Laserfiche Spark is a live webcast that brings together a community of Laserfiche users and tech enthusiasts to learn the latest updates in Laserfiche technology and valuable insights into the future of work.

1,100 tech enthusiasts registered for the global event, which featured 11 informative sessions ranging from Laserfiche product announcements to customer case studies to industry trends shaping the digital workplace today.

Read on to learn some of the key takeaways and updates from Laserfiche Spark:

Laserfiche Technology Updates

Several sessions during Laserfiche Spark highlighted new and updated product features that are both upcoming and currently available to Laserfiche users.

Robotic Process Automation

In her session Leave the Busywork to the Bots, Laserfiche Technical Product Manager Cosette Dwyer shared the results from our recent Robotic Process Automation (RPA) preview introduced at Empower 2019, including the most popular ways the Laserfiche community used software robots to boost productivity. Learn more about RPA below.

New Laserfiche Interface

Karen Schneider, Director of User Experience Design, shared a glimpse of the new Laserfiche user interface, with increased ease-of-use and a more centralized view for all Laserfiche-related work. The new Laserfiche home screen provides users with a dashboard view of the most relevant content and activities, as well as performance indicators to provide quick status updates from processes across the Laserfiche suite. Stay tuned to Laserfiche Answers as more information becomes available.

Laserfiche Aspire

Attendees also got a sneak peek at our upcoming community-based learning platform, Laserfiche Aspire. This new system will store all Laserfiche learning resources and tools, including the Laserfiche certification program courses, in one easily accessible place.

Microsoft Office 365 Integration

In addition to previews of upcoming releases, Spark attendees were treated to an in-depth breakdown of the benefits of some of our latest product updates, including Laserfiche’s Microsoft Office 365 integration capabilities. Ian McCready, technical product manager, shared exciting announcements about new functionality for both cloud and on-premises Laserfiche users: Microsoft has their Office online server available for Office 365 customers, to enable document preview, co-authoring, simultaneous document editing and more from directly within Laserfiche. Learn more about this functionality from the product experts at Laserfiche Answers.

Flexible Records Management

Justin Pava, senior principal product manager, shared important details about new Records Management updates in the Laserfiche 10.4 release, and stressed that “Records management needs to be at the core of an organization’s digital transformation“, especially to aid in compliance with data privacy regulations. Laserfiche 10.4 brings the largest update to Records Management functionality since its initial release, with improvements in storage, records retention and modification, and organizational transparency. Learn more about Laserfiche Records Management here.

Digital Leadership

Laserfiche leadership from across departments shared their helpful tips and advice for guiding your workplace seamlessly towards a more productive, digital culture.

Digital Evolution

Laserfiche President and CTO Karl Chan welcomed attendees with an introduction into the future of work by looking back at the past—to the invention of sliced bread (developed in the 1920s, consequentially).

Karl suggests that in the same way automated manual processes—ranging from sliced bread to GPS to mobile banking—can become a simplified, no-effort aspect of our daily lives, so should automated business processes in the future of work.

“We have heard from some of our users that digital files and process automation is the ‘best thing since sliced bread.’ We love hearing that, but we know we can always evolve; there will always change. We want to continue to empower [our users] to continue to embrace and drive change in your organization.” – Karl Chan

Digital Change Management

Melissa Henley, director of customer experience, shared insights for change managers at every level of digital maturity in her session Three Steps to Building a Digital Culture.

In addition to providing a holistic look at the reasons some organizations struggle to achieve a successful digital transformation (including cultural resistance, team misalignment and miscommunication), Melissa offered suggestions to help change managers guide their businesses in the right direction.

“As a leader, you have to help your team visualize how their lives will look after implementing automation.” – Melissa Henley

By demonstrating how a digital transformation will support business goals and implementing analytics reporting across departments, leaders can guide their teams towards a more transparent, productive digital culture.

Most importantly, when planning a digital transformation, ask the following:

• Why are we doing things this way?
• Why do we want to fix things?
• What problems will we solve?
• What do we want to accomplish?
• What will happen if we do nothing?

For additional insights on implementing a successful toward digital transformation, download the eBook 5 Strategies for Driving Digital Transformation.

Laserfiche Tips & Use Cases

Laserfiche Spark was a goldmine of helpful advice for Laserfiche users from both product experts and members of the Laserfiche user community.

Inspiring Case Study

Spark attendees were treated to a special session led by Dr. Duana Kindle, Managing Director of Human Resources, and Anna Koenig, Managing Director of Human Resources, at Frisco Independent School District (ISD), who shared their inspiring Laserfiche story. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Frisco, TX is the fastest growing metropolitan area in the U.S., and the HR team at Frisco ISD must meet staffing demands at an ever increasing rate of urgency.

After implementing Laserfiche process automation and records management tools in their HR system, Frisco ISD managed to hire 1,100 within 2 months, and continue to evolve their Laserfiche system to tackle new projects while updating existing processes regularly.

For more information on how organizations like Frisco ISD have transformed their HR operations with digitization and automation, click here.

Business Process Modeling

In her session Get Started Automating Your Processes, Senior Presales Engineer Anita Chiang shared tips for developing a format for designing a simplified, easily adaptable business process. Anita assures users that “while you may be working with tools that are new to you, or tackling a process that you’re not the expert for, a lot of the work in getting ready actually revolves around what problem you’re trying to solve.”

Anita suggests to begin by framing a business process around questions to ask yourself/stakeholders:

• Who is the owner of this process?
• Is this a brand new process that hasn’t been outlined before, or are you automating an existing manual process?
• What is the problem you are trying to fix by automating this process?

For helpful, step-by-step examples of how other organizations have automated their processes with Laserfiche, visit the Laserfiche Solution Exchange.

Business Process Reporting

Yin Seo, technical product manager at Laserfiche, shared tips for Building a Business Process You Can Report On during Laserfiche Spark. Yin broke down the benefits of the Laserfiche reporting dashboard, and encourages users to “leverage the tools available to continually improve on your [automated] processes” by maintaining steps in the process and eliminating potential bottlenecks.

For more information on Laserfiche Reporting and Analytics, visit our product tour.

Preparedness for the Future of Work

Innovation is at the core of Laserfiche technology, which is why Laserfiche is dedicated to staying ahead of the curve with the latest product features that meet the demands of success-focused businesses at every level of digital maturity.

Brandon Buccowich, product marketing manager at Laserfiche, shared insights into five trends that are shaping the future of work, and how Laserfiche can help organizations meet business challenges and expectations to come:

Machine Learning

A subset of AI, machine learning enables a system to recognize user behavior patterns while learning from experience. Processes like document classification and data extraction can be improved with machine learning to reduce configuration effort to a minimum, saving time and improving efficiency—Laserfiche is working to apply these machine learning capabilities to existing document capture and workflow tools. Learn more about Laserfiche Capture and Imaging here.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

Automated bots import resources from the front to the back office by bridging automation gaps, non-invasively integrating applications together, reducing manual data entry and improving accuracy across processes. Learn more about Laserfiche RPA here.

Secure File Sharing

Data privacy affects everyone. “Being able to safely access and securely share information while maintaining IT governance is more important than ever before,” says Brandon. Learn how Laserfiche continues to improve on its security functionality by providing even more robust external file sharing capabilities. “Any content shared from Laserfiche will stay within Laserfiche in a secure and auditable fashion.” Learn more about current Laserfiche Security product features here. 

Business Intelligence & Reporting

“The future is data-driven, and data must be a part of how we conduct business,” says Brandon. Laserfiche is developing an even more unified reporting offering for users to view out-of-the-box reports and create custom reports across multiple sources in Laserfiche, including task information, process data, repository activity, metadata values as well as audit reporting across Laserfiche. Learn more about Laserfiche Reporting and Analytics here. 

Cloud Management

Cloud technology helps organizations keep up with the accelerating pace of the modern workforce. It helps organizations reduce infrastructure burden, while ensuring that new technology deployments are easier than ever. Laserfiche Cloud enables users to access the latest features and product updates in Laserfiche faster than ever. Laserfiche is excited to announce that we’ll be expanding our Cloud support to more countries globally than ever before. Learn more about Laserfiche Cloud here. 

Thank you to all who were able to attend Laserfiche Spark! Visit Laserfiche.com/spark to view the live broadcast recording on demand.