“For financial advisors, an integrated technology solution that leverages Laserfiche content and document management along with portfolio management and CRM improves productivity and enables business growth,” said Brian LaPointe, Vice President of Strategic Solutions at Laserfiche. “With an open API that makes it easy to integrate with other software applications, Laserfiche is the ECM solution of choice for RIAs across the country.”

Laserfiche will also be featured during three pre-conference panel discussions titled, “Leverage Veo®’s Open Access Capabilities—Insights from Integration Providers” in Canary 3 today at 11:00 am 1:00 pm and 2:00 pm. Other solutions providers participating in the sessions include:

• Junxure
• Salesforce.com
• PIEtech, Inc.
• Morningstar
• Ebix
• eMoney Advisor
• Advisor Products, Inc.
• Black Diamond Performance Reporting, LLC

Laserfiche provides enterprise content management (ECM) solutions that enable advisory firms to go paperless, lower the cost of compliance and automate standard business processes.

About Laserfiche
Since 1987, Laserfiche® has used its Run Smarter® philosophy to create simple and elegant enterprise content management (ECM) solutions. More than 30,000 organizations worldwide—including federal, state and local government agencies and Fortune 1000 companies—use Laserfiche software to streamline document, records and business process management.

The Laserfiche ECM system gives financial advisors the ability to simplify regulatory compliance, improve profitability and limit exposure to civil and criminal liability. It allows advisors to prepare for audits more easily and ensure compliance with multiple state, SEC and FINRA regulations—all while accelerating business processes and making staff more efficient.

Laserfiche®, Run Smarter® and Compulink® are registered trademarks of Compulink Management Center, Inc.

“Being a part of the Laserfiche PDP program has helped us become the CRM of choice for advisors seeking a complete document management suite, thanks to a network of more than 600 Laserfiche resellers who make sure that Junxure is part of their demonstrations,” said Greg Friedman, President of Junxure.

“Our goal at AppCrown is to make advisors’ lives easier and help them maximize their CRM’s return on investment,” said Franklin Tsung, COO/Head of Sales and Marketing at AppCrown. “By integrating Laserfiche with our solutions, RIAs can increase both productivity and profitability.”

Laserfiche provides enterprise content management (ECM) solutions that include document imaging capabilities that enable advisory firms to go paperless, records management automation that lowers the cost of compliance and workflow functionality that enables advisors to automate standard business processes.

AppCrown is a systems integrator that delivers solutions built on Salesforce.com, the world’s largest CRM provider, which currently supports more than 3 million users across 100,000 organizations around the world. Junxure is a comprehensive, integrated CRM system for financial advisors. It was created exclusively for financial advisors based on the experiences of a financial advisor.

About Laserfiche
Since 1987, Laserfiche has used its Run Smarter® philosophy to create simple and elegant enterprise content management (ECM) solutions. More than 30,000 organizations worldwide—including federal, state and local government agencies and Fortune 1000 companies—use Laserfiche® software to streamline document, records and business process management.

The Laserfiche ECM system gives financial advisors the ability to simplify regulatory compliance, improve profitability and limit exposure to civil and criminal liability. It allows advisors to prepare for audits more easily and ensure compliance with multiple state, SEC and FINRA regulations—all while accelerating business processes and making staff more efficient.

Laserfiche distributes its software through a worldwide network of value-added resellers (VARs), who tailor solutions to clients’ individual needs. The Laserfiche VAR program has received the Five-Star Rating from Computer Reseller News/VARBusiness magazine.

Laserfiche®, Run Smarter® and Compulink® are registered trademarks of Compulink Management Center, Inc.

Tom Giachetti, Chair of the Securities Practice Group at Stark & Stark, will open the workshop with a discussion of the legal and compliance issues advisors face today. A former investment banker and FINRA-registered representative, Giachetti’s legal practice is devoted to investment-related matters, including the representation of investment advisors, financial planners and registered representatives throughout the United States.

“With all of the regulatory changes affecting investment advisors, wise use of technology has become more important than ever,” said Giachetti. “Those advisors who proactively invest in technology to improve the efficiency of their compliance programs will be in the best shape to respond effectively to increased oversight and more frequent audits.”

Following Giachetti’s presentation, Greg Friedman, Co-founder and President of Junxure, and Laserfiche Senior Consultant Tim Welsh will join forces to demonstrate how integrating customer relationship management (CRM) with enterprise content management (ECM) streamlines operations, reduces compliance costs and mitigates risk.

“Managing multiple applications detracts from the time advisors spend on profitable activities,” said Welsh. “Advisory firms across the country have integrated Junxure with Laserfiche to gain instant access to client documentation from within their CRM, accelerating audits and simplifying compliance with state, SEC and FINRA regulations.”

About Junxure

Junxure was established in 2001 by Ken Golding and Greg Friedman, MS, CFP^®, a financial advisor who developed the initial Junxure software to help him streamline operations at his growing firm. Today, Friedman is both Junxure president and president of Private Ocean, one of the West Coast’s most innovative wealth management firms. The inspiration for Junxure consulting, training and software comes from Greg’s day-to-day experience running his practice and helping his clients achieve their personal financial goals. A recent Investment News survey revealed more advisors use Junxure than any other CRM.

About Laserfiche
Since 1987, Laserfiche has used its Run Smarter® philosophy to create simple and elegant enterprise content management (ECM) solutions. More than 30,000 organizations worldwide—including federal, state and local government agencies and Fortune 1000 companies—use Laserfiche® software to streamline document, records and business process management.

The Laserfiche ECM system gives financial advisors the ability to simplify regulatory compliance, improve profitability and limit exposure to civil and criminal liability. It allows advisors to prepare for audits more easily and ensure compliance with multiple state, SEC and FINRA regulations—all while accelerating business processes and making staff more efficient.

Laserfiche®, Run Smarter® and Compulink® are registered trademarks of Compulink Management Center, Inc.

The 2011 InvestmentNews RIA Technology Study revealed that top performers who integrate CRM with ECM reap higher rewards from their technology spend. Laserfiche makes integration easy by providing out-of-the-box ECM integrations with CRM systems like Junxure, Salesforce.com, Tamarac, Microsoft CRM, Redtail and ACT!

“As the top ECM provider in the RIA space, Laserfiche is dedicated to supporting the CRM systems our customers rely on,” said Tim Welsh, Senior Consultant at Laserfiche. “By accessing documents stored in Laserfiche through their CRM systems, advisors can instantly respond to client queries, increasing productivity and profitability.”

Welsh will participate in “21st Century Document Management,” a panel discussion on Saturday, October 15, at 10:55 am in the Dearborn Room to explore how to build greater practice efficiency using integrated mobile, cloud and social media capture strategies.

Laserfiche will be on hand at booth #203/205 to demonstrate its enterprise content management (ECM) software solutions—including its new iPhone app, Laserfiche Mobile™—and give out an overview of the 2011 InvestmentNews RIA Technology Study.

About Laserfiche
Since 1987, Laserfiche® has used its Run Smarter® philosophy to create simple and elegant enterprise content management (ECM) solutions. More than 30,000 organizations worldwide—including federal, state and local government agencies and Fortune 1000 companies—use Laserfiche software to streamline document, records and business process management.

The Laserfiche ECM system gives financial advisors the ability to simplify regulatory compliance, improve profitability and limit exposure to civil and criminal liability. It allows advisors to prepare for audits more easily and ensure compliance with multiple state, SEC and FINRA regulations—all while accelerating business processes and making staff more efficient.

Laserfiche®, Run Smarter® and Compulink® are registered trademarks of Compulink Management Center, Inc.

“Laserfiche is the perfect complement to our ongoing workflow improvements. It’s customized to meet FPA’s needs, is also compliance-oriented and easy to use,” said Curt Niepoth, FPA’s Associate Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer. “During our evaluation process, Laserfiche rose to the top because they provided the best solution for our organization by helping reduce administrative expenses and integrating well with our other systems.”

Chris Wacker, executive vice president at Laserfiche, said, “While other financial advisors struggle to find the time, money and staff to comply with industry requirements, advisors using Laserfiche are more efficient than ever before. The FPA shows industry-leading vision by providing their staff with the most agile content management solution on the market.”

About Laserfiche
Since 1987, Laserfiche® has used its Run Smarter® philosophy to create simple and elegant enterprise content management (ECM) solutions. Since 1987, more than 30,000 organizations—including numerous investment advisors, financial advisors and broker-dealers—have used Laserfiche solutions to streamline document, records and business process management.

By digitizing paper archives, Laserfiche enables financial services professionals to find what they need in seconds, quickly prepare for audits and make better-informed decisions. Secure Web access enables information sharing with remote offices, business partners and clients, while comprehensive security options ensure compliance with government- and industry-mandated standards.

Laserfiche® and Run Smarter® are registered trademarks of Compulink Management Center, Inc.

About FPA
The Financial Planning Association is the largest membership organization for personal financial planning experts in the U.S. and includes professionals from all backgrounds and business models. FPA members adhere to the highest standards of professional competence, ethical conduct and clear, complete disclosure to those they serve. Based in Denver, Colo., FPA works in alliance with academic leaders, legislative and regulatory bodies, financial services firms and consumer interest organizations. For more information about FPA, visit http://www.fpanet.org/ or call 800.322.4237.

“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.”

In fact, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce reports that there are at least 350 new regulations and approximately 150 studies mandated in the 2,319-page reform bill. Many of these rules and regulations will apply to financial advisors, and one of the more significant—a switch from federal to state oversight for advisors with less than $100 million in assets under management—will take effect on July 21, 2011.

The upshot of this change will be more frequent audits for advisors of all sizes. Learn how ECM can help you sail smoothly through audits and navigate the other major changes ushered in by Dodd-Frank in Laserfiche’s new white paper, “What Financial Advisors Need to Know about the Dodd-Frank Act.”

The white paper highlights the most relevant parts of the reform bill for financial advisors and provides an overview of the many ways ECM software can help you adapt, including streamlining audits, simplifying recordkeeping and automating the disclosure process.

Read the white paper today!

“As the leading ECM provider in the RIA space, Laserfiche is 100% committed to supporting the CRM systems our customers rely on,” said Tom Wayman, Vice President of Product Strategy at Laserfiche. “Laserfiche’s open architecture allows advisors to instantly access critical client documentation from within their CRM applications, saving time and effort.”

Available as both a Web-based and a desktop solution, Laserfiche ECM includes:

• Document imaging capabilities that enable advisory firms to go paperless.
• Records management automation that lowers the cost of compliance.
• Powerful, DoD 5015.2-certified security features that protect confidential client information.
• Comprehensive auditing and reporting capabilities that monitor all system activity.
• Workflow functionality that enables advisors to automate standard business processes.
• Windows-like interface that minimizes user training and improves productivity right away.

“Managing multiple applications causes costly inefficiencies that detract from the time advisors spend on profitable activities,” said Wayman. “Advisory firms across the country have reaped the benefits of integrating Laserfiche with traditional CRM systems, and providing an easy-to-implement integration with Salesforce’s cloud-based CRM solution was the logical next step in meeting our clients’ needs.”

About Laserfiche
Since 1987, Laserfiche® has used its Run Smarter® philosophy to create simple and elegant enterprise content management (ECM) solutions. More than 28,000 organizations worldwide use Laserfiche software to streamline document, records and business process management.

The Laserfiche ECM system gives financial advisors the ability to simplify regulatory compliance, improve profitability and limit exposure to civil and criminal liability. It allows advisors to prepare for audits more easily and ensure compliance with multiple state, SEC and FINRA regulations—all while accelerating business processes and making staff more efficient.

Laserfiche distributes its software through a worldwide network of value-added resellers (VARs), who tailor solutions to clients’ individual needs. The Laserfiche VAR program has received the Five-Star Rating from Computer Reseller News/VARBusiness magazine.

Laserfiche is a registered trademark of Compulink Management Center, Inc.

“The regulatory challenges that Dodd-Frank has ushered in include new SEC and FINRA requirements, more frequent audits and more detailed reporting,” said Welsh. “Many financial advisors are nervous about the impact these changes will have on their business, but with the right technology, they will not only master these challenges, they’ll achieve a substantial ROI.”

During his presentation, Welsh will highlight the most relevant parts of the reform bill and provide an overview of the many ways that enterprise content management (ECM) software can help financial advisors adapt, including:

• Records management automation that lowers the cost of SEC and FINRA compliance.
• Powerful security features that protect confidential client information.
• Robust document management functionality that eliminates the need for paper files.

“All across the country, successful financial advisors are using Laserfiche to decrease the amount of time and money they spend on compliance,” said Welsh. “Laserfiche streamlines audits, simplifies recordkeeping and automates the disclosure process, contributing significantly to these advisors’ profitability and growth.”

Conference attendees who attend the breakfast or stop by the Laserfiche booth (#215) will receive a new white paper titled “What Financial Advisors Need to Know about the Dodd-Frank Act.”

About Laserfiche
Laserfiche creates simple and elegant enterprise content management (ECM) solutions that help organizations run smarter. Since 1987, more than 28,000 organizations worldwide—including federal, state and local government agencies and Fortune 1000 companies—have used Laserfiche software to streamline document, records and business process management.

The Laserfiche ECM system gives financial advisors the ability to simplify regulatory compliance, improve profitability and limit exposure to civil and criminal liability. It allows advisors to prepare for audits more easily and ensure compliance with multiple state, SEC and FINRA regulations—all while accelerating business processes and making staff more efficient.

Laserfiche is a registered trademark of Compulink Management Center, Inc.

• More state oversight for advisors with less than $100 million in assets under management.
• Increased scrutiny from the SEC for larger advisory firms.
• Increased supervision from FINRA.
• Fiduciary standard for broker-dealers.
• Additional disclosure and reporting.

“The Dodd-Frank Act will have a profound impact on financial advisors’ costs, compliance programs and productivity. But far too many advisors are unaware of all the implications for their business,” said Chris Wacker, executive vice president at Laserfiche. “We wrote this paper to bring clarity to the market, and to show advisors that with the right technology, they can increase profitability even in the face of massive regulatory change.”

The white paper highlights the most relevant parts of the reform bill for financial advisors and provides an overview of the many ways that ECM software can help them adapt, including streamlining audits, simplifying recordkeeping and automating the disclosure process.

“Successful financial advisors across the country choose Laserfiche to decrease the amount of time and money they devote to compliance,” said Wacker. “They also benefit from powerful security features that protect confidential client information, imaging capabilities that enable them to eliminate paper waste and workflow functionality that allows them to improve efficiency across the firm.”

You may download the white paper at: http://www.laserfiche.com/docs/white_papers/FinancialAdvisors_Dodd-Frank_Act.pdf

About Laserfiche
Laserfiche creates simple and elegant enterprise content management (ECM) solutions that help organizations run smarter. Since 1987, more than 28,000 organizations worldwide—including federal, state and local government agencies and Fortune 1000 companies—have used Laserfiche software to streamline document, records and business process management.

The Laserfiche ECM system gives financial advisors the ability to simplify regulatory compliance, improve profitability and limit exposure to civil and criminal liability. It allows advisors to prepare for audits more easily and ensure compliance with multiple state, SEC and FINRA regulations—all while accelerating business processes and making staff more efficient.

Laserfiche is a registered trademark of Compulink Management Center, Inc.

During the session, Laserfiche Compliance Director Jeffrey Green will discuss how agile ECM technology will help financial advisors adapt to the sweeping regulatory changes outlined in the Dodd-Frank Act, including:

• More state oversight for advisors with less than $100 AUM.
• Increased scrutiny from the SEC for larger advisory firms.
• Increased supervision from FINRA.

“The regulatory changes that financial advisors are facing in the wake of the Dodd-Frank Act’s passage amount to two main things: More frequent audits and more detailed reporting,” said Green. “Without a solid electronic records management strategy in place, advisors’ costs are going to increase and their productivity is going to go down.”

Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM) systems include imaging capabilities that enable advisory firms to eliminate paper waste; records management automation that lowers the cost of compliance; powerful security features that protect confidential client information; comprehensive auditing and reporting capabilities that monitor all system activity; and workflow functionality that enables advisors to automate standard business processes.

“Laserfiche ECM systems have been proven to improve compliance, efficiency and profitability at advisory firms across the country,” said Green. “In the face of Dodd-Frank’s regulatory overhaul, it will be the advisors who proactively invest in technology to improve the efficiency of their compliance programs and everyday operations who will realize a disproportionate share of the growth.”

About Laserfiche
Laserfiche creates simple and elegant enterprise content management (ECM) solutions that help organizations run smarter. Since 1987, more than 28,000 organizations worldwide—including federal, state and local government agencies and Fortune 1000 companies—have used Laserfiche software to streamline document, records and business process management.

The Laserfiche ECM system gives financial advisors the ability to simplify regulatory compliance, improve profitability and limit exposure to civil and criminal liability. It allows advisors to prepare for audits more easily and ensure compliance with multiple state, SEC and FINRA regulations—all while accelerating business processes and making staff more efficient.

Laserfiche is a registered trademark of Compulink Management Center, Inc.

“Successful financial advisors choose Laserfiche to meet their content management needs, and they want to hire people with a proven set of Laserfiche skills,” said Chris Wacker, senior vice president at Laserfiche. “We’re pleased to offer Texas Tech students the opportunity to learn best practices for using Laserfiche to ensure compliance and maximize efficiency within financial planning firms.”

Laserfiche will donate the use of its software, training materials and instructional resources to Texas Tech’s Personal Financial Planning Division free of charge through its Certified Professional Program (CPP). The CPP is designed to provide comprehensive online training in a number of specific areas, including system administration, business process management, records management and more.

“By adding Laserfiche to the curriculum, our students will gain a real-world understanding of how to digitize financial planning documents so that they are consistent, reliable, useful and accessible,” said Texas Tech Associate Professor Deena Katz, CFP. “They will also learn how to use Laserfiche to facilitate compliance with regulatory requirements, giving them a concrete advantage when they enter the workforce.”

The first Professional Technology in Personal Financial Planning class to incorporate Laserfiche in the curriculum will begin this fall. Approximately 100 students will complete the certification program by the end of the school year.

About Laserfiche
Laserfiche creates simple and elegant enterprise content management (ECM) solutions that help organizations run smarter. Since 1987, more than 28,000 organizations worldwide—including federal, state and local government agencies and Fortune 1000 companies—have used Laserfiche software to streamline document, records and business process management.

The Laserfiche ECM system gives financial advisors the ability to simplify regulatory compliance, improve profitability and limit exposure to civil and criminal liability. It allows advisors to prepare for audits more easily and ensure compliance with multiple state, SEC and FINRA regulations—all while accelerating business processes and making staff more efficient.

Laserfiche is a registered trademark of Compulink Management Center, Inc.

“Laserfiche is the perfect complement to our ongoing workflow initiatives. It’s advisor-friendly, compliance-oriented and seamless in operation,” said First Allied President and CEO Adam Antoniades. “It will help our current and future advisors save money through reduced administrative expenses and seamless integration with many of our other systems.”

Laserfiche’s successful track record in the financial services industry was critical in First Allied’s selection process. According to First Allied Chief Technology Officer Steve Krameisen, “Laserfiche is a robust, secure, Web-based imaging and content management system. New features such as bar code recognition, an easy-to-use folder system and more advanced search capabilities—backed by the company’s proven track record—made it our top choice.”

Chris Wacker, senior vice president at Laserfiche, said, “While other financial advisors struggle to find the time, money and staff to comply with industry requirements, First Allied’s advisors will find themselves more efficient than ever before thanks to First Allied’s vision and commitment to providing the most agile content management solution on the market.”

About First Allied Securities
First Allied Securities (Member FINRA/SIPC) is the firm of choice for an increasing number of the industry’s leading financial advisors. First Allied’s exclusive business development platform has been expertly constructed to provide entrepreneurial advisors with one of the industry’s most comprehensive—and proven—platforms for growth. First Allied Securities, Inc. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Advanced Equities Financial Corp., a diversified financial services company.

About Laserfiche
Laserfiche creates simple and elegant enterprise content management (ECM) solutions that help organizations run smarter. Since 1987, more than 28,000 organizations worldwide—including federal, state and local government agencies and Fortune 1000 companies—have used Laserfiche software to streamline document, records and business process management.

The Laserfiche ECM system is designed to give IT managers central control over their information infrastructure, including standards, security and auditing, while still offering business units the flexibility to respond quickly to changing conditions. The Laserfiche product suite is built upon Microsoft® technologies to simplify system administration, supports Microsoft SQL and Oracle® platforms and features a seamless integration with Microsoft Office® applications and a two-way integration with SharePoint®.

Laserfiche distributes its software through a worldwide network of value-added resellers (VARs), who tailor solutions to clients’ individual needs. The Laserfiche VAR program has received the Five-Star rating from Computer Reseller News/VARBusiness magazine.

Laserfiche is a registered trademark of Compulink Management Center, Inc.

“A lot of people think if you have an office in a metropolitan city that the highest cost to a business is rent, it’s not. It’s the people we employ. So I’d rather have them doing mission-critical, profitable work.”

For Pittsburgh, PA-based Xpyria Investment Advisors, Inc., Laserfiche has already helped the Firm minimize labor costs by helping existing staff use their time more effectively. The Firm has grown to ten full-time employees since being incorporated in 1990, and now manages approximately $400 million in assets with clients in 14 states and three countries.

But before Xpyria could begin using Workflow functionality to automate paper- and labor-intensive business processes, they had to start by eliminating inefficiency from their daily tasks. So Salpietro and his Firm began implementation by working with their Laserfiche reseller, One Source/ADI, to integrate Laserfiche with Advent Axys, the Firm’s asset management platform, and Junxure, the Firm’s customer relationship management (CRM) solution.

[See post to watch Flash video]

Watch Joesph Salpietro describe his Laserfiche success in his own words.

A trading applet pulls information directly from Axys to automatically populate the trading sheet, which saves time and prevents errors. And by integrating Laserfiche with Junxure, when a client calls, staff are able to access all related client documents stored in Laserfiche from the client’s record in Junxure—so they can answer customer inquiries instantly. “I’m not sure you can put a price tag on the efficiency gains,” Salpietro says. “We can access information in one or two keystrokes, which creates more time for mission-critical investment research—which ultimately benefits the client and our performance.”

Since the beginning of the year, Xpyria has focused on implementing Avante’s BPM functionality. Laserfiche Workflow, included in the Avante system, promotes constant productivity with rules-based document routing, e-mail notification and activity monitoring.

“Our trading process used to be paper and time intensive,” Salpietro says. “Each trade involved multiple pages that needed to be circulated to six people in the office for processing and approvals, but you never knew exactly who had it or where it was In the process.

“It was organized chaos,” he adds. “With Workflow, we can push this document in a very systematic fashion to the people who are required to sign off at various stages of the process.” In fact, if anyone in the workflow process is out on vacation or otherwise unavailable, Workflow automatically redirects the document to the appropriate on-duty personnel. Anyone can check the status of a trade by finding it in Laserfiche, and, if there’s a bottleneck, it’s easy to identify. Trades are automatically uploaded as a .csv file for final processing with the custodian and completed trades are stored in Laserfiche.

“Automating the trading process has given us better control, because we know exactly where the trade is in the approval process. Also, there are fewer data entry errors, because the trade sheet only needs to be keyed once during the process,” Salpietro says.

And now, the trading process isn’t just automated—it’s also more secure, because it relies on electronic signatures. “Electronic signatures are more secure than handwritten ones, because they are password protected, ” Salpietro adds.

Once staff at Xpyria completed the Workflow automation for its trading process, they moved on to the Firm’s “Chron (chronological) folders,” folders the firm uses to keep a record of all activity on a client’s accounts. “These folders need to be reviewed each week, and we used to physically print out or copy every piece of paper coming or going,” Salpietro remembers. “We’d put it in the Chron folder and that would get passed from associate to associate, and they’d check off that they’d reviewed it.”

Now, thanks to Avante’s BPM functionality, that process happens automatically. All relevant documents are automatically extracted from the Laserfiche repository and are put into an electronic Chron folder. The folders are then pushed out to all the associates simultaneously, so they all can review it when they have time. Salpietro estimates that Xpyria has saved over $4,000 annually in hard costs and 72 hours of labor by automating the Chron-folder process.

And he believes Laserfiche has helped Xpyria save tens of thousands of printed pages per year. “We walk around less and we push around less paper,” Salpietro says. “We find information more quickly.

“We used to print over 30,000 pages a year just for this one [Chron] process,” he adds. “We’re saving on paper, printing supplies, and service related to wear and tear on our office equipment.”

Xpyria doesn’t plan to stop there. It plans to implement Laserfiche Quick Fields to automatically index and file quarterly reports, correspondence and other client mailings, saving the administrative time spent filing electronic documents after they’re scanned. “While the cost savings will be nominal—we estimate them to be less than $400 a year—the automation will eliminate the possibility of filing errors and future service delays,” Salpietro says. “Our plan is to get Quick Fields up and running before the end of 2009.”

Salpietro encourages more firms to investigate BPM solutions like Avante. “If a firm has a process that involves multiple touches, multiple points of entry, and time sensitivity, then Avante’s workflow capability is a viable solution to streamline the process and gain better control,” he says.

“I would recommend that anyone considering Avante assign an internal project manager to improve the probability of benefiting by better matching your firm needs to the software’s capabilities. And having a committed reseller that understands the financial services industry, like One Source/ADI, is also recommended,” Salpietro concludes.

Cosentino founded Financial Foundations in 2001, and by 2006, the firm had doubled in size, with assets under management of $135 million. Although he is the sole owner of Financial Foundations, Cosentino was still aware that digital document management would benefit his firm just as much as a larger one. “In fact, I knew we had to implement an electronic filing system if we were going to continue to grow,” he says.

When Cosentino began looking for a digital document management solution, he consulted his technology advisor. They went to visit other financial advisors using Laserfiche to see how they used the system and how it fit into their existing work processes. All the users he spoke with raved about how easy Laserfiche was to learn and how well it worked with their business, which was crucial. “The fact that so many other financial advisors used Laserfiche was the number one reason I chose it,” he says. “The ease of use and the way it fit into my existing business were definite factors, but seeing how well Laserfiche worked for other financial advisors was really the key.”

At Financial Foundations, nobody misses their old paper-based processes. “It’s not just the ease of finding things, but the ease of putting things in,” Cosentino points out. “Now we scan, shred and toss all our paper. Desks are neater, there’s less clutter, and the piles of paper are completely gone.”

A key concern was not just eliminating paper, but also complying with increasingly strict FINRA and SEC regulations for retention and documentation. “With compliance the way it is, there were up to ten forms per client, and it was out of control,” he says. “The amount of paper is completely prohibitive.”

Financial Foundations is also using Laserfiche for more than just storing client records; their repository also serves as a centralized resource for everything from accounts payable to staff training. “All of our back-office processes are stored in Laserfiche,” he says. “Our staff can use the back-office folder to store information and retrieve the ‘how-to’s’ that will allow them to learn more, including all the processes for what they need to know and how to do it. This is a use I couldn’t have anticipated.”

Since implementing Laserfiche, Financial Foundations has grown, not just in staff, but also in clients. “With Laserfiche’s scalability, we’ll be able to grow more, and even faster,” Cosentino says. “Eventually, I’d like to open a branch office, and Web Access will aid with that. We’ll easily be able to create a centralized resource without duplicating our efforts. We can take advantage of Laserfiche’s connectivity and capabilities to create a centralized repository without the cost of setting it up.”

Back office staff are working so much more efficiently that Cosentino is also looking into buying another advisor’s book of business. “We’ll scan the information into Laserfiche and move it over,” he says. “In this industry, when you take on another advisor’s clients, that means all the applications and account forms too, and you have to have that back-office capability. If you’re going to grow by acquiring other practices, you have to transfer accounts, and without this capability, it would be nearly impossible to do without hiring on a significant number of staff. Laserfiche helps you grow in an easier, more cost-efficient way.”

Cosentino believes that growth will continue to be key for his firm as more and more sole proprietors begin to consider retirement. “Personally, I believe that over the next five, ten, even fifteen years, you’ll see a lot of integration and consolidation, and Laserfiche will aid with that,” he continues.

“There are so many one-person shops out there. They may have between $30-40 million in assets, but they don’t have a succession plan. Laserfiche works well as a succession plan, because the ability to easily transfer data increases the value of your business.”

Cosentino doesn’t doubt the value of Laserfiche to his business. “Absolutely, if you have Laserfiche, your business is worth more. If you don’t have it, tough luck, because clearly, you will have to implement a digital document management solution eventually, just to keep up.

“It may cost me up front, but in the long run, I will be in a better competitive position,” he adds.

The strict oversight of the Isle of Man Government’s Financial Supervision Commission (FSC) means that independent financial advisers require a secure, enterprise-wide platform for tracking and managing both paper and electronic records. Proliferating work process documents, extensive audits and strict records-retention rules leave many financial services firms struggling to maintain productivity in a highly-competitive industry.

For Jon McGowan, managing director of MAC Financial, these challenges multiplied with his business’s increasing success. With three major acquisitions in three years, McGowan and his staff were dealing with more customers, more work and significantly more paper. They needed a solution that would not only organize their records, but would also assist them in following compliance directives. Whatever solution they chose had to have enterprise capabilities, be able to manage a large volume of documents and integrate with their customer relationship management (CRM) system to enable fast, efficient and flexible client service.

It took less than half a day for MAC Financial to implement a Laserfiche solution, enabling instant document retrieval and freeing up an entire floor of office space. Now, MAC Financial runs more efficiently, saving time, money and staff resources while increasing revenue.

The Situation

MAC Financial, a firm of financial advisers based on the Isle of Man, boasts over twenty-five years’ experience providing employee benefits advice to large multi-national and small corporate clients. As a Corporate IFA (Independent Financial Adviser) for investment business, they also provide a full range of bespoke services to private clients.

With over 5,000 individual clients and more than 300 corporate schemes encompassing 4,000 employees, MAC Financial operates in a complex environment. Recent acquisitions made it even more difficult to keep up with business demands. McGowan knew his team needed a solution that would enable efficient document management procedures while also providing the tools for superior customer service and comprehensive compliance procedures.

MAC Financial required a proven and reliable document management platform that could produce benefits in several key areas: customer service, compliance and operations. Integration with their CRM system was also crucial, because their solution had to function not only as a system for storage, search and retrieval, but also as a workflow management system integrated with their existing CRM software.

With a solution from Laserfiche document management, MAC Financial has improved productivity, streamlined their workflow and even enabled an employee to telecommute from Australia—not to mention benefited from savings of 25-35% achieved through reduced staff and a more efficient use of time.

The Solution

Before Laserfiche, staff needed to walk up three flights of stairs to the attic to retrieve documents. They were spending enormous amounts of time searching for information and filing documents, not to mention impeding profitability due to the overhead costs of paper used to print correspondence and copies for their files. Since implementing Laserfiche, MAC Financial has cleared the attic of paper, completely freeing an entire floor of office space. Staff spend less time searching thanks to instant document retrieval and only print out documents for correspondence, cutting down on printer output and storage space. According to Chris Reynolds, senior consultant at Viking Office Systems Ltd., the value-added reseller that implemented MAC Financial’s Laserfiche solution, “They don’t print anymore.” With over 5,000 clients, that’s an incredible amount of paper that has been eliminated.

Eliminating paper was only one aspect of the implementation; McGowan knew that MAC Financial needed a document management platform that would support integration with the company’s CRM system, MIG Turbo®. “Everything we do begins and ends with client information that we enter, store and manage in MIG Turbo,” McGowan says. “We knew that we needed not only the document management aspects, but also scalability and the ability to custom integrate into how we did business.”

Viking provided the integration between Laserfiche and MIG Turbo that met MAC Financial’s needs. This integration dynamically searches the Laserfiche repository from within the MIG Turbo interface, while automatic login to the Laserfiche platform saves time and makes the integration easy to use. This seamless integration means that users only see one program—MIG Turbo—which has, according to Reynolds, “revolutionized the way they work since everything is in the same place.”

The benefits of this integration between Laserfiche and MIG Turbo are enormous. “Without Laserfiche, we would have had at least twice as many staff employed at our offices,” McGowan says. “Not to mention the space saving through the absence of paper documents and filing cabinets.”

Since implementing Laserfiche, client service has noticeably improved. Comprehensive search capabilities enable staff to search through client information instantaneously, without leaving their desks to go up to the attic. In addition, staff can access documents simultaneously, something impossible with paper files. “There’s no more shouting ‘Where’s the file?’, as any person can access the records in conjunction with our core CRM system,” McGowan comments. “We’ve definitely noticed faster, more dedicated responses to client queries.”

The benefits aren’t limited to enhanced front-end customer service; Laserfiche’s flexibility has also helped MAC Financial improve back-end operations. When an employee emigrated to Australia, instead of losing a valuable employee, McGowan and his staff used Laserfiche to enable her to work on their systems through a virtual private network (VPN), a set-up that was, according to Reynolds, “straightforward and uncomplicated.” Taking the time difference into account, this means that MAC Financial is able to update accounts on a nearly round-the-clock basis.

In the future, McGowan plans to continue enhancing the integration between Laserfiche and MIG Turbo. He’s also considering implementing WebLink™ to enable clients to access information from their home computers. “We’re definitely considering whether an ‘extranet’ offering to clients for our financial services products is required,” he says. “We would like to see what role Laserfiche could play in this.

“It’s been an exciting process getting to this point, and we continue looking for ways to streamline wherever we can,” McGowan adds. “Our philosophy is to continue to innovate in both technology and process, and Laserfiche is a critical component of our plans going forward.

“Essentially, Laserfiche has moved us from the paper century to the electronic century.”

Levitz’s father, Robert, founded GCG Financial, then called the Greater Chicago Group, Inc. in 1975. Alan joined in 1983, and his brothers David and Rick soon followed. Alan’s now president and CEO; David and Rick are both executive vice presidents. But GCG is hardly a small family operation—the firm manages 83 producers who sell insurance, investment and benefits, most of them split between Bannockburn, and Oakbrook IL, and Denver, CO. “As our offices don’t share the same physical location, it was important to standardize the services we provide to both groups,” says Levitz.

When Levitz began investigating document management solutions, he surveyed his broker/dealer network about solutions they were using. A few were already satisfied Laserfiche users. “Because we’re semi-independent, we were free to make our own technology decision. Other firms that were using Laserfiche see it as a great solution. For us, it was a common-sense decision, a real no-brainer.”

To deploy Laserfiche, GCG used what Levitz calls a “phased but quick implementation,” where the firm “focused on fixing small things instead of large things.” The firm began scanning individual business files, then on to advisor and administrative files, compliance files, new investment business files, new group files and finally HR files.

“Taking baby steps at first is what made our implementation a success,” Levitz adds. “You have to start small if you want to be successful when you eventually go big.”

The firm employs a full-time staff member to scan documents, which Levitz finds helps processing move faster, while Human Resources, Licensing and the Group Department all handle their own scanning, which saved the firm from having to hire additional staff. And because GCG began with day-forward scanning, its business processes were paperless immediately. “Eventually we’ll get to back-scanning,” Levitz says. “It just wasn’t an immediate priority.”

What was an immediate priority was finding a way to integrate Laserfiche into their daily work processes. Working with their Laserfiche reseller, Cities Digital, Inc., GCG designed an integration with the two databases, EZData’s SmartOffice and Zywave’s Brokerage Builder, that support their primary business lines. With this integration, staff use a “hot key” to pull information from the database into Laserfiche. Because the file structure in Laserfiche mimics the file structure of their databases and original hard file system, staff have found it very easy to work with, according to Levitz.

In fact, Levitz speaks highly of Cities Digital’s support. “They’re more than just a reseller, they have been a business partner,” he says. “We couldn’t ask for more from them. They’re awesome, and they’ve really made our lives easier.”

He emphasizes the importance of working with a reseller that understands the financial services industry. “Cities Digital works with a lot of financial services firms, so they were able to provide us with a folder structure so we didn’t have to spend the time creating one ourselves,” Levitz explains. “ We continually send them our document archives on CD, which satisfies the SEC’s third-party download retention requirements. And they’ve really spent the time to understand how we operate, so they can help us become more efficient.”

But before Cities Digital could understand how to improve their business processes, Levitz adds, he had to first understand them. “Speed is very important for our advisors,” he says. “Any way you can reduce the time lags and the cost of paper processing is vital.”

What Levitz immediately realized was that Laserfiche could automate new business processing. When an order arrives, it’s immediately scanned into Laserfiche. Workflow files the documents to the correct subfolder within the individual client folder, then routes it to a principal for approval. The principal approves the order by signing on a secure digital signature pad – another Cities Digital custom integration, which, remarks Cities Digital CEO Patrick Welsch, enables compliance officers to approve documents more efficiently, regardless of where they’re working. And, finally, Workflow automatically routes the approved order paperwork to GCG’s broker-dealer for processing.

Welsch believes that GCG’s willingness to challenge accepted business processes was key to their success. “GCG has a dedicated spirit of innovation,” he says. “Their relentless search for efficiency gains brought about many creative solutions. We love working with customers like GCG that push the envelope and challenge us to create unique applications to solve new problems.”

Levitz is continuing to search for those creative applications for the firm’s Laserfiche system. Since attending the 2009 Laserfiche Institute Conference, Levitz says he realizes how much more Workflow could do. “There’s a whole new world out there with Workflow that we need to get to. We’ve done three workflows already, but I dreamed up 20 more in the two days of the conference,” he laughs. “Laserfiche is really a piece of clay. The question comes down to, ‘What can we do with it?’

What started as a flexible document management solution has transformed the very way GCG manages its business processes. “Laserfiche has become the center of our operations. It’s helped us define and refine our work processes,” Levitz says. “We recently lost a key staff member, and it wasn’t nearly as devastating as we thought it would be. Two or three years ago, that would have been an entirely different story.”

In fact, Laserfiche has streamlined operations so much, Levitz realized advisors no longer needed individual assistants. Instead, GCG restructured its support staff into a “pod system,” with one pod focused on communications and another focused on new business processing. “Even though our advisors and support staff may not be in the same location, we were able to bring them together with technology,” he says. “It’s really a case of doing more with less.”

Though Levitz was able to cut down on operating costs, his advisors see Laserfiche as an investment in their time and effort, which has been key to Laserfiche being so unanimously adopted throughout the firm. “We told them, ‘We’re building this around you, and you can decide when you want to be a part of it,’” he says. “We gave people what they needed to make the right decision. When they saw that there wasn’t a single instance of Laserfiche losing information, eventually, they all bought in.”

Even though Laserfiche’s ease of use won over reluctant advisors, Levitz says the biggest revelation has been how powerful Laserfiche actually is. “When we first got Laserfiche, I was faced with rooms of skeptics, including my brothers. I thought, ‘Oh, it will file paper.’ But the reality is, to get the most out of the software, you have to think about what you should be doing that you aren’t.

“Now we can’t live without it.”

We have so many customers out there who use Laserfiche in innovative and creative ways to make their budgets stretch as far as possible. Here are some examples.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Xpyria Investment Advisors Xpyria, an investment advisory firm that works with high-net-worth individuals, didn’t just save money by using Laserfiche to eliminate off-site storage. “We always figured we’d have to hire more people to create the efficiency we needed,” President and CEO Joseph Salpietro remembers. “We’d talked about needing two or three administrators over the next five or so years at a cost of, say, $30,000-40,000 each. And when we found out that we didn’t have to hire those people to help us with the paper chase—well, that’s a smart business decision.”

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

Remember: the savings are out there.

“We always figured we’d have to hire more people to create the efficiency we needed,” he says. “We’d talked about needing two or three administrators over the next five or so years at a cost of, say, $30,000-40,000 each. And when we found out that we didn’t have to hire those people to help us with the paper chase—well, that’s a smart business decision.”

Pittsburgh, PA-based Xpyria had grown to ten full-time employees and two adjunct professionals since being incorporated in 1990. After joining the firm in 1996, Salpietro now serves as Xpyria’s president and CEO. The firm now manages approximately $400 million in assets for 140 clients in 14 states and three countries, providing investment and supervisory services to primarily institutional clients and high-net worth individuals.

Salpietro had been aware of the need for Xpyria to implement a document management solution since becoming an owner eight years ago. “It was always on our radar, but was never within reach,” he remembers. “But as our business evolved, it became more and more reasonable to pursue.”

Once faced with hiring more staff members to keep up with the paper chase, he realized Xpyria could simply use Laserfiche. “The technology was there, the expertise was there and it was applicable to our industry and the way we did business,” he says.

Xpyria needed Laserfiche to do two things. First, integrate with Advent Axys, the firm’s asset management platform, and Junxure, the firm’s customer relationship management (CRM) solution. Secondly, Laserfiche had to help Salpietro’s team minimize labor costs and maximize leverage, because while managing client records and documenting phone calls and e-mails were important, he didn’t want to pay his top earners to do it. “I always want to have talented people doing mission-critical, profitable work. What I don’t want to do is pay someone top dollar to file documents.”

Or spend all their time implementing new software.

When Salpietro and the Xpyria team investigated a competing document management system, they were disconcerted with the amount of effort staff would have to expend on developing the system. But once they met their Laserfiche reseller, One Source/ADI, they realized that they could turn most of their system’s development over to the experts.

President and CEO of Xpyria Investment Advisors, Joe Salpietro

“We were trying to figure out how to streamline our file trees, and they said, ‘Let us take a crack at it based on what we know about your industry and then you look at it.’ That’s what we needed,” Salpietro says. “Thanks to them, we only have one person functioning as a project manager instead of 10. I don’t want 10 people implementing Laserfiche—I want 10 people educated on Laserfiche and using Laserfiche, but I want them focused on our business, not on the technology behind it.

“Having a partner to ease the pain of implementation, especially one who understood our industry, was key, because the reality is that without a good service partner, things can fall apart very quickly,” he adds.

Salpietro worked with One Source/ADI, the firm’s reseller, to integrate Laserfiche, Junxure and Axys so staff could immediately improve client service. The results, he says, were instantaneous. “When we’re servicing our clients, I can access information in one or two keystrokes. I can retrieve correspondence from two years ago without moving from my desk,” he says. “And that just creates more time for me to handle additional client research, which ultimately helps the client and our performance.”

Salpietro also realized the firm’s paper storage would still be an issue, especially with respect to meeting SEC requirements. With One Source/ADI’s experience and Laserfiche’s reputation in the financial services industry, he felt confident that the firm’s Laserfiche solution would meet, if not exceed, SEC requirements. “I really didn’t want to spend too much grey matter figuring out what the SEC wanted and didn’t want in a technology solution.

“What Laserfiche has afforded us is the confidence that I’d have an advantage in audit time, when it next comes around,” he continues. “Compliance has always been a major challenge, but it’s become far more intense in the last five years. When the SEC used to come in 10 years ago, we’d pull the boxes they were looking for, and they had to spend the time going through the boxes. Now, they call you a week or two before they show up and ask for the specific information they want to see in electronic form. Everything else was swept to the sidelines for a week or two until we found everything. We didn’t want to go through that anymore.”

The SEC also requires the firm to store documents for three years on-site and then an additional four-to-ten years (depending on document type) off-site. “We’d ship stuff off to cold storage, but because you’re charged by the square foot, as you accumulate more and more documents, it gets pretty pricey,” Salpietro says. How pricey? “We were indirectly involved in litigation, where our records were subpoenaed by court order for another firm who was being sued, and it cost us over $1,500 to retrieve those documents—and we weren’t even a party to the case.”

Once Laserfiche was up and running, the firm started with day-forward scanning, and then moved on to capturing the three years’ worth of documents stored on-site. “I don’t have to send another box off-site for storage,” he says. “And it’s not just one box a year, it’s dozens of boxes. And that’s a big cost that’s going to go away.”

For 2009, Salpietro’s looking forward to implementing Workflow and Quick Fields to further streamline the firm’s repetitive work processes. “Eliminating the highest cost to my firm has never been my rent,” he says. “A lot of people think if you have an office in a metropolitan city, the highest cost to a business is infrastructure, and in that regard, it’s not. It’s the people I employ. So I’d rather have them doing mission-critical, profitable work.”

For firms considering implementing document management technology, Salpietro stresses the importance of choosing a quality local service provider to the success of his firm’s implementation.

“The lesson I’ve learned is that it’s all about the integrity of the organization you’re working with. And we’ve gotten the support we need from both our reseller and from Laserfiche,” he says. “The long term outcome will be just what we want.”

Regal Independent Financial Services Director Neil James and his co-directors were fighting a losing battle against rapidly-filling file cabinets and spiraling storage costs, all the while facing the strict compliance and retention pressures of operating in a highly-regulated environment. With files of up to 250 pages, easy searching was a priority, and physical storage space was at a premium.

Regal, a firm of financial advisers based in Bristol, offers advice to both individual and corporate clients on all aspects of financial planning, including pensions, investment and portfolio planning, life assurance, mortgages and general insurance. With eighteen advisers working remotely throughout Southern and South West England, as well as South Wales, James and his advisers needed a solution that would both allow secure remote access to documents and enable better management of paper records that were rapidly taking over the office.

As a whole-of-market, independent adviser, Regal is required by the FSA to store documentation of the entire research and sales process, from fact-finding documents, copies of insurance policies and correspondence to client illustrations—files so extensive that one four-drawer filing cabinet could only accommodate one to two hundred customers’ records. Staff wasted endless hours locating, copying, printing and faxing multiple copies, and audit preparedness was becoming more and more taxing.

“Every time we make a new sale, that equals hundreds of pieces of paper produced, copied and delivered,” says James. “Records often have to be kept for an infinite number of years.”

Any successful solution would have to be nimble enough to quickly and easily manage large volumes of paper while still ensuring compliance with strict FSA regulations. Enabling centralized access to files for remote workers was a priority, as Regal financial advisers working throughout the U.K. needed fast, effortless and dependable access to client records.

“Our goal was essentially to kill paper and eliminate the filing cabinets,” says James. Through a referral from CFS, his hardware supplier, he got in touch with Harvey Burgess of RB Document Solutions. Burgess recommended a Laserfiche document management system, primarily for its ability to securely protect documents while still permitting quick and easy access, even for remote users.

Regal purchased a multifunction machine and in no time had the new system up and running. It took a mere three days for Regal to implement Laserfiche. Almost instantly, piles of paper began to disappear as office space was reclaimed.

“Even with training to get people up to speed, there was a noticeable monetary benefit,” James recalls. “Because Laserfiche is Windows-based, it was much easier for staff to adapt to the new solution.”

Ending the paper chase created immediate, appreciable cost savings in both postage and labor. Documents that once had to be photocopied and faxed are now sent electronically. Regal’s Compliance Department requires the files from 10% of monthly sales to be provided for audit. Before Laserfiche, Regal copied, packaged and shipped each piece of paper. Now, they easily submit customer files via e-mail. “If you really look at it, they reckon Laserfiche saved 10% of gross revenue,” says James.

Regal also realized immediate space savings. Staff digitized and shredded 3,500 client files, eliminating almost 400,000 sheets of paper and nine filing cabinets. The space that used to house overflowing file cabinets is now home to two new desks. Off site deep storage is no more, saving monthly rent and staff time required to find documents.

The entire company accesses the central repository, with two administrative staff scanning and indexing all newly generated documents. Thanks to Laserfiche, filing is quick and easy and the supply chain process has been reduced to five simple steps.

In addition, the Laserfiche repository enables advisers working remotely to quickly access information located up to 100 kilometers away via virtual private network (VPN). Being able to instantly locate information like an applicant’s date of birth, mortgage details or the last date of policy review gives advisers an opportunity to re-visit their clients immediately, rather than waiting for files to arrive through the mail. Sales have increased, business has become more transparent and advisers are much more efficient in renewing business and keeping in contact with clients. Not only are advisers much happier, calling Laserfiche “a godsend” to their business, but clients are more satisfied too.

As a company, Regal has grown considerably since implementing Laserfiche and is now planning a move to larger offices. “The beauty of it is, when they were looking at premises, they didn’t have to consider storage or filing space,” Burgess remarks. “They just got to pick an office they liked.”

But other advisors—and their firms—recognize the benefits of document management. From immediately eliminating clutter to long-term benefits such as saving time, space and money, the return on investment with document management is quite impressive.

Stage 2 Planning Partners is one of those innovative firms achieving their goals thanks to document management. Founded by Principal Josh Patrick in 1997, the firm offers wealth management services for owners of closely held businesses, individuals and groups, focusing on a variety of strategic and financial issues.

“As a business owner myself, I understand the issues that are important to owners of private firms,” Patrick says. “So when I founded my own firm, I used my thirty years of experience as a business owner to build a successful wealth management and business consulting firm.”

And when it came to growing that success, Patrick knew that by utilizing technology, he’d be able to help his staff do more, more efficiently. “We chose Laserfiche because it’s really the acknowledged leader in document management for financial planners. Also, our broker-dealer, National Financial Partners, uses Laserfiche, and they highly recommend it.”

Prinicipal Josh Patrick

Yet while Patrick knew eliminating paperwork would bring benefits to his staff’s daily work processes, there was an even more simple reason for choosing Laserfiche: managing the firm’s growth, both current and planned.

“When we installed Laserfiche, we were in the middle of moving offices and adding additional reps to our staff,” Client Service Specialist Melissa Provost remembers. “With this growth came additional clients’ records to manage. As any financial planner can tell you, misfiling is always an issue, no matter how many clients you have. But of course the more clients you have, the more documents you have the chance to misfile.”

Provost, who joined the firm in 2001, has never known a workday without Laserfiche. “We installed Laserfiche two weeks after I started, so Laserfiche and I started at the same time,” she says. “I’m not sure that I’d want to know what things would be like without it.”

Provost remembers that when the firm installed their Laserfiche system, staff were immediately able to get up and running because installation and training were done much more quickly than she expected. “Within a day and a half, our system was ready to go. The first day was installation, and half of the second was training,” Provost says. “It really has to do with the fact that Laserfiche is so easy to learn.

“Recently, we hired a new part-time employee, and she caught right on,” she adds. “That really says something about how easy to use Laserfiche is, that even a part-time employee can quickly get up to speed with the system.”

Client Service Specialist Melissa Provost

Not only does Laserfiche require minimal resources to set up and learn, it also requires minimal resources to maintain. “If we have any problems with Laserfiche, I can usually take care of it myself,” Provost says. “I set up and manage accounts for our reps, so we don’t have to have onsite IT personnel to manage the system. If any major problem arises —which is a true rarity—then our reseller, One Source/ADI, takes care of it for us.”

For Provost, who provides support for the advisors at Stage 2 Planning, Laserfiche made everyday work processes much easier. “We scan everything into Laserfiche, from all client and compliance files to accounts receivable and accounts payable documents. Not only are documents easier to find in Laserfiche, they’re never misfiled,” she says.

And when home office staff or clients call looking for a document, Laserfiche provides a quick and easy solution to getting it to them. “One of the best things about Laserfiche is the e-mail feature,” Provost adds. “Instead of printing and then faxing or mailing a document, we just e-mail it right from Laserfiche—which saves both time and money.”

When it comes to saving time and money, Laserfiche has definitely lived up to expectations. Before installing Laserfiche, the firm had six large file cabinets to store client and compliance files. But now, there aren’t any file cabinets anywhere in the office, which was a huge money saver when it came to the company’s move to a new office. And the benefits don’t stop there.

“We recently had a part-time employee leave the company,” Provost says, “but thanks to Laserfiche, there wasn’t a critical need to go out and hire a replacement right away. Because we’re able to work so much more efficiently, we can do more in a day, so we were able to cover the extra workload while we took our time hiring the right person.”

Also, Laserfiche has paid off in faster, easier audits for the firm’s staff. Provost estimates that their last broker-dealer compliance audit went significantly faster than usual, all thanks to Laserfiche.

“During our last audit, instead of the auditor requesting documents and sitting and waiting while we found them, we gave them a desktop computer logged into Laserfiche,” she says. “We can easily search for any document they’d like to see, and bring it up almost instantaneously for them to look at right there on the computer.

“Normally, our audits last from about 8:30 A.M. until 12:00 P.M.,” Provost adds. “But with Laserfiche, we were done and the auditor was out the door by 10:30 A.M.”

Stage 2 Planning staff have realized what many Laserfiche users ultimately discover: that getting rid of paper is only the start of the benefits Laserfiche can bring. From faster audits to savings on office supplies and staffing, once Laserfiche becomes a part of daily business processes, the possibilities for saving time and money are nearly endless.

“While I love that Laserfiche got rid of the stacks of files I had to search through to find things, what really surprised me is how much time Laserfiche saves me,” Provost says. “I expected Laserfiche to make things more efficient—but not nearly to the degree it has.”

“We were dealing with an enormous amount of paper,” remembers Teresa Devick. “And the paper files concerned us greatly, mainly because if our office were ever damaged, our information would be completely unrecoverable.”

Devick had read about document management in an industry magazine, and had heard about it from colleagues who had implemented their own paperless offices. When she saw Laserfiche at the FPA Symposium in Minneapolis, however, it was clear that Bond and Devick had found their perfect solution.

“We knew we needed a cost-effective system that was easy to use,” Devick says. “Some of the other systems that met our specific criteria were cost-prohibitive, and they required changing our operating procedures. Laserfiche didn’t require us to change how we do business, and we could choose exactly the functionality we needed—no more, no less.”

Once Bond and Devick decided on Laserfiche, installation was “very quick,” according to Devick. Within eight months, the firm had fully transitioned from paper to digital files.

The Bond and Devick Minneapolis Team – RJ Devick, Andy Feterl, Rachel Halvorson, Kristine Bisanz and Sherry Duggan

“It helped that our reseller, Cities Digital, Inc., sent two staff to the office to train everyone the day our system was installed,” Devick says. “It only took a couple of hours for us to feel comfortable with Laserfiche. It’s extremely easy to use, so training—even for new users—takes very little effort.”

Devick also believes support from Cities Digital was crucial to their success. “Once we started using the system, they were always available to answer any questions,” she says. “Their customer service is truly second to none.”

Thanks to this training and support, Devick says, users were instantly more productive. “We immediately started scanning and importing client information, including e-mail correspondence, trade reports, contracts, holding reports, retirement analysis and basically anything else we could think of,” she says. “We also store our company information, such as our compliance reports, employee files, 401(k) plan documents and meeting minutes.

“The interesting thing is that filing our information in Laserfiche actually takes a little longer than filing a paper document, because we have to take a few seconds to enter template information and put it in the correct location,” she continues. “But the ability to access information once it is filed is just so much easier and quicker. We don’t have to dig through file folders and try and find just the piece of paper we need. And, because it’s stored digitally, it can be viewed by more than one person at a time.”

With locations in Minneapolis and St. Paul, MN, sharing information was a priority. “Because we handle sensitive and private information, we needed a secure system, but we also needed to become more efficient,” Devick says. “To create that efficiency, multiple people needed to be able to access the same document simultaneously, and we needed to access it through our client management software.”

To truly enhance efficiency, however, the firm worked with Cities Digital to integrate Laserfiche with their client relationship management (CRM) application, ACT!® “From an efficiency standpoint, it was an obvious need for us,” Devick says. “The ability to integrate Laserfiche with ACT! was a question we asked about immediately.

When an advisor or staff member is viewing a client contact in ACT!, they simply click a link button to pull up all the folders for that particular contact. “Integration between a CRM system and Laserfiche is essential for firms who want to maximize the value of their digitally stored information,” says Cities Digital CEO Patrick Welsch. “With this type of integration, staff don’t have to do anything differently than they’re already doing. They just pull up information stored in Laserfiche directly from the CRM application. It’s a tremendous time-saver, and helps staff respond to client questions much more quickly.”

“The pleasant surprise with Laserfiche is how simple it is to use. Once things are scanned in, anyone can find the information they’re looking for.”

Devick agrees. “From the users’ perspective, this is truly the most useful feature in Laserfiche,” she says.

“The integration has really helped our financial advisors provide better client service. When speaking with clients on the phone, our advisors can immediately view documents to answer questions. When they’re doing account review, they can instantly pull up reports that are generated and scanned into the system.”

And when a client calls and needs tax forms or statements sent to their accountant or lawyer, Laserfiche enables the firm’s staff to turn those requests around “almost immediately,” says Devick. Staff simply find the document in the Laserfiche repository and e-mail it with a simple right click.

“This is really the biggest benefit for our clients,” she says. “Of course they benefit from our increased security, but that’s more behind the scenes. What they really notice is that, with Laserfiche, we can simply e-mail the document right from the system. It doesn’t matter whether the external party uses Laserfiche, because the document is sent in either TIFF or PDF format, which they can open from their own computer.”

And at the office, it’s not just advisors and back office staff that appreciate the firm’s Laserfiche system. “Even our greeter, who works on client accounts, benefits from it,” Devick says. “She doesn’t have to leave the front desk to grab client files because she’s able to view them right from her computer. So we always have someone sitting at the front desk—which is much better from a customer service perspective.”

Storing documents in Laserfiche also helps Bond and Devick comply with regulatory requirements for disaster recovery and information security. “Storing all our documents electronically enables us to back up the data and keep it offsite,” Devick says. “And our system is encrypted and password-protected, which makes unauthorized access nearly impossible.”

Laserfiche has also enabled Bond and Devick to more easily comply with legal and broker-dealer retention requirements. “Since we are required to maintain much of our client data for seven years, we’ve eliminated more paper than we could have imagined when we started this process two years ago,” Devick says.

“It’s also simplified our audit process,” she adds. “It’s cut the time of our compliance audits down considerably, since the auditor can quickly and easily pull up any information they need.”

When an auditor is onsite, they can sit down at a computer and pull up any information they’re looking for on their own. “Auditors have never had a problem using the system,” she says.

Ultimately, Bond and Devick knew that optimizing business processes was the key to their ultimate success. “We didn’t really look at our Laserfiche system from a financial perspective, but as a necessity,” Devick says. “Being able to access our information is quickly is key, and so is the fact that we can easily share information both in and outside the office.

“I would highly recommend Laserfiche,” she continues. “The pleasant surprise with Laserfiche is how simple it is to use—it’s much easier than locating a hardcopy client file. Once things are scanned in, anyone can find the information they’re looking for.”

“He was amazed,” reports John Caso of Alternative Data Imaging of Johnson City, TN, the Laserfiche Value Added Reseller who implemented Laserfiche for Bingham and Hensley early this year. “He was truly impressed with how Laserfiche was improving productivity at Bingham and Hensley.”

Working closely with NFP, Caso and Alternative Data Imaging are now immersed in a phased implementation of Laserfiche United that will eventually touch every level of operations, including member firms. “We are completing the initial phase, which has focused on establishing the basic document imaging and scanning program,” Caso reports. “We are building NFP’s implementation of the Workflow Suite and will proceed methodically to put it into effect.”

In another phase of its Laserfiche implementation, NFP plans to add a Laserfiche WebLink-based repository to its password-protected website to provide member firms with searchable access to support documentation.

For the long term, NFP hopes to be dealing as paperlessly as possible with its member firms down the line, and with the brokerage houses and insurance companies that they work with up the line.

A subsidiary of New York City-based National Financial Partners, NFP and its member firms offer financial services, including financial advice and investment and insurance products, to individuals and corporations.

“We are in our files on a daily basis, and there was no way to easily see the individual files for any given client, and no way to easily separate non-qualified and qualified life insurance files, as dictated by regulations,” says Jeff Bingham. “We were and are solely dedicated to going paperless, but our system was not living up to expectations and was not giving us the solution that we needed.”

Decision makers at Bingham and Hensley became fans of Laserfiche® the minute they saw that its flexible file folder structure could emulate their existing filing system yet still help them solve the problems they faced. They could also store both archival and current client records in the Laserfiche repository, and electronic annotation tools would enable them to make comments on documents and files, just as they would add handwritten notes to paper-bound client files.

In addition to scanning paper documents into the Laserfiche repository, Bingham and Hensley stores proposal records there as well. Now, when they need a specific proposal that was created using one of their other financial planning applications, they can easily access the proposal from a central location—the client’s file in Laserfiche.

Bingham and Hensley’s short term goal was to eliminate their numerous file cabinets and storage boxes. Their long-term goal is to provide more efficient service to their clients, to spend less time looking for files and to more easily comply with government and industry regulations.

“Our Laserfiche reseller took the time to learn our filing system, to understand our specific needs and to assist us in developing an implementation plan that will enable us to realize our goals,” Bingham explains. “Without a doubt, that is one of the keys to successfully ‘going paperless’ in the financial services industry.”

Thanks to their Laserfiche® digital document management system, Wall Street Financial Group has gained new efficiency, reduced overhead and enabled representatives to work more effectively—both at the home office and in the field. Wall Street Financial Group has been using Laserfiche for the past three years, and in that time, has utilized Laserfiche to capture client and working documents to a secure, centralized and searchable repository.

Now, thanks to Laserfiche Web Access™, a Web browser-based document management solution, representative can access, maintain and contribute to that repository just as easily from the field. Given that financial advisors are frequently out of the office meeting with clients, this ability to access and act on information online has greatly increased their productivity.

“Our processing center has recognized a considerable increase in efficiency thanks to Web Access,” says Michael Bewley, Wall Street Financial Group’s CEO. “It’s freed up time for our staff in the home office to focus on handling other aspects of our representatives’ practices.”

Web Access is a true “thin client,” offering virtually all of the document management capabilities of the standard Laserfiche interface. That means representatives can search, retrieve and work on client documents located in the company’s central database from anywhere they have an Internet connection.

“The burden of maintaining a paper-based client file has been lifted from the reps,” says Bewley. “Whether meeting at a client’s home, or in the rep’s office, the necessary documents are right at their fingertips.”

Advisors can now scan paper documents into the Laserfiche repository as soon as they generate them, in most cases eliminating the need to mail documents back to the home office. Most importantly, representatives can contribute to client files from anywhere, be it a client’s living room, a field office or an airport terminal. “Web Access allows field representatives to access information without having to be handcuffed to a filing cabinet,” adds Bewley.

The entirely-digital process affords considerable advantages beyond convenience and time savings. With Web Access, advisors are able to secure and store not just client documents, but also their notes and working documents. As Bewley explains, “Traditionally, reps would make annotations on the inside of a manila folder or on a sticky note. Information could easily get lost or destroyed. With Web Access, you have the ability to annotate the document in the field. You can make the notes you want, knowing they’ll be saved and backed up.”

According to Bewley, Web Access has taken Wall Street Financial Group’s efficiency and productivity gains to new heights. “It opens the door for our authorized advisors to easily access their documents. We’ve had an overwhelming response from our people in the field who are using Laserfiche Web Access. They love this system.”