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Nature Coast Women’s Care & Family Medicine developed an automated patient intake process using Laserfiche Cloud. As a tech-forward, comprehensive family healthcare center that offers a wide range of services — including obstetrics, gynecology, preventative services, aesthetic medicine and family medicine — Nature Coast modernized its patient experience using digital forms, and shortened patient wait times by 75%. Accelerating patient processing proved to be an especially significant benefit as COVID-19 arrived in the U.S. and it became more important to lessen the amount of time patients were in the waiting room.
Located in Tallahassee, Florida, Nature Coast Women’s Care & Family Medicine was started by Dr. Chukwuma M. Okoroji to advocate for patients’ health throughout all stages of their life. The practice prides itself on combining technology innovation with a proactive approach to patient care. The practice’s strategic planning led to the implementation of Laserfiche Cloud as a means to reimagine the patient intake process.
“Before using Laserfiche, our patients were instructed to come into the office early to fill out their new patient packet, and bring their license, insurance card — just all these pieces of paper,” said Tamearia Williams, practice administrator at Nature Coast Women’s Care & Family Medicine. “They’re filling out demographic information, financial information, etc. They would sit out in the lobby for about 10 to 15 minutes, sometimes longer, to fill out that paperwork.”
Once the front desk staff receives the paperwork, they check to make sure everything is complete and accurate before scanning the packet into the patient chart in the electronic medical record system. While the legacy process was similar to many other clinics’ patient intake process, the Nature Coast team saw opportunities for improvement. By digitizing the intake form, the clinic could reduce errors that may occur when patients fill the form out with a pen and paper, and ensure all necessary information is captured without having to return the form to the patient. Additionally, offering the ability to submit the form online would reduce wait times for all patients and streamline work for the practice.
The Nature Coast team worked with Business Automation Pros, a Laserfiche solution provider, to implement Laserfiche Cloud content management and realize their vision for a digital patient intake process.
“Nature Coast Women’s Care & Family Medicine is one of the few healthcare facilities in the region that has a digital patient intake process, which is a testament to the organization’s forward-thinking approach, and commitment to providing the best possible experience for patients,” said Ja’Baree Allen, president of Business Automation Pros. “We worked with the Nature Coast team to digitize the process just before COVID-19 arrived in the U.S. and stay-at-home orders began to take effect, enabling the clinic to continue caring for patients without missing a beat.”
Using Laserfiche, Nature Coast Women’s Care & Family Medicine replaced the in-person, manual process with an online form that patients can submit before even setting foot in the office.
Once the patient submits the intake packet online, the information is sent to the front desk team, who receive an email notification of the new patient. The information is pushed over to eClinicalWorks, the electronic health records system.
“Our front desk staff just needs to press a button and all the patient’s information is put into eClinicalWorks, which sets up the initial appointment,” Williams said. “There’s no wait time once they arrive. Laserfiche frees up a lot of time for staff and reduces the amount of time patients are in the office.”
For the team at Nature Coast, selecting a cloud-based content management system aligned well with the practice’s approach to technology. “We’re very tech driven here, so we like cloud-based everything,” Williams said. “We are in this office to treat our patients. So we need our technology to be top-of-the-line, all across the board. We need the ability to be remote, now more than ever. And no matter where we are, we need access to our files and our electronic medical records.”
The need to protect patient information also played a large role in the decision to implement Laserfiche Cloud.
“Being a healthcare organization, data security, HIPPAA and regulatory compliance plays a large role in our decision-making process,” Williams added. “Protecting patient information is just something that we know we must do on a day-to-day basis. Laserfiche offers the ability to see who can see what in what folders on a granular level, which is a big benefit. And Laserfiche records management is DoD-certified, which makes us feel very secure using the system and protecting the information that we are putting into the system.”
Since implementation, Nature Coast has received positive feedback from patients and staff about the new digital intake process. “Patients aren’t sitting out in the waiting room filling out paperwork, and there’s no longer the issue of forgotten driver’s licenses or insurance cards — they’ve already sent us the information we need,” Williams said. “Nothing is missed. They get here and check in, they’re seen, and then they’re on their way.” She estimates that they have shortened wait times for new patients by 75%.
Nature Coast Women’s Care & Family Medicine continues to build on the success of the new patient intake process. Human resources and financial are the next departments that will digitize records and processes, with plans to put the clinic’s job application online using Laserfiche Forms. As Nature Coast automates more of the clinic’s repetitive tasks, Williams also plans to take advantage of Laserfiche’s process analytics to help grow the practice.
“We’re hoping to increase our new patient volume,” Williams said. “Once we get more data, and more of the organization starts using Laserfiche, those analytics will be key.”
Find out how Laserfiche Cloud can transform how you do business. Experience Laserfiche Cloud today.
Document metadata is information assigned to a document to provide additional context. This metadata describes such characteristics as what the document is, who created it and when it was created.
Applying metadata to documents can help ensure information accuracy, simplify document search and retrieval, and automate business processes using an enterprise content management system.
Let’s take a deeper dive into what metadata is and the best practices for putting it to work in your organization.
A document’s metadata provides context that can help you better organize content. Additionally, search tools can usually read metadata much faster than a document’s full text, saving you time when searching.
Metadata holding document information can take on a variety of forms, including:
Fields store metadata about a document or folder. They can contain information including but not limited to words, lists, numbers, and dates.
Multi-value fields can be assigned multiple values at once. For example, someone may create a multi-value “author” field since some books may have multiple co-authors. Multi-value field groups enable someone to group together related fields. For example, you may group together “first name” and “last name” fields.
The most advanced cloud content management systems allow you to customize how fields are viewed to enhance the user experience. In addition, many systems offer the option to set fields as “required” so that users have to enter necessary metadata when creating or importing a new document.
A template is a group of document metadata fields. A template allows you to immediately apply a set of fields to a document, organized in a way that you want. Dynamic fields are useful when you want the list of options in one field of document metadata to depend on another. For example, a form on a government site may have a “county” field that depends on the “state” a user chooses.
Tags can be a quick way to classify and categorize documents. Informational tags provide additional notes on a document, while security tags can restrict access to only authorized users.
Flexible, reliable content management systems support document links – a type of metadata that associates a document with another. Two important document link types are:
Document relationships are useful whenever you want to be able to keep two documents associated with each other—especially if they are stored in different parts of your digital repository. For example, you might file email messages in a “Communications” folder by date or sender, but put the email attachments in other folders depending on their content. If you connected emails with their attachments using a document relationship, you could quickly find an attachment that goes with a particular email message no matter where in the repository the two documents are stored.
A link group is a collection of related documents, each with their own metadata, location, and other information. You can create a link group from any document, add or remove documents in the group, import documents into that group, or comment on documents in the group. Similar to document relationships, you can quickly access any of the documents in the group from any other document in the group.
Versions are useful for making reversible and trackable changes to documents. If you scan or save a document as a new version, the old version of the document remains intact in its version history, eliminating the risk of accidentally losing information by overwriting. In addition, a document’s version history allows you to see and compare the changes made in previous versions and to revert to a previous version, if necessary.
A digital signature is a way to indicate a document’s authenticity, confirming the signee’s identity, and providing a digital footprint that the signature itself has not been modified. For example, a manager can use a digital signature to indicate that he or she has approved a document. Later, a user can look up this signature to verify who signed it and if that signature was modified.
Document metadata is typically accessed by two parties in an organization: administrators, and users. Administrators have control over modifying types of metadata, permissions and rules (for example, making certain fields required when a user edits a document). Users may access metadata to update a search for and modify a document, or to organize a portion of the digital repository.
When establishing a system of metadata use within an organization, the administrator should set the following best practices:
As an administrator, it is a good idea to plan out the use of document metadata as early as possible.
Deliberately designing your metadata allows for a more structured, streamlined and intuitive system than adding metadata elements to your documents at will, which can result in duplicate fields and a cluttered environment.
For example, if you plan your fields ahead, you can create a single “Customer” field that can be used for all templates, which reduces the total number of fields a user must contend with and simplifies search and retrieval.
In contrast, if users create fields as they go, one user might create an “Invoice Customer” field and another user might create a “Customer Report” field, creating unneeded redundancy as both fields would contain customer names.
As a standard, you should use as few document metadata types as you can while still storing all the information you need. The more metadata elements you have in your repository, the more performance (i.e. speed of search) will be affected.
In many cases, a single metadata element can serve more than one purpose. For example, it’s not necessary to have five different “Vendor” fields just because you have five different templates. If all of those fields will contain a vendor name, you should create a single “Vendor” field and use it in all of the templates.
Certain kinds of information can be stored in more than one way, by more than one document metadata type. Occasionally, several metadata types will be equally suited to a task; however, in most cases, one type will be most appropriate. Consider how the information will be set and used, and choose the type most suited to the task.
Want to learn more about how digital document management can simplify business operations? Download the Document Management Software Buyer’s Guide.
Contributed By: Tamearia Williams, Practice Administrator, Nature Coast Women’s Care and Family Medicine
Based out of Tallahassee, Florida, Nature Coast Women’s Care and Family Medicine Clinic has a goal of being the first medical practice to go completely paperless across the board. In order to help achieve this goal, the clinic decided to implement Laserfiche Cloud.
The first process tackled by the clinic, with the help of their Laserfiche Solution Provider Business Automation Pros, was the new patient intake process.
“The transition to Laserfiche Cloud was very easy for staff. The system is user friendly and benefits were immediate,” says practice administrator Tamearia Williams.
Prior to this new process, new patients were instructed to come to the office 15 minutes early to fill out paperwork. Once they filled it out, they’d bring it to the front desk employee who would check it for accuracy and scan it into the patient’s chart in the eClinicalWorks healthcare records management system. The downside of this process was that patients would need to spend more time in the lobby, which is not desirable, especially during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, patients would occasionally skip questions on the paperwork, or had indecipherable handwriting.
If a person wants to become a new patient at the clinic, they click the “Become a New Patient” button on the clinic’s website. This launches a Laserfiche Forms new patient intake process. To make the form easier to fill out, it is divided into nine pages. A button from inside the form links to the appointment scheduling system to make scheduling the first appointment easy.
As part of the process, the new patient is asked to upload a copy of a state issued identification card. He or she is also promoted to agree to and electronically sign numerous disclosures and policies.
Once the form is submitted, it is assigned to a front desk staff member for review. The staff member reviews the form for accuracy. Once the form is reviewed and the staff member clicks the Approve button, the information is pushed to eClinicalWorks, from where a new appointment can be created for the patient.
The process diagram is shown below.
The new patient intake process has reduced the time patients have to spend waiting in the lobby before appointments by 75%. In the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, this has reduced potential disease exposure for both patients and staff.
Other benefits of the new process include less errors when capturing data such as insurance information. Required fields in the form ensure that no questions are skipped. The front desk staff member doesn’t have to decipher handwriting or spelling errors, and can process new patients much faster.
Document management is a set of practices that define how an organization manages, stores and tracks its documents.
Documents come in a wide variety of formats, from contracts and forms to images and emails. However, whatever form documents take, the principles of document management stay consistent. The common components of document management include:
These components play an important role in securing your organization’s information and making it useful to businesses.
Although it may be up for debate, the most important aspects of document management are likely storage and organization. Proper organization and storage allows people to easily find content and information when they need it. You can expand these topics further to include things like metadata management, or even embrace more modern interpretations of the concept to include process automation and generative AI.
That said, the most important part of document management depends on your organization’s needs. We encourage you watch our webinar ECM 101: An Introduction to Document Management Features to help decide what aspect of document management is the most important.
Although simple on the surface, document management is an important skill with a high ceiling for business professionals. The ideal document manager is:
Organizations and teams produce content at an ever-increasing rate — according to the Association for Intelligent Information Management (AIIM), “on average, organizations expect the volume of information coming into their organizations to grow from X to 4.5X over the next two years.”
To top it off, even with proper records retention, documents stay around a lot longer than they did in the days of paper.
When unaddressed, these challenges create:
Subsequently, with information scattered between individuals and team this disorganized information can result in:
For these reasons, it’s important to select the right tools and technologies to take full advantage of them. This is where a document management system comes in.
Laserfiche is a document management platform that’s flexible and easy-to-use, enabling organizations to:
By performing these functions, Laserfiche enables businesses to protect their content while also making it more useful to staff for the tasks they do every day.
By implementing a document management system, any organization can get their documents in order and take advantage of the following benefits:
• Increase transparency: Whether contracts, invoices or forms, it’s essential that employees to find documents when they need them. A document management system puts documents all in one place, ensuring that employees are working with the same “source of truth.”
• Quickly search through multiple documents: Through a combination of AI and other technologies, document management systems make documents full-text searchable. This enables employees to find information in a document’s title, metadata or deep within the full text.
• Securely share content internally and externally: A document management system can store a document in a secure location, ensure that it’s shared for a limited time, and enhance transparency by logging who accessed it and when.
• Foster employee and organizational collaboration: Document management systems allow colleagues to collaborate on a document in real-time. This process can remove back-and-forth of editing through email threads and help get final versions of documents out faster.
• Keep track of major revisions: Feature-rich document management systems have built-in version control. This helps employees track document changes and ensure that any document they’re working on is the most up-to-date version.
• Protect sensitive information: With a document management system, administrators can grant or deny access to information as needed. This helps your organization ensure that documents can be accessed by authorized users and no one else.
• Support compliance efforts: Most document management systems provide audit trails – logs of system activity, including document edits, login attempts and user permission changes. This functionality helps to show auditors that your organization is following regulations.
• Access information securely from anywhere with cloud document management: Employees can now access content securely from wherever they are in the world. Additionally, many cloud systems automatically back up content for quick recovery in case of a disruption.
The best software for document management usually has a few key aspects:
Each platform has its own pros and cons, so its best to assess them in relation to your organization’s needs. We recommend tools like the G2 Grid® for Document Management to help you compare top vendors on the market.
Even with a good idea of your organization’s needs, the demo and purchasing process can be a challenge. For advice on how to procure the right system for your organization, download The Document Management Software Buyer’s Guide.
In its recent report, the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Document Management, analyst firm Gartner named Laserfiche a Leader in document management, evaluating vendors based on ability to execute and completeness of vision. Download the full report here.
Document management is a set of practices that define how an organization manages, stores and tracks its documents.
GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner and Magic Quadrant is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved. This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from Laserfiche. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
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.
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.
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.
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 invoices and associated documentation are saved in the repository, in a folder by fiscal year and vendor.
Each invoice has appropriate metadata assigned, including the name, vendor number, date, invoice number and invoice amount.
Once a week , Accounts Payable exports the metadata information for the approved invoices from Laserfiche into a spreadsheet and uploads it into Abila MIP.
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.
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.
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.
Once the form is submitted, the candidate gets an automated confirmation message on screen and via email.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
The fast-changing economic landscape of the credit union industry has highlighted the importance for firms to leverage technology to meet customer needs.
Many credit unions that rely on legacy systems built around proprietary technology and manual processes have found it challenging to maintain and attract new members and stay ahead of the competition. Committed to putting its members first and continuously improving its service offerings, Dakotaland Federal Credit Union (“Dakotaland”) — a full-service, not-for-profit financial cooperative — has challenged the status quo, transforming traditional paper-based workflows to digitally transform its business. In 2004, the firm implemented a Laserfiche electronic document management system and has since expanded its use across its departments, while continuing to explore new ways to drive efficiency throughout the organization.
Dakotaland started with just 10 members in Huron, South Dakota, in 1935. In 2020, celebrating its 85th anniversary, the firm spans across 11 branches and serves nearly 40,000 members in 46 states. This growth further underscored the need to build more automated business processes in order to streamline information sharing and accelerate collaboration. “With Laserfiche, we can develop and assign tasks regardless of location, share that information easily across branches and automate notifications, and know exactly where we are in the process,” said Gina Hansen, vice president of product development at Dakotaland.
Additionally, increased regulatory burden, and a growing expectation of incorporating advanced technology solutions, have all presented opportunities for Dakotaland to acquire other small institutions to help these firms align their services with the evolving industry landscape. With the help of Laserfiche’s customizable technology solutions, Dakotaland has been able to continue providing the best possible service to its current member base while also growing its business.
Before implementing Laserfiche, Dakotaland’s information storage took the form of five rooms stacked with filing cabinets. The team realized it needed to store documents electronically to save space and avert document loss, while addressing recordkeeping requirements enforced by different regulatory bodies. These needs led Dakotaland to select Laserfiche for its robust electronic records management and automated workflow capabilities.
“Regulators and examiners expect us to document everything, requiring us to show proof of the firm’s work,” Hansen said. “Laserfiche helped us present all our data — including all mandatory details — in a format that leaves no room for error.”
The Laserfiche implementation enabled Dakotaland to digitize its records, while preserving record integrity and simplifying compliance processes. The efficiency driven by the Laserfiche initiative spurred the expansion of Laserfiche’s use in other projects aimed at improving the end-user experience and creating a stronger operational infrastructure across departments, including human resources, IT, insurance, mortgage, and more.
“Today, we heavily rely on Laserfiche for almost all our day-to-day operations, automating nearly 250 running workflows and almost 100 active forms processes,” Hansen said. “I do not believe there is any part of our organization that is not using Laserfiche in some capacity. While some forms and workflows are simple routing to logically file documents, others are utilizing the report feature to provide tracking ability, and some automate more complex processes such as our new hire or vendor management tracking process.”
While all departments within Dakotaland use Laserfiche in some shape or form, one department that has harnessed the great values of digital transformation is human resources.
Multiple teams across different departments are impacted whenever an employee is hired or terminated, or moves to a new department. To keep employees and teams informed, Dakotaland used Laserfiche to create an end-to-end solution to process employee and candidate records, and combat information loss. The platform streamlines the workflow through a new-hire checklist, comprising of analyzing applications, processing forms, sharing the database with the supervisors, helping them classify the applications, and developing a comprehensive pool of interview candidates. By automating the HR processes, the firm is able to save countless hours — allowing teams across a multitude of departments to focus on more client-facing services that require a human touch.
Most recently, the firm also used Laserfiche to automate a key process for its now-virtual Employee Enrichment Day — a team-building program, where the firm engages in activities that enhance staff connection and give employees an opportunity to learn about each other. During this day, the team works on a spotlight commemoration developed and assigned to the staff in Laserfiche Forms with questions directed to the respective personalities of the employees. The answers then develop a quiz that goes back to all employees, and within that process, the team uses Forms to analyze and file the answers. Automating the process with Laserfiche saves the firm around 10 to 15 hours, analyzing the scores of more than 160 employees in one day.
COVID-19 has compelled firms across different industries to challenge their technological capacities and reevaluate their resources. When the pandemic first hit, more than 30 team members at Dakotaland were deployed to work remotely within a week — enabling the firm to fully rely on its digital repository of data and its automated workflows. The seamless transition enforced business continuity at Dakotaland, allowing for uninterrupted services to its members, even in an unpredictable environment.
One of the biggest hurdles to adopting a new system can be identifying areas that need improvement and processes that can be streamlined. The management at Dakotaland takes pride in driving a thorough observation across the firm to determine loopholes and encourage innovation that can help avoid system failures and boost operational competency. With support from the executive team, the firm leverages its Laserfiche champions, who lead the technology shift across different teams and help them adopt new solutions. These champions play a critical role in training employees about the new processes and identifying unique ways in which Laserfiche can be customized to further enhance productivity and maximize the firm’s investment in Laserfiche technology.
“There are always new challenges and concerns that the credit union industry has to address,” Hansen said. “However, our confidence in Laserfiche’s capacity has encouraged us to identify and resolve any technology challenges upfront and continue to enhance our competitive edge in the industry. I am excited to see what innovation is in store for our collaboration and how we can collectively revolutionize the credit union space.”
SITUATION
• New account opening process depended on paper forms and direct mail
• Legacy new account opening process could take from three to seven days
• Difficulty tracking activities taken on documents resulted in challenges with audit preparation
SOLUTION
• Accelerated new account opening process from one week down to 30 minutes
• Simplified audit preparation
• 40,000 hours of annual time savings
An independent investment advisory firm that provides financial consulting services to more than 4,000 households with approximately $2 billion in assets under management needed a way to expedite client services.
The firm sought out document management technology to automate its new account opening process. The legacy process was paper-based, requiring the firm to prepare stacks of paper forms and individually mail them between advisors, a client service representative, the firm’s cashiering department, the client and the custodian. This typically took three to seven days and often delayed important client transactions.
“New account documents are extremely time sensitive. At times, we would have to interrupt advisors during meetings to get a signature,” said the firm’s IT director. “We were looking for a paperless system with efficient workflow, SEC and FINRA compliance and a strong integration capability.”
After a demonstration of Laserfiche software, the firm’s IT team felt that Laserfiche’s configurable workflow tools could easily address their operational needs.
To automate account opening, the firm integrated Laserfiche with DocuSign, its Tamarac customer relationship management (CRM) system and Laser App. By integrating these systems, client paperwork can be reviewed, signed and finalized in under half an hour:
Compared to the legacy system, this new process has generated a week in time savings. The process is not only quick, but enhances personnel accountability from start to finish.”
“If a document that requires review sits for more than 24 hours, the system emails a reminder to the responsible person,” said the IT director. “If the same document sits for more than 72 hours, the system emails that person’s boss.”
Improving operations was only part of the firm’s information management overhaul. The firm also needed comprehensive compliance functionality to meet the strict standards of its industry.
“The SEC and FINRA require that firms use a certain type of document management technology, such as unalterable database software,” said the IT director. “Our research showed that Laserfiche’s technology is not only the most flexible, but also offers the option to use numerous add-on features.”
One feature that simplifies audit preparation is Laserfiche’s event log capability, which tracks the creation, deletion and modification of documents.”
“Our system logs every possible interaction with a document,” said the IT director. “Even if a document is deleted, it is still available in the Laserfiche repository and we can see who modified it.”
The firm’s DocuSign integration also verifies the identity of a document’s signer. Detailed security questions, social security verification and access code protection maintain the integrity of client transactions and prevent fraud.
“It’s pretty astounding when you consider the time savings,” said the IT director. “We estimate that Laserfiche saves us up to one hour per document. “Given the firm’s estimated average of 165 documents processed per day, Laserfiche produces an annual time savings of roughly 41,415 hours.”
