Westbank First Nation Elevates Employee Experience and Safety

Located in south central British Columbia, Westbank First Nation (WFN) is one of eight Okanagan Nation communities representing a portion of the Syilx traditional territories that have inhabited the valley for thousands of years. Today, the First Nation government comprises about 200 staff members who serve a population of 10,000 residents spread across four reserves. In an effort to address silos between departments and reorganize physical documentation in storage, WFN sought to digitize and inventory its existing paper records. After exploring options with its digital workplace solutions provider Ricoh Canada, WFN selected Laserfiche as its electronic records management (ECM) system. Since implementing Laserfiche more than a decade ago, WFN has expanded its digital transformation efforts, introducing Laserfiche Workflow and Forms to automate business processes, and utilizing metadata to improve reporting and turnaround times.

“We grew so fast as an organization, identifying many processes that we could streamline along the way,” said Chad Rota, Records and Information Management Supervisor at Westbank First Nation. “Laserfiche has provided us with an opportunity to assess our processes and improve the organization holistically.”

Laserfiche is now used for numerous internal processes across departments, streamlining approvals and records management through automated document routing. In addition to time savings, benefits have also included investigating the ability to support COVID-19 contact tracing efforts, and the flexibility to continue addressing community health and safety through incident reporting.

Establishing a Digital Foundation

WFN manages over 4,400 properties, which requires intensive property tax documentation processes. From early on, WFN recognized the need for a more efficient records management system. A majority of its vital records management and property tax documents relied on off-site filing, resulting in substantial fuel surcharges to store and retrieve boxes. Seeing an opportunity to improve compliance, transparency and efficiency, WFN explored ways to digitally transform the way the organization managed these documents.

Today, the organization uses Laserfiche to process all documents related to each property tax folio digitally, and automatically store them in a centralized location, eliminating lost files. The system enables metadata to be attached to each document, making them easily searchable. The process now requires less paper, which originally required five floor-to-ceiling shelves containing over 4,000 folders to store. Now, there are only a few small folders for processing documents that either need to be scanned weekly or mailed out to residents, helping to improve responsiveness to members. As the organization grew, file storage rooms were converted into functional workspace.

“The repository grew from managing meeting minutes and policies into managing working documents and case files. We really experienced an organization-wide transformation — department by department.”

— Chad Rota, Records and Information Management Supervisor at Westbank First Nation

Increasing Administrative Efficiency and Elevating the Employee Experience

Following the success digitizing its document management process, the organization recognized that internal requests — such as employee change notifications and staff reports — could also be digitized and automated to reclaim time for employees who were manually managing files being passed between departments.

“We really needed a way to improve monitoring and transparency to streamline these submissions,” said Rota.

WFN implemented Laserfiche Forms, which can be edited digitally without being passed between departments for amendment and approval. This system has been fully adopted and integrated across the organization, including the finance department, legal department and HR. Notably, finalized employee change notification requests are automatically filed in Laserfiche via an automated Laserfiche Workflow, with a notification sent to the payroll team for review and approval. This fully digital process has increased efficiency, as well as boosted employee satisfaction as requests are resolved more rapidly.

Additionally, the request portal is hosted using Laserfiche Forms, which can be easily modified and updated with newly available resources. This has supported the dissemination of information throughout WFN, creating a self-service portal for employees, who now have the independence to navigate forms, pending requests and their associated documents.

“Being able to access everything in one central location has empowered staff to become more independent Laserfiche users.”

— Chad Rota, Records and Information Management Supervisor at Westbank First Nation

Prioritizing Employee Health and Safety

In addition to creating a long-term digital culture, Laserfiche has provided WFN with a high-level view of working conditions for its employees, improving health and safety when it matters most. If an incident occurs on-site, employees can complete a dedicated Laserfiche form which is automatically forwarded to WFN’s occupational health and safety advisor, while notifying the director of the submission. The system generates a corrective action task, prompting a discussion about the cause of the individual incident and preventative measures. In addition to metadata based on the location and department of the incident, WFN can leverage advanced reporting tools to identify health and safety trends and make more informed, data-driven decisions to improve conditions for specific locations.

This system also helps support compliance requirements — in terms of policy development, WFN submits annual reports to regional and national governing entities in Canada. Now, staff can extract relevant information from incident responses and complete these forms more quickly and accurately. Additionally, during the early stages of the pandemic, WFN also used Laserfiche to support contact tracing efforts, developing a dedicated form for staff entering the premises in order to comply with British Columbia’s health reporting requirements, eliminating the need for Health and Safety specific software.

Understanding Organizational Priorities

By using Laserfiche to establish replicable solutions that can be applied to a variety of processes, WFN has optimized its resources while enabling employees to be more independent and less reliant on paper files. Documents can be retrieved in seconds, allowing staff to work far more efficiently and take more ownership over core processes. Achieving such substantial savings in time and resources has translated to reduced operational costs and headcount allocations, allowing the organization to run more efficiently.

In terms of future digital transformation plans, WFN is working to digitize and streamline accounts payable using Laserfiche Forms and process automation. The organization is also exploring Laserfiche Cloud as a storage solution moving forward.

“We are able to go from the troubleshooting and testing phase to launching new processes so rapidly because we have so much at our fingertips with Laserfiche. It’s easy for us to mobilize efforts and prioritize our workload the right way.”

— Chad Rota, Records and Information Management Supervisor at Westbank First Nation

To learn more about how Laserfiche drives digital transformation, schedule a consultation today.

Santa Monica’s Digital First Approach

The City of Santa Monica, California, leverages Laserfiche to provide better services at a lower cost and with lower friction to constituents.

Transcript

Santa Monica is a city of 8.3 square miles. 93,000 residents and about 1800 staff members. We’re a full service city. We have our own utilities, our police, fire traffic, even our federal airport. First, we got a great beach and we have a lot of technology, a very complex environment with probably over 300 applications that we utilize. So I came to the city about five years ago.

Laserfiche was already in our environment. I saw an Opportunity to leverage tools like Laserfiche more extensively to help digitize our environment. And the game changer for us was when Laserfiche came to us and talks about an integration with DocuSign. And so we implemented that. One of the big benefits is that it’s in sustainability.

We no longer use as much paper as it. And in the past three and a half years, we estimated you’d saved over 180000 hours staff time. That integration when the pandemic hit, we had to quickly and become a virtual workplace. We had made the city workforce completely mobile with technology. We had created a user experience that was the same whether you were virtually working or face to face on site.

And we had done all this not because we were anticipating a pandemic We did it because we wanted to enable flexibility and Work-Life Balance for our staff. What we were able to do very quickly was to pivot and have 80% of our staff teleworking with all the tools they needed in 36 hours. Part of that was we had workflows already in place which utilized these Most people don’t think of government as being frictionless.

This matter of fact, most people consider the government a main source of friction But why does it have to be that way? Can we see a way to provide better services at a lower friction, at a lower cost to our constituents? If we can use the same tools that any other organization uses, it’s just thinking about things different.

I see Laserfiche as one of our key platforms that we can leverage and simplify our environment, but also give us greater capability within one system to do more. I’m Joseph Cevetello, and I’m using Laserfiche to empower the people of Santa Monica.

Public Records and Process Automation Power the County of Newell’s Digital Business Strategy

Located in Alberta, Canada, the County of Newell is known for its central location and dynamic and diverse economy. Recent years have brought growth to the region, including Amazon’s first renewable energy investment in the country — a 80MW solar project expected to produce enough energy to power more than 18,000 Canadian homes for a year. The Newell County government is committed to the area’s progress, continuously improving processes with an eye toward its vision statement: “to encourage and support sustainable growth and quality of life.”

This commitment recently drove a number of transformative efforts at the county, including the digitization and automation of business processes that employees and residents use on a daily basis. The county, a Laserfiche customer since 2004, has been going through processes strategically, optimizing steps using a lean project management methodology.

“We strategically approach everything that we do,” said Roberta Fernell, director of information technology at the County of Newell. “Every process or system we introduce, we want to understand how it fits, and where we may need to adjust to make some improvements. That’s why we did an organization-wide implementation of Laserfiche.”

Reimagining Records Management

Working with Laserfiche solution provider Inspiris, the County of Newell achieved a strategic priority by digitizing and centralizing information in Laserfiche. The Laserfiche platform became the foundation on which departments could build automated processes and integrate with other systems to streamline information flow throughout the organization.

“Digital transformation is a journey, an evolution in how our organization works, operates and moves forward to better serve the public,” said Joanne Wells, records management technician at the county. Departments that now use Laserfiche include:
  • Administration
  • Agricultural Services
  • Corporate Safety
  • Enforcement
  • Engineering Services
  • Finance
  • Fire Services
  • Fleet Services
  • Human Resources
  • Information Technology
  • Municipal Services
  • Planning and Development

The centralization and digitization of records has also supported the county’s commitment to open government, and compliance with Alberta’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FOIP), as well as the federal Access to Information Act and Privacy Act. The county website’s public portal removes the burden from county staff who previously had to manually pull records, which could cause delays.

“I receive a lot of internal requests for information,” said Ariana Nielsen, executive assistant at the county. “And the search capabilities of Laserfiche allow the public to find information on their own without having to wait for a response.”

Plus, Fernell added, the visibility into what documents are being downloaded enable county staff to gage what the public is interested in: “This information gives us insights into the hot topics — we might find, for instance, that we should do an educational campaign on social media because we see high interest on something particular. We’re leveraging our information in a connected way that can inform other areas of the organization.”

Reclaiming Time in Accounts Payable

As the county assessed the potential for further improvements, accounts payable came up as one process that touched multiple departments but heavily relied on manual tasks. The county re-engineered the AP process, capturing invoices digitally in the Laserfiche repository and using a Laserfiche workflow to automate the routing of information to various departments for reviews and approvals.

This transformation increased visibility of invoices across the organization, enabling the county to accelerate payments and more accurately determine cash flow. Laserfiche integrates with the county’s financial management software, Diamond, as well as its CentralSquare asset management system to create a seamless experience for employees who interact with the AP process.

“The AP process in Laserfiche is efficient and great time saver,” said Emerson Pankratz, the county’s accounting clerk. “It is very easy to enter new invoices into the system and get them to the appropriate person for coding and approvals quickly. Also, Laserfiche’s ability to recognize duplicate invoices helps stop duplicate payments and duplication of efforts.”

“We not only reduced our inaccuracy and our opportunity time — or the time that should be reduced to improve process performance — but we increased our value-added time, or the tasks we do that actually add value to the process, by 27%.”

— Roberta Fernell, director of information technology at the County of Newell

Simplifying the COR Audit Process and Enhancing Employee Experience

As the county’s success with digitization and automation projects spread, the county’s IT team began leveraging a lean methodology to prioritize projects that would have the highest impact.

The organization undergoes a Certificate of Recognition (COR) audit each year to maintain its recognition for developing health and safety programs that meet the standards established by the Alberta government. A previously arduous audit process led the county to reassess its health and safety training documentation, a critical process for the county, which requires all employees to be educated on occupational hazards, preventative measures and best practices.

“For the COR audit, we have to be able to deliver on-demand what they need,” Fernell said. “They need to know that people have received the training required to be competent in their roles, and that we as a county government are keeping them safe by providing that training.”

The IT team built a Laserfiche Form and set up document templates that enable employees to get certificates into the Laserfiche records repository with minimal data entry. The transformation resulted in a reduction of information inaccuracy — from a 58% inaccuracy rate down to below 10%. The county also built notifications into the workflow so that HR employees had visibility into the process — and Laserfiche reporting tools enable managers to view the time it takes to complete the progress, opening up further opportunity for optimization.

While the county used to see about 100 documents related to health and safety training recorded in Laserfiche per year, it now sees about 100 per quarter, thanks to the team’s optimization efforts. The end-to-end process time was also reduced from 135 days to 5.2.

“Staff members want to be recognized for the training they’ve taken,” Fernell said. “And managers need to know what training their staff has taken, or what training they need to take — to help support health and safety in the workplace, and to resource plan.”

County-wide Digital Transformation Continues

The County of Newell continues to strategically optimize processes and integrate systems with Laserfiche with the aim of providing the best possible employee and citizen experience. Major business processes that have already been automated include:
  • Accounts payable approvals
  • Corporate safety
  • Training documentation
  • County of Newell Water Project registration
  • Pre/post trip process
  • Performance reviews
  • IT change requests
  • Gravel haul cards
  • Inspections
  • Fire permits

The IT team also has significant Laserfiche projects on the horizon, including HR onboarding and offboarding, equipment rentals, expense claims and development permits.

“What impresses the County of Newell is the versatility of Laserfiche. Not only does it effectively manage county documents, applying records management, but it also offers efficiencies in the processing of documents, ways to transfer/share data between systems and methods to electronically capture data to be used for reporting and analytics.”

—Roberta Fernell, director of information technology at the County of Newell

“Laserfiche has totally changed how we operate, and how we think about operating,” said Matt Fenske, chief administrative officer at the county.

To learn more about how Laserfiche drives public sector digital transformation, schedule a demo today.

Creating a Covid-19 Vaccine Wait List in under 2 Hours.

How Collin County, Texas leveraged Laserfiche to serve its citizens during the pandemic — without working overtime or weekends.

Transcript

Our citizens were desperate to at least do
something on their own behalf for their own health care.

Let me tell you the story
about how we developed our Collin County

COVID-19 vaccine waitlist.

My name is Tim Nolan. I work for Collin County, Texas

and I am the applications manager.

The day before we went on holiday for New Year’s Day,

the judge gives us a call around 2 p.m. and
said we need to put together a waitlist,

and so we reached out to the team

and they were able to put something
together in Laserfiche Forms in two hours.

We had 45,000 people that day enter
their information.

We didn’t have to work over that holiday weekend.

We actually launched and went live right there.

Everyone on our list either got vaccinated by us,

our partners or some other means.

So now you can come directly to our website

and schedule your own appointment to get your own
vaccine.

There’s no need for a waitlist any longer.

And so we intend to use Laserfiche well into the
future with health care.

I think it’s here to stay.

Secure File Sharing Enables Streamlined Processes

By simplifying its processes and making better, data-driven decisions, the group of insurance carriers elevates the experience it provides for employees and customers alike.

The Isle of Man Moves to Digital-First Government Services

In recent years, the Isle of Man has undertaken modernisation efforts to the benefit of citizens, bringing more services online and increasing efficiency using Laserfiche for digital records management, electronic forms and workflow automation. The Laserfiche initiatives have created a foundation upon which to build a digital-first government, enhancing the experience for anyone seeking services, whether they are private citizens or businesses.

The Isle of Man Central Registry’s digital transformation efforts unexpectedly became a key factor in its ability to keep business moving during the COVID-19 pandemic.  “Having Laserfiche installed, and integrated with government’s online service, was a godsend for the Land and Deeds Registries and all of our customers as it enabled us to continue to provide a full service throughout the lockdown period,” said Registrar General Ed Clague. “In conjunction with government online services, we operated successfully throughout the lockdowns.”

Building a Foundation with Digital Records Management

The Isle of Man sits at the heart of the British Isles with a population of 86,000. As a self-governing British Crown Dependency, the Isle of Man’s parliament is the world’s oldest, dating back more than 1,000 years. The Island’s Central Registry is responsible for maintaining and administering services related to a family of registries including the Civil Registry, Companies Registry, Deeds Registry, Land Registry, and Public Record Office.

Prior to implementing Laserfiche, the land and deeds registries had a mixed way of managing records, which comprised manual search and retrieval, and a bespoke legacy system that was not internet-enabled and approaching end-of-life.

“The biggest motivation for us to move to Laserfiche was its off-the-shelf capabilities, which reduces the risk of having to retire another legacy system in the future, and provides us with a demonstrable upgrade path,” Clague said. “Most importantly, Laserfiche gives us a platform for further digital services. It’s a perfect system for our requirements.”

By transitioning from the registry’s legacy records system to Laserfiche digital records management, the organisation safeguards and centralizes historic records and ultimately provides better customer service via improved efficiency and easier access to information by the people who need it. The ability to provide documents to people who have requested them online and on-demand also reinforces the Isle of Man’s commitment to open government; the organisation aims to make more of its records available online within the coming years.

The digitalisation initiative also supports the Isle of Man’s compliance practices, which have become increasingly important with the introduction of GDPR in 2018. The Isle of Man aims to maintain its reputation for meeting high international standards in its compliance practices, making sure that data is as accurate, reliable and up to date as possible.

“We want to be early adopters of international guidelines; we want to make sure that IT systems can keep up as well,” Clague said. “Our goal is to enable the organisation to evolve with international standards, and we want our practices to be demonstrable, while keeping compliance overhead low.”

While the registry’s initial phase of Laserfiche implementation included digitalisation and data migration, the organisation began seeing even more benefit when Laserfiche was integrated with the Isle of Man’s GIS platform based on Esri’s ArcGIS, as well as the government’s payment gateway in order to streamline land and deeds processes and to create a public search portal for land and deeds. The registry has worked with Laserfiche Solution Provider Manx Business Solutions for implementation, selecting the company for its expertise and experience after evaluating a number of partners.

“People make the project. We have worked with MBS and they have been a fantastic team to work with: a solution-orientated team which listens carefully to our needs and suggesting options,” Clague explained. “MBS is knowledgeable, personable, professional, and flexible at all times. To varying degrees, almost my entire team has worked with MBS at some point of the project — and I’m pleased to say this view is universally shared. I take this opportunity to thank the MBS team, for the work it has done and work it continues to provide — keep up the good work.”

The Isle of Man’s public portal now allows people to access a Laserfiche online 24/7 to purchase deeds. Through the Laserfiche integration with ESRI, the Land Registry also enables customers to search an online map for properties, and view all available documents related to those properties.

“The Isle of Man’s new Land Registry solution based on our ArcGIS technology required a document management element,” said Nart Tamash, solution architect at ESRI UK. “This is where the team at MBS and Laserfiche came into play which enabled us to deliver an end-to-end solution to the Isle of Man’s Central Registry by integrating our off-the-shelf web-based products. The most exciting thing is that this pattern is repeatable, and customisable thanks to our APIs, across many organisations and use cases that require a world class mapping and document management system.”

Quinn Legal, a leading law firm on the Isle of Man, has saved significant time utilising the Laserfiche driven Land and Deeds Registry process. Historically, the firm’s staff would have had to visit the registry on a daily basis whereas now, most of their business can be undertaken online.

“This came into its own when COVID struck, with the Island of Man going into lockdown,” said Neil Quilliam, senior conveyancer at Quinn Legal. “Quinn Legal staff were able to seamlessly continue with their daily interaction with the Land and Deeds Registry online.”

Continuous Innovation to Enhance the Employee and Citizen Experience

When lockdowns took effect, the Central Registry had to close its office to visitors in person, however, it was able to provide a digital alternative for all its services.

“Our implementation of Laserfiche was very timely,” Clague said. “This is the new normal now — we still have customers who visit the office — they may not be able to access digital forms at home for various reasons — but for the most part people now prefer to access our services online. The number of people visiting the office has dropped by 90% if not more. It’s been a massive benefit.”

Along with the rest of the world during COVID-19 surges and mandates, the Central Registry has experienced a growing demand for access to information in real-time online and digital services. By providing those digital services, the Isle of Man has been able to reduce physical foot traffic and simultaneously increase efficiency in its processes, reclaiming time that staff has used to improve the experience for both government employees and the people they serve.

“Governments can get caught in a vicious cycle when trying to do more with less, but we’ve created a virtuous circle. We’ve freed up time by digitalising, and the more that we digitalise, the more we can serve our customers. It’s allowed us to maintain and improve our services at no additional cost, even during lockdowns.”

—Ed Clague, Registrar General, Isle of Man Central Registry

“We are not resting on our laurels,” Clague added. “We want the ability to innovate and move forward. We will be using Laserfiche as a fundamental component in transforming our business. We will be moving more of our services online. We will be protecting our critical business records. And we will be improving our working environment and improving our efficiency.”

Learn more about how to prepare your organization for any unexpected circumstances with a solid business continuity plan. Download The Ultimate Guide to Business Continuity Planning now.

The Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District Digitizes to Enhance Records Management and Remote Collaboration Capabilities

The Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District (MSD) provides comprehensive wastewater and stormwater management services to over 1.3 million people in St. Louis and surrounding areas. In recent years, the organization transformed its document management processes and file sharing, transitioning to Laserfiche Cloud. Using solutions such as Laserfiche Direct Share, MSD modernized the internal and external user experience while increasing efficiency and supporting information governance. As a result of investing in a robust digital infrastructure, MSD also adapted quickly to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, equipping employees with tools to work remotely.

“The ease of adoption has been accelerated because Laserfiche is so easy to use,” said John Daly, information governance manager at MSD. “You don’t have to be a records management information governance expert to succeed with it.”

Testing the Waters for a Digital Future

Since 1954, MSD’s mission has been to protect the public’s health, safety and water environment by responsibly providing wastewater and stormwater management. While its mission hasn’t changed, MSD has identified opportunities for improving operations, empowering its employees and delivering consistent, high-quality customer service.

As local governments, agencies and special districts grow in size and services, the ability to share information and collaborate while also maintaining information governance becomes increasingly important. MSD implemented Laserfiche Cloud to enhance information sharing both internally and externally, while facilitating regulatory compliance, safeguarding electronic records and simplifying records management with Laserfiche’s records management capabilities. Along with automatic updates and easy scalability, Laserfiche Cloud has streamlined document search and retrieval, allowing staff to perform more efficiently and improve the quality of information delivered to stakeholders.

“The biggest impact of MSD’s Laserfiche Cloud initiative has been on employee productivity,” said Daly. “The ability for staff in different departments to access documents organization-wide has saved countless hours previously spent on manually requesting and sharing files.”

As part of this digital transformation initiative, staff are able to preserve critical information dating back decades — in addition to streamlining document management, this increases accessibility of important content while enabling oversight across the organization.

The operational benefits adopting a Laserfiche Cloud system were especially clear during the COVID-19 pandemic, helping staff transition to working remotely and contributing to business resiliency during the major disruption. MSD was able to continue meeting customer needs and keep staff safe at the same time. “With a high level of agility, flexibility and scalability, we couldn’t be happier with Laserfiche Cloud and its role in our organization as a core business application,” added Daly.

Interoperability is also key to MSD’s Laserfiche Cloud system, which includes custom-built integrations with Outlook and DocuSign that facilitate approval processes and improve the user experience. Designed and implemented in partnership with Accelerated Information Systems, MSD’s Laserfiche solution provider, MSD staff can drag-and-drop email directly from Outlook into the Laserfiche repository. All relevant record retention schedules are automatically applied to these uploaded emails, and attachments appear in the file’s metadata just as they would within Outlook.

“It has been extraordinary working with John Daly and the MSD team on their digital transformation,” said Zaheer Master, president at Accelerated Information Systems. “Going from a small, self-hosted Laserfiche implementation to the limitless capabilities of Laserfiche Cloud enabled MSD to better serve their constituents, even while working remotely during COVID-19. As a premier Laserfiche Cloud provider, Accelerated is excited to work with John and MSD to continue to expand their Laserfiche solution.”

“Laserfiche has really opened our eyes to new possibilities we had not even considered before,” said Daly. “We have really noticed an improvement in our overall operations since developing these integrations to automating document management processes.”

A Transparent Pipeline of Content

In addition to addressing the needs of staff members, MSD reimagined the way staff could share documents with people outside of the organization. Rather than rely on traditional methods of information sharing that lacked trackability such as email, USB drives or discs, MSD deployed Laserfiche Direct Share, which allows users to share content from their Laserfiche repository with external customers or community members in an audited and tracked manner.

“Direct Share has been one of the most useful solutions for us at MSD,” said Daly. “For the first time in the history of our organization, we are able to send documents securely and safely, which is a huge game changer.”

MSD has found Direct Share particularly useful for the legal department, which frequently sends and receives large files, and benefits from the visibility and security measures Direct Share provides. MSD attorneys can password-protect links, set the amount of time that recipients can access the document, and manage and track sharing and downloading activities

“I don’t have attorneys calling me anymore, saying, ‘How can I get these case files to someone?’” Daly said. “My phone doesn’t ring as much because now they are using Direct Share to their benefit.”

A Clear Path for Digital Transformation

Using Laserfiche Cloud, MSD continues to modernize processes enterprise-wide to reimagine how employees, vendors and citizens interact with the organization. As part of its commitment to transparency, the district created a Laserfiche-powered public portal on its new website, which gives citizens frictionless access to public documents such as those related to environmental compliance, annual reports, budgets, diversity and more.

Additionally, MSD is working to deploy a number of Laserfiche electronic forms to digitally manage activities such as travel reimbursement, company vehicle requests, badge requests, and business card requests, with more in the works. By digitizing information, forms and processes, MSD is uncovering greater efficiencies while improving the experience for employees and citizens alike.

“For me it’s all about the customer — whether internal or external,” Daly said. “Every day we have the opportunity to make someone’s day better and meeting people’s needs. Every day I’m working, I’m asking what paper-based processes we currently have that could become digital. When customers and employees find information in seconds, rather than minutes, that’s providing us with real organizational value.”

Request a demo to learn more about how Laserfiche Cloud can help your team accelerate how business gets done. 

Cabarrus County, North Carolina, Innovates with Chatbots and Laserfiche to Deliver on ERAP Funding

To assist Americans across the country who face economic uncertainty, rental debt and housing insecurity as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. federal government launched the Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP) to provide financial assistance for housing expenses and housing stability services. Along with local governments across the country, Cabarrus County, North Carolina, took on the responsibility of developing an accessible way to determine people’s eligibility and get the funds out as soon as possible.

“The IT team decided that this was going to be the most important thing we were doing,” said Todd Shanley, CIO at Cabarrus County.

The county’s IT team took quick action to put the pieces together, creating an online Laserfiche form that would capture applicants’ information and route it to the relevant departments and systems. The form was integrated with a chatbot to walk people through important eligibility requirements, providing an intuitive experience for what could have been a complex process for applicants.

The solution enabled the county to collect and process hundreds of applications, quickly getting financial relief to people who needed it. The chatbot integration also helped to immediately redirect people who were not eligible, ultimately saving time for county employees who would have had to spend time reviewing hundreds of ineligible applications.

An Intuitive Solution for Capturing Information

Serving more than 200,000 residents over 360 square miles, Cabarrus County has been recognized for its visionary leadership and good stewardship. For nearly a decade, the county has been named a Top Digital County by the Center for Digital Government.

“One of our county priorities is healthy and safe communities; another is sustainable development,” said Debbie Brannan, area manager of technology and innovation at Cabarrus County. As part of these commitments, county employees took immediate action after hearing about ERAP would assist household unable to pay rent or utilities due to COVID-19-related challenges.

“Being in the county manager’s office, I heard about the money coming — $6.5 million,” said Brannan. “We needed to find the citizens who needed that money and get it distributed quickly.”

Beyond this urgent task, Brannan noted that the county would need to document as much as possible in order to ensure distribution was fair, and that the county would meet the federal government’s rules and requirements. “My vision was that there would be an online application, and we’d be able to vet the application as much as possible,” she added. “We also wanted to get relevant information over to our social workers. We have Northwoods [case management software] integrated with Laserfiche, so we also wanted to get that information over, and then get it to finance and into our ERP so we could pay people.”

Leveraging Laserfiche Forms and business process automation, the county pulled together an electronic form to be hosted online, and a workflow to route information to the correct departments.

“Mark [McIntyre, our senior software developer] pulled together a form over the weekend, and by Monday morning, he had it done and built,” Shanley explained. “We tweaked it from there; it was fast.”

In addition to building the Laserfiche form that residents could access online, the county integrated the form with a chatbot, with the goal of guiding applicants through specific eligibility requirements and providing immediate answers so that people did not have to wait just to find out whether they were eligible for ERAP assistance.

“The set of criteria from the government was very lengthy, and some of it was very restrictive,” Shanley explained, adding that people applying for funding or services may not want to read through pages and pages of fine print in order to identify the eligibility requirements. “We provided that criteria upfront through the chatbot, so that people would get immediate feedback — they could respond to these questions and realize they were or were not qualified without having to wait long after they submitted all of their information.”

Going Beyond Expectations

While the chatbot provided a more intuitive way for people to apply for funding, it also redirected would-be applicants who were not eligible for ERAP assistance. This process reclaimed desperately needed time for county government employees, who could focus on providing other critical services during the pandemic. The county has processed more than 500 emergency rental applications in just two months.

“We don’t want people to have to wait two weeks to find out that they’re not eligible,” Shanley said. “We wanted to provide that TurboTax-style environment, which provides customers the information they need in a timely manner.”

The Cabarrus County team also took care to ensure that the form was mobile accessible, to make it usable by as many people as possible. “Accessibility is an issue for some people, but a very large percentage of our population has a smartphone,” Brannan explained. “Even if they don’t have a computer, they can use a smartphone, and they can even upload documents if they need to from their phones or take photos with their phone and upload them.”

“That was probably one of the biggest benefits to this process,” Shanley added. “All of this paperwork that the federal government is requiring — people have that stuff stored in so many different places. Rather than having to have a scanner or having to take everything to a place where they have a scanner, you can just take a picture of it and upload it from your phone.”
Smiling mature middle aged business woman using laptop working on computer sitting at desk. Happy old businesswoman hr holding cv interviewing distance applicant, senior seeker searching job online.

The Future of Citizen Services

Cabarrus County has been using solutions that integrate chatbots and Laserfiche in order to help people use other digital services, including a personal status request (PSR) form for county employees, and a quarterly inspections process for the sheriff’s department. These solutions have enhanced users’ experience by auto-populating data from previous form submissions, cutting down time that people have to spend filling out forms.

“Cabarrus County continues to be a shining example of how enterprise adoption of a technology has exponential benefits to the organization,” said Traci Small, EVP of sales and marketing at MCCi, Cabarrus County’s Laserfiche solution provider. “The county’s deep knowledge of Laserfiche and desire to serve is second-to-none. We have even used this same chatbot technology at MCCi after we saw how well it worked at Cabarrus. We learn just as much from our customers as they do from us. Cabarrus County citizens have a top-notch team as do we in a client partner.”

“The importance of experience — it’s going to change how governments interact with their customers every day,” Shanley said. “People don’t want to submit information and then have to wait. That makes call volumes go up, and there are unintended consequences for governments. If you’re presenting people with overly complicated forms, it could cause someone who really needs help to just give up on the process.”

To date, the county has paid out over $330,000 in ERAP funding to eligible people.

“Without an established workflow application like Laserfiche in place, we would have been in trouble,” Shanley added. “We would have spent months trying to make this work.”

The county continues to digitally transform processes across the organization, with a focus on supporting more accessible, more transparent and more intuitive public services.

“My vision for Laserfiche Forms and our chatbots to present more of a conversation with our employees and citizens,” said Brannan. “We get feedback that people want to come and talk — they don’t want to fill out a form. But if we make our forms conversational, we make them more accessible and easier to understand.”

“We are trying to continue our growth and the growth of opportunities, while providing transparent and accountable government,” Brannan said. “Laserfiche does a good job of helping us do that.”

Read the Center for Digital Government report: “The Way Forward: Insights for Government Leaders on Modernizing Service Delivery” for more on how governments are meeting rapidly changing citizen needs using technology.

Leesburg, Virginia Supports Community and Local Businesses with Laserfiche Cloud

The information technology department for Leesburg, the largest town in Virginia, has a mission to “exceed the Town of Leesburg’s residents’ and employees’ expectations in delivering accessible and reilable technology services — creating a greater good for the local community.” This mission has the department constantly looking ahead to the technology solutions that will allow for the highest standards of customer service, security and system reliability, even in times of change.

The need for greater adaptability led the town to move its enterprise content management (ECM) to Laserfiche Cloud. The cloud-based system has been an invaluable asset to Leesburg government staff as it allowed for flexibility during stay-at-home mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic, but also because it has enabled IT to quickly respond to all types of needs — from internal service requests to public-facing financial relief programs.

The town has been able to expand its digital capabilities beyond the limitations of self-hosted servers with Laserfiche Cloud. This flexible and scalable environment has enabled Leesburg to achieve business continuity while supporting both staff and the community, even as remote and hybrid work becomes more prevalent.

“Laserfiche has helped us to handle data collection digitally and be elastic while responding to major changes within our IT infrastructure as staff work from home,” said Jakub Jedrzejczak, Director of IT at Leesburg. “I’m so impressed by Laserfiche Cloud and its automated features and scalability.”

Automating processes in Laserfiche Cloud has helped Leesburg be more agile, while positioning the town for long-term success. Using Laserfiche’s electronic forms and business process automation capabilities, Leesburg reduced manual tasks under tight schedules and continues to improve the quality of service provided to the community. This has streamlined response times to citizens, businesses and other organizations while enhancing the overall digital experience and maintaining fairness and transparency

Solutions to Support Local Businesses, Nonprofits and Town Staff

“Access to documents was key for us,” Jedrzejczak said. “We had to streamline a lot of internal processes and external services that we offer to support to our community.”

Like many other localities, during the pandemic, Leesburg needed a solution to process $6 million in funding under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act to support eligible businesses and nonprofit organizations.

“Distribution of relief packages is very time sensitive,” Jedrzejczak said. “Businesses and nonprofits can’t afford to wait months for government IT to develop an effective solution, or for us to implement a new system. The faster we can process data, the faster we can provide support to our community.”

Though the town already maintained detailed information on local businesses and nonprofit organizations, the primary challenge for the Leesburg IT department was authenticating existing data and determining eligibility. Laserfiche Cloud was implemented to streamline the authentication and cross-referencing processes based on existing data on thousands of local businesses and nonprofit organizations in the finance department database. Using this data, a dedicated form was set up with required fields relating to license information, employer identification number (EIN) and other conditions. If a business or nonprofit did not meet specific conditions — such as the revenue threshold or funding information — a pop-up notification would appear to indicate that the applicant is ineligible for CARES Act funding. Applications were sorted into separate folders within the Laserfiche repository based on whether they were accepted or not, which were concurrently monitored by town staff to ensure accuracy.

The metadata from the forms submissions helped the Leesburg team determine that over 330 businesses and over 20 nonprofits were eligible for funding. Not having to sort through data manually streamlined this process, reclaiming time for staff members to focus on citizen services at a time when the town needed them most.

The form helped with the quality of CARES Act submissions as well. Applications completed using the Laserfiche online form could not be submitted with incomplete or incorrect information, meaning that staff members did not have to spend time manually verifying missing details, business licenses and misspelled organization names.

“The more that we can guide residents with requests, the faster we can respond to their needs — often in minutes rather than days if the right information in the right format is submitted,” said Jedrzejczak.

The Digital Transformation Domino Effect

Amid changing budgets and uncertain economic conditions, governments must digitize and standardize public services. At the same time, it is also increasingly important for governments to respond to disruptions quickly, using flexible and scalable solutions that enable them to keep information secure. For these reasons, Leesburg is relying on the cloud for core technology systems including ERP, asset management and ECM.

“I can eliminate the need for maintenance, and have a scalable system that has a predictable cost, and I always inherit functionality — that is why we choose Laserfiche Cloud,” Jedrzejczak said. “I don’t have to worry about uptime. I don’t have to worry about the security. I know these two components are being addressed by the Laserfiche Cloud platform. I can focus on the development of the systems and focusing on user needs versus the back end maintenance.”

While town staff work with Laserfiche Solution Provider MCCi for complex projects, Leesburg is preemptively developing solutions in-house, including the electronic forms and digital processes related to the CARES Act. Laserfiche has empowered IT department staff to create a digital town hall where innovative solutions modernize citizen services. This has enabled staff to train new users on the platform based on specific needs and connect with the Laserfiche community to share best practices on ways to streamline business processes to increase efficiencies.

Today, most of the municipality’s departments are using Laserfiche. “We support internal processes, such as in our finance department, as well as external processes,” Jedrzejczak said. “Our town council uses Laserfiche to review documents; our utilities department uses it to gather information from residents, and we process a lot of forms and approvals through Laserfiche.”

Jedrzejczak added that most local governments today experience information overload — too many emails, and too much data to process.

“Information overload is a problem, but Laserfiche helps us with it. We can’t rely on in-person or paper-based communication to gather and process information anymore,” said Jedrzejczak. “There is so much that needs to be digitized — we just can’t have paper driving processes outside the office.”

The town has been in the process of creating a digital town hall to increase access to services even further. Leesburg is also working on integrations between Laserfiche and other core systems that will enable further automation and enhanced collaboration across the organization.

Looking ahead, Leesburg is building on its success by reimagining can continuing to modernize how it delivers services.

Want to gain more insights into modernizing service delivery? Read the Center for Digital Government report: “The Way Forward: Insights for Government Leaders on Modernizing Service Delivery” to understand why technology plays a critical role in generating cost savings, continuing operations and meeting growing constituent demands.

How the Confederated Tribes of Coos Lower Umpqua Siuslaw Indians Provide Emergency Assistance

Solution Contributed By: Jan Lawrence, Digital Process Manager; Jacob Hawk, Administration & Project Assistant; Jeannie McNeil, Enrollment Coordinator and Sierra Puckett, Archivist and Technical Assistant, Confederated Tribes of Coos Lower Umpqua Siuslaw Indians

The Confederated Tribes of Coos Lower Umpqua Siuslaw Indians based in Oregon has 1,269 members located around the country. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the tribe was awarded money from the federal government to provide emergency assistance to members. The confederated tribes used Laserfiche Forms to distribute $3 million worth of funds to tribal members quickly and efficiently. The tribe also used Forms to distribute computers to tribal members for use with school or telehealth appointments.

Emergency Assistance Process

The challenge faced by the confederated tribes was to create a process to disburse money from the federal government to provide financial assistance to every tribe member, on a short timeline. The tribes wanted to streamline communications throughout the process and mail out checks quickly. It was also necessary to make sure there were no duplicate applications.

“With this form we are able to distribute $3 million in funds. Laserfiche reporting is amazing. We ran reports daily and were able to catch duplicate applications early. This whole process was completely streamlined,” says Jan Lawrence, Digital Process Manager

The application was created in Laserfiche Forms. Members were able to fill out and submit the form from any computer or mobile device. If a member was unable to fill out the form electronically, they were still able to submit a paper form. A team member then transferred the information from the paper form into an electronic form.Coos Lower Umpqua Siuslaw Indians Provide COVID-19 Relief Using Laserfiche Form

Coos Lower Umpqua Siuslaw Indians Provide COVID-19 Relief Using Laserfiche Form

Once submitted, the form is sent to the membership enrollment coordinator for verification of tribal membership. The membership enrollment coordinator looks up the member in the membership database and checks the form information for accuracy.

Once the form information is verified, the form is sent to finance as a check request. This check request form has all irrelevant information excluded, and only includes the information that finance needs to cut the check. Once the check is cut and mailed, the process ends.

Coos Lower Umpqua Siuslaw Indians Provide COVID-19 Relief Using Laserfiche Form

To keep track of how much money was disbursed, and how many members have been applying for services, the tribes ran reports on a regular schedule. These reports were exported into a spreadsheet and shared with relevant employees across the organization.

Computer Request Process

With distance learning and telehealth becoming a necessity during the COVID-19 pandemic, tribal members without computer access were at a disadvantage. To close the digital divide, the tribes created a program of disbursing computers to those who could not afford one. This computer request and disbursement process is similar to the emergency assistance process described in the previous section.

The process starts with the tribal member filling out an electronic request form. The requestor has the option of picking up the computer at one of a few locations or having it mailed.

Coos Lower Umpqua Siuslaw Indians Provide COVID-19 Relief Using Laserfiche FormCoos Lower Umpqua Siuslaw Indians Provide COVID-19 Relief Using Laserfiche Form

Once the form is submitted, the enrollment coordinator verifies the requestor’s tribal membership and program eligibility in the membership system. When the verification is completed, a notification is sent to the housing department. Department team members package and ship any computers that need to be mailed. If, at any point in the process, the requestor is deemed ineligible for the program, they are notified by email.

Coos Lower Umpqua Siuslaw Indians Provide COVID-19 Relief Using Laserfiche Workflow

To keep track of how many computers were distributed, as well as which ones were to be picked up or mailed, the housing department ran regular reports. These reports were downloaded into a spreadsheet and shared with select individuals within the organization.

Coos Lower Umpqua Siuslaw Indians Provide COVID-19 Relief Using LaserficheWant to see how Laserfiche can help your organization streamline customer-facing business processes? Schedule a free demo.