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.”

• Case Management: Durham County, NC
• Student Records Management: Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board
• A/P Processing/Shared Services: ECOM
• Police Case Management: Shakopee, MN 

Interested in sharing your solution with the Laserfiche community? Contact Melissa Henley at melissa.henley@laserfiche.com. Or let us know how you’ve benefited from our customer solutions by leaving a comment on this post!

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?”

Martin Lovelace-Chandler's Laserfiche workstation

Born with a form of cerebral palsy that limits his motor skills and speech, Lovelace-Chandler has embraced technology with a purpose and passion in his life and career—at least as much as the technology has been able to keep up with the ambitions of the now-married father of two. “In college [in the late ‘90s], I really wanted to go into computers but I didn’t have a way to type or to use a mouse,” he says. After Lovelace-Chandler became an ASN client a decade ago, Dr. Vire had a great idea: to make ASN’s client files accessible to staff by scanning cumbersome paper files to disc. “It was just costing the agency storage every month. He asked me if I could help. I told him I can do anything on a computer if he just gets me the right equipment,” Lovelace-Chandler remembers.

The “right equipment” has changed a lot over the years. Realizing it needed a network solution to make scanned information more easily accessible to staff, ASN implemented a Canofile imaging system in 2006, but quickly found it fell short of its promise. Lack of indexing and usability meant ASN’s 20-plus case managers were still using three-inch thick paper files—sometimes three or four of them per client—which were time-consuming to locate and use and even more resource-consuming when it came to storage and auditing. It was “nightmare-ish stuff,” as Dr. Vire remembers. The one bright spot was that Lovelace-Chandler started using a combination keyboard and mouse that allowed him to program hotkey shortcuts—“macros and micros,” he calls them—that cut the keystrokes required to open up programs like Canonfile from 10 to two. “This allowed me to spend more time on the program itself and gave me total independence,” he says.

Over time, just as Lovelace-Chandler upgraded his communication device to a simpler and more comprehensive “Eco 14” model, ASN likewise upgraded to Laserfiche in 2008. The reason was twofold: “We wanted to be able to have all current and past files on Laserfiche so then it would be at everyone in the agency’s fingertips,” Lovelace-Chandler says. “We also wanted a program that would have a higher security feature after the HIPAA law went into effect.”

Although Dr. Vire admits that system adoption initially took time—not everyone was as attuned to the benefits of using technology as Lovelace-Chandler—the impact has been real.

“There was a time when, if we had a question about an individual’s plan from last year, we had to send someone to a storage unit and hope they could find the correct file, and then hope that the information was in the correct place. We almost always found the document, but the time invested was huge. We can now find that document in minutes rather than hours—and we’ve never had a water leak that left our Laserfiche files water-logged and unusable,” he says. “Laserfiche is definitely a time and money saver.”

For Lovelace-Chandler, a key benefit is how easily he can set up and administer ASN’s Laserfiche system for the case managers who use it on a daily basis. In addition to processing the 200 or so documents generated in the field every day, Lovelace-Chandler has added indexes for medical history, case manager notes and program plans, among other documents. “I’m able to use drop down lists for 98% of the fields,” he says. “It allows documents to be located faster and more efficiently.” And, he adds, securely.

“Laserfiche allows me to give only the people that should be seeing a certain region access. So for example, a case manager might have several consumers out of several regions, but that case manager only has access to each consumer that they are assigned—it’s a lot easier to them to access, and I love that security is set up differently,” he explains. “On Canofile any person could look up any consumer and see all their files. Now, with Laserfiche, I can assign that consumer just to who actually needs access. We also set up groups for each department. For example, Human Resources can’t access supported living files and vice-versa. We really like this because we can track who all is accessing all the files.”

He particularly likes Laserfiche’s support for Window Active Directory. “Almost every day I use the multi-media function to add employee names to the list.”

Another area of improvement has been auditing. As a healthcare services provider with funding and oversight from state and national agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services (which monitors HIPAA compliance), the Arkansas Department of Human Services and the Division of Developmental Disabilities Services, ASN is subject to frequent audits—as many as four per year. “We had an agency that told us that we had so many days to find documents or our agency would be fined. I was able to look up and send them every document they wanted. I would have spent twice the amount of time looking for the documents if we were still using Canofile,” Lovelace-Chandler says.

In addition to using Laserfiche for case management, Lovelace-Chandler also uses it to manage payroll, HR and AP processing. The plan, says Kevin Dickinson of ASN’s Laserfiche reseller, Preferred Office Products, is to implement Quick Fields, possibly even equipping case managers with netbooks to directly input their notes, freeing up Lovelace-Chandler’s time.

“I feel that having Laserfiche we will be able to do bigger and better things in the future. I also feel that it will help us greatly since our agency continues to expand,” says Lovelace-Chandler.

“I have been able to use Laserfiche more than any other program. With the features of Laserfiche it is an easier process to program my device and to use all the features that the program offers. I feel like Laserfiche could open a lot of doors for me or even people like me that have a physical disability,” he adds.

Likewise, Cunningham saw that RHC’s case management system could be made more agile. For starters, RHC’s 90 employees needed to find a better way to fulfill the information requests from over 3,400 court officers requesting client information from the agency. A legacy imaging system allowed staff to scan and attach documents to client records, but without a comprehensive search tool to locate specific documents or the ability to search by keywords, requests required a staff member to find the document in the case file, download it and attach it. Even more laborious was inputting information. Court papers and probation documents would need to be faxed in, re-scanned and manually inputted. “It didn’t just waste time, it wasted paper,” Cunningham says.

The logistics of real-time case management over three states was also a challenge. “Like any multi-state, multi-location business, we need access to files and data anywhere we’re doing business,” Cunningham says.

In March, Jeff Flory of Laserfiche reseller Datamax of Texas introduced Cunningham and the RHC staff to Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM). “The nature of RHC’s business is that it’s not only very paper intensive, but also very information dense,” Flory notes.

Flory showed RHC a Laserfiche Avante system with Workflow, Web Access and a WebLink public portal. Cunningham and his staff agreed Laserfiche was just what RHC’s case management system needed. For starters, Laserfiche’s full-text search and ability to locate individual documents within client folders would make case information that much easier to look up. But, Flory says, it was how Workflow would automate and simplify the capture process that convinced Cunningham of the real value of the Laserfiche solution.

“All a staff member has to do is fill out the template field using drop down lists and a couple of key fields, and then send the document. Workflow picks up the document, names it, and puts it in the right folder. For an organization like RHC, where many different users are scanning content themselves, this adds the assurance that all documents adhere to a consistent naming and foldering convention,” Flory says.

Cunningham was impressed. “I can have a staff member anywhere in Texas, in any court room, in any of 254 different counties, and all they need is a little road warrior scanner and a laptop. They can upload the court orders from wherever they are, and Workflow does the rest.”

Add to that the ability of Web Access to enable remote deployment and WebLink to allow the 3400 court officers requesting information to locate it themselves, and Laserfiche provides RHC with an ECM system agile enough to streamline its case management system.

Implementation is still ongoing, but already Cunningham is recognizing the long-term benefits. “Laserfiche will enable me to have a company-wide retention policy. We’re subject to audits by the IRS and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (who enforces HIPAA), as well as state regulatory authorities, and I can already foresee that first audit where we can pull up all the contract and court documents associated with the GPS and SCRAM system quickly and easily, right from Laserfiche. I’m going to be glad we have this. I look at it as corporate security.”

Next up, he says, RHC is looking at integrating its SCRAM system with Laserfiche to enable more active case management. “It’ll be just that one ID number and the user will have everything,” Cunningham says.

But even now, Cunningham adds, he’s satisfied. “I know I don’t want paper and Laserfiche helps me get rid of it,” he says. “I don’t want to have to spend a lot of time training anybody—I just want to be able to get my information when I need it, how I need it.”

But in terms of automating its paper‐based processes, the Commission has become progressively more proactive in its procedures and practices since implementing Laserfiche in 2002. Utilizing the powerful automated capture and search capabilities of Laserfiche as well as the WebLink public portal, the Commission began by revolutionizing its internal and external “e‐discovery” processes while increasing online transparency via its e‐Library. The launch of the e‐Library fulfilled a long‐standing desire to offer the public a searchable on‐line repository of every Commission ruling dating back to 1979. In addition, phase two of the e‐Library implementation was to provide, via its website, all of the financial disclosure statements required to be filed with the Commission by public officials and public employees.

The Need to Accelerate e-Discovery

In 2002 faced with the daunting and time intensive task of assembling case files to prepare for an upcoming trial, Commission staff knew there had to be a better more efficient way to prepare exhibits. Contino had a case that had over 35,000 pages of discovery documents. Long‐standing manual processes would have involved hiring a temporary employee to hand‐number each page and then copy all 35,000 pages for opposing counsel.

“That could easily take two weeks,” Contino says. “We had to generate some kind of numbering system so I could take a 35,000 page case file and refer to something on page 15,231 without going through every page to find it.”

With that goal in mind, the Commission issued a Request for Proposals for a document management solution. “We went through a pretty long and thorough vetting process with the Commonwealth’s list of preferred vendors, which included Laserfiche,” says Cynthia Lynch, the Commission’s Director for Administration. “A lot of the solutions we were shown were proprietary and costly. Laserfiche was an out‐of‐the box solution for all intents and purposes. It was a lot more economical and a lot more user‐friendly.”

The Commission ultimately purchased Laserfiche with Quick Fields advanced capture, including Bates numbering functionality, which immediately enhanced the Commission’s case preparation processes. Commission staff were able to scan in the thousands (and sometimes tens of thousands) of pages, which were then automatically electronically numbered. Then Commission attorneys could pick and choose the exhibits necessary and made them available to opposing counsel on read‐only CD’s with appropriate redactions applied. Commission attorneys could then simply drag and drop specific pages into their own sub‐folders, which Quick Fields could re‐process and re‐number for easier reference in the courtroom.

Improved Case Management Internally, a Transparent e-Library Externally

Contino immediately saw how Laserfiche’s capture and search functionality could be applied to managing the Commission’s history of rulings and opinions that dated back to its inception in 1979. “One thing I had been trying to do since the early ‘90s was move away from depending on institutional memory to find information in our rulings,” says Contino. “We realized that if we could use the search function to aid in our case management of our investigative files, we could use it to let the public search available rulings [via Laserfiche WebLink]. That became our e‐Library.” A year later, in 2004, the Commission added the Statements of Financial Interest that officials are required by state law to file annually, adding convenience to the transparency. “We were always big on transparency and making things available to the public,” Contino says. “The e‐Library made this more convenient for everyone.”

The challenge, explains IT Director Sean Firestine, was making information filed according to the Commission’s internal filing system available for public use. The solution was again Quick Fields. “We found Quick Fields could look through our database for first and last name, and sort files in alphabetical order so the public could use an ‘A‐Z’ list to look up information. Internally, the original paper documents continue to be filed according to our specific naming convention.”

Ensuring Continuity and Maximizing Resources with a Brief Bank

Contino says the ongoing benefit of using Laserfiche is the convenience it brings to the Commission’s day‐to‐day operations. “The fact that I can access any investigative file from my desk – evidence, reports, everything – saves a lot of time,” he says. As such, staff has been proactive in applying Laserfiche’s use to other business processes. “We keep thinking of ways we can utilize the system,” Contino says. Or as Firestine puts it, “John says ‘Hey, can we do this?’ And we usually can.”

For instance, the Commission has used Laserfiche to establish its own “brief bank.” “Over the course of 30 years, we’ve written thousands of legal briefs, which are now cataloged in Laserfiche,” Contino explains. “Brief‐writing is very time‐consuming. You’re given 30 days, but it can take the first two weeks just to do your research. Now we can potentially save a week’s worth of researching if it’s something we’ve already written about.”

Lynch adds that the Commission’s Laserfiche system is also an integral part of the agency’s overall Continuity of Government Plan. “Anything that used to be solely on paper is scanned into Laserfiche has become part of our daily and nightly back‐up,” she says.

The Value of Upgrading to Avante ECM

The latest chapter in the Commission’s evolving use of Laserfiche is its recent upgrade to a Laserfiche Avante ECM system, which includes Workflow business process management, Web Access and Audit Trail. “For us, the benefit of upgrading to Avante is that we were able to get Web Access and Workflow reasonably inexpensively,” says Contino.

Since upgrading to Laserfiche Avante with Web Access at the end of 2009, the Commission has continued to find even more ways to utilize and maximize its use of Laserfiche. This includes providing the Pittsburgh office with the ability to input information into Laserfiche directly – saving paper, labor and overnight delivery fees. This improvement has already proved to be a significant cost‐saver, giving the Pittsburgh office the ability to scan their documents directly into the Laserfiche repository, instead of overnighting the paper files to the Harrisburg office for scanning and processing duplicating efforts.

“We keep thinking of new ways we can use the Laserfiche system,” Contino says. The Commission’s proactive thinking is paying off: greater efficiency plays a significant role in the agency’s ability to fulfill its mandate – despite operating with 20% less staff.

Firestine has begun working with the agency’s reseller, Full Circle Solutions Group, to set up a Workflow to automate proofreading and editing opinions between investigators and supervisors. Contino says the actual cost savings have not been compiled, but says the addition of Web Access – like the e‐Discovery, e‐Library transparency, internal brief bank, and Continuity of Government plan – provides another example of the agency fulfilling another mandate: to maximize its resources in an era of decreased operating revenues.

“We’re in a situation where doing more with less is key right now,” says Contino. “We’ve been operating with 20% less staff this year, but we still have a mandate to fill. Anything that allows us to utilize existing systems instead of hiring more individuals, and that allows us to pursue our mandate and be compliant, helps us continue our operations and serve the interests of the Commonwealth more effectively.”

A Need to Improve Data Governance—and a Need for a Plan

In 2006, county departments secured budget approval for a three-year automation planning initiative to replace the county’s AS400 imaging system, which was slow and offered limited search capability. Melissa Buman, records management/administrative services supervisor for the Outagamie County MIS Department, recognized the need to manage electronic documents as intuitively as paper ones.

“The lack of an electronic records management strategy, including e-mail retention, resulted in poor data governance, with a lot of confusion and a lack of consistency throughout the departments,” she says. Add to this the increasing costs of storage and managing paper files in various departments, and it was time for a change.

With the support of County Executive Robert “Toby” Paltzer, the county chose Laserfiche ECM. County MIS staff, who support approximately 40 departments, soon realized that while Laserfiche gave them the right tools, they didn’t yet have a clear vision for how to manage such a large project on top of their existing workload.

Creating Repeatable Processes to Balance Departmental and IT Resources

In 2008, Laserfiche reseller Cities Digital helped the county develop an implementation strategy that would balance departmental and MIS staff resources to ensure success. Led by MIS Project Manager Steve Flater, staff reviewed existing procedures and worked out a multi-year implementation timeline before deploying Laserfiche in the Corporation Counsel, Health and Human Services, Brewster Village, Planning and Finance departments.

“Our strategy was to create a foundation with the first few departments, so the MIS team had repeatable processes to set up individual departments, while still maintaining a manageable IT workload as more departments came on board,” explains Cities Digital Executive Vice President Jessica Welsch.

The paperless (or “less paper”) strategy had an immediate impact county-wide:

• Aging Planning Department files, for instance, could be archived, reducing storage needs and costs.
• Staff at Brewster Village, the county-owned nursing home, used Laserfiche to keep track of internal paperwork as well as managing client case files.
• The Corporation Counsel’s office adopted a paperless incoming mail process, reducing bottlenecks, aiding in e-discovery and improving staff efficiency and productivity.
• The Purchasing Department immediately began distributing requested documents more quickly, and cut down on the amount of time it takes to perform audits. According to Buyer Nicole Schoultz, Laserfiche helped cut the audit time of the county’s procurement cards in one department from 11 hours to less than four.
• Risk Management has likewise benefitted from not just reduced storage demands, but from improved information governance. “Security and retention are big concerns because we’re dealing with a lot of workers compensation and liability claims that involve confidential medical records and legal documents,” explains Risk Administrator Brian Margan.
• “Continuity of Operations—which is our disaster recovery plan—is also something we look to Laserfiche to help with, so if anything happens, we can get back to business as soon as possible,” Murgan adds.

Laserfiche Agile ECM Improves Case Management in Health & Human Services

In the Outagamie Health & Human Services department, with 360 employees serving seven different divisions, Laserfiche has helped staff consolidate and secure patient files, which can grow to ten volumes over a lifetime of care. MIS has set up security settings that improve data governance by limiting access to confidential documents as well as those falling under the HIPAA umbrella, redacting personal information such as Social Security Numbers. “A worker in Mental Health can’t see the records of a WIC client,” explains Kathy Watters, system support supervisor, adding that staff adoption of Laserfiche has been unanimous. “The folder structure wasn’t hard to learn because it’s what they’re used to already,” she adds.

A major procedural improvement has come from integrating Laserfiche with the department’s case management system. “It used to be that when a contracted psychiatrist came in for the day, we had to have support staff wheel all the medical records on a big cart so they could see a patient’s lab results and other medical records,” Watters says. “Now, contracted staff members just click a button in the case management application to see the rest of the files, which are stored in Laserfiche.” Not only does this save staff time, it lessens the load for users and MIS staff who don’t have to train and support hundreds of users.

Making an Impact in the MIS Department

The biggest impact has been in the MIS department itself, which now uses Laserfiche to scan and manage internal billing system records, IT service requests, inventory paperwork, financial and budgeting department forms, meeting minutes, and, of course, documentation regarding the management of Laserfiche for the rest of the county. Users are able to retrieve information such as diagrams, manuals, spreadsheets, presentations or even audio recordings wherever they are. Content is never lost, and multiple staff can access and share information easily.

With the first round of deployments complete, MIS is ready to expand Laserfiche to the Airport, Highway and Coroner departments in the coming year. Plans are also underway to complete a final migration from the AS400 to Laserfiche. As MIS Director Tom Pynaker explains, “Our Website is integrated with the old imaging system and those links will need to be re-established.”

The Value of Automating Repeatable Processes

Outagamie County’s success thus far illustrates the importance of setting realistic expectations and manageable goals. “We looked at this product much like we do Microsoft Exchange/Outlook—that it’s IT-initiated and supported county-wide,” says Pynaker.

“We learned we had to promote a team of users and IT staff to create a complete plan for the use and support of Laserfiche. We also had to look at the complete life cycle of the document to have the proper procedures implemented at the user level,” he adds. “As we continue to cycle through our departments, the same basic processes will be repeated time and time again. Thankfully, Laserfiche is flexible enough to be fine-tuned based on departmental needs.”

The MIS team is now looking at how Workflow can further maximize its resources. “Some of our future projects in MIS include paperless work request processes and using Workflow for additional services such as mail services, print shop orders, records center transfers, microfilm retrievals, and online forms with automatic routing for internal time off requests,” says Buman.

After taking classes at the Empower 2010 Laserfiche Institute Conference earlier this month, Buman is confident but realistic. “We’ve come a long way, but there are still many enhancements that can be made to further automate our daily processes,” she says.

In most industries, being unable to access the right information can be costly and inefficient. But in law enforcement, it can be inconvenient—even deadly.

“Officers respond to calls uninformed of safety precautions,” says Elk River, MN Police Chief Jeffrey Beahen bluntly. “They’re on the scene without knowing if the suspect has any violent history, if they own any guns – nothing.” Once back at the station, he says, the real work began – only it wasn’t exactly police work.

“Officers would have to go through multiple locations and cabinets to find anything, which could take up to three days if it was over a weekend,” Beahen says. If officers could find what they needed, he adds, they would often have to return to the office from the field, get the documents and then return to the field—or take someone into custody who could have been cited in the field and released. Either way, that was valuable police time officers in the city of 24,000 at the edge of suburban Minneapolis could more effectively spend patrolling the streets.

Beahen saw the impact of paper on his department was not just organizational, but procedural. “Lost paperwork could impede prosecution,” he says. “Sometimes we’d be unable to coordinate multiple pieces of information and evidence to solve crimes.”

Chief Beahen

The cost—well that was a whole other story. “Man hours used to manage documents and case files was the biggest drain on the department,” Beahen says. By his estimates, the ERPD spent over $17,000 a year and needed 3.5 full-time employees just to process and store the paperwork generated by the department’s 24,000 cases each year. “Files might have three or 3,000 pages. But then we had to sort them all, and everyone would to have them – defense attorneys, prosecutors, courts, the state, FBI and other government and county agencies. So they’d all have to be copied, mailed and delivered. That killed a lot of trees.”

Besides case files, there were the gun permits, alarm files and other forms the police department was required to maintain. “We were going through 36 reams of paper a year, which, if you add up all the different copies we’d have to make for everybody, wound up at 251 reams of paper, which was 2.2 tons of paper or 54 adult trees,” Beahen says. He estimates the paper alone cost well over a $1,000 a year, not to mention the storage costs of four shelves required to house all this paper.

Beahen saw that going paperless would transform the way his officers dealt with information, both organizationally and procedurally. Since arriving in Elk River as Assistant Chief in 1998, Beahen had been a proponent of technology, working after hours to install computers and build a network “just to get everyone on e-mail.”

In 2002, Elk River purchased Laserfiche, and soon the city’s reseller, Cities Digital, Inc., expanded Laserfiche to the Police Department. However, the Police Department’s records management system (RMS) worked on a proprietary SQL-based server. “While Laserfiche had an open architecture, there was just no way to bring the RMS together with it. Everybody’s desktop had two icons, so you’d pull up the case number and go into Laserfiche to find supporting documents. There was a lot of jumping back and forth, and no access in the squad cars,” Beahen says. “We wanted to get to the point where everything for a case file could be scanned in and filed by case number and the whole thing could be sent out as an attachment, or accessed from a laptop in a squad car.

“We just wanted to make it simple,” he adds.

In 2007, it became just that simple. Beahen was approached by the Law Enforcement Technology Group (LETG) with a Web-based police records management system. “It wasn’t proprietary, so anything we could scan into and store in Laserfiche we could attach right to the record from the RMS. It turned the process of accessing records and documentation into a one-stop shop.”

Interoperability with Laserfiche was key when Beahen worked with LETG to set up the RMS, which Beahen describes as “friendly with Laserfiche,” in a way that media attachments from Laserfiche and police records are simultaneously accessed from a combined repository. “What we were really impressed by is how easy it was to integrate Laserfiche into our Web-based RMS. This kind of interoperability was really important to us because it was simply a matter of knowing how things are stored in one system and how it’s stored in the other and being able to build that bridge between them in a matter of days,” he says. “This is the kind of thing that you hear stories about seven engineers working on and two months and $85,000 later, it still isn’t working right. Our integration was done in less than a week.”

An Elk River PD officer accessing Laserfiche from his squad car

These days, Beahen says, “Everything that we scanned goes into our browser-based RMS system. Officers have a wireless card in their squad car so the computer automatically updates to the central repository. Photos, maps, reports, names – everything is accessible from our squad cars.”

With only the fuzziest of details to search the database, officers responding to a scene can instantly access a criminal’s history and an incident’s full details. “This keeps officers safe all the time, because we have specific and related information available to police in the field instantly,” Beahen says.

Besides resolving the organizational issues associated with the old paper-based filing system, Beahen says the department has seen significant procedural improvements as well. For starters, all content is scanned into Laserfiche using Quick Fields advanced capture. “The time required to fill out paper forms used to be enormous, now it’s just, boom, drop it in the scanner, predetermined templates and voilà!”

Tickets and case paperwork are filed immediately in Laserfiche, which prevents the risk of evidence tampering. “We can cross-reference with other resources prior to disturbing crime scenes,” he says. “That means greater coordination and access to evidence, so we’re solving crimes faster.”

There is also the freedom and necessity of being able to collaborate with other police departments and cities, state agencies, courts, FBI, the Department of Human Services and other county authorities. Beahen cites an example of how effective this information sharing can be. “A missing person’s body washed up about 50 miles down the Mississippi River from us. Because of Laserfiche we were able to quickly provide identifying information to local authorities, identify the victim, and within hours, we were able to notify the family.”

As the Elk River Police Department’s use of Laserfiche shows, you don’t have to be the biggest department to realize real and valuable benefits from using Laserfiche; you just have to have some vision. In fact, the ERPD’s use of technology was recognized with a 2008 award for Excellence in Information Technology from the International Association of Chiefs of Police– alongside some of the biggest, most advanced police agencies in the world.

Beahen is encouraged by the fact that a lot of skepticism about digital information has been put to rest by the U.S. Supreme Court. “Hesitance on electronic records and processing is not really a big deal anymore, but some people realize this sooner than others,” he says.

And his advice for other law enforcement agencies facing the challenges he was? “Have patience, a plan and a budget. Get past your fear of courts not liking electronic documents, put the old ways in the file cabinet you’ll be getting rid of, and make the quantum leap.”

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 benefited 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 were allowed to 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 the state regulatory agency charged with protecting citizens’ health and safety, the Medical Board regulates the practice of medicine in Texas by licensure, discipline and education. It has a legislative mandate to file and track all complaints filed on any doctor licensed in the state—typically hundreds of them a year.

In the past, investigating all of those complaints led to the creation of thousands and thousands of paper documents that could be used in legal proceedings, and shipping and storing them all was a considerable drain on the agency’s resources. Staff members could injure themselves moving boxes of records around, and it could still take hours to find the exact paper document that was required for a legal hearing.

“The ability to retrieve information on demand is critical to legal proceedings and the agency as a whole,” says Anthony Merritt, a systems analyst with the Texas Medical Board. “At times our staff had boxes stacked up to the ceiling all around the office, just to have the appropriate documents on hand when they were needed. It was crazy. They knew there had to be a better way.”

Fits and Starts

The agency deduced that digitizing the documentation associated with complaints was the way to go, and it started by simply uploading and storing content on a number of different file servers. Managing content this way, however, turned out to be a nightmare: Files resided on different servers, and various departments were saving different versions of documents in their own network spots. There was no consistency. There was excessive redundancy. Worst of all, there was no way for an employee to guarantee that the document he was working with was really in its most current form.

Next, the agency opted to install a document management solution from FileNet. It worked well for a while, but as the agency grew and began to offer more services over the Internet, the existing system just couldn’t keep up. Customizing it to different departments’ needs required hiring a contract programmer, which made the cost of upgrading, customizing and maintaining the FileNet solution too high. According to Merritt, the system’s interface was cumbersome, and due to its limited features, “people were starting to avoid using it entirely.”

Comprehensive, Cost-effective Content Management

Once again faced with an untenable system for handling content, The Medical Board reviewed its alternatives and decided that replacing FileNet with Laserfiche—with its more comprehensive capabilities, lower maintenance costs and easier administration—was worth the upfront investment. “Laserfiche nearly tripled our ability to capture and process complaint documents,” explains Merritt. “It saves us time and energy every day.”

Merritt says Laserfiche’s key difference was its customizability to meet the agency’s specific needs. “There were multiple methods to input information into the system. With Quick Fields, we can manipulate the pages we scan in an automated fashion, while Web Access and WebLink allow us to serve documents to our off-site staff and consultants via the internet,” he says. “We’ve customized our system to cut costs dramatically by using less staff time, and ultimately create a better workflow for our agency.”

Specific benefits the Texas Medical Board has realized as a result of implementing Laserfiche include:

• Multi-file format capture. Because Laserfiche has the flexibility to capture multiple types of enterprise content, Medical Board staff are able to scan and store any file provided by the public, including image files, Microsoft Office documents and DVD media.
• Accelerated scanning. Laserfiche reseller DocuData Solutions set up scanning stations that assimilate thousands of documents into Laserfiche in a matter of minutes, saving massive amounts of employee time and storage space.
• Quick and easy data extraction. Laserfiche Quick Fields extracts information from scanned documents and automatically tags them with metadata (including the Bates Numbers required by the agency’s lawyers), enabling instant search and retrieval without adding extra work.
• Flexible file folders. The top-down file structure makes it easy to navigate the Laserfiche content repository, and unlike FileNet, the folder structure in Laserfiche can easily be altered to reflect changes in the way the agency processes documents or organizes itself.
• Granular security features. Rights and permissions based on department and individual job tasks free the IT department from having to constantly guard and monitor the system—while still ensuring that confidential consumer information is protected.
• Remote access. Laserfiche Web Access gives Board members the ability to log into their secure laptops and review all of the relevant case materials through their Web browsers—any time, anywhere, without having to lug boxes of paper records into meetings or rely heavily on support from IT staff.

“With Laserfiche, the Texas Medical Board settles consumer complaints more quickly, allowing us to continually meet our legislative goals,” concludes Merritt. “This is definitely a case where technology has made life easier for us.”

For the people who struggle with these issues in southeast Texas, Spindletop Mental Health Mental Retardation (MHMR) Services has the resources to support their recovery and relieve their distress. But with over 8,000 patients every year and upwards of 400 employees, Spindletop’s ability to respond promptly to records requests—and, by extension, to patients—was being compromised.

Over 80,000 files resided in a hardcopy storage facility that cost more than $2,000 a month to maintain. And even with six full-time staff members dedicated to managing hardcopy documents, some records took as long as three days to locate and cost $4 each to retrieve and deliver; others were lost for good.

Realizing that an enterprise content management system would ensure access to high-quality services in a more cost-effective way, the center turned to Laserfiche for help.

Complete Content Management within a SharePoint Site

Spindletop was already leveraging SharePoint for the company’s intranet site, but scanning and storing 80,000 documents in SharePoint required more comprehensive content management functionality.

“We wanted to centralize access to patient records without forcing our employees to go out of their way,” explains Jerry Carnley, CIO at Spindletop. “Our intranet seemed to be the natural place to do this, but we needed to implement a content management solution that would be easy to implement, easy to install, and eliminate extra work for the people who deal with patient documents every day.”

Spindletop selected an Agile ECM system engineered with Laserfiche and SharePoint, which met its content management needs in three key ways:

• Seamlessly added document imaging functionality to SharePoint with minimal requirements for installation, support and maintenance.
• Dramatically expanded the amount of content that can be stored online while also improving document security.
• Provided federated search across content stored in Laserfiche and SharePoint.

“Given Laserfiche’s experience and dedication to the Microsoft suite of technology, we saw that it delivers a complete offering to customers seeking an integrated content management and SharePoint solution,” Carnley says.

Specifically, Agile ECM engineered with Laserfiche and SharePoint enables Spindletop to:

• Bring comprehensive document imaging and records management functionality to Spindletop’s existing SharePoint intranet. Employees scan and upload documents directly through the SharePoint interface, then view and manage them with the easy-to-use Laserfiche document viewer.
• Supply superior security, records management and content distribution capabilities when content is moved between SharePoint and Laserfiche—manually, as part of a workflow process or automatically based on a SharePoint expiration policy.
• Provide the ability to retrieve content from both Laserfiche and SharePoint using Spindletop’s intranet search box.
• Automate content-related processes based on activities occurring in both SharePoint and Laserfiche with graphical, drag-and-drop .NET-based workflow configuration that makes workflow design simple for IT staff.

As a whole, Agile ECM provides a cost-effective complement to Spindletop’s SharePoint intranet site—with all of the content management capabilities the company needs.

Results of Running Smarter

With the assistance of DynaSource, a Laserfiche reseller located in Texas, Spindletop implemented Laserfiche and transformed the way it manages content, most notably in the four following ways:

• Instant search and retrieval. From any internet access point, staff can instantly locate scanned records by using the “Electronic Imaging” tab on the SharePoint intranet site. Offsite employees have
  access to the Laserfiche digital records repository through a password-protected Citrix site.
• Sure-fire security. Because Spindletop’s SharePoint intranet uses full Laserfiche security enforcement, employees are granted access to records by department. Employees can view the records for their
  own clients, but restricted patient, employee and financial information remains confidential.
• Easy and efficient scanning. Laserfiche templates enable employees to scan ten times more content than they could before the custom templates were implemented.
• Time-saving automation. When new content is scanned into the system, Laserfiche automatically populates template fields and generates and organizes new folders and subfolders. Because each client has between six and eight subfolders with a total of 25-52 documents to be scanned, this eliminates redundancy and extra work.

According to Carnley, implementing Agile ECM has had a number of noteworthy benefits. “We’ve increased productivity, and morale has jumped in every department that uses Laserfiche,” he says.

“There’s no more waiting around for days for hardcopy documents to be found, and no more lost or misfiled records resulting in huge institutional fines. And we aren’t spending thousands of dollars each month on offsite storage facilities,” Carnley adds.

But best of all from Carnley’s perspective as a CIO is that because Agile ECM engineered with Laserfiche and SharePoint supports developers who need to extend collaboration, scan images and set up workflows to quickly respond to business needs, deployment was quick, easy and affordable. There was no need to hire expensive programmers or IT consultants and no need to build customized plug-ins from scratch. In addition, the intuitive user interface makes the solution easy to administer, since drag-and-drop functionality enables IT staff to permit line-of-business employees to easily make changes to existing workflows and folder trees without IT staff assistance.

“Laserfiche provides a scalable solution that’s easy to install, easy to administer and easy to use,” concludes Carnley. “We’re very happy with the way Laserfiche has enabled Spindletop MHMR Services to expand our use of SharePoint and improve the way we manage content.”

The importance of time is especially crucial to homicide cases. “We only see about 10-12 homicides a year and we generally stay on top of them,” says Lieutenant Bruce Barnett. “But the longer a case stays open, the more the paperwork piles up.”

Nowhere was this more evident than in the murder case of Charlotte “Amy” Gellert. One Sunday evening in March, 1994, the 21-year-old returned to her parents’ home, only to walk into a botched robbery attempt. The thief, who had tied up her parents, stabbed Gellert to death and fled the scene.

Over the past decade and a half, the case had gone cold, leaving a mountain of paperwork behind. Most homicides accumulate a box or two of paperwork, but the Gellert case had eight owing to its myriad suspects, reports, statements, testimony and evidence, all stored in what officers referred to as “the big room.”

Barnett saw the potential of using Laserfiche for compiling and indexing the Gellert case along with the county’s other 46 cold case homicides. Some dated as far back as 1967. Almost all had long since seen their initial team of investigators transfer, retire or move on, which complicated the already-difficult task of locating information in decades-old paperwork. “In the past we’d had issues with misplaced files,” Barnett says.

Beginning late last year, the Sheriff’s office began a painstaking backlog conversion project beginning with the Gellert case. Staff often worked after hours to scan and organize files into Laserfiche folders.

In the process, they’d possibly uncover a piece of the puzzle that could hopefully bring a resolution to crimes that have haunted victims’ families for decades. Barnett had realistic hopes for the new technology, pointing out that police departments are not as high-tech as Hollywood makes them out to be. “I remember in 1990 when we had Tandy TS80 words processors and what a big improvement that was over typewriters!”

“It’s frustrating when you’re in front of jurors who think we should be able to have a case solved in an hour because they’re so used to seeing Hollywood depict it that way. It’s not something we can do from our desktop yet,” Barnett adds.

No, but they can at least look at the case from their desktop now, which, Waller explains, is a huge improvement. Putting cold case files into Laserfiche, he says, is a powerful first step in revisiting an investigation. “It’s always good to get a new set of eyes on a case,” he says. “We’re talking about scraps of paper, sometimes stuffed in files, that used to take hours, sometimes days to dig out – that is if you could find it. Now I can see it from my desk in moments.”

It’s not quite “CSI: Laserfiche” but it’s getting there. Unlike television shows where detectives huddle around supercomputers that can reveal a fingerprint, photo and —this gets a chuckle from Waller—a reliable current address, all with a single keystroke, local law enforcement send data comparison requests to state and national databases. These can take hours, sometimes weeks or even months, to come back with possible matches. “I wish we could solve the whole thing in an hour like TV does,” Waller says. “We don’t have the budgets Hollywood thinks we have.

“Local governments are always the first to have budgets cut,” he adds. “The reality is, we just don’t have the resources to address cold homicide cases every day.”

But when officers are able to turn their attention to a cold case—and just having to dig into old files to scan them creates awareness—Laserfiche provides them with a wider lens to view what’s there. “We can start comparing data from other cases, like behaviors, things left behind at the crime scene or modes of entry,” says Barnett.

Waller is even more emphatic: “Fifteen or twenty years later there may be something that glows in the dark that wasn’t so obvious at the time of the crime.”

And in the Gellert case, he says, something has: while re-evaluating evidence during the case file upload process, a DNA sample was discovered. “We obtained the DNA profile after reviewing the case and resubmitting the evidence for analysis that did not exist at the time of the crime,“ Waller says. “It’s the kind of thing we weren’t scientifically capable of doing fifteen years ago.”

That’s no guarantee the case will be solved. Barnett has transferred to another division within the county, and just a few weeks ago, the Los Angeles Times reported that some 400 DNA samples in rape and homicide cases were languishing unanalyzed due to the limited resources to analyze them.

But Laserfiche is a step in the right direction, especially for police departments with limited resources.

“Police departments usually have records managers because of the sheer amount of paperwork they generate,” notes Donny Barstow of Laserfiche reseller MCCi. “They’re already using [police software], but that’s just for their active data, not their records.” Because so many local governments already use Laserfiche, expanding its use to law enforcement and specifically cold cases is a way to maximize both resources and service, he says.

Other police departments using Laserfiche have already solved high-profile cold cases. In Wichita, KS, the so-called BTK killer was brought to justice after years of eluding police because authorities were able to track the metadata on a computer disc he used to communicate with a newspaper.

And in Hollywood, FL, the case of Adam Walsh, whose disappearance and murder inspired his grieving father John Walsh to found the “America’s Most Wanted” franchise, was finally closed last December, again partly because police were able to conclusively link a suspect who died in custody in 1996 once and for all to the disappearance and murder. The Walsh case shows just how important it is to catalogue and access information in a case: in a tragic investigative misstep, a blood soaked piece of a car seat, and eventually the entire car itself, were accidentally destroyed due to a documentation mix-up.

Waller points out that being able to use Laserfiche to compare data from other cases, to get that fresh set of eyes, as he calls it, is not unlike Operation SMART, a state-wide law enforcement cold case effort that Brevard County participates in to collaborate and compare experience and expertise in investigations that span cities and regions.

With Laserfiche’s case, it’s spanning time. “I can’t say that we’ve solved a case yet,” Waller admits, “but we have several that are very close.”