“ECM is a necessity to win larger deals, but finding the right partner can be an arduous task,” said Tom Wayman, Vice President of Product Strategy at Laserfiche. “The Laserfiche Systems Integrator Program provides a stress-free experience for system integrators looking to close larger opportunities.”

The Laserfiche Systems Integrator Program provides members with access to the Laserfiche ECM suite, which is built on Microsoft technologies to leverage existing Microsoft skillsets. Members:

• Quickly implement vertical-specific solutions built on the Microsoft stack, including ready-made templates for government, financial services, education and healthcare.
• Receive bid support including technical inquiries, sales team briefings and proposal assistance.
• Benefit from a dedicated team of engineers who assist with system design and training.

“Charter members of the Systems Integrator Program have won deals as large as $50 million in industries including federal government, education and financial services,” added Wayman. “We look forward to welcoming more members into this prestigious group.”

Systems integrators interested in program membership can apply at booth #719 in the Solutions Innovation Center (SIC) throughout the event, where Laserfiche will be offering stress-reducing massages and demonstrations of its agile ECM solutions.

More information on the Laserfiche Systems Integrator Program is available at www.laserfiche.com/si.

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 use 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 while still offering business units the flexibility to react quickly to changing conditions. The Laserfiche product suite is built on top of Microsoft® technologies to simplify system administration, supports the Microsoft SQL platform and features a seamless integration with Microsoft Office® applications and a two-way integration with SharePoint®.

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

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

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

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

Other important selection criteria included:

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

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

Laserfiche + SharePoint = Transparency

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

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

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

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

Laserfiche + SharePoint = Operational Efficiency

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Overcoming Implementation Hurdles

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

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

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

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

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

• DoD 5015.2-certified records management.
• Complete document capture and imaging functionality.
• Turnkey transactional content management.
• Simplified workflow design with Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation.
• Accelerated deployment of SharePoint sites.

The DoD 5015.2 standard sets forth core functionality requirements for records management software used by the Department of Defense and its components. Endorsed by the National Archives and Records Administration, it is also used as a benchmark by many other federal, state and local government entities, in addition to numerous public and private corporations.

View video comments from Andy Wang, our director of ECM strategy, here.

Laserfiche’s support for SharePoint Server 2010 maximizes the strengths of both systems. SharePoint Server 2010 provides a unified business collaboration platform, while Laserfiche provides document imaging and turnkey transactional content management for core business processes, including:

• Accounts payable
• Case management
• Contract management
• HR onboarding
• Many more processes

“Adding Laserfiche to SharePoint Server 2010 helps accelerate deployment, simplify workflow design and minimize the need for customization and development,” said Meera Mehta, director of SharePoint Partner Marketing at Microsoft Corp. “It offers customers an easy way to achieve enhanced productivity using SharePoint Server 2010.”

“Using Laserfiche with SharePoint Server 2010 makes organizations more agile,” said Tom Wayman, vice president of product strategy at Laserfiche. “We’re pleased to support the SharePoint Server 2010 launch and provide Microsoft customers with the means to easily manage transactional content within their SharePoint sites.”

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, and it supports the Microsoft SQL platform, Microsoft Office applications, and SharePoint Server.

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.

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their registered owners

“Every year, vast amounts of diverse and complex content are created—in blogs, social networks, e-mail, the cloud and more traditional forums for communication and collaboration,” said Kimberly Samuelson, director of government strategy at Laserfiche. “Now more than ever, organizations need to support informed decision making by taking a scalable, responsive and agile approach to information management.”

At the Summit, Samuelson will deliver an overview of the Three Laws of Agile ECM, providing case study examples from Spindletop MHMR Services and Collin County, TX. The three laws are designed to help organizations across industry sectors such as government, healthcare and financial services design an agile framework for data governance that achieves a balance between the need for central control and departmental flexibility.

“Spindletop has used the Agile ECM philosophy to bring comprehensive content management capabilities to its SharePoint intranet,” said Samuelson. “We’re pleased to share the secrets of Spindletop’s success.”

Laserfiche will also host a “March Madness” reception at its Hospitality Suite in Laurel C-D on Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. Attendees will enjoy networking, complimentary copies of a new Economist Special Report titled “Data, Data Everywhere,” and the opportunity to win a 16GB iPad.

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 is a registered trademark of Compulink Management Center, Inc.

The Road to Rio

According to Chandresh Sharma, vice president of solutions sales at Sigma-Tech, Essar became interested in Laserfiche Rio after seeing how capably the system would complement Microsoft SharePoint. Specifically, Essar wanted to integrate Rio with SharePoint to establish a shared service center for processing invoices.

A key selling point, Sharma says, was being able to show video examples of how Laserfiche integrates with SharePoint. “The videos really ‘broke the ice’ with the Essar CIOs,” Sharma says. “We were able to show how Laserfiche functionality could complement SharePoint, not overlap it.”

Sharma says he then showed how Laserfiche’s imaging functionality was an obvious fit for SharePoint’s capabilities. This led to more detailed demonstrations of Workflow and Quick Fields to address specific issues regarding Essar’s invoicing processes, namely how to avoid duplicating invoices.

The Workflow Designer, Sharma says, was instrumental to this part of the presentation. “One of the CIOs asked a really good question about how a third value could be added to a Workflow, and using the Workflow Designer I was able to set it up and publish it in less than ten minutes,” he says.

In the end, Essar was sold. The first phase of the implementation began last November with 100 users in the financial departments of 12 Essar companies. That number will grow to 500 by the time the implementation is complete early next year, and there are plans to eventually expand Rio into all 55 Essar companies in the future.

Achieving Success with Shared Services

Sharma says Sigma-Tech—and all Laserfiche resellers—can leverage the success of the Essar Rio implementation: “There is a remarkable shift in the market towards big corporations looking for shared service centers to centralize business processes. We see ‘Agile ECM Engineered with Laserfiche and SharePoint’ as a great enabler of that.”

In particular, Sharma believes that Workflow 8 and the SDK offer IT departments the flexibility and confidence “to establish shared services across their enterprise.” He also believes that Rio’s promise of unlimited servers bolsters confidence in Laserfiche. “The ability to create test environments is very important—and it allows us to be more competitive,” he concludes.

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

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

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

Complete Content Management within a SharePoint Site

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Results of Running Smarter

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

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

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

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

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

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

“People want more choice and flexibility in how, where, and when they work,” said Owen Allen, SharePoint senior product manager, Microsoft Corp. “Laserfiche is built on the SharePoint 2010 platform to offer customers a way to achieve richer and better collaboration and productivity using SharePoint 2010.”

“Given Laserfiche’s experience and dedication to the Microsoft suite of technology, we believe it delivers a complete offering to customers seeking an integrated content management and SharePoint 2010 solution,” said Jerry Carnley, CIO of Spindletop MHMR (a community mental health center). Spindletop has evolved as an innovator of technology among the community centers of east Texas (covering about 30% of counties in Texas) that store and access data on the SharePoint Server farm housed at Spindletop.

“Laserfiche provided custom templates that allow our users to scan 10 times more content than before the custom templates were implemented,” added Carnley. “Also, the Web interface provided by Laserfiche allows us to properly and securely archive this sensitive data in a responsible way that is accessible from anywhere on the private MPLS network that connects all 10 community centers.” Laserfiche value-added reseller DynaSource successfully integrated Laserfiche Web Access with Spindletop’s SharePoint Server-powered Intranet.

The Laserfiche customer base and community of developers are eager to start working on integrations with SharePoint 2010 to leverage new features and support them when available. With the Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009 fast approaching, Laserfiche looks forward to the unveiling of SharePoint Server 2010 and to continuing its tradition of a firm alignment with Microsoft technology.

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their registered owners.

About Laserfiche

Laserfiche® creates simple and elegant enterprise content management (ECM) solutions that help organizations run smarter. Since 1987, more than 27,000 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 on top of 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 Products and Technologies.

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.

When we introduced the first version of Laserfiche in the late 1980s, digital document management was a new concept for most organizations. Now, as technology has matured and the world has increasingly gone digital, few organizations can survive without it.

Organizations’ needs have also grown more complex over the years. In the past, they needed a system that would help their most paper-intensive departments archive and retrieve their documents. But now they need a solution that also helps them streamline business processes enterprise-wide.

The marketplace is clearly ready for an enterprise solution that’s easy on the budget and easy to purchase and install, and that’s why we’ve spent the last few years developing Rio.

One of Rio’s strongest features in this regard is its licensing structure—you simply purchase a named license for each user in your organization. This license provides users with a full range of ECM functionality, including Workflow, Web Access, Advanced Audit Trail, Snapshot and the E-mail Plug-in. License pricing follows a sliding scale, so the more users in your organization, the lower per-user price you’ll pay. In addition, you can upgrade your system to add Laserfiche WebLink to provide unlimited public access to documents in your Laserfiche repository.

Rio includes an unlimited number of Laserfiche servers, which you can use for back ups, failover clusters, testing and other purposes. Rio also helps you adapt to changing business conditions—you can add users simply by purchasing additional user licenses, and you can take advantage of workflow automation or Web-based document management without extra expense. This licensing structure makes budgeting for an enterprise deployment much easier, and it eliminates the long requisition process customers often face when they want to expand their system.

Rio also offers industry-leading integration with SharePoint, complementing SharePoint’s collaboration tools by adding imaging functionality and enhanced workflow capabilities. So if your organization has a SharePoint installation, but you’re not sure how it will work with your Laserfiche system, now there’s a solution to help you unite SharePoint with Laserfiche, without compromising the security or records management functionality of your Laserfiche solution.

We’ve created a Website to provide you with more information about Rio. If you have questions about if Rio is right for your organization, please contact your solutions provider.

Processing the thousands of paper documents associated with these accounts, however, was limiting MDS’s productivity. “We needed a system to provide three key features: security, accessibility and accountability,” says Solutions Architect Matt Brown. “We also wanted to cut down on paper-related costs. We spent the better part of a decade looking for a system that could accomplish all these goals.”

MDS first experimented with a Web-based product in an attempt to eliminate paper documents and streamline work processes. “It did a very good job of storing and retrieving documents, but that was about the extent of its usefulness,” Brown says. “It proved difficult to administer. So we then built a second system ourselves, using Microsoft® SharePoint® as the foundation.”

This second solution provided a clear demonstration of the benefits of an enterprise-quality system. “We could see the possibilities, such as ease of retrieval, improved business intelligence and the efficiencies of automating work processes,” Brown explains. “However, SharePoint isn’t a document management system, so we were asking it to do something it wasn’t designed to handle.”

This experiment, however, helped staff envision an ideal solution. “Our immediate goal was to store billing records electronically, but our eventual goal was and still is a completely paperless workflow,” Brown says. “We needed to make sure that billing records were easily retrievable, that protected health information was secure and that we could account for all our documents, but we also needed a solution that was cost-effective and scalable.”

Laserfiche® fulfilled all these requirements—and more. Thanks to its open architecture, Laserfiche can serve as the document management back-end for many line-of-business applications, including Med/FM™, the application MDS uses to manage billing and claims processing. With help from their Laserfiche reseller, JPI Data Resource, MDS integrated the two systems so that staff can instantly access Laserfiche documents from within Med/FM. “That was the system’s number one selling point,” Brown notes.

After MDS selected Laserfiche, things moved quickly. “Installation was completed in less than a day, and training took less than a week,” Brown remembers. “We were able to initiate a completely paperless workflow for one of our clients by the week’s end. Then we started bringing our other clients online.”

MDS has two Laserfiche servers, one in each of their two divisional offices. Over 30 users in those locations—and in smaller offices throughout California—use the system daily to process billing documents submitted in both paper and electronic formats.

Some clients still send MDS paper billing documents, which must be processed manually. Staff scan those documents, separated by bar-coded index sheets, into Laserfiche. The Quick Fields™ Bar Code Plug-In™ reads the bar codes and automatically indexes the scanned files. “We simply attach the cover sheet to its corresponding billing record and Quick Fields does the rest,” Brown says. “Quick Fields fills in all the necessary document metadata—such as the patient’s name and identifying information—that is stored in the bar codes.”

When clients submit electronic documents, staff use the client’s daily log to create empty documents in the Laserfiche repository that serve as place holders for corresponding billing documents. Staff then use Snapshot™ to convert the electronic information into unalterable TIFF files and import them into Laserfiche, where they are matched up with the empty documents created earlier.

To further automate work processes, Workflow™ routes documents among the various departments that create the billable record and generate the final claim. If any information is missing, Workflow automatically routes the record to the appropriate department for further follow-up.

While Laserfiche speeds up the entire collections process, it has specifically streamlined the process for submitting claims that require supporting documentation. “Before Laserfiche, there was a delay of several days, given that a staff member would have to physically locate the billing record, pull it and copy it,” Brown says. “Now, we can send claims out the same day. Employees simply pull the account up in Med/FM and press a function key, which automatically generates a search in Laserfiche for the patient’s billing record.

“These efficiencies have enabled us to shift job priorities from one department to another—or eliminate tasks altogether,” Brown continues. “Before, we needed a rather large staff just to manage all the paper. Our medical records department has been completely transformed. Now, they simply handle scanning and document printing for claims attachment.”

In addition, Laserfiche has given MDS greater oversight of business processes. “We use Microsoft SQL Server™ Reporting Services to query the Laserfiche database, which provides us with a wealth of real-time data we didn’t previously have access to,” Brown says. “This data gives us greater awareness of our business processes, which helps improve decision-making.”

MDS’s clients benefit from this improved reporting as well. “The medical director at one of our client sites requests a monthly time study showing how many patients their physicians see each hour,” Brown says. “Before Laserfiche, this was a laborious process that required manually entering statistics into a spreadsheet. Now, we use Laserfiche to pull this information directly from the ER log and store it in the document template fields. Our reporting server queries this information and automatically generates and sends the report—with no user interaction required.”

In the future, MDS plans to completely eliminate paper from their billing processes. “We’re in the beginning stages of adding additional automation and integration with our billing management system that will eliminate manual demographic and charge entry. We also plan to implement a paperless workflow in our payment processing department,” Brown says. “We are constantly looking for new ways to extend our Laserfiche system with integration and customization—so we definitely appreciate the ability to purchase components separately and add new ones over time.”

Customizing MDS’s Laserfiche system comes easy to Brown, who values the flexibility of Laserfiche’s open architecture. “As a programmer, I appreciate the expansive features of the Integrator’s Toolkit™,” he says. “With the Toolkit, you can create additional functionality with just a little effort. I also enjoy interacting directly with Laserfiche Developers through the Laserfiche Institute Conference, the Support Site and the forums.”

Brown doesn’t hesitate in recommending Laserfiche to his peers. “I would unequivocally recommend it,” he says. “After years of evaluating just about every document management system there is—and there are a lot—none of them comes close to matching the breadth of features Laserfiche provides.

“Along with our medical billing system, Laserfiche is one of our core applications,” he continues. “We would be hard-pressed to function without it. Employees benefit from rapid access to the information they need to do their jobs, and management benefits from the peace of mind of knowing the documents that are integral to our operation are safe and secure. It’s a win all around.”