Government Archives | Page 6 of 11

Laserfiche-Driven Digital Transformation Enables Township of King to Innovate Public Services

The Township of King, located in the Greater Toronto Area in Ontario, Canada, implemented Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM) to store and centralize content, making information more accessible across the organization. Since then, the township’s staff has leveraged the software for digital transformation initiatives that go beyond document management. The township now uses Laserfiche to modernize the government experience, where citizens can access public information and submit online service requests (i.e., permits and licenses) using Laserfiche electronic forms. The township’s staff has also integrated Laserfiche with other core technologies and automated key business processes in order to accelerate service delivery.

Centralizing Content Across Departments

Over the past several years, King has assessed its digital infrastructure with the goals of ensuring employees have access to necessary information, breaking down department siloes and improving efficiency. In 2018, the township built a new municipal center, prompting a large-scale initiative to digitize and centralize content that was previously stored in filing cabinets and banker boxes, and across individual and department network drives.

“We initially looked for a solution for electronic document and records management; we have been moving away from paper, and we wanted to have one central, streamlined filing system for all electronic documents,” said Manager of Legislative Services and Deputy Clerk Denny Timm. “We saw the opportunity and improvements that would be realized if we could increase department collaboration and information sharing.”

With the support of Ricoh Canada, one of the township’s workplace technology solution providers, King implemented Laserfiche as its central digital repository. Laserfiche allowed the township to reclaim time previously spent physically searching for information — which now is accessible at staff’s fingertips. Using Laserfiche, departments have transitioned off network drives, and content has been centralized while simultaneously strengthening the municipality’s information governance program.

“Implementing Laserfiche really allowed us to look at our filing methodology and filing structure from a corporate perspective,” Timm added. “It’s like building a house — you need to build a solid foundation, organize and plan what goes in the rooms, and assign the proper access to those rooms. With Laserfiche, we have one corporate folder structure as our foundation, filled with subfolders and documents, and appropriately assigned access privileges and controls. We now have greater integrity and confidence in our information management system. We know staff are accessing what they need to access, while elevating the protection of personal and confidential information.”

As King saw the benefits of digitizing and centralizing content, they began to learn more about taking their digital transformation to the next level by integrating Laserfiche with other core technologies and using Laserfiche’s electronic forms and business process automation capabilities.

“We saw that Laserfiche was more than just a place to put files,” said Timm. “That’s when we started to view tutorials, speak with our team at Ricoh, and understand that there’s way more capability within the system than we initially thought.”

Next-Level Digital Transformation: Electronic Forms and Process Automation

King’s document management project was a catalyst for the team to reimagine how they could now use the township’s digital information in its mission to deliver citizen services, maximize efficiency and ensure employees are well equipped to respond to customer’s needs. Laserfiche’s electronic forms and business process automation capabilities enabled King to increase access to information and public services. This mindset shift came just in time — before the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the region.

“We were fortunate to have had departments adopt Laserfiche before COVID-19 arrived,” Timm said. “Staff have access to all the information they need in a central resource that they can securely access remotely. Departments also see the immediate savings in administrative work, no longer needing to file paper copies, and now being able to easily search and retrieve information.”

Now, the township is using Laserfiche to actively replace paper forms with electronic forms to make more public services available online — a key benefit during the pandemic. King recently launched a new website where constituents can access applications, permits and other essential items with an integrated payment system, including:

Building permit payments
Bulky item pickup and garbage bag tags
Pet and service animal licenses
Fire permits
Freedom of information requests
Marriage service payments
Road occupancy permits
Property information requests
Tax certificate requests
E-Billing registration for property and water bills
Temporary sign permits

In addition to increasing access to these forms, staff leveraged Laserfiche business process automation to automate information routing and approvals. Now, when a resident submits an electronic form through the township’s website, the information is automatically sent to the relevant departments and approving parties for review and approvals. By removing the dependence on manual routing, automated processes streamline the flow of information and expedite service delivery, whether employees are in-office or working remotely. Laserfiche’s process reporting and analytics also increase transparency and create opportunities for continuous process improvement.

“We are excited to see our public forms integrate with our repository, too,” said Timm. “Now, forms and information will be automatically filed in the right spot, and our approval process moves to the digital realm — we’re able to track and start looking at the analytics.”

The central repository and automated processes have also supported business continuity during COVID-19 and as the King team navigates the staff changes that all municipalities must manage.

“We have staff retiring, and that previously meant information and institutional knowledge would be lost,” said Supervisor of IT Business Systems Angelo Castillo. “Having everything in Laserfiche provides that single repository that everyone is familiar with. If we use Laserfiche for forms and processes, our staff will be comfortable using them.”

Building a Digital Future

Today, the township continues to build on its success by automating processes across all departments, with a clear vision toward creating a more modern experience for employees and the people they serve. The IT team has plans to further centralize content and processes by using Laserfiche where possible to replace niche software that individual departments may have acquired or are looking to acquire for specific processes. “Laserfiche doesn’t make digital transformation seem overly complicated because the tools are all there — we are equipped to easily automate processes without having to acquire and learn multiple small, specific pieces of software,” Callisto explained. “For example, we just successfully launched and leveraged Laserfiche forms and its business process capabilities to automate our entire Performance Development and Recognition Program (PDRP). By expanding our in-house knowledge of the system, we are beginning to build more complex and corporate wide implementations. These new electronic and automated processes streamline core critical corporate processes, making them easy and accessible to staff.”

The IT division is now aiming to create a self-service model. “The goal is to have each department build their own digital forms and publish them online,” Castillo said. “The subject-matter experts in the individual departments are going to know the processes the best, and with Laserfiche’s ease of use, we know staff are eager to build and implement!”

Into the future, the township plans to further leverage Laserfiche’s process dashboard to analyze information such as the number of permits, applications and licenses received, what time of year is the busiest, etc. “We’re really excited to dive into the data and analytics, and look at them in terms of usage and output,” Timm said. “It’s going to give us a whole new area that we haven’t explored before.”

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

How the Flood Protection Authority Processes Invoices with Laserfiche

Contributed by: Kelli Chandler, Director of Finance, Flood Protection Authority

With 265 employees across four physical locations, the Flood Protection Authority (FPA) is responsible for overseeing the flood defense system in metropolitan New Orleans, LA. FPA worked with their solution provider SYGNVS to automate the invoice approval process with Laserfiche Forms, cutting invoice processing time by more than half from 30-45 days to 10-15 days.

Vendors Upload Invoices Through a Dedicated Vendor Portal

When the FPA starts a new project, the finance director creates a project folder in the Abila MIP accounting software and specifies how the project invoices will need to be coded. The director assigns the project to a specific vendor. Each vendor is identified by a unique vendor number.

Vendors submit any invoices that need to be paid through a dedicated vendor portal on the authority’s website.

Invoices are submitted through a vendor portal on the FPA’s website.

When the vendor clicks the Submit Invoice button on the website, a vendor invoice upload form loads. This form is created in Laserfiche Forms. The vendor types in the vendor number and is presented with a list of assigned projects. This is accomplished through a lookup into Abila MIP. The vendor selects the appropriate project, enters the invoice information and uploads the actual invoice. The form automatically calculates the balance that needs to be paid based on the project information.

A vendor provides invoice information and uploads the invoice through a Laserfiche form.

After the form is submitted, it is assigned to the project manager for review. The project manager looks at the pending balance and compares it to the balance on the invoice. She or he also verifies that the coding was done properly in Abila MIP, and the work has been completed.

The project manager verifies the information on the invoice and the coding.

The invoices and associated documentation are saved in the repository, in a folder by fiscal year and vendor.

Invoices and associated documentation are saved in the Laserfiche repository.

Each invoice has appropriate metadata assigned, including the name, vendor number, date, invoice number and invoice amount.

Invoices have appropriate metadata attached.

Once a week , Accounts Payable exports the metadata information for the approved invoices from Laserfiche into a spreadsheet and uploads it into Abila MIP.

The invoice upload and approval business process designed in Laserfiche Forms.

Invoice Processing Time Has Been Cut in Half

In the first four months after launching this project, 2,000 invoices have been received through this new process. Invoice processing time has been cut by more than half. It used to take 30-45 days to process an invoice and now takes 10-15 days.

“Before Laserfiche, approving and tracking contracts and projects was super manual. The more data/documents we have in the system, the more powerful Laserfiche becomes,” says director of finance, Kelli Chandler.

See how Laserfiche can help you automate accounts payable by scheduling a free demo.

How the City of Fullerton Modernizes Elections by Automating the Candidate Nomination Process

Contributed By: Lucinda Williams, MMC, City Clerk, City of Fullerton, CA

The City of Fullerton, located in Orange County, CA, incorporated in 1904 and has a population of more than 142,000. Fullerton is a full-service city with over 500 employees and a five-member, by-district city council.

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, city facilities closed to the public and most city employees worked from home. Even after the partial reopening of city hall, citizens continued to demand that the city provide more remote services. The city clerk’s office needed to prepare for the upcoming local election, but due the uncertainty of COVID-19, this year’s preparation included planning for both in person and remote candidate processing.

Fullerton partnered with their Laserfiche solution provider, ECS Imaging, to develop an online candidate nomination process using Laserfiche Forms. The process that was developed was modeled after the Orange County Registrar of Voters online candidate filing process.

Candidates Start the Process by Filling out an Electronic Form

To begin the candidate registration process, a candidate fills out the online candidate registration form. This form asks for the candidate’s identifying information and details about the office the candidate wishes to run for. The city clerk uses this information to verify the candidate’s eligibility to run for office. The form requires the candidate to complete key fields before submitting the form for review. Certain fields, such as the driver’s license number field, require the candidate to enter the exact number of characters found on a California driver’s license.

A candidate fills out the online candidate registration form to begin the registration process.

Once the form is submitted, the candidate gets an automated confirmation message on screen and via email.

The candidate receives a confirmation message on screen.

The city clerk also receives an email notification when a new form is submitted. The city clerk clicks on the email link to open the task in Laserfiche Forms.

The city clerk receives an email notification when a new candidate registration for is submitted.

After opening the task, the city clerk sees a read-only version of the candidate registration form, except for a section on the bottom for performing the candidate eligibility determination.

The city clerk reviews the candidate information and completes the Candidate review section of the form.

If the candidate does not meet eligibility requirements, the city clerk selects “Not Registered” and includes a notation with the reason for the rejection. The candidate then receives a notification email.

The candidate is notified by email of a rejection.

If the candidate meets all of eligibility requirements, then the city clerk selects the “Registered” option. The candidate she is notified by email. The email also lets the candidate know of an upcoming meeting with the city clerk.

The candidate is notified by email when meeting eligibility requirements.

The city clerk will meet with the candidate either in person or via remote web conference. The city clerk documents the meeting in the electronic form.

The city clerk fills out notes from the meeting with the candidate, in another section on the form.

After the city clerk submits the candidate meeting form, Laserfiche Forms emails the necessary nomination forms to the candidate. The email includes a link to an electronic form that will be used to upload the completed documents, as well as an automatically generated access token. The access token provides a unique identifier to link together all of the documents submitted by this candidate later in the process.

The candidate receives and email with additional forms to fill out.

The candidate has to provide the access token in the form along with uploading the required documents.

Once the form is submitted, the city clerk is notified by email. The clerk opens the assigned task and can find all of the candidate’s information, including a link to the candidate’s submitted documents. The link opens the candidate’s folder in the repository, where all of the documents have been imported.

All documents related to the candidate are stored in the repository.

The city clerk reviews the submitted documents for completeness and adds any comments to the form before approving or revoking the candidate. The system emails the candidate of the outcome of the review.

The city clerk performs one more review of the documents before approving or revoking the candidate.

Benefits of Laserfiche

Implementing this Candidate Processing Laserfiche Forms process has provided the City of Fullerton with the ability to remain nimble and still provide excellent customer service while remaining in compliance with election regulations during the uncertainty of the COVID-19 era. The city has the ability to process candidates in person or remotely at any time. Additionally, using Laserfiche Forms for candidate processing streamlines the entire nomination process not just during COVID-19, increasing efficiency and transparency.

Learn more about this process by watching this on-demand webinar.

Oneida County Enhances Communication and Collaboration During COVID-19 and Beyond

SITUATION

• Pandemic response required quick solutions to support staff and residents
• Needed a way to immediately provision devices and enable access to systems remotely to support work from home
• Channels for reaching out to residents and local businesses impacted by COVID-19 did not exist

RESULTS

• Enabled remote work using Laserfiche
• Provided a way for the health department to reach out to people with COVID-19 and prevent further spread
• Collected local business surveys to gain an understanding of the pandemic’s impact on the economy

Oneida County, New York, faced an unprecedented set of challenges from the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. As a provider of essential services, the county government took measures to protect the health and safety of employees — especially important in one of the states with the highest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases. The county embraced digital transformation across its many departments long before the pandemic. County Executive Anthony J. Picente Jr. has prioritized the implementation of technology including Laserfiche to drive innovation and effective, efficient services for the county. This approach resulted in an easier transition to a remote workforce, and same-day turnaround time of Laserfiche processes related to the county’s COVID-19 response being accessible online.

Within the first 30 days of the pandemic in the U.S., the county transitioned over 60% of its workforce from in-office to work-from-home by using existing automated workflows in Laserfiche and other technologies. At the same time, the county rolled out three key automated processes using Laserfiche to assess employees’ abilities to work remotely; monitor and support constituents who have tested positive for COVID-19; and assess business impact in the wake of the pandemic.

“This pandemic has presented county governments with many challenges,” Picente said. “Early on in the crisis, Oneida County acted quickly and decisively to safeguard the public and those maneuvers put us in position to be one of the first places in the state to enter into phased reopening. Our use of technology has been a key factor in continuing operations, and enabling continuity of citizen services. We had been using Laserfiche in many different ways prior to this, and we were able to build on those solutions to develop new ones that fit our current needs.”

Springing Into Action: Enabling Work from Home

At the beginning of March, when many government organizations across the country were just starting to realize the impact the virus could have on day-to-day life, Oneida County used Laserfiche to create an electronic form that helped assess various factors that enable county employees to work from home.

Each employee was required to fill out the form confirming home internet access, whether or not they needed any county-issued devices to do their job properly (e.g., tablets, laptops, cellphones), the percentage of daily tasks that each individual worker could do with virtual access to the county network, and how long each employee estimated they could effectively work remotely.

“The form centralizes the overall transition process and standardizes the information collected from each employee, rather than leaving it up to various managers or individuals,” said Oneida County IT Director AnneMarie Ambrose.

County leadership knew, however, that in order to best serve citizens during an emergency, the county needed to go beyond transitioning its own employees to remote roles. The county needed to ensure better information sharing among departments that serve residents.

Monitoring and Supporting Citizens with COVID-19

As COVID-19 spread throughout the state of New York, local health departments were quickly taxed with determining what citizens may have had contact with the virus, who had been tested, the results of each test, and more. Oneida County staff realized immediately that the same Laserfiche technology the county had worked with since 2013 could be leveraged to assist the local health department.

Laserfiche electronic forms were rolled out to local healthcare providers across the county so that each practitioner could give the county’s health department information about people who had been tested for COVID-19, as well as their healthcare provider and physician’s information. This process now provides the county with basic information and the ability to reach out to people who have tested positive in order to make sure they have the proper isolation guidelines, follow up with them to see how their self-isolation is going, and prevent further spread.

Taking this a step further, the health department contacts those under monitoring each day, to track vital signs and give patients a channel to ask for additional assistance if needed. “Because there are hundreds and hundreds of people to contact on a daily basis, we decided to automate the process using Laserfiche,” Ambrose said.

The automated process enables patients to submit a consent form with their preferred method of contact (email, text or phone call) to the health department. Every day at 5 p.m., notifications are automatically sent to everyone in the database that needs to self-report, with a deadline of 11 a.m. the following day. The department also automatically receives a list of those who have not self-reported by 11 a.m., so they can be contacted by phone.

“During this challenging time in 2020, our technical staff quickly pivoted to help Oneida meet their needs with these digital forms and processes,” said Mike Rizzo, Laserfiche operations manager for ICC Community Development Solutions, the county’s Laserfiche solution provider. “Our team helped lighten the load of several county departments, especially the Health Department, in order for government operations to continue to function at the highest level during this unprecedented time.”

Outreach to Local Businesses and Planning for Post-Pandemic Life

Meanwhile, the team at Oneida County knew that local businesses were feeling the brunt of stay-at-home orders that were going into place in New York State and across the U.S. It was essential for county leaders to assess the economic impact on businesses as well as create a better avenue for communication between citizens and their local government.

The Oneida County Planning Department leveraged Laserfiche to automate the process of collecting business impact surveys aimed at local businesses. The goal was to enable businesses to digitally submit information that would help the county understand the current state of the local economy, and what impact the virus is having on local businesses. Business owners have been asked to fill out the form with information such as how many people they employed before COVID-19; how many people they employ currently during the crisis; what revenue was in 2019 in comparison to now; whether they have business interruption insurance that will cover current losses; and how they think business will be after the state of emergency is lifted.

While the county’s first priority is of course to keep citizens as safe and healthy as possible, it also realizes the importance of planning for life after the crisis. Thus far, over 300 submissions have been made. The county is making sure that local businesses are not alone in this crisis and working with local business leaders to plan for what resources local businesses will need once the area is ready to reopen the economy.

As a result of the business impact survey, the county has been able to assist employers that are required by the State of New York, under Executive Order 202.16, to provide their employees with personal protection equipment (PPE). The county formed a consortium to get a supply of masks at a fair price, a testament to the county’s commitment to keeping citizens safe and healthy.

Oneida County continues to work closely with its Laserfiche Solution Provider, General Code, and Laserfiche to assess additional areas where technology can be applied to streamline operations and to ensure continuity of citizen services. The county already plans to bring additional services online using Laserfiche to automate essential processes to enhance the citizen experience. In the meantime, Oneida County continues to use these tools to provide a better avenue for communication between its citizens and their local government.

Download The Ultimate Guide to Business Continuity eBook to learn more about how to keep business moving when your employees, customers and constituents need it most.

For more on how Laserfiche can support your business continuity planning, visit the Business Continuity Planning (BCP) resource page.

How to Expand Laserfiche Beyond Your Organization

Whether it is to access documents from your repository using the Windows or web client, or to submit and review various electronic forms, you’ve gotten used to using Laserfiche internally. Yet, nearly all organizations, whether private and public, have to interact with customers and citizens on a regular basis. That may involve fielding phone calls and emails, providing requested information, accepting forms to process permits or enrollment, or meeting face to face just to obtain information to get a process started. With tools such as Laserfiche Forms, the WebLink public portal and direct file share, Laserfiche can help you provide a better customer experience, reduce time spent on routine interactions and enable you to spend more time building meaningful customer and citizen relationships.

Laserfiche Forms

Instead of customers coming in person to submit requests or mailing in paper forms, you can have them fill out an electronic form instead. They can even upload documents or photos to the form to save time and build a complete application package.

Information submitted through these forms can be pushed to an external line-of-business application without employees having to decipher paper forms to re-enter information.

Electronic forms can improve experience for external users.

If you work for a college, university or school district, you can convert a lot of common paper forms usually filled out by students and parents into electronic forms. You can host these forms on your organization’s website or within your app, if you have one.

Some examples of organizations that have extended Laserfiche Forms usage to external users include:

Oakwood University. The university streamlined the graduation clearance process.
Cowlitz County, WA. The county automated the property value appeal process.
City of Southlake, TX. The city automated police department hiring.
T Bank. The bank simplified the lending process.

WebLink Public Portal

If your company has the Laserfiche WebLink public portal, then it can use it to share documents with the public and other employees outside of the organization. For example, a city can host meeting agendas and other public records in the public portal so that citizens can find the documents they need without having to contact the office or department. The city of Ithaca, NY transformed the permitting process by letting the public view permit information from the city’s website through WebLink.

Other examples of documents that can be shared with the public via WebLink include meeting agendas, historical documents, company financial statements, fund prospectuses and other public records.

If you don’t use the WebLink public portal but frequently deal with public records requests, you can use Forms and Workflow to streamline fulfillment of these requests.

Direct File Share

You can also share content from your Laserfiche repository with external users in a manner that is tracked and secured within Laserfiche. This is called direct share. When you send documents through direct share, the recipient will receive a URL through which they can access the files. You can specify the number of days until the URL link expires.

Using direct share helps reduce the risk of sending important data to the wrong person, and limits the access they may have to the document. It is also useful for sharing files that would otherwise be too large to attach to an email.

Direct share can be a component of these business processes:

Contract management
New account opening
Benefits enrollment
Legal document requests

More information about using direct share can be found in the product documentation.

Direct share simplifies sharing documents with external users.

Embed Laserfiche in Other Applications

Laserfiche Forms and WebLink can be easily embedded in websites and external facing applications. For example, the city of Newport Beach, CA embedded WebLink into the city’s website, which allows the public to search for permits without even realizing that they are searching in Laserfiche.

WebLink is embedded in the website of the city of Newport Beach, CA, allowing the public to search for permits.

Furniture store chain Steinhafels Inc. links to the company’s employment application, a Laserfiche form, from job postings posted on external websites.

You can also integrate Laserfiche with your geographic information system (GIS). In this way, clicking on a parcel or building on a map on your website, can open any related documents in Laserfiche.

How Cowlitz County Uses Laserfiche to Respond to the COVID-19 Crisis

Solution Provided By: Chelsey Hulsey Pedersen, Laserfiche Specialist, Cowlitz County

Cowlitz County, WA has a population of over 102,000 residents. When the COVID-19 virus hit, the state of Washington issued a Stay Home, Stay Healthy order, which means non-essential businesses are not able to operate and social gatherings are more or less prohibited. In order to respond to this crisis, the county created a cooperative, multi-jurisdiction, multi-discipline group of people to act as the Incident Management Team.

The County Needed a Central Repository for All Related Documents

Not every county agency has Laserfiche, so the team had to come up with some creative solution to get this diverse group utilizing a secure central source to hold their documents, to collect data and convey critical information.

The county decided to store all related files in the Laserfiche repository. A team member tracks down all electronic files from various network folders, as well as cloud storage services, and imports them into Laserfiche. The team member also scans in any physical files. After import, the team member applies the appropriate template and populates the fields. A workflow routes the indexed documents to the correct folder in the repository for archival.

Documents are stored by type. Shortcuts to documents are also placed in folders pertaining to day so that it is easy to review everything that happened on a given day at a glance.

An Electronic Form is Used to Survey Care Facilities

Another critical process that has been streamlined using Laserfiche is surveying various long term care facilities such as retirement homes to determine their personal protective equipment (PPE) supply and testing capacity. Before the Forms process was implemented, a member of the incident management team would reach out to these facilities daily by phone to get these questions answered. An electronic form streamlines information gathering as staff at facilities can fill out the form and submit it themselves.

A delegate from each facility fills out the form daily to report the facility’s status. A member of the incident management team can review the submissions in the repository or by using a simple dashboard that shows an overview of each facility at a glance.

This dashboard is simply another Laserfiche form that compiles all the information from the various submissions in one place. After each form is submitted, the information in the form is saved in a database. This makes it easy to pull and display in the dashboard.

The county started by surveying six facilities but now surveys 20 different facilities and new ones come on board as needed.

Laserfiche Provides Citizens with the Most Updated Information

As the county receives new test results for COVID-19, the public information team has been keeping the public informed by issuing a press release for each positive case that details the patient’s general age, gender and current status.

This information is now listed on the county’s special COVID-19 website. In order to generate that report, data is captured first through Forms and then stored in a database. The data is pushed into another form that is embedded in the website through an iFrame. The website report is updated automatically if there are any changes to the data.

This simple process has considerably reduced the public information team’s workload. The team can focus on getting information out to the public instead of up constantly updating the website.

Laserfiche Keeps the Public Educated About Compliance with the Stay Home, Stay Healthy Order

Another way that Forms has helped the Cowlitz County Incident Management Team is through the noncompliance inquiry form.

Prior to implementing this Forms process, the county’s 911 call center was inundated with people calling to report what they believed were violations of the governor’s Stay Home, Stay Healthy order. In order to allow the 911 call center to tend to more pressing emergencies, the county developed a noncompliance inquiry form.

A law enforcement officer reviews each inquiry and follows up with the subject of the complaint to educate them about how they can continue through this period of quarantine safely. In just three weeks after implementation, the county closed out over 160 inquiries.

Are you interested in learning how Laserfiche can help your organization work from home during this COVID-19 crisis? We’ve put together a list of frequently asked questions about using Laserfiche to support remote work.

Optimize Citizen Services by Automating Your Accounts Payable Process

How Cowlitz County Automated the Property Value Appeal Process

Solution Provided By: Chelsey Hulsey Pedersen, Laserfiche Specialist, Cowlitz County

Cowlitz County, WA has a population of over 102,000 residents and approximately 60,000 parcels of land – both residential and commercial. Each property is either physically inspected or statistically reviewed by an appraiser every year to determine its property value for taxation purposes. Once the value is finalized, the Assessor’s Office sends the taxpayer a Notice of Value which initiates a 30-day appeal period.

If the property owner disagrees with the assessed value, he or she can submit an appeal during this time. Some of these appeals are resolved without a hearing, though sometimes the appellant must plead their case to the county board of equalization. Whatever the outcome, the process has many intermediary steps, which used to be manual and paper driven. All petitions and their associated attachments were submitted on paper. The assessor’s office would make a copy for their paper files. Even though the documents were stored in petition folders in Laserfiche, the assessor’s office still preferred to keep paper versions.

The county transformed this process using Laserfiche Forms and Workflow.

The New Process is Managed Using Laserfiche Forms

The appellant submits the property value petition through an electronic form. This petition form is divided into six sections. Each section asks for a different piece of information.

Before the letting the appellant fill out the petition, the form ensures eligibility.

The appellant can only submit one petition per parcel, per assessment year. There is a lookup configured in the form that checks the parcel number against the database to make sure that it is valid and that there are no other petitions on file for it for the current year.

A database lookup in the form validates the parcel.

The appellant must specify whether to receive all communication regarding this petition electronically or physically. Appellants who elect to receive electronic communications will receive all notices through automatically generated emails. Applicants who elect to receive physical communications will receive a letter that is printed and mailed by either the clerk of the board or the chief appraiser. Over half of applicants opt for electronic communications.

The appellant fills out contact information, including how he or she wants to receive communications throughout the process.

The assessor’s property value is populated from the database based on the parcel number. The appellant must include the property value that he or she thinks is correct.

The appellant provides estimated property values.

The appellant must also specify a valid reason for the appeal. Some valid reasons include problems/damages with the property that weren’t apparent during the assessment, external economic forces such as a change to the neighborhood containing the property, etc.

The appellant must provide specific evidence that the property value needs to be changed.

The petition includes a section for additional property information that is optional to fill out.

Before submitting the petition, the appellant must upload a copy of the notice of valuation, which was already provided by the assessor. The petitioner may also use a custom link to access a copy of the notice if needed.

The final step in the petition is uploading a copy of the notice of valuation.

Sometimes, an appellant prefers to submit a petition in person. The clerk then fills out the Laserfiche form on behalf of the applicant and scans in any supplemental documents.

After submission, this petition is routed to the clerk of the board for review. The clerk reviews the petition to make sure that there is enough evidence provided for the petition to be considered compliant. At this step, the clerk can contact the appellant to clarify or update any information. If the petition is compliant, the clerk assigns a unique petition number.

The clerk of the board reviews the petition to make sure that is compliant.

If the appellant elected to receive information electronically, he or she receives a confirmation email once the clerk has completed her task. If the appellant elected to receive information via physical mail, Workflow generates a letter that the clerk prints and mails.

The email and letter contain the petition number as well as the access key that the appellant can use to look up documentation related to the petition in the future.

Appellants receive a confirmation email or letter once their petition has been accepted.

The petition is then routed to the chief appraiser inside the assessor’s office, who reviews the petition and selects the appraiser most qualified to handle this case.

The chief appraiser assigns an appraiser to handle the petition.

The petition is routed to the assigned appraiser and the appellant is either sent an email or letter letting them know the appraiser’s contact information.

The appraiser has two options:

Compromise on a new property value (if there is sufficient evidence to support a change).
Take the appeal to a hearing before the board of equalization to argue for maintaining the original value.

If the appraiser selects the first option, then he or she is prompted to fill out the value change fields within their user task which will be used to generate a document called a stipulation. If the appraiser selects the second option, he or she drafts a response document and uploads it within their user task. These documents must be reviewed and approved by the chief appraiser before being sent to the appellant.

The appraiser fills out a form to generate a stipulation.

Stipulations are signed by the chief appraiser and appellant, either electronically or by hand depending on the communications method selected by the appellant earlier in the process.

Below is the full Laserfiche Forms process diagram for the property value appeal process.

Appellants Can Access Documentation through a Custom Dashboard

The county developed an innovative way of sharing documents with appellants throughout the process. Every time a document is generated it is saved in the repository. Laserfiche Workflow creates the entry, generates a Laserfiche WebLink URL and stores this URL in a database table along with all the other information about the petition.

Laserfiche Workflow creates a WebLink URL for the document and stores it into the database alongside other information about the petition.

If the appellant wants to access documents related to a particular petition, he or she opens the petition dashboard. This dashboard is a Laserfiche form with the submit button hidden unless the appellant is performing an action, such as uploading evidence, submitting a withdrawal, etc.

The appellant enters the petition number and access key provided in the initial confirmation letter. Forms performs a lookup into the database and fills specific hidden fields with the document’s URL. The documents are opened in WebLink through an iFrame embedded in the form.

Appellants can access documents related to a petition through a dashboard.

“By storing the URL in the database with the other petition information, we can provide access to one or multiple documents which will always be up to date. If there are revisions to a document, we override the URL in the database,” says Laserfiche specialist, Chelsey Hulsey Pedersen.

Documents are loaded from WebLink displayed in an embedded iFrame.

The Clerk of the Board Schedules Hearings

If the petition is not stipulated or withdrawn, the clerk of the board will schedule a hearing. The clerk opens up a hearing dashboard, which is basically an electronic form that contains a table filled with information from a look up into the database containing all of the petitions. The clerk can quickly see which petitions are active, stipulated or withdrawn, and can then schedule the hearings directly though this dashboard.

The clerk of the board can see information about all petitions that are active, stipulated or withdrawn in a central dashboard.

After the hearing is over, the clerk of the board uses Forms to populate a board order. He or she selects all attendees, types out the board findings and determination, and submits.

An electronic form helps the clerk generate a board order.

The board order is generated with data from the electronic form.

Workflow automatically generates a board order document in Microsoft Word, which the appellant can access through the online portal.

The board can make one of three decisions:

Sustain the assessor’s property value.
Overrule the assessor’s property value.
Approve a new property value provided by the assessor.

All documentation related to every petition is stored in the appropriate folder in the repository.

All petitions and related documents are stored in individual folders in the repository by year.

Benefits of Laserfiche

Automating the property tax assessment appeal process with Laserfiche has resulted in many benefits.

It used to take the clerk 15-20 minutes per petition to scan it in, enter the metadata and create a physical file in the cabinet. If there was a problem with the petition, it would take anywhere from 10 minutes to a couple weeks to resolve it. Now, with the online form it takes two minutes to process the petition. If the appellant submits the petition on paper, it takes up to 10 minutes to enter the data into the electronic form and scan in the attachments. Since the form has many required fields, petitions are submitted with fewer errors that need correcting.
The clerk used to take from an hour to 90 minutes to schedule one day’s worth of hearings using a separate spreadsheet. There are usually three or four hearing days, based on the number of petitions. It takes 15 minutes to schedule a full day’s worth of hearings now with the new dashboard.
Processing a stipulation in person took about 25 minutes and by mail from five days to two weeks. Now, the process is automated and can take as little as 10 minutes from start to finish.

Mille Lacs Corporate Ventures Transitions Corporate Operations to Laserfiche Cloud

Mille Lacs Corporate Ventures (MLCV), created by the tribal government of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, manages the business affairs of the Band. This includes oversight of two casinos, Grand Casino Mille Lacs and Grand Casino Hinckley, which employ nearly 3,000 people and welcome millions of guests each year. The casinos, as well as the rest of the Band’s portfolio, use Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM) to automate and streamline key business processes.

Over the years, the casinos in particular have achieved great economic success thanks to a strong operations infrastructure powered by Laserfiche. That steady growth, however, has led to a very large and complex business environment that is catered to sustaining the needs of the casinos. The MLCV leadership team knew that they needed to create a separate business environment for corporate operations to maintain performance, so they made the decision to migrate MLCV content and processes to Laserfiche Cloud in order to create a more accessible and agile environment for corporate operations.

Transitioning Key Business Processes to the Cloud

For the last 10 years, Laserfiche has been instrumental in supporting the Band’s mission of building a sound economic future for generations to come by enabling the Band to standardize, automate and optimize core company processes. Having initially deployed Laserfiche on-premises, the MLCV team was confident that they could leverage Laserfiche Cloud to build an accessible corporate business environment quickly, with the added bonus of familiar technology.

“The digital workplace is constantly evolving, and the obvious next step for us was to start transitioning operations to the cloud,” said Angie Litchy, CIO of Mille Lacs Corporate Ventures. “We selected Laserfiche Cloud because we already had a successful on-prem solution, which means we could easily migrate key workflows and ensure business continuity while we made the transition.”

“Mille Lacs Corporate Ventures has always been at the forefront of using technology to create efficiencies,” said Ned Weizenegger, COO at Laserfiche Solution Provider Minokaw Technologies. “Moving operations to the cloud was a natural next step, and aligns well with MLCV’s vision of improving businesses and communities by infusing passion and ideas.”

Among the first workflows that Mille Lacs Corporate Ventures migrated to the cloud was the contract management process.

“Before our initial Laserfiche solution was implemented, contracts were impossible to get a status on because the process varied from person to person, which created bottlenecks and lost information,” said Andrew McElrath, strategic project manager at Mille Lacs Corporate Ventures. “Laserfiche introduced uniformity and a clear line of authority, which ultimately expedited the entire process from weeks to just hours. It was a priority to ensure that this process wasn’t interrupted as we transitioned operations to the cloud.”

The contract process was migrated to the cloud with few alterations. Today, associates can start the contract process by submitting a Laserfiche Form with the contract for review. The information is automatically routed to the submitter’s supervisor, contract coordinator, COO, CFO and legal counsel for review and approval. The document is then sent to the legal coordinator who prepares the document for final signature by the vendor, and then the countersignature of the MLCV CEO. The legal coordinator also stores a final version in the Laserfiche repository.

“In Laserfiche Cloud, it’s easier for us to determine where requests are in the process at a glance,” McElrath said. “And the transition itself was fairly easy. Our Laserfiche Solution Provider mocked up the forms and process for us, then we would review it and suggest changes. The most important part of the process is to communicate clearly and test thoroughly so that your solution fits your needs once it has been launched.”

Reevaluating Business Needs

Another major benefit of transitioning to the cloud was that it created an opportunity for MLCV leadership to reevaluate the organization’s established processes and make adjustments if needed.

“We have been using and building upon our Laserfiche Workflows for a number of years, and the way our business operates has evolved since that initial implementation,” said McElrath. “We wanted to introduce more efficiency into our processes, so we took a hard look at what we were doing and how we could do it better.”

For example, during the transition, the MLCV team realized that the purchasing process was cumbersome and it could be streamlined further. Migrating to the cloud provided the chance to take another look at the process and simplify it.

Today, associates can access Laserfiche Cloud in order to submit a purchase request. After logging into the online system, the employee navigates to the purchase request page, fills out required fields (such as the purchase amount, purchase order number and vendor IDs), attaches required materials, and submits the request. From there, the request is routed to an approver depending on the cost of the purchase. The appropriate reviewers will then approve or reject the purchase order through the system. If approved, the information is submitted to a purchasing agent who can then follow through with the request.

“The entire process is completed in the cloud,” said McElrath. “Every individual that is included in the workflow can complete their portion of the process from the comfort of their home, from a conference or on an airplane. All they need is a mobile device and access to the internet.”

Looking ahead

Mille Lacs Corporate Ventures has migrated many business processes to Laserfiche Cloud including contract management, purchase order requests, annual appraisals, direct deposits, system access requests, tuition reimbursement requests and more. This has been especially helpful since all the company officers now have remote access to one common business platform, enabling the organization to standardize, streamline and expedite major business processes.

“Laserfiche’s compliance tools in the cloud, and knowing that Laserfiche takes security very seriously have been important factors in our decision making.”

—Andrew McElrath, strategic project manager at Mille Lacs Corporate Ventures

Other benefits to transitioning to Laserfiche Cloud include:

The organization easily migrated key business processes to Laserfiche Cloud without introducing a learning curve or creating a gap in business continuity.
Employees no longer need to be on-site in order to complete work, which has reduced bottlenecks, improved efficiency and bolstered productivity.
MLCV simplified operations since Laserfiche Cloud requires no physical hardware and users receive instant updates.

“Once you’re invested in Laserfiche as a platform, you start to unlock a lot of the value,” said Litchy. “Now that we have the system, we are invested in leveraging it to its full potential to reach our business goals.”

Find out more about the benefits of managing content and automating business processes in the cloud. Click here to visit our Laserfiche Cloud page and get a free trial.

How Westbank First Nation Uses Laserfiche to Improve the Employee Experience

Laserfiche Solution Contributed By: Chad Rota, Supervisor, Records and Information Management, Westbank First Nation

Located in the Okanagan region of British Columbia, Canada, self-governing Westbank First Nation (WFN) is one of seven bands that comprise the Okanagan Nation Alliance. WFN has a membership of approximately 900 people and employs more than 200 staff to serve the nearly 10,000 residents living on Westbank reserve lands.

Before Laserfiche, WFN used paper forms to process employee change notification requests. These forms started out as PDF forms and were printed, signed, and passed around the various departments through inter-office mail. This process was inefficient, time consuming, and prone to lost and/or wasted paper: if any update needed to be made to the request, the process had to start all over.

Laserfiche Forms Built a Lot More Flexibility into the Process

Instead of filling out a PDF form and printing it, an employee now fills out an electronic form. The employee can select the appropriate manager to whom the request should be routed. If the employee reports directly to the director of operations, then the application is routed directly there and skips all the other approval levels in between.

This image shows an electronic form with various options for status changes — The employee can select from multiple status change options

At each level of approval, the approver has the option of sending the request to another manager, directly to human resources, or back to the submitter with required changes.

This image shows an electronic forms with three different options for approval decisions — The approver can make one of three decisions before submitting the form

Each request can be reviewed and approved by one or multiple people. Once all managers have viewed and approved it, the request is vetted by human resources and then sent to the director of operations for final approval. Throughout the process, the request can be sent back to either reviewer or submitter at any time to make changes. Each reviewer can also make some changes to the form while reviewing it.

Finalized requests are stored in Laserfiche, and Forms sends an automatic notification to payroll. A payroll employee checks that all documentation in the folder is compiled properly and makes the appropriate changes to the payroll system. Once finished with their task, the payroll employee launches a Laserfiche Workflow business process which routes the documents to the appropriate places in the repository for storage, names them correctly, and applies the relevant security tags based on the document type.

This workflow also uses the Employee Number field to look up information in the human resources database to populate the rest of each document’s fields.

This image shows a Laserfiche workflow taht routes documents to the right folders. — Laserfiche Workflow moves the documents to the right folders and applies the appropriate security tags. Click to view larger in a new window.

This Workflow business process is used to move, rename, and apply security to all human resources documents, not just change requests. WFN processes over 50 human resources documents every week, and this workflow ensures that the human resources portion of the repository remains organized and secure.

Employees Can Access All Forms and Documents through a Custom Portal

In order to help employees find the appropriate document or form to fill out, the staff at WFN created a custom staff resources portal. This portal is actually a Laserfiche form with the Submit button hidden. The button is hidden by making its color and text blend in with the background.

The staff resources page is created in Laserfiche Forms

This image shows how to format the Submit button so that it blends in with the background color. — The color of the Submit button can be changed in the Themes tab in Laserfiche Forms

Employees specify what they would like to do by checking the appropriate boxes. This opens up other fields which contain links to the appropriate Laserfiche WebLink pages or Laserfiche Forms, including any directions.

This image shows the employee portal when a user checks the Policies and Procedures Library option — Different options appear based on what was checked for the first question

Since launching the staff resources page, the records management and information technology teams have received significantly fewer emails and calls with questions regarding where to access specific forms. Employees are able to find everything they need on their own. Since this portal is created using Laserfiche Forms, it can be easily modified and updated with any new available resources.

“The new portal has eliminated a lot of mystery and curiosity around Laserfiche. Users can now access everything in one place. This has led to a lot more independent Laserfiche users,” says Chad Rota, Supervisor, Records and Information Management.

Moving forward, WFN plans on exploring an integration between its payroll system and Laserfiche using Laserfiche Connector to help automate various human resources processes even further.

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Learn more about this process by watching this on-demand webinar.

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The New Process is Managed Using Laserfiche Forms

Appellants Can Access Documentation through a Custom Dashboard

The Clerk of the Board Schedules Hearings

Benefits of Laserfiche

Transitioning Key Business Processes to the Cloud

Reevaluating Business Needs

Looking ahead

Laserfiche Forms Built a Lot More Flexibility into the Process

Employees Can Access All Forms and Documents through a Custom Portal