Imagine facing a harsh winter without heat. Or struggling to put food on the table for your family. For many individuals and families across northern Minnesota, these challenges are a reality. Arrowhead Economic Opportunity Agency (AEOA) has a mission to help them. With programs spanning housing, energy assistance, Head Start, SNAP, senior services and transportation, AEOA delivers these critical services to thousands of Minnesotans each year.

The work is both high-volume and time sensitive. For years, much of it depended on paper files and manual processes. Across departments, staff managed large volumes of documentation by hand:

These processes created delays at multiple points in the workflow. Staff often had to search across file cabinets, coordinate handoffs between teams or track down missing information. This made it harder for AEOA to respond quickly to community needs. It also provided limited visibility into where applications or documents were in the process, which made it especially challenging for managers and program leaders responsible for oversight and reporting.

“We were managing critical programs with systems that made it harder to move quickly,” said Emily Celley, chief financial officer at AEOA. “When your mission is to serve people in urgent situations, operational efficiency directly impacts outcomes.”

AEOA initially adopted Laserfiche to replace paper-based files and centralize how staff store, retrieve and manage program documents. Over time, use of the platform evolved into a foundation for how AEOA manages its programs, data and day-to-day operations.

Working with Laserfiche partner OPG-3, AEOA expanded Laserfiche across departments, building and refining workflows to meet the needs of each program.

“From the beginning, we weren’t looking to just digitize documents. We wanted to build processes that could grow with us,” said Celley. “The Laserfiche platform lets us continuously improve how we work.”

One of the strongest examples is the Energy Assistance Program. Previously, applications were managed as paper files, manually sorted and routed. Today, applications are batch scanned into Laserfiche and processed through automated workflows. Metadata determines how each application is categorized and routed, including directing urgent cases, such as households facing shutoff notices, into priority workflows. This eliminates the need to pull and manage physical folders and enables AEOA to identify and address time-sensitive cases more quickly.

Similar improvements extend across AEOA, where Laserfiche supports a wide range of high-volume, digital workflows across programs:

As Laserfiche adoption grew, AEOA modernized its infrastructure by migrating to the cloud. Moving away from aging on-premises servers reduced the burden of system maintenance while improving accessibility for staff across locations.

A phased migration allowed AEOA to continue expanding its use of Laserfiche without being limited by infrastructure constraints. Today, the cloud environment supports ongoing innovation and gives staff faster, more reliable access to information across programs.

That same visibility also strengthens how AEOA manages risk, compliance and data security across its programs. The nature of AEOA’s work means it handles vast amounts of sensitive client and program data. Laserfiche enables the organization to control access to information based on roles, supporting confidentiality while maintaining accessibility for authorized users. The system also simplifies audit preparation by allowing staff to quickly compile documentation across thousands of records.

“In our environment, compliance and accountability are critical,” said Celley. “Laserfiche gives us confidence that we can meet those requirements while still operating efficiently.”

AEOA staff now spend less time managing paperwork and more time supporting Minnesotans in need. “Our mission is to strengthen communities by providing opportunities for people experiencing social and economic challenges,” said Celley. “Laserfiche helped us remove barriers in our processes to better deliver on that mission.”

With a strong foundation in place, AEOA continues to explore new opportunities to optimize workflows, expand automation and improve service delivery across its programs. “Laserfiche allows us to operate more efficiently at scale,” said Celley. “This directly impacts how quickly we can deliver services to the communities we support.”