Carolina municipalities already were using Laserfiche as their enterprise content management system, so he contacted Kevin Smith of Laserfiche reseller One Source Document Solutions to learn more. Smith demonstrated how, using Laserfiche, staff in the clerk’s office could scan and store contracts while making them available to town staff—even multiple staff simultaneously—right from their desktop computers. Overton recalls easing staff concerns following a prior experience with a cumbersome imaging system. “Laserfiche had an easy-to-use Windows look and feel everyone could see themselves using,” he recalls. For his part, he liked how Laserfiche Web Access could create URL shortcuts to documents. “I saw tremendous potential for integration with a lot of our primary departmental applications as we rolled it out.”

In spring 2003, implementation took place in the Clerk’s Office. The Engineering Department followed a month later, presenting the challenges of larger document volume as well as different types of documents. Laserfiche’s ability to categorize documents according to several template fields proved significantly effective. “We started out with about 15 template fields, which we’ve narrowed down to about seven that we use today,” Overton says. “In 2007, ‘Project Number’ and ‘Document Type’ fields became very useful as we began to find ways to integrate Laserfiche with our GIS software, MapInfo.”

Rounding out this initial deployment, One Source assisted the Cary Police Department with a massive migration of some 190,000 documents from its legacy imaging system to its own volume within the Laserfiche repository. Since then, the Cary Police Department hasn’t looked back, adding more than 10,000 documents a year to its Laserfiche system.

System Integrations “Just a Click Away”

A 2006 upgrade to Laserfiche 7.2 brought with it enhanced opportunities to integrate Laserfiche with line-of-business applications. “Laserfiche 7.2 allowed you to save searches; we felt that if you could save a search in Web Access, then you should be able to execute a search using a URL link,” Overton says. “Through testing, research and help from One Source, we were able to create a URL search where we could pass search information from a simple browser shortcut and have Web Access perform a search and pull up the desired documents.”

Overton soon wrote an AS/400 CL program that uses the Contract Control Number in the Contract Control system to display a contract in Web Access. While the user is viewing contract information on the Contract Control System, all they need to do is press a hotkey to initiate a Web Access search that displays the contract image in detail.

“Now users don’t even have to log into Laserfiche—with the press of button they can see all related documents for a contract,” he says.

A few months later, Overton developed another “hotkey” integration for Cary’s MapInfo GIS software. The ability to search across multiple templates, such as the clerk’s as well as engineering departments’, is helpful to bring up all documents for projects outlined in MapInfo. With this integration, a MapInfo user only needs to click an address, select a project and a search is launched that pulls up a list of all related project documents in Web Access—quickly focusing searches in a town where, “everything is geo-centric,” as TS Director Stice puts it.

To simplify multi-template searches, Overton—along with co-workers Wilson Farrell and Ken Guttman—created a small internal website to perform central searches using Web Access. “So instead of running into character limitations with MapInfo when we have more than one template search, we can pass critical information to an internal website to launch the remaining portion of the script,” says Overton. “This helps tremendously in minimizing the character length of the URL needed for integrating into other applications.”

Creating a Standard for Imaging—and Image-Enablement

This image enablement has proven so useful Overton says he’s now looking at ways to integrate Laserfiche with the Police Department’s RMS software as well as the Accounting Department’s Sungard Public Sector financial software. “Sungard has an imaging interface that was built specifically around a few select products on the market,” he says. “Now, with the ease of use and flexibility of Laserfiche, we hope to utilize this part of the Sungard interface to integrate the two.” Overton says that after taking part in the inaugural Eastern North Carolina State Laserfiche Users Group earlier this year, he’s looking forward to sharing his experience with fellow users.

“From our User Group meetings, I know lots of municipalities here in the Southeast that have both Sungard Public Sector and Laserfiche software,” he says. “So having that network of fellow users is very helpful in terms of sharing experience and ideas.”

And it ends up being more cost-effective, too, he adds. “You’re talking about tremendous cost savings when you don’t have to consult with a third party to write an integration. For our MapInfo integration, if we had to hire a consultant, it would have been at least $10,000, if not more. Multiply that per application and the savings can really add up,” Overton says. “The way we are able to link to documents in Laserfiche from another application really makes a difference in terms of value and functionality.”

As such, Laserfiche has become the integrative middleware used by several departments to access and share content. Besides Engineering, the Town Clerk’s office and the Police Department, the Parks and Recreation and Planning Departments have also implemented Laserfiche, with plans to expand to the Accounting Department as well as Inspections and Permits.

“Laserfiche has become a strategic application,” Stice says. “It’s the standard we use to manage paper and it’s the only one we use to access that information and tie it to other information.”

Tying that information together, Overton notes, has proven its value both in terms of saving IT resources, but also in the value of enhanced functionality to deliver shared services. “Laserfiche’s Web Access has made integration just a click away,” he says.

Allen Adjamian of Laserfiche reseller Adjamian Affiliated was called to demonstrate how Laserfiche could lighten the firm’s paperwork load. Adjamian showed how Laserfiche could be integrated with the firm’s Lacerte tax software and other accounting software programs to create a central storage repository for the entire firm’s paperwork in a way that all but eliminated printing—even scanning.

Rocha says his fellow Olmsted staffers were particularly impressed by how user-friendly Laserfiche was, because it “had the look and feel of Windows and search engines we were used to using.” Another plus, he adds, was the comprehensive single solution Laserfiche offered. “Other programs you had to buy more products to get to that level of functionality. Laserfiche suited our needs right out of the box.”

Olmsted herself notes that even with all its functionality, Laserfiche offered a focus. “We looked at a lot of systems where the document management component was usually one component in this canned system,” she says. “What stood out about Laserfiche was that it was a stand-alone program that focused on a single, separate function that provided a higher level of security.”

The firm purchased Laserfiche with Web Access to serve staff internally and remotely, as well as its clients. Implementation began in late 2006 with a backlog conversion of seven years’ worth of paper files. Adjamian and fellow solutions consultant Kristina Yassi worked with Rocha and Olmsted’s staff to set up templates and document types to establish the file structure that, with some enhancements, the firm still uses today. “Allen and Kristina helped us a design a folder and subfolder structure that allowed us get started scanning our documents right away,” Rocha recalls. “We’ve been able to improve on it since then, which is actually something we’ve come to appreciate about Laserfiche: It’s flexible enough to grow with us, without making a big project out of it.”

The impact of using Laserfiche was immediate. “A lot of the time when we complete a project, we have to make associated information almost immediately available to meet deadlines and client demands. Once things are in Laserfiche, we can make that data readily available through e-mail or Web Access,” Rocha says.

A big time- and resource-saver, he says, is the ability to print directly to Laserfiche from the firm’s Lacerte tax software. “Printing to Laserfiche from Lacerte takes about 10 to 15 seconds for about 40 pages. There is no need to print, prep and scan paper copies for review, whether it’s for managers or staff. They go directly to Laserfiche to review it,” Rocha explains. “This allows us to move tax returns through the office for input and review without printing out any pages, which also saves time and money.”

This saves time making changes to tax returns and statements, Rocha says. “Whereas before we would have to recycle the old version and reprint the new one and file it, now we just delete it in Laserfiche and re-print/download to Laserfiche. It’s also very convenient that we don’t need to go track down the client’s file to review data, because it’s already in Laserfiche.”

Rocha also says that Laserfiche’s interoperability with other programs and file types has brought efficiency and convenience to other business processes. “We transfer all our disparate types of data and document types into Laserfiche—QuickBooks, PDF documents, and Excel,” he says. “We can print directly to Laserfiche, save-to, or just drag-and-drop it. It’s that easy.”

For her part, Olmsted says the Laserfiche system inspired rapid adoption for its ease of use, but again, its focus of use. “Laserfiche feels like an independent program in that it’s this standalone entity that’s open to all of the types of files we work with. Our staff and customers have adopted it really well.”

The ultimate customer service, she says, is Laserfiche’s DoD 5015.2-certified security. “It can take some time to get people used to not working with paper, but for us it’s the only way to secure information moving forward by making sure you don’t have sensitive information laying around the office. Our clients look to us as their accounting firm to secure their information at the highest level,” she says.

At the same time, Olmsted sees Laserfiche making her business more agile and responsive to staff and clients alike. “Laserfiche provides us a lot of mobility. Auditors going out in the field can scan in documents and access company files. We have everybody reviewing tax returns online as well.”

Now, four years since implementing Laserfiche, the firm is seeing its return on investment (ROI) from regained staff time and cutting overhead costs. “I can say we save about 25% across the board, as far what it takes us to process paperwork now,” Rocha says.

And Rocha says that Olmsted & Associates has found a new way to work. “With Laserfiche we’ve found a document management system that offers us control in terms of securing and centralizing information, but also the flexibility to handle all kinds of content and make it readily available to our staff and clients securely and conveniently.”

That, Olmsted says, has given her firm a competitive edge. “The only way to move forward is to get your efficiency up and your costs down. For us, Laserfiche has been a big part of that.”

Of his probationers, Eyrick says, “They’re just people who make some bad decisions. I try to focus on their issues and their individual dynamics, while at the same time testing them and making sure they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing.”

In recognition of his commitment and personal dedication to the job, Eyrick received the 2009 “Order of Augustus,” an annual statewide probation officer award named for John Augustus, the father of probation in America.

But Eyrick’s responsibility extends beyond offering assistance to individual offenders: He’s also tasked with developing and coordinating the direction of the probation department as a whole.

For Eyrick, technology plays an important role in shaping departmental strategy. Under his direction, the department recently rolled out a video conferencing system, which has improved security by keeping inmates in jail during their arraignments. The department has also benefitted from the chief probation officer’s decision to implement Laserfiche content management more than seven years ago.

“Prior to implementing Laserfiche,” Eyrick says, “we were storing piles of files that had accumulated over the course of more than twenty years. Organizing everything was a problem, as was finding enough storage room. Laserfiche changed all of that.”

Specific benefits the probation department has realized since implementing Laserfiche include:

• Increased efficiency. Without leaving their desks, employees are now able to instantly locate probationary records within the superbly-organized Laserfiche content repository. Staff members are more productive because they no longer have to waste time searching for client files in cluttered filing rooms.
• Easy integration. Laserfiche provider BOLT Document Management created a useful integration with the probation department’s case management system that allows probation officers instant access to clients’ files while viewing case information in the database.
• Storage savings. Scanning old records into Laserfiche allowed the department to destroy thousands of hardcopy documents and reclaim a large storage room that had been in utter disarray. The Court Clerk, who shares the space, benefits from how neat and organized the room is today.

Eyrick’s success with Laserfiche soon attracted attention outside of his department, and it wasn’t long before Darlene Hale, IT director for the entire county, came calling.

The Tipping Point: From One Department to Many

Charged with delivering the most effective and affordable technology to all LaPorte County offices including the auditor, treasurer, probationer, surveyor, juvenile detention and more, Hale had noticed a few problems with the way content management had been rolled out county-wide. Chief among them was that, in the years before she’d taken the helm, individual departments such as Eyrick’s had been allowed to choose and deploy their own preferred IT systems. As a result, interoperability was lacking, sharing information was difficult and costs were high.

It was time to standardize.

In the course of Hale’s research, she determined that if one of the content management systems already in use could be expanded, the cost of conversion wouldn’t be quite so high. Two systems rose to the top: Laserfiche and Docuware. Ultimately, after talking to Eyrick and his department, comparing features and functionality and considering ROI, Laserfiche won out.

According to Hale, “The biggest thing that sets Laserfiche apart from other content management solutions is the sheer ease of use. The layout is simple and intuitive, so it’s easy for users to pick up, but just as important for IT professionals like me is that it’s also easy to administer. Setting up templates and user licenses, integrating it with other products and external applications: everything is just so easy.”

BOLT helped LaPorte County migrate the content stored in Docuware into Laserfiche by completing the following five steps:

• Examining the document and information structure of the old Docuware repositories.
• Obtaining samples of documents and data from every unique document set.
• Using the samples to determine the logic and structure incorporated in the repositories.
• Creating a unique conversion program for each document set.
• Importing and testing samples from each set in Laserfiche.

Once the testing was successfully completed, the conversion process began—one department at a time.

Each phase of the migration project was carefully defined and scheduled, since departments needed continuous access to stored content even while the process was underway. Employees could look up existing information in Docuware, but to prevent “orphaned” records, staff was not allowed to make any additions or changes. After the process was complete, the converted information was mounted as new volumes to the county’s Laserfiche server. BOLT then installed and configured the Laserfiche client software on department computers and trained each department’s personnel.

Users Love Laserfiche

Although LaPorte County now has centralized control over all of its content (ensuring that information from all departments can easily be shared), Laserfiche grants each department the flexibility to adapt the system to the way they work and manage their files. “Our users love Laserfiche,” Hale explains. “It just has so many more uses and capabilities than what they were using before.”

The county, too, has reaped the benefits of standardizing on Laserfiche. Overhead costs for content management have diminished, and information management throughout county offices has dramatically improved. In addition, all of the advantages that Steve Eyrick’s probation department realized as a result of implementing Laserfiche—increased staff productivity, storage savings and easy integration with mission-critical applications—have now materialized for all of the departments under Hale’s purview.

“Better system, more functionality, lower overhead costs, excellent ROI,” Hale concludes thoughtfully. “What’s not to love?”

As Jennifer L. Litchfield, IT Manager at Palladium, remembers it, onboarding more than 1,000 accounts all at once left almost no time to learn a new electronic document management system in their new Norfolk, VA, offices—even as the need to implement one to ensure the breakaway firm could hit the ground running was clear.

“We added $1 billion in assets under management within three months, so we needed to have everything come together very quickly,” Litchfield recalls. Experiences from a prior firm had proven how cumbersome and costly paper was, from the staff effort to file and find information to the yearly accumulation of paper that took up valuable—and expensive—space. “We used to have six or seven employees spend two full weeks every year just merging each client’s file with the historical files, purging information where appropriate, and making room for the next year’s paperwork,” she says.

As owners of their new firm, Palladium’s principals knew that the right technology would make a long-term difference. “We wanted to start off our new company with smart decisions when it came to technology and electronic document management,” Litchfield says. “We made decisions that required upfront commitments of time and money, but produced ongoing savings of both.”

“We needed it to be user-friendly, customizable to our needs, and manageable on-site.”

The search for a document management system began with three criteria in mind—and one given: value. “We needed it to be user-friendly, customizable to our needs, and manageable on-site,” Litchfield explains. “Cost is always a consideration, so we were looking for a balance between use and cost while considering long-term scalability.”

Litchfield was referred to Laserfiche through the Advent Users Group, a resource made up of companies that use the portfolio management products from Advent Software. John Caso, solutions consultant at Laserfiche reseller One Source Document Solutions, Inc., showed Palladium how Laserfiche:

• Enabled users to process and store documents according to customizable template fields.
• Offered multiple searching options using those templates as well as full-text keyword searches.

Litchfield invited users from each department to the demonstration for their feedback. Each, she says, agreed Laserfiche was the most user-friendly solution they’d looked at.

“Managers wanted to be able to answer client questions over the phone, so they liked how we could set up the Laserfiche system to feel like their paper files, with the same tabs as the old paper files. The client service administrators really appreciated the advanced search capabilities that helped them find documents quickly and easily,” Litchfield recalls. “Other solutions seemed like they had a pretty big learning curve; Laserfiche is a product that you can open up and it’s immediately apparent how you use it.”

The advanced searching, Litchfield adds, would play a significant role from a compliance perspective as well, allowing easier auditing and monitoring of documents. “Our compliance officer really needs to be able to slice and dice information, and it was clear Laserfiche was the right choice. Plus everyone would be using the same system, on the same server, so everything’s in one place. From a technology, disaster recovery, and business continuity standpoint, this was important.”

Long-term, Litchfield and fellow staff agreed Laserfiche was flexible and scalable enough to grow with the firm. “We liked how we could set up the folder structure like our paper files and then change it at a later date,” she says. “We have ever-changing needs and it was important to have a product that could grow and change with us.”

Palladium purchased Laserfiche in May 2008; implementation took place over a two-day period. “We opened in late January, so by then we already had the bulk of the accounts on our portfolio accounting system,” Litchfield explains. “We had onsite support for those first two days to get Laserfiche up and running and train users and administrators. We didn’t have a backlog of information, so that helped.

“We just set the system up, set up individual scanners and got the users trained so that they could start working in the system right away,” she adds.

Improving the Day-to Day, Keeping Pace with Compliance

Since then, Litchfield says, Laserfiche has been instrumental in streamlining the day-to-day operations of the firm. “I hear all the time from our client service administrators how much they love using Laserfiche as opposed to the old way of filing paperwork. Every day, they scan all account documents into the system so all the original paperwork and correspondence is in a single location. We don’t have to worry about the storage space and cost for paper documents, or the annual clean up and purging of those documents,” she explains.

“Besides our client folders, we also maintain other folders within Laserfiche with information that cannot be changed, including marketing and compliance folders. Because we store copies of custodial statements in Laserfiche, we don’t have to keep those hard copies onsite. The only hard copies we keep are our original signed agreements,” she adds. “Our onsite storage is minimal.”

In the future, Litchfield says the firm is looking forward to the advanced search functionality that will come with upgrading to Laserfiche 8. “Everything is changing in our industry, and compliance is such a huge part of that,” she says. “Our compliance officer is one of our biggest Laserfiche users. Because she needs to be able to search for multiple criteria, being able to search throughout the file structures , as well as the further capabilities that are available with upgrading to Laserfiche 8, will be a big step forward for compliance.

“We use Laserfiche a lot for in-house verification, so having what we call that ‘wildcard’ capability to search according to a manager’s code, that’s a great oversight tool for auditing,” Litchfield adds. “Also, if we have auditors in house, we need to be able to get information to them immediately—not in three days or four days. Having these features available shows us that Laserfiche is keeping an eye on the changing environment and is adapting to keep pace.”

Along with their upgrade to Laserfiche 8, the firm is investigating implementing Workflow business process management. “We’d love to automate a lot of our processes that cross departments. Where we currently use Outlook or walk paper around, each person could sign off on a section of a document in the workflow and automatically the next person would get an e-mail saying it’s ready for them. We could move paperwork through much more effectively and efficiently,” Litchfield says.

“The ability to integrate [Laserfiche] with our portfolio management software is a big step forward. This will make the opening of new accounts a single point of entry, where fields will be populated automatically directly to Laserfiche. Additionally, allowing us to monitor personal trading within the firm from a compliance standpoint is another improvement. Automating that process will save time and money,” she adds.

The hospital relies heavily on paper—particularly for patient records. Some nursing documentation is housed in Meditech, but none of the physician orders, progress notes or surgical packets are handled electronically. With over 500 physicians and an additional 100 residents serving THE MED’s patients, the HIM department is forced to manage an overwhelming amount of paper records.

Building the Case for Enterprise Content Management

Prior to implementing Laserfiche, the HIM department had to store many of the hospital’s paper records onsite because researchers routinely required access to files. This, of course, uses valuable real estate that can be put to better use caring for patients.

But it wasn’t just the clinical staff that needed access to patient records: HIM frequently found itself copying and/or carting charts to various departments, leading to processing inefficiencies and delays.

The HIM department tried to solve its paper problem by using a vendor to scan records to the vendor’s database. However, outsourcing this important task didn’t yield positive results, as the vendor did not always properly index the records, making it difficult for hospital employees to find the desired electronic files.

Rosson knew the HIM department needed to find a better way to manage its records, but cost concerns were a limiting factor, particularly when it came to traditional electronic medical record (EMR) systems.

“THE MED is the ‘safety net’ hospital for the area,” she explains, “so we serve a large number of people who are unable to get care elsewhere.”

It was obvious that an EMR solution from the likes of Cerner or McKesson—which can cost millions of dollars—was out. Rather than scrapping the idea of EMR altogether, though, Rosson decided to take an incremental approach.

Laserfiche Becomes the Cornerstone for Hybrid EMR

Rosson’s vision centered around the creation of comprehensive EMRs that include current and historical nursing documentation from Meditech, physician documentation, pathology reports, EKGs and more. “I didn’t want employees to have to piece together a complete patient record from a variety of sources,” she says. “I wanted everything to be central and secure.”

The hospital’s CFO encouraged her to investigate an EMR solution from another vendor. “The vendor stated that its current solution didn’t have the functionality I needed just yet, but if I could wait a year, the next release would blow me away,” Rosson says. “I’m not going to waste a year waiting for something that may or may not happen.”

Instead, Doc Imaging, the company that manages THE MED’s copiers, proposed Laserfiche Rio. “From the very first demo, I thought Laserfiche was the answer,” Rosson says.

In terms of features and functionality, the HIM department was particularly impressed by Laserfiche’s:

• Ease of use.
• Robust and flexible storage.
• Advanced search.
• Granular security.
• Affordable price.

As a result, the hospital decided to purchase Laserfiche in December 2009, implementing the system in February 2010.

Breaking Ground with Hybrid EMR

Although Laserfiche has only been in place a little over six months, THE MED already uses Laserfiche to retrieve ER, inpatient, day surgery and ancillary records. “Any medical record documentation that’s not in Meditech gets scanned into Laserfiche,” Rosson says.

She adds that the hospital uses Laserfiche Quick Fields, a high-volume capture tool that automatically sorts, organizes and stores documents, to batch scan records into the system.

Pathology reports (and soon EKGs) are “cold fed” directly into Laserfiche, eliminating the need to print and store hard copies.

Each patient’s record is organized in the repository by visit number and medical record. “Our goal is to ‘ghost print’ everything from Meditech—including nursing documentation—into Laserfiche so the complete record is available to our physicians through the Laserfiche system,” the HIM director explains.

According to Rosson, physicians access records through the Web, using Laserfiche’s advanced search capabilities to quickly locate the records they need. “Laserfiche is so intuitive that users can pick it up with virtually no training,” she says.

In addition to the fast and easy access that Laserfiche affords, Rosson is excited because multiple users can view the same patient information simultaneously. “In my world, the fact that three people can be in separate rooms and all look at the same thing at the same time is huge! Laserfiche is a huge time saver in this regard.”

She also notes that THE MED’s file room is in the basement, which means HIM employees are constantly running up and down the stairs to retrieve paper files. “With Laserfiche,” she says, “our physicians don’t have to wait for someone to finish reviewing a chart, or for my department to make them a copy. They just log into Laserfiche and everything is right at their fingertips!”

Moving forward, Rosson is also excited that Laserfiche will enable coders to work from home. “The flexibility to telecommute is a big recruiting benefit,” she says, “and it frees up more space in the hospital for additional patient care areas.”

A Solid Foundation

Rosson is clear that what her department is doing with Laserfiche is more than mere archival: “We’re using Laserfiche to manage active medical records,” she says. “This is my EMR.”

Although the IT department would like to one day implement an EMR system with a CPOE component, Rosson stresses that for the time being, Laserfiche provides a sound and effective hybrid solution. “From a cost standpoint, from an access standpoint and from a productivity standpoint, Laserfiche is giving us everything we need right now.”

Besides, she points out, even if THE MED migrates to a complete EMR solution, “there’ll still be paper to manage. It’s not like the need for a content management solution is going to go away.”

When it came time to upgrade to Laserfiche 8, Hummel saw that a consolidation to an enterprise solution made sense to streamline administration, and would allow him to better leverage his own staff to handle future integrations and deployments. Eugene’s long-time reseller VPCI, of course, had an app for that: Laserfiche Rio enterprise content management.

In April 2009, Hummel submitted a memorandum to Eugene’s Central Services Advisory Board outlining a plan to consolidate Eugene’s four Laserfiche systems by moving to Rio. Besides recapping the “high return on investment” Eugene had already enjoyed in the areas of sustainability, efficiency and “new capabilities”—GIS and SharePoint integration among them—as well as asset protection over the last ten years, he outlined the potential benefits of moving to Rio:

• Unlimited Servers and Repositories: With the unlimited servers included in the Rio system, Hummel’s team could easily establish environments for testing and pilot projects.
• Named User Licenses: Instead of limiting mission-critical users like judges and 911 operators with first-come, first-serve concurrent licensing, licenses assigned to individual users would provide constant access.
• Enterprise-Wide Features: Because Rio licenses come fully loaded with a complete suite of applications, features currently used by certain departments—including Workflow, Records Management and the Laserfiche SharePoint integration—would now be available city-wide.
• Unlimited Read-Only Public Connections: Rio’s Public Portal provides unlimited read-only connections through Laserfiche WebLink 8, which would enable the city to meet surges in public demand for information.

Hummel points out that a 100% credit offered by Laserfiche, as well as pooling support costs, not only made the Rio upgrade affordable—only about 10% more of what the four contracts totaled—but it also allowed the city to centralize administration and IT staffing for further deployment and customization.

Leveraging a city-wide telecom tax set up to support three-year IT projects, Hummel was able to secure a funding boost to launch the project, while giving departments a temporary break from their own support costs until 2013. The Board agreed with the plan and the project was funded in summer 2009.

The Rio Reality

“We didn’t really start our Rio deployment until after the 2010 Laserfiche Institute Conference in Los Angeles,” Hummel explains. “We have a large enough IT staff to do a lot of work in-house, so we wanted to learn as much as we could before we got started.”

His strategy’s working; the Rio upgrade will be complete this month. “Rio not only solves our licensing problem, but it also lays the framework for Laserfiche as a common content management platform for everyone across the enterprise,” Hummel adds. “Beyond that, it has the potential to become a real information sharing and collaboration tool.”

The biggest improvement, Hummel says, is centralizing Laserfiche administration and service. “I think we’ve made a more professional IT environment for Laserfiche—which is part of laying the groundwork for future deployment,” he says. “We’re proactive in that we’re able to apply patches and fixes all at once. Where we had functions within departments before, we’re able to cultivate expertise in the right place as far as re-aligning departmental staff into central server administration.”

At the same time, he adds, the Rio centralization has afforded Eugene greater control and oversight of its information assets. “A big benefit is that the whole system is auditable. Because Laserfiche authorization is now controlled by a central administrator, in respect to security roles, we’re able to lock down repositories and folders according to different administrative needs,” Hummel says. “Now, we’re treating Laserfiche like one of our larger information systems such as ERP and database servers that also encompass risk management and compliance.”

And, he says, having a single, standardized ECM system allows staff to be more self-sufficient. “We have a lot of applications with embedded Laserfiche components, so we use the Laserfiche SDK a lot. We’re a .NET shop, so that’s the kind of flexibility that’s important to us,” Hummel says. “Laserfiche offers flexibility and programmability in terms of .NET integration that allows a full-featured IT shop like ours to use the tools we already have to fully customize it for our own applications.”

He points to a recent example. “We built an ASP.net web application for our Planning and Development department for building inspectors that has GIS maps, their routes, etc. All supporting documents are stored in Laserfiche, but the inspectors use the application in their car, and click on a button and the supporting documents come up in WebLink—without them knowing where it came from. All the searching and metadata is behind the scenes. We basically wrote our own client.”

Standardizing Enterprise-Wide

For Hummel, standardization is its own combination of reality and potential. “In government, everything seems to grow in silos, by workgroup and department,” Hummel says. “The ability to easily and seamlessly automate information across organizational boundaries—it’s kind of the holy grail of IT.

“Just having Laserfiche isn’t going to get us there, but our Rio-based architecture—and by that I mean both the placement of servers on our network as well as the way we positioned our repositories to simplify the creation of shared processes—gives us the technical framework that will allow departments to create business processes to cut through silos. That’s a good start,” he adds.

He also points to the promise of Workflow, which will enable his department to easily develop and implement standardized, repeatable processes. “For city-wide applications, we’ll write our own custom user interfaces. We want to use the workflow engine, but we’ll build in interactivity using the ToolKit API and .NET,” he says.

One of these new business processes is city-wide contract management. “Right now, every department keeps its own copies of contracts and its own retention policies, even though everything’s in the City Recorder’s archives. They may not know what’s being kept centrally and if they do, they think it’s a big process to access them,” Hummel says. “One of the things that attracted us to Rio was the idea of transparent records management, so we could make the actual storage transparent and be able to assign access to certain folders according to who needs to get them. That way, we can really increase the transparency of information back to the organization, which will translate into efficiency.”

Hummel points to this efficiency in the evolution—and simplification—of how the Eugene Police Department (EPD) shares reports with the Eugene Municipal Court (MuniCourt). The EPD first used shortcuts to a special distribution folder in Laserfiche, then a custom integration that briefcased police reports to move it into the MuniCourt repository—which still created multiple copies. Now with Rio, EPD staff use a simple “yes/no” MuniCourt template field to give the court read-only access to designated reports in the EPD folder, which are searchable by case number. “We actually had a customization written for the prosecutor [to briefcase reports for MuniCourt]. But since going to Rio, now that they’re sharing common services, we’ve eliminated a ton of custom code and complexity,” Hummel says.

Reaching ROI

Hummel is confident this self-sufficiency will translate into enterprise efficiency, especially staffing-wise. “We’re not talking about using automation to eliminate positions, but we’re looking at using technology to cope with positions we have already lost during the economic downturn, as well as any future staff reductions,” Hummel says. “We want to make sure the level of service doesn’t denigrate. We want to cope with the reduced footprint using automation tools. Laserfiche is one way to do that.”

Besides efficiency, he says, Rio has allowed his staff the freedom and focus to excel as well. “The Information Services Department is 40-plus people, where all six city departments have two to three analysts to determine their application needs,” Hummel explains. “Every department is really its own business. One of the challenges is to serve very specialized departmental needs with a fairly modest staff. Each of member of my team is assigned directly to a department for application support, so professional collaboration among IT staff has always been a challenge.

“Laserfiche has been a unifier,” he adds. “We have a team of Laserfiche IT folks where we can make the most of where the expertise lies to serve all the different departments. It’s made the upgrade possible. We have this collaborative environment that’s made the lines between assignments more fuzzy so hopefully that will be a catalyst for other [IT-driven] endeavors.”

Hummel notes functionality his staff once had to develop themselves is now out-of-the-box. “The last version of WebLink, we basically re-wrote it to be our own version. But WebLink 8 is essentially like the Adobe reader interface, so now we’re ripping out custom code.” That, and the collaborative, catalyzing environment standardizing on the Rio ECM system inspires, is encouraging, he says, both for the success of the Laserfiche consolidation, but in terms of the reality and potential of his own department.

“If you look at companies like Microsoft or Apple, they owe a lot of their success to the way developers are able to build innovative solutions in it,” Hummel says. “It’s not locked down. Like Laserfiche, it’s a broader base of development that encourages more innovation, because users are not just customers, they’re partners.”

Declaring Independence from Its B-D – and its ECM

Laserfiche was not the firm’s first ECM solution—but it was its first successful one. “Two years ago, our broker-dealer at the time came to us as one of their two branch offices in the whole country they were going to let beta test their document management system. I jumped on it, thinking this has got to be better than having a file clerk in a room all day,” recalls Marcy Gitterman, director of IT & HR.

Trouble was, with no folder hierarchy and searching limited only to template fields, the legacy system was creating as many problems as it was meant to solve. “It was just a really cumbersome program to use,” she says. As the firm prepared to switch broker-dealers to Fidelity, only one of 19 staff had actually scanned their paperwork into the system. Gitterman was frustrated, but optimistic. “I knew there had to be something else out there that would work,” she says.

The firm’s principals, meanwhile, just wanted something people would actually use. “At one point, we were just talking about scanning everything to PDF ourselves and storing it on a hard drive, but I was really against that,” Gitterman says. “We needed something a lot more robust—the fact that PDFs can be altered wouldn’t help with security or compliance.”

Laserfiche, turns out, was one of the ECM providers on Fidelity’s short list of recommended solutions. Jeffrey Gitterman was aware of Laserfiche from local FPA chapter meetings, as well as from hearing about it from colleagues who used it. “It’s just a name we kept hearing a lot,” he says. When Zaheer Master, president of Laserfiche reseller Accelerated Information Systems, presented a Laserfiche solution tailored to the firm’s dual registry, Gitterman knew he was working with the right company—and that he’d actually use the software.

“I avoid technology like the plague, so ease of use was for me the number one priority. How easily can our new employees use it? How easy is it for me to use it?” Gitterman says. “Laserfiche could take our paper filing system—the one we’ve been using successfully since 1996—and transpose it to a Windows-type environment we were comfortable with.

“But what really impressed us about Laserfiche was the way our reseller presented it. The other solutions we looked at were totally reactionary—they just said ‘this is how you get rid of paper.’ Our reseller presented Laserfiche in a way that said, ‘Okay, now that your information’s automated, here’s how you’ll need to set this up to get the most out of it and here’s how you do it,’” he adds.

Implementation took place over two months. Says Master, “We showed them how they needed to separate the RIA side of their business from the B-D side for FINRA and SEC compliance. We also showed them how using metadata, you could set up a template field search with a cut-off date or destruction date to easily enforce a retention policy. I think the important thing to realize with ECM is that just because it’s easy to keep everything, doesn’t mean you necessarily want to.”

The space saving alone, Marcy says, was a relief. “We look at the hundreds of square feet we’d been devoting to our file room—it just gets crazy. And half of those files you’ll never see, but you have to keep for compliance,” she says. “Now we get our space back and now all we have to do is shoot something through the scanner so we don’t have to touch it again. It’s that simple.”

The flexibility to segregate information and customize user access to certain folders was not only effective, she says, it was easy. “In the old system, we would have to hire a support person to do that. Now we can set up permissions to assign access,” Gitterman says. “We use Laserfiche for client files, HR files, benefits, payroll, you name it, so the ability to lock down some files versus other files is really helpful.”

She adds, “Laserfiche doesn’t just say it’s user-friendly, it is.”

Automated Compliance – Even at 2 AM

While having more accessible information is a benefit, Gitterman & Associates have also realized that automated information is more useful information. “We do a lot of our compliance right in Laserfiche,” Marcy says. “Instead of our reps having to make copies of client correspondence, they scan them in and it’s automatically submitted to our Chief Compliance Officer in a folder only they have access to. Then we set up a stamping process so the compliance officer can tell the rep that it’s been approved.”

This automation has paid off in faster service for financial advisors. “One of the nice things is that if our CCO is on the road, it’s not like it has to wait a week if it’s something that needs to be pre-approved. He doesn’t have to look for a fax machine or find time to respond during business hours, he can just log into Laserfiche at 2 AM.”

For his part, Jeffrey agrees. “Laserfiche is a huge help from a compliance side.”

But Gitterman says it’s the little things that make using Laserfiche an effective part of everyday business. “The fact that I can redact a line in a memo, and then send it in a secure e-mail—these are the kinds of things I like. I don’t have to ask someone how to do it, I can just do it.”

He sees the potential for Laserfiche to make audits more hassle-free. “I just went through six months of FINRA audits and I can tell you it was painful. They basically put me out of business for six months. If we had already had Laserfiche, it wouldn’t have been a tenth of the nightmare it was,” he says. “Now that we have Laserfiche, even though an auditor can come and say they want to see incoming correspondence from a certain date range, we can have everything for them in 30 seconds. That’s going to be huge for us.”

Marcy says now that the firm is enjoying its first taste of content management efficiency, she is eager to see what Workflow can do to automate business process management. “Right now our CRM integrates with our e-mail system—I’d like to see it integrated with Laserfiche as well,” she says. “And our internal processing department will be able to automatically route documents to our principals to approve from anywhere, instead of having them wait in a folder on a desk—that’ll be nice.”

As nice, says Jeffrey, is that the Gitterman & Associates Wealth Management has found an ECM system that’s finally living up to its potential—and uncovering new potential in the process(es). “Of all the new software we’ve gotten in the last few months, this is everyone’s favorite,” he says. “Laserfiche did what it promised to do. None of the other software did.”

• Providing in-home services to help homebound older people live in their own homes as long as possible.
• Helping active older people stay fit, healthy and involved through senior center programs and volunteer opportunities.
• Providing family caregivers the resources and support they need to maintain their own lives while caring for older loved ones.

But with 19,000 clients, CareLink was contending with a challenge of its own: filing, storing and accessing customer charts and other documentation in a timely and efficient manner.

Paper’s Pain Points

According to Luke Mattingly, CareLink’s chief operation officer, the agency employs 740 employees, with many of them providing home-based customer care. Some of these field employees live and work nearly 100 miles away from CareLink’s main office, which made filing and accessing customer charts a time-consuming and difficult task—one that took away from the face-to-face time they could spend with customers.

“Our employees are kind and compassionate people who entered this field in order to help senior citizens,” says Mattingly, “not spend hours filing and retrieving reports.”

In addition to staff productivity concerns, CareLink’s paper-based processes also caused delays when it came to funding. As a nonprofit, the agency receives funding from a variety of sources, including:

• Medicaid.
• Federal awards.
• State assistance.
• Private insurance companies.
• Personal donations.
• Private individuals (fee for service).

“We have thousands of customer charts and documents related to a variety of funding sources, and we get audited by third parties in conjunction with their funding requirements,” explains Mattingly. “Paper is just not conducive to quick and easy audits, particularly in the document collection phase.”

Electing to Go Electronic

In 2006, CareLink decided that enough was enough: the agency needed to find a solution that would allow it to do away with paper records and manage electronic content instead.

After evaluating several systems, CareLink found that “Laserfiche had the features and operational capabilities we were looking for, including excellent security, comprehensive records management and ease of use.” Plus, adds Mattingly, “Laserfiche was offered by Datamax Micro, one of our long-time, trusted vendors, and we knew that we could count on them to implement the system according to our needs.”

How ECM Helps

Implementing an enterprise content management (ECM) solution has transformed the way CareLink handles customer information in a number of ways:

• Electronic customer charts increase employee efficiency. With Laserfiche, field employees no longer have to travel to the main office to retrieve and file customer charts, which greatly enhances their efficiency. They simply access Laserfiche via a Citrix connection and find and file electronic records in the Laserfiche repository. According to Mattingly, this ability to capture documents in the field saves significant staff time. With distributed capture, CareLink has created a five-day filing rule that ensures data is uploaded to Laserfiche on a regular basis. This keeps charts current and protects against the possibility of losing files due to local hard drive failures.
• Automated filing process increases organizational efficiency. Using Laserfiche Quick Fields and Workflow, CareLink has created a quick and easy way to capture, index and auto-file documents in its Laserfiche repository. “Quick Fields captures our customer charts, saves them to the correct location and extracts index field data from specific areas of our forms in order to pre-fill our templates. Workflow further enhances the process by automatically populating template data based on folder name/designation. The automated filing process has been marvelous at eliminating manual data entry and saving staff time,” Mattingly reveals.
• Enhanced security eases HIPAA concerns. Prior to implementing Laserfiche, customer charts were kept in a large file room where it was impossible to be 100% sure that personnel only had access to the records of their assigned customers. In addition, staff sometimes forgot to record when a file was removed for review. “The granular security controls in Laserfiche eliminate the possibility that employees can view customer files they’re not supposed to see,” says the COO. “The system also provides an audit trail so that administrators can easily see all the activity that’s taken place on any given file.”
• Easier access to information eases audits. “In conjunction with our funding requirements, CareLink is audited by third parties on a regular basis,” Mattingly explains. “Laserfiche sped up the process of retrieving documents when those entities show up unannounced.” The system has also simplified internal audits that are designed to ensure that various departments and individual employees are completing an appropriate amount of work. “With Laserfiche’s advanced search capabilities, we can quickly determine the number of documents filed by any employee or department during a given date range. This has been very helpful and saves us a lot of time,” Mattingly says.

But customer charting isn’t the only area of agency operations that has been enhanced by ECM. Finance uses Laserfiche to manage financial documents, check registers and payables invoices. The fundraising department uses it to keep track of content such as proposals and thank you letters. HR uses it to control personnel files, time sheets and employee training files. In addition, the repository also houses organizational policies and procedures, letters, correspondence and individual employee files.

“Laserfiche started out as a solution for electronic charting but it’s grown to encompass so much more,” Mattingly says.

Return on Investment

According to Mattingly, Laserfiche has enabled CareLink to cut its paper consumption in half. Over the past three years, paper savings and the reduction of off-site storage costs have completely covered the cost of purchasing the system. “Over the next seven years,” Mattingly states, “eliminating off-site storage entirely will offset the annual maintenance fees for Laserfiche.”

Mattingly reminds us, however, not to forget about the cost savings associated with the efficiency gains CareLink has gained through its use of Laserfiche: “We estimate a 40% efficiency gain for audits, for example, and our field staff has absolutely seen a productivity boost. Although we haven’t assigned these gains a dollar value, this is where the real savings lie.”

Not surprisingly, against this backdrop of budgetary efficiency, Neumann and his team have initiated several infrastructural enhancements to the city’s technology wheelhouse that have resulted most recently in a redesign of the city’s website. Completed in May 2010, the redesign is the culmination of an e-Government Web strategy used by virtually all of Oshkosh’s departments to provide automated information and services to citizens. Helping to drive these services, Neumann says, is Oshkosh’s use of the Laserfiche WebLink 8 public portal, a key component of Laserfiche’s enterprise content management (ECM) suite.

Finding an ECM System and Standardizing for the Future

One of the first things Neumann did when he came to Oshkosh a decade ago was to implement a proper ECM solution in the City Clerk’s Office. Paper storage in the already packed offices, he remembers, “was like trying to stuff ten pounds into a five-pound bag.” What’s more, the legacy document indexing system, MuniMetrix, was proprietary, “which to me was just scary,” he adds.

On September 11, 2001, Gary Eide of Laserfiche reseller Computer Technologies Access showed Neumann how a Laserfiche system could help not just the Clerk’s Office, but also just about every other city department. “I liked the fact that [Laserfiche] was non-proprietary and SQL-based. Plus, the way the system extracted text from documents [via OCR] seemed very forward-thinking, and we like to think of Oshkosh as a forward-thinking city,” Neumann says.

Neumann had cut his teeth on mainframe systems in the military, so Laserfiche appealed to his service-oriented architecture (SOA) sensibilities. “When I look at a product, I look at any use different business units have even remotely in common,” he says. “Laserfiche is an application that crosses many boundaries—it’s one product that literally touches every department.”

Neumann seized the opportunity to adopt a single, unified standard for the city’s metadata. “Standardization was one of the initial core changes that would move Oshkosh forward,” he says. And it would do so by providing a common model for content storage, making it easier to find, link and retrieve: “We saw the potential for the cross-utilization and system interoperability that would allow for distribution and cross-interaction. Plus we’d minimize compatibility issues and allow for future expansion and technology migration over time.”

In February 2002, Computer Technologies Access installed and configured the new Laserfiche system in less than a week, and the impact on the Clerk’s Office and the Inspections Division was immediate:

• Storage space was converted back to office space.
• Internally, staff no longer needed to print documents to image them; they could be imported directly using Laserfiche Snapshot.
• Departmental employees were given their own access to the Laserfiche repository.

Implementing Laserfiche WebLink, Neumann says, sparked what he calls “an evolution” of Oshkosh’s e-Government strategy. Procedurally, because departmental staff could now make public information available themselves, Neumann’s department was no longer inundated with requests to publish cumbersome PDFs or send out mass e-mails to citizens. “Wisconsin has a pretty comprehensive open records law, so pretty much everything had to be made available,” Neumann explains. “WebLink basically extended public information services right to people’s living rooms.

“Customer satisfaction went through the roof—we started getting complimentary phone calls instead of derogatory ones,” he laughs.

Evolving a Successful e-Government Strategy

Establishing formal ROI statistics when your IT department is spending 33% less than it did ten years ago seems redundant, but Neumann happily details the self-sufficiency of Oshkosh’s IT department. “I like to brag that we don’t contract anything out —not even wiring. Everything is done in-house, including our network architecture, design and management,” he explains. “In that sense, I’d say Laserfiche fits us because it’s very self-driven and intuitive to get around. The biggest thing I’ve enjoyed is the ease of upgrades. We do them all ourselves, without a single hitch.”

He adds, “The Knowledge Base on the [Laserfiche Support Site] is also very beneficial —we really haven’t had to contact our reseller for support issues.”

At the same time, he says, using Laserfiche has gone a long way in supporting the evolution of Oshkosh’s e-Government strategy, which now includes 12 departments using WebLink to push out information through seven municipal Websites. “Every electronic document we create can be managed departmentally,” Neumann explains. “We just have to set up security within Laserfiche, and as soon as a document is in the system, it can be made available for public view.”

In Neumann’s view, making information more available isn’t just about transparency, but also the government’s responsibility for the decisions it makes. “When we talk about WebLink we’re really talking about transparency and accountability—they go hand in hand,” he says. “We have our resolutions and ordinances posted online dating back to 1990, and residents love that they can research an issue or an address going back 20 years.” Online inspection reports, for instance, are used by both potential homebuyers and realtors, while contractors can see a virtual history of work done on a property.

And insurance companies and attorneys access accident reports through WebLink—a process that accounts for 350 visits to Oshkosh’s Website each day. “Because accident reports are public records, they are uploaded when the patrol car gets back to the station, so they’re available online in real time,” Neumann explains.

It isn’t just citizens who benefit from the efficiency, as Oshkosh administrators also recognize the value of Laserfiche. “Our municipality is driven by our city manager and city council, and using Laserfiche to automatically publish the agendas and minutes from our boards and commissions really illustrates how effective it is,” Neumann says.

According to Neumann, the recently re-launched city Website was the culmination of five years of adding interaction based on citizens’ input, plus some inspiration, he says, from the best practices of the Center for Digital Government and Government Technology’s Best of the Web winners (“They won those awards for a reason,” Neumann comments). But final buy-in and approval came as a result of an internal assessment by the Oshkosh City Manager and Media Services Department. “We sat down with them and went over their likes and dislikes,” Neumann explains.

Next, Neumann’s looking at integrating Laserfiche with the city’s internal Munis systems. “If you’ve got the framework, you want to utilize it the best you can. I’d like to get to a full ERP integration where we’re bringing a number of departments through a single, shared application. If we can do it ourselves, and I think we can, we’ll do it,” he says.”I take it as a challenge to use little or no capital, because with Laserfiche, we’ve been able to do that the whole time. We’ve achieved all our goals annually.”

“Choosing Laserfiche as our ECM system was definitely an investment, not a purchase,” he adds. “It’s gone a long way toward keeping my budget the way it is and it’s allowed our departments to be a lot more self-sufficient in terms of managing their own content and making it available to the public.”

“I’ve been in HIM since 1986,” explains Patty Hall, privacy officer and director of HIM at Wythe County Community Hospital, a 100-bed facility located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwest Virginia, “and I have to tell you that having an electronic solution makes things so much easier.”

A transplant from a hospital in Illinois, where she had worked with electronic health records for years, Hall was determined to decrease Wythe’s dependence on paper and improve the ease with which clinical, clerical and billing staff could access the patient information they need.

“I had a very specific idea of what I wanted in a content management solution,” she says, “and I worked very closely with the team at EMI Imaging [a Laserfiche reseller] to make sure that they could accommodate my requirements.”

Convincing Corporate

Hall was quickly sold on Laserfiche due to its rich functionality and affordable cost, but convincing Wythe’s parent company of the system’s merits was a tougher nut to crack. “LifePoint Hospitals uses a different content management solution, and they were fairly adamant at first that we should go with the system they had in place,” she says.

According to Hall, EMI made the difference by designing a very detailed, highly customized demo for the representatives from LifePoint. “After the demo, the lady from corporate headquarters told me that she’d come out to Virginia with the intention of nixing the Laserfiche proposal, but after the demo, she just didn’t see a way to say no; it was such a perfect fit for our needs.”

Wythe purchased its Laserfiche system in August 2009. In less than a year, the hospital’s repository has grown to manage more than 2,152,886 pages of records. “Working with EMI, we were able to deploy Laserfiche very quickly,” explains Hall. “Today, nearly 100 of our 415 employees use Laserfiche to some extent.”

Leaving the Paper World Behind

In 2009, Wythe had a total of 7,200 inpatients and 37,300 outpatients, performing 3,300 same-day surgeries and treating 15,000 people in the ER. With so many patients coming through the doors, digitizing medical records has been a huge time saver. “Many of our ER patients, in particular, come back more than once,” says Hall. “When you’re living in a paper world, it takes time to track down their records. Laserfiche makes it instantaneous.”

Although some technology solutions require intensive staff training, the HIM director notes that Laserfiche is pretty much the exact opposite. “Laserfiche is very user friendly. If you know how to use Microsoft Windows, you can use this system. For some of the less tech-savvy staff, we conducted 15-minute training sessions. That’s really all anybody needed to get up and running.”

Laserfiche delivers a number of benefits on the clinical side, including:

• Electronic EKGs. Physicians log directly into Laserfiche, where they can view labs, radiology reports, EKGs and ER reports for outpatients and ER visitors. (Inpatient charts are not yet being managed by Laserfiche.) “Having the EKGs in Laserfiche is a big benefit for our doctors,” Hall explains. “While our Meditech system makes labs and radiology reports available electronically, the EKGs don’t have a place in any other software application. To have them accessible through Laserfiche, in a crisp image, is fantastic.”
• Centralized Charts. Hall also acknowledges that having a centralized digital chart available through one interface (Laserfiche) makes it easier and faster to access all of the information relevant to any given patient. Labs, EKGs and radiology reports are batch scanned and captured electronically using Laserfiche Quick Fields, a high-volume capture tool that automatically sorts, stores and creates folder paths for these documents in Wythe’s Laserfiche repository. Charts are tabbed and separated into sections that make it fast and easy for doctors to locate the type of information they need.
• Quick Digital Searches. Kim Newman, the HIM department’s lead operations technician, notes that the optical character recognition (OCR) process available through Laserfiche translates printed words into alphanumeric characters that the system indexes for full-text search, giving Wythe the opportunity to search for specific documents using a keyword or phrase. This capability has come in particularly handy when radiology reports were misfiled. “Searching by the patient’s medical record number enabled me to quickly find the missing report and save it to the correct chart. If this had happened before we implemented Laserfiche, we may have had to spend hours and hours searching through every chart processed on a particular day of service, and even then we may never have found the misfiled report. Laserfiche OCR is a real timesaving tool!”
• Easy-to-Access Advance Directives. In addition to the patient charts, the hospital’s HIM department has created a folder for Advance Directives, organized by patient name. Having these important documents in Laserfiche is particularly useful in the case of emergencies. In the past, paper copies may not have been discovered quickly enough to make an emergency patient’s wishes known to medical staff. With Laserfiche, a simple search rapidly reveals whether or not a patient has an Advance Directive on file; if such a document exists, the patient’s preferences are immediately identified and honored.

Back-Office Benefits

But it’s not just the clinical staff that benefits from Laserfiche; the patient access (registration) department, the business (finance) office and the lab director (who is in charge of compliance), all use Laserfiche, too.

“Before Laserfiche, Patient Access made four copies of each patient’s records; now they make none,” says Hall. She also notes that the hospital now sends its ER billing information to its outside billing company electronically, adding to the cost savings Wythe realizes on printing, storing and mailing paper documents.

Facilitating Compliance

As the hospital’s privacy officer, Hall is responsible for investigating HIPAA complaints. Laserfiche Audit Trail, which tracks repository activity and provides a Web-based interface for running detailed reports on the tracked information, allows her to monitor all system activity—who looked at various records, what time records were viewed, whether any changes were made, etc.

However, Hall notes that the security controls in Laserfiche make it virtually impossible for unauthorized people to view information they are not allowed to access. “We limit access to the content in our repository based on folders,” she says. “For example, the patient access department doesn’t see the same things our physicians do.”

Corporate audits conducted by LifePoint are also much simpler now that Laserfiche is in place. With Laserfiche, the hospital is able to grant auditors secure access to a folder containing all of the documentation that needs to be reviewed. “Laserfiche allows us to prepare for audits on very short notice,” explains Hall. “It’s a lot easier than finding and copying paper documents and putting them in the mail.”

What’s Next

Wythe is currently in the process of implementing Laserfiche in the physical therapy department, and it hopes to tackle inpatient records before too long. Hall is also interested in adding electronic signature functionality to Laserfiche. Although her department doesn’t currently have the budget for it, she’s hoping to get money approved for it next year.

Overall, though, Hall sees Laserfiche as “a much larger solution for the hospital. This isn’t just something that the HIM department can benefit from; it would be a great thing for departments like HR and credentialing, and for the hospital as a whole.”