When Olmsted & Associates, a CPA firm based in Fountain Valley, CA, went looking for a content management system in 2006, its needs were simple: “We needed a program that would allow us to scan multiple sizes and types of documents and then facilitate our search for them later. Security and retention periods were a concern as well,” says Tax Administrator Fernando Rocha. “Basically, we needed to have everything in one place so whomever needed to use it, could.”
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When six portfolio managers left their former firm and formed Palladium Registered Investment Advisors in 2008, it gave them the opportunity to break away from their paper-based office.

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.
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“Like all non-profit organizations, we continue to be asked to ‘do more with less,’” says Dr. Keith Vire, CEO of the Arkansas Support Network (ASN). Since adopting Laserfiche as its case management system in 2008, Laserfiche has helped do just that by supporting ASN’s 430 staff, program managers and case managers as they provide services and supported employment to over 800 individuals and families with disabilities. Client files that were once three-inch thick folders of medical information, case notes and support plans are now indexed and searchable—visible only to assigned staff, making compliance and frequent audits by multiple state and federal healthcare agencies simple and comprehensive.
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Since it was founded in 1990, Gitterman & Associates Wealth Management, LLC has grown from a five-person Financial Firm to a dually-registered firm with 25 employees handling $225M AUM on its RIA side and over $400M AUM on its broker-dealer side. With this growth came the need to manage more client information and business records—and, now as a dually registered RIA/B-D, to meet separate compliance standards for both FINRA and the SEC.
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When Lindsay Lohan violated her probation by drinking the night of the MTV Movie Awards this month, it was the technology authorities used to catch her that really made headlines: an ankle monitor that detects alcohol on the wearer’s skin. Former Criminal District Court Judge Vickers Cunningham Sr. knows all too well how effective this technology, known as SCRAMx (“Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitoring”) can be. “Before we had this tool, I was putting 80% of people on probation for alcohol-related offenses back in prison,” Cunningham says. “Now, 83% percent of the people using the bracelets are alcohol-free—which means our justice system can focus its resources on the remaining 17%.”
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Caring for senior citizens can be challenging: chronic pain, decreased mobility and a dwindling social network are just a few of the issues that older people—and their caregivers—must contend with. The mission of CareLink, a private nonprofit organization serving central Arkansas, is to connect older people and their families with resources to meet the opportunities and challenges of aging. The agency accomplishes this by:

• 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.
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When the average person thinks about the employees who keep a hospital running, it is doctors and nurses who immediately come to mind. But what the average person doesn’t realize is how much work it takes to provide those doctors and nurses with the information they need to provide high-quality care. This task, of course, falls to health information management (HIM) professionals, and when a hospital relies on paper records, it is no easy feat.

“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.”
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Name a recent natural disaster, and Ceres Environmental Recovery & Restoration Management has been there, helping clean up and rebuild. In fact, the licensed general contractor and government contracting firm has been awarded more than $700 million in disaster recovery contracts during the past eight years—most notably a $500 million contract to help Louisiana recover from Hurricane Katrina.
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For Michigan’s Rehmann Financial, compliance became more of an issue as the RIA firm grew and regulatory concerns increased. With 100 staff members—including 30 advisors—spread out across 13 offices in two states, sharing, accessing and tracking information had become “really clunky,” as Operations Manager Amy Flourry puts it.

“For us, there’s a real link between operations and compliance,” explains Flourry.
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Time is money, especially for a busy firm like Renaissance Financial Corporation of St. Louis, MO. With offices in St. Louis, Omaha, NE, Lincoln, NE, and Kansas City, KS, keeping information moving was crucial.

As Renaissance staff explain, when an advisor is spending time searching through paperwork, that’s less time he or she has to focus on what the firm is known for: managing securities and investment plans, offering quality advisory services and helping with small business planning. “The more time advisors spend finding paperwork, the less time they have to spend building client relationships. We’re constantly trying to find ways to streamline processes so they don’t have to spend time doing administrative tasks.”
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Outagamie County, WI, has a tradition of innovation. Appleton, its county seat, is home to Hearthstone, the very first home in the United States to be powered solely by Thomas Edison’s hydroelectric technology and light bulbs, way back in 1882. Now, almost 130 years later, that innovative spirit can be seen in the county’s deployment of Laserfiche agile enterprise content management (ECM) to expand and enhance information services in several departments.
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In a year marked with more bank failures than we’ve seen since the height of the savings-and-loan crisis, D.L. Evans Bank, a family-owned institution with 22 branches, 320 employees and $875 million in managed assets, has cause to celebrate. Its ten-year use of Laserfiche has netted the 105-year-old, Idaho-based bank a wealth of dividends, including:

• Faster audits.
• Streamlined lending.
• Improved business continuity planning.
• More efficient processes for opening new accounts.
• A 33% reduction in hard copy document production and an 85% reduction in paper storage.

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