Document & Records Management Archives | Page 4 of 38

Leading the 2026 AI Expansion in Government: Washington’s Data Governance Framework

Presenter in front of Laserfiche Washington user group

In 2026, AI expansion across government is accelerating at an unprecedented pace. This year’s Washington State Information Professional Management Association (IPMA) Forum brought together technology, business and management leaders to help public agencies navigate this landscape and map out the future of operational resilience and technical innovation.

Conversations with public sector leaders made one thing clear: artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a concept for the future—it is actively shaping everyday government operations. The defining question is no longer if agencies will adopt AI or even Agentic AI, but whether they are prepared to govern it responsibly.

This marks a critical shift for state and local agencies navigating an environment defined by rising expectations, compounding information complexity and growing pressure to accelerate service delivery without compromising public trust.

Why Governance Matters More Than Ever

Across IMPA sessions focused on modernization, records management, automation and digital transformation, three core themes emerged:

The Explosion of Unstructured Content: Documents, emails, forms, contracts, and case files continue to grow across disconnected systems. Much of this information lacks consistent metadata, making it difficult to find, govern or use effectively.

The Scalability Crisis: Manual processes no longer scale. Staff shortages, increasing compliance obligations and growing transparency demands are forcing organizations to rethink how work gets done.

The Governance Mandate: Leaders increasingly understand that AI only delivers value when it operates within trusted governance frameworks.

These priorities closely align with a broader shift happening across government: moving from managing content as static records to treating information as a strategic operational asset.

That is where content management is being reimagined.

Leveraging AI in Document Management

Traditionally, enterprise content management focused on storing, organizing, and retrieving documents. While those capabilities remain essential, they are no longer sufficient on their own. With the rapid growth of AI in local and state government, agencies today need systems that can help classify information automatically, surface insights quickly and support faster, more informed decisions.

AI-drive document management is accelerating that evolution.

At the forum, discussions around automation and AI repeatedly returned to practical use cases that agencies are actively exploring. Intelligent document classification, automated metadata extraction, AI-assisted records retrieval, and conversational access to information are no longer mere luxuries. They are becoming operational necessities.

But what stood out most was the emphasis on responsible AI.

Government leaders are understandably cautious. Public trust depends on transparency, accountability, and defensible decision-making. Agencies cannot afford black-box systems that operate without oversight or explainability. As AI capabilities expand, governance becomes more important, not less.

Innovation Done Safely: Washington’s Framework for AI Governance

Government leaders in Washington state are already establishing formal frameworks for responsible AI adoption. In 2024, Governor Jay Inslee issued Executive Order 24-01 directing agencies to develop guidance for the ethical, transparent, and accountable use of generative AI across state government. The order emphasized that agencies must balance innovation with safeguards around privacy, bias mitigation, security, and public trust.

More recently, Washington Technology Solutions (WaTech) expanded those efforts through the state’s Artificial Intelligence Policy, which requires agencies to identify AI-enabled systems, conduct AI risk assessments and ensure human oversight remains part of decision-making processes. The policy specifically calls for governance frameworks that are transparent, auditable and aligned with Washington state’s AI Principles.

That direction closely mirrors what many attendees at the IPMA Forum discussed throughout the event. Agencies are not simply asking how to deploy AI faster. They are asking how to operationalize AI responsibly within environments that already contain decades of sensitive records, fragmented systems and complex compliance obligations.

This is why governance is emerging as the true foundation of AI readiness.

Rather than treating governance as a compliance exercise that slows innovation, agencies are beginning to view governance as the foundation that enables innovation safely. When information is properly classified, secured and governed, AI becomes significantly more effective and far more trustworthy.

Deploying Intelligent Document Automation in the Public Sector

Early AI adoption often focused on assistance: summarizing documents, extracting data, or helping staff locate information more efficiently. Increasingly, however, agencies are shifting from simple assistance to intelligent document automation, evaluating systems capable of taking independent action within workflows. AI can now recommend next steps, identify exceptions, trigger processes, and support decision-making in real time.

That progression raises the stakes.

AI systems depend on context. Context depends on well-governed information. If data is fragmented, outdated, or inconsistently managed, automation compounds risk.

That reality became evident in conversations at the IPMA Forum. Agencies are recognizing that modernization is no longer just about digitizing records. It is about creating an information environment where data can be trusted, processes can be audited and AI can operate responsibly within defined guardrails.

Core Priorities for AI in Data Governance

To navigate this paradigm shift safely, state and local agencies will need to map out future strategies that move away from manual oversight and toward automated workflows that embed compliance directly into daily operations. To prepare for this transition, public sector IT and business leaders should prioritize these key areas:

Strategic Data Governance Frameworks: Apply consistent retention, security, and access policies dynamically across increasingly complex information environments.

Foundational Workflow Automation: Create workflows to continuously classify, route, and govern information the moment it enters a system, reducing reliance on manual indexing.

Secure Interoperability Standards: Design systems that enable governance policies to travel with the data itself, ensuring security rules remain completely consistent regardless of where content resides.

And perhaps most importantly, agencies are approaching AI as a tool to augment human expertise, not replace it.

That distinction matters.

The most successful government AI initiatives are not removing people from the process. They are reducing repetitive work, accelerating information access, and allowing public servants to focus on higher-value decisions. Human oversight remains essential because accountability cannot be delegated to an algorithm.

This is why responsible AI and modern content management are becoming inseparable conversations.

Turning Trusted Information into Intelligent Action

The agencies making the most progress are not necessarily the ones moving fastest to deploy AI. They are the ones investing in trusted information foundations first. They are aligning governance, automation and AI into a unified strategy designed to improve service delivery while protecting transparency and public confidence.

That is ultimately the opportunity ahead of government leaders.

AI has the potential to transform how agencies manage information, respond to citizens, and operate at scale. But the long-term value of AI will not be determined by the sophistication of technology alone. It will be determined by whether agencies can build environments where information is structured, governed and trusted enough for AI to operate responsibly.

Washington State’s evolving AI policies make one thing increasingly clear: the future of government AI will not be defined by how aggressively agencies automate, but by how effectively they govern the information that powers those systems.

At the Washington State IPMA Forum, that message was impossible to miss.

The future of content management is no longer about storing information.

It is about turning trusted information into intelligent action.

Build Your Foundation for Responsible AI

Successfully navigating the ongoing expansion of government AI requires an information foundation you can trust. Laserfiche helps state and local agencies bridge the gap between innovation and compliance with secure intelligent document automation and AI-driven solutions.

See how Laserfiche accelerates secure government transformation.

AI Readiness Starts With Operational Readiness | Empower 2026 Recap

After spending time with customers and technology leaders at Empower 2026, it was hard to ignore the impact that AI is having on every industry.

During the customer keynote, we heard firsthand stories from leaders and experts across the public and private sectors who are navigating this change in real-time. While most aren’t used to seeing this kind of speed with enterprise technology, where evolution once took decades rather than months, the organizations gaining the greatest value aren’t chasing every new tool. They already have the operational foundation to adapt quickly and put AI to work.

As our speakers highlighted, success usually comes down to having clean data, connected systems, clear governance and teams that understand their processes well enough to improve them.

This is the real starting line for AI readiness.

Moving AI From Experimentation to Impact

Bianca Lochner, CIO for the City of Scottsdale, talked about how quickly the conversation around AI evolved from hype and experimentation to practicality and operational impact. For Scottsdale, making AI practical means moving past the technical specs to focus on the end goal. “We don’t think about technology only,” she said. “We lead with the outcomes.”

That means improving services for residents, scaling successful initiatives across departments and avoiding AI silos with limited value. “Innovation is a team sport,” she said.

The city supports more than 600 citizen services and welcomes millions of visitors every year. Scottsdale already uses Laserfiche and AI-powered automation to reduce permitting review times from days to hours, and to accelerate onboarding and training for first responders. As part of its ongoing modernization efforts, Scottsdale is now deploying its Laserfiche instance to the cloud.

Data and Process Maturity Matter

Desiree Champaco, vice president of IT and supply chain at Diamond Foods, knows what it takes to modernize a 115-year-old company. “The technology is largely there,” she said. “But from a maturity standpoint, are your organizations ready to adopt it?”

Diamond Foods spent years improving the processes, integrations and data quality that allow teams to move faster and make better decisions. One example involved integrating Laserfiche with the company’s ERP environment to eliminate manual invoice uploads and reduce repetitive work inside finance operations. As part of that modernization effort, Diamond Foods migrated from an on-premises Laserfiche environment to the cloud to support future growth and AI-driven workflows.

Champaco also described how AI can help supply chain teams process large amounts of planning data that would otherwise consume hours of manual effort every day. Transportation costs, inventory levels, external demand signals and customer data are changing constantly. For teams managing those variables, AI agents create opportunities to respond faster and spend more time making decisions instead of manually assembling information.

For Diamond Foods, speed matters. So does giving teams the ability to spend less time piecing information together and more time responding to what’s happening across the business.

Trust is Becoming a Competitive Advantage

AI only works at scale when people trust how the systems operate. As organizations begin delegating more work to autonomous agents, expectations around governance, transparency and security are rising just as quickly.

Rob Lloyd, executive director of the Center for Digital Government, described trust as one of the defining challenges of the next several years. “Trust is either going to be something that allows you to act faster and be your multiplier,” he explained, where technology, tools and processes can finally fill the gap between rising expectations and tightening budgets, “or we are going to see it break organizations.”

The faster AI is embedded in everyday work, the more important those trust signals become. The companies and public sector agencies moving fastest are usually the ones putting clear guardrails around how their teams use AI and creating transparency around how AI-driven decisions are made.

Different perspectives. One operational reality.

Successful AI adoption begins with the work happening behind the scenes: modernizing workflows, connecting systems and breaking down operational silos that have existed for years. The leaders at Empower 2026 highlighted how this foundation supports the most effective AI initiatives, helping teams spend less time on repetitive work and more time on what matters most.

The starting line for AI is already behind us. The conversation is becoming far more operational, focused on how AI improves responsiveness, reduces friction and fits into the way work already gets done.

And that’s where organizations are starting to see the strongest results.

Download our eBook to learn how business leaders are accelerating daily operations and driving real change with agentic AI.

Get the Agentic Playbook

Is K-12 Ready for AI Agents? My Insight from the K-12 Leadership Council

K-12 education has come a long way from cataloging student records in physical filing cabinets. Today, much of the education sector has realized the importance of digitization and moving to cloud-based systems. But as transformative as technology can be, the growing push toward AI-enabled solutions also raises questions on practical applications and governance requirements.

I recently joined Brian Cohen and the GovTech K-12 Council meeting to discuss some of those questions with superintendents, tech leaders and industry experts. The session tackled two incredibly timely topics: building operational resilience against disruptive technology outages and exploring how AI agents can alleviate budget and staffing pressures. Participants shared their unique perspectives and walked away with practical, actionable insights to take back to their school districts.

Technology is No Longer Just an IT Concern

Before the widespread adoption of cloud computing and AI, system outages were nothing more than an inconvenience and an IT ticket, but that is quickly changing.

According to the latest CoSN U.S. State of EdTech Report, districts are aggressively prioritizing technology to modernize legacy operations. In many cases that means connecting and digitizing siloed data, integrating operating systems and automating routine processes with AI-enabled tools. Modernization has helped leading institutions cut core operations, like creating student records, down to seconds. However, as leaders in the council discussed, it also means that technology is increasingly becoming a vital part of delivering student services across all functions — making system outages an operational crisis, not just an IT problem.

As we move into the future of K-12 operations, outage planning and prioritizing platforms with advanced data security and recovery features are becoming increasingly important.

The Agentic Shift: Is K-12 Ready for Autonomous Operations?

As modernization ramps up, K-12 education is standing on the brink of an operational shift. We are moving past basic chatbots and static content generation into the era of AI agents — systems capable of managing multi-step workflows, interpreting complex institutional data and acting across enterprise systems.

These agents have the potential to completely transform daily administration, acting as a force multiplier for overburdened school staff. However, transitioning to agentic AI requires a careful balance between administrative efficiency and strict organizational readiness. Striking that balance means first building a foundational framework for data governance.

Because an agent is only as effective as the data it can access, data quality and rigorous security policies are essential for successful adoption. Reliable human oversight and clear audit trails are also vital components for maintaining student trust and ensuring school leaders retain full visibility into how institutional data is handled.

Brian Cohen, vice president at the Center for Digital Education, explained the concept saying, “Whether districts are responding to a cybersecurity incident, managing a critical system outage, or exploring agentic AI, success depends on strong governance, trusted information, well-documented processes, and organizational alignment. The districts that invest in understanding how information moves across their organization today will be best positioned to navigate both the risks and opportunities that lie ahead.”

Where AI Agents in Education Deliver Immediate Value

Successful agentic AI implementation does not require districts to plunge headfirst into fully autonomous student-facing systems. Instead, the smartest deployments target high-friction, backend administrative workflows where AI can deliver immediate relief.

Districts will find the highest return on investment in three critical areas:

Records Management & Compliance: Transitioning from a reactive scramble to automated, “set-it-and-forget-it” retention schedules that securely store and purge HR or financial files according to state and federal mandates.

Intake & Organization: Automating the tagging, organizing and restructuring of massive backlogs of sensitive student files, including Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) and 504 plans.

Parent Communication: Powering mobile-friendly portals that provide real-time updates and bridge accessibility gaps, ensuring consistent engagement for families.

By offloading these repetitive tasks, districts can directly alleviate staff burnout, freeing up human educators to focus on student counseling and classroom support.

The New Era of K-12 with Agentic AI

Technology is now deeply ingrained into daily school operations, with modernization pressures rising steadily. The transition toward autonomous AI agents in education is no longer a distant possibility — it is the next frontier for K-12 administration. As the insights from the K-12 Council meeting made clear, navigating this shift successfully demands a proactive focus on security, transparency and organizational alignment. School districts with strong governance frameworks can begin to harness the power of AI agents to reduce backend administrative bottlenecks, alleviate staff shortages and help their teams keep the focus where it belongs: on supporting students.

Bring your institution into the new era of student services, get the playbook on how to successfully deploy Agentic AI and automation within your institution.

Download Now

Innovation Meets Impact: Recap of 2026 Oregon Digital Government Summit

At this year’s Oregon Digital Government Summit in Salem, state and local IT and governance leaders gathered to set the strategy for the future of the state’s public infrastructure. The conversations at the event focused on driving digital transformation to address common public sector challenges through practical AI utilization to provide modernized constituent services — all while maintaining trust.

Oregon’s Chief Information Officer, Terrence Woods, echoed this sentiment, “Digital transformation isn’t about systems — it’s about belief. When leaders trust their platforms, innovation accelerates. I look forward to the 16th annual Oregon Digital Government Summit where we can continue collaborating on digital transformation strategies.”

This focus on trust and innovation aligns directly with the expanding AI governance policies and questions public sector leaders are increasingly facing from their teams and the communities they serve.

Laying the Groundwork: Oregon’s AI Governance Framework

Government modernization has evolved from merely digitizing data and cloud migration to turning massive volumes of information into trusted intelligence. To bridge that gap, agencies are rapidly scaling the use of AI in public sector workflows.

Laying the groundwork for responsible AI adoption, Oregon established the State Government Artificial Intelligence Advisory Council and appointed a Chief Privacy Officer and AI Strategist to guide agency adoption. In early 2025, the council published its Final Recommended Action Plan emphasizing transparency, privacy, security and workforce readiness as prerequisites for scaling AI across state government.

Rather than treating AI as a standalone initiative, Oregon is positioning it as part of a broader effort to modernize how information is governed, shared and used to improve outcomes for Oregonians.

Oregon’s Vision for AI in Public Sector Work

In many ways, Oregon’s vision reflects a broader shift occurring across state government: technology is an asset to humans only when deployed responsibly.

During his summit keynote, “How Public Sector Leaders Unlock Collective Genius and Fuel Breakthroughs in the Age of AI,” author Frankie Russo challenged attendees to view AI not as a replacement, but as a “copilot” to unlock human intelligence and impact. This theme echoed throughout the event, shifting the conversation from treating AI as a mere technical tool to leveraging it as a catalyst for collaborative, human-centric innovation.

But as many leaders at the conference agreed, AI requires strong guardrails to remain effective and maintain public trust.

Guiding AI Transformation Through Strategic Governance

State and local leaders in Oregon are recognizing that AI transformation is founded in governance, not just adoption. Compliance is not a barrier to innovation—it is the mechanism that makes it safe and sustainable.

Translating the “copilot” vision from Russo’s keynote into real-world results demands a foundation rooted in integrity. Summit conversations converged on four critical capabilities required to achieve this:

Trustworthy data: Agencies must ensure the content informing AI systems is accurate, current, and securely governed.

Operationalized governance: Policies regarding privacy, retention, and security must be embedded directly into technology platforms, not just written in documents.

Discoverable information: AI cannot generate insights from data it cannot find, analyze, or contextualize.

Transparency and accountability: To protect public trust, AI-assisted decisions must remain explainable, auditable, and subject to human oversight.

As Oregon advances its enterprise AI strategy, long-term success will hinge on these core practices. By establishing a disciplined data foundation today, public sector organizations will find it drastically easier to drive digital innovation responsibly while maintaining public confidence.

Moving Toward Agentic AI and Autonomous Workflows

Strong data governance becomes even more important in the advent of agentic AI and autonomous workflows.

While generative AI focuses primarily on creating content and summarizing information, agentic AI introduces the ability to act, coordinate processes, and execute tasks. As these capabilities mature, the importance of structured, governed and well-managed information environments increases dramatically. Organizations that lack information governance may find themselves automating inefficiency or creating new compliance risks. Conversely, those that secure their data foundations will be well positioned to innovate public services and even strengthen trust.

Empowering Public Servants with Human-Centric AI

Ultimately, the Oregon Digital Government Summit proved that the future of AI in government will not be determined solely by the sophistication of the technology, but by the quality of the governance supporting it.

Oregon’s vision is firmly grounded in a human-centric reality: The goal is not to replace public servants, but to empower them with better tools and sharper insights to improve constituent outcomes.

From cybersecurity and data governance to AI-driven digital service delivery, this year’s summit delivered the peer connections and actionable guidance needed to move your agency’s mission forward.

Continue the work started in Salem by downloading our executive guide to managing organizational change and scaling responsible AI adoption.

Get the Guide

Operational Efficiency is a Public Safety Imperative: What I Heard at the IACP Technology Conference

In an era of on-demand digital services and deep public scrutiny, law enforcement agencies are under immense pressure to modernize. Yet, at this year’s International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) Technology Conference in Charlotte — the premier forum for law enforcement innovation — the conversations weren’t about chasing futuristic tech trends. Instead, the core takeaway from the expo floor was refreshingly grounded. Leaders widely agree AI and emerging technologies should be used to reduce administrative burden and free personnel to focus on public safety instead of paperwork.

While modernization once focused strictly on basic digitization and compliance, today’s leaders recognize cutting administrative friction is directly tied to an agency’s ability to protect and serve. This highlights a massive industry shift: operational efficiency is no longer just a back-office goal — it is a public safety imperative.

The Daily Strain on Police Operations

Agencies are dealing with staffing shortages, disconnected systems, growing records demands and increasing pressure to respond faster while maintaining accountability and public trust. The challenge is no longer simply storing information. The challenge is making information easy to access, trustworthy and usable when it matters most.

Throughout the conference, agencies consistently described the same operational pain points:

Duplicate data entry across multiple systems

Information trapped in departmental silos

Administrative work pulling officers off the street

Difficulty finding trusted information quickly

Growing concerns around AI governance and accountability

These are not isolated technology problems, rather operational problems which directly affect investigations, officer effectiveness and service delivery.

The staffing pressure facing agencies today is also well documented. As the National Policing Institute recently noted:

“Law enforcement agencies today face a difficult challenge: meeting growing public safety expectations while operating within tight budget constraints and with fewer officers amid declining recruitment and retention.”

That pressure is forcing agencies to rethink both how information moves across the organization and the growing role of law enforcement automation

Fragmented Systems Increase Governance Complexity

One of the strongest themes at IACP was that agencies are not looking for another standalone system and instead are seeking integrations to systems they already have. All topics discussed were focused on interoperability, governance, and law enforcement workflow automation. Today’s law enforcement environment is increasingly complex. Records management systems, CAD platforms, evidence systems, body camera platforms, drone technologies and CJIS-related repositories often operate independently from one another. As agencies add more technology, operational complexity increases.

One example discussed heavily at the conference was Drone as First Responder (DFR) programs. While drones themselves may not directly connect to content management, they are driving a growing number of integrations and governance challenges around operational data. The real issue is not collecting more information. It is governing and operationalizing information effectively.

Elevate Public Service with Intelligent Document Management

All my discussions at the conference resulted in one theme: the need to reduce operational friction to serve the community. They want officers spending less time searching for records, re-entering information and navigating disconnected systems — and more time serving the community.

Operational efficiency is no longer just an internal administrative goal but directly connected to officer safety, service delivery and public trust.

Working in the governance-driven information management space, what I heard at IACP reinforced how critical a unified approach has become. Modern intelligent document management platforms connect departments and systems securely, creating a unified data foundation without forcing agencies to replace existing applications.

Building a Foundation for Law Enforcement Automation

Data governance becomes even more important as agencies begin adopting AI-enabled workflows. At IACP, AI discussions focused far less on hype and far more on accountability, explainability and governance. Agencies expressed real concern about how sensitive information is managed, how decisions are documented and how public trust is maintained as automation increases. With fragmented systems and unstructured data, those concerns are justified. Modernization isn’t simply access to digital records, but building an environment where information is trusted, governed, accessible, securely shareable and actionable in real time. This foundation improves more than compliance; it improves operational efficiency.

Automation in Action: Long Beach Police Department

The Long Beach Police Department (LBPD) clearly showcases the power of law enforcement automation. The department streamlined its Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program, which redirects individuals to social services instead of the justice system.

To reduce manual data bottlenecks between officers, clinicians and prosecutors, the LBPD automated its intake and referral workflows into a mobile app called GUIDES (Government User Integrated Diversion Enhancement System). Powered by enterprise content management technology, this secure framework lets officers input field data and route sensitive information across city departments with strict compliance. The resulting automated system cuts administrative friction, allowing personnel to focus on community care and public safety.

Learn more about how the LBPD transformed their operations to improve public service.

The New Era of Modern Policing

Operational efficiency is quickly becoming one of the defining public safety challenges of modern policing. This reality was reflected in the dominant message from IACP: agencies do not need more standalone technology, but rather systems that work together to reduce daily friction and help personnel do their jobs more effectively.

When agencies can securely connect information across systems, automate routine processes and provide officers with faster access to trusted records, they gain real operational advantages. Investigations move faster. Administrative bottlenecks decrease. Public records requests become easier to manage. Officers spend less time navigating systems and more time focused on public safety. Most importantly, agencies strengthen public trust through better transparency, accountability and governance.

Bring your agency into the new era of policing. Download our eBook on intelligent automation to learn how our AI-powered tools can help connect your systems and reduce operational friction for your officers.

Get the Guide

Members Trust Company Reduces Account Processing Steps by 85% With Automation

Finding Smarter Ways to Service Clients Nationwide

Members Trust Company (MTC) manages trust and investment services for more than 65 credit unions and thousands of individual clients across the United States. Through these partnerships, credit unions offer trust and investment products to their members, while MTC administers the underlying accounts and records.

Combining the scale and capabilities of a national trust institution with the personalized, relationship-driven service of a boutique firm, MTC operates under strict federal oversight by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). Its 60 employees oversee more than 5,000 accounts — a lean structure that makes efficiency, reliability and compliance essential to maintaining client trust.

Despite its lean size, MTC’s growing client base and expanding account volume made manual, disconnected processes difficult to sustain. Employees stored tens of thousands of client records, such as account opening forms and trust agreements, in shared drives. This made information retrieval difficult, inconsistent, and prone to errors. “It was a challenge to locate the right documents quickly,” said Diana Begley, process architect at MTC. “We wanted a system that was more structured, reliable and easier to manage.”

When Hurricane Irma knocked out power across Florida, MTC recognized that its locally managed systems created risk for both business continuity and client service. MTC made the strategic decision to move information to the cloud to better protect client assets, maintain uptime and modernize operations. The company selected Laserfiche for its secure, accessible infrastructure and powerful automation capabilities. This would enable staff across the country to access records for its nationwide client base reliably and securely, even during a disruption.

Simplifying Account Management and Strengthening Compliance

MTC’s first goal was to improve accuracy and efficiency in two key areas of account management while maintaining strict regulatory compliance. Laserfiche automated its account opening and account request processes so that every document, approval and audit trail is captured and stored correctly.

Account Opening Portal: This secure, digital portal guides staff and credit union partners through required documentation. Laserfiche ensures all forms are complete, reducing delays and errors in account setup. “Our field team knows exactly what’s needed,” said Keisha Stevenson, trust operations specialist. “With Laserfiche, they can open accounts faster, with fewer errors.”
Account Request Portal: This serves as a single online entry point for client service requests such as distributions, account changes and investment updates. Forms now route automatically to the right department and include dynamic fields that prompt for key details to prevent incomplete submissions. These include account number, request type, contact information and authorization details. “Before Laserfiche, we managed hundreds of requests through email,” Begley said. “Now every task routes automatically, documents file themselves and communication is handled instantly.”

Records management and metadata automation capabilities from Laserfiche keep these processes consistent and auditable. Each document is filed with complete metadata, making information easy to locate during regulatory audits and internal compliance reviews. Laserfiche also reduces manual errors and variability between departments.

These improvements allow MTC to maintain the personalized, relationship-driven service it’s known for, even as the company’s client base continues to grow.

Newfound Clarity in Daily Work

After launching the new system, MTC immediately saw measurable improvements. It reduced account servicing steps from 15 to two, cutting average handling time from 45 minutes to about 15 minutes per request. The new workflows eliminated the need to interpret incomplete requests or manually route tasks between departments, replacing that guesswork with clear, automated steps that keep every request on track.

Since introducing the Request Portal, MTC has processed more than 1,300 automated tasks, with full adoption still underway. Each process includes integrated notifications, approvals and filing, eliminating the back-and-forth emails and status checks that staff once handled manually. Staff report higher satisfaction and fewer errors, while clients experience faster turnaround times and consistent service. “Laserfiche lets our team focus on client relationships instead of administrative tasks,” Begley said.

To create a unified experience, MTC connected Laserfiche with other essential systems across the organization to create a unified view of client activity and documents:

DocuSign enables clients to sign forms securely and return them instantly.
Salesforce syncs account data so staff can view related records without leaving the CRM.

Together, these integrations give staff and partners faster, more reliable access to client information. Digital signatures speed up document turnaround, while synchronized data ensures teams always work from the most accurate record. The result is a more connected client experience, with fewer handoffs and less manual work across departments. That means MTC can provide faster, more consistent service without losing the attentive client care that defines its approach.

Reliable Operations That Uphold Client Trust

Today, 83% of employees use the system daily. Automation significantly reduced the time staff and partners spend on repetitive tasks while improving data accuracy and compliance readiness. The decision to deploy in the cloud also reduced IT overhead, eliminating the need to manage servers, perform updates or handle routine maintenance.

As a result, MTC enjoys stronger business continuity, fewer interruptions and better scalability for future growth. “We have a reputation for reliability,” Begley said. “Laserfiche enables us to deliver on that every day.”

MTC continues to expand automation to additional account processes and explore new ways to leverage AI capabilities. The company plans to connect Laserfiche with its trust accounting system for straight-through processing. It is also looking to implement Intelligent Data Capture to handle incoming checks and invoices more efficiently.

Together, these connected processes create a consistent, compliant framework that supports growth and reliable client service. With Laserfiche, MTC can continue operating with the reach of a national firm while preserving the personal service that sets it apart.

“Laserfiche gives us the agility to scale without adding staff,” Begley said. “It’s helping us build a smarter, more efficient future for our clients and our team.”

Coopecaja Enhances Member Services and Secures Data with Laserfiche

Coopecaja, a savings and credit cooperative in Costa Rica, operates with the complexity of a bank, providing mortgages, consumer loans and savings services to its members. While the organization is dedicated to offering robust financial benefits, the management of physical documentation created significant logistical and financial hurdles.

The cooperative previously relied on physical archives, storing documents in filing cabinets and external servers. This resulted in excess storage costs and slower member service. Coopecaja needed a solution that would not only digitize their records but also align with national archival standards.

To alleviate these inefficiencies, the organization implemented Laserfiche to centralize document management and streamline processes across the enterprise.

“Laserfiche has been a great tool to provide faster and easier access to information,” said Marlene Norori, archivist at Coopecaja. “Working with the platform is much more efficient and fits our administrative and document management needs perfectly.”

Protecting Member Data and Reducing Storage Costs with Centralized Records

Managing records in accordance with strict regulatory requirements and safeguarding sensitive member data is challenging with physical records. Physical files also slow internal processes and make it difficult to enforce strict access controls. As a cooperative, Coopecaja is governed by a legal framework and regulations issued by the General Superintendency of Financial Institutions (SUGEF) concerning supervision, regulation, and applicable financial controls. Additionally, for document management, Coopecaja must follow the archival standards issued by the National Archive of Costa Rica as well as other international standards.

To centralize records and enforce granular access controls, the cooperative adopted Laserfiche’s cloud-based enterprise content management (ECM) system.

“The permissions structure allows staff to find what they need quickly and securely,” said Sharon Ureña Sánchez, archive assistant at Coopecaja. “It also ensures that each person has access only to the information they need and not additional data.”

With documentation in Laserfiche, Coopecaja minimized the need for printing and physical filing. The platform’s search templates and metadata capabilities helped the cooperative organize information, mirroring their previous archival structure in a secure digital environment.

Staff can now access information instantly without leaving their desks, freeing up time to focus on higher-value tasks rather than information retrieval.

“The time saved has been significant — we’ve greatly reduced waiting times for other departments when they need access to information,” said Sánchez. “Laserfiche provides us speed and accessibility.”

“Laserfiche has significantly reduced physical storage costs,” said Norori. “The goal now is to eliminate obsolete documents that have already passed their retention period and keep only what’s necessary in Laserfiche.”

By centralizing records in Laserfiche, Coopecaja created a secure environment that strictly enforces data privacy without hindering productivity.

Streamlining the Member Journey

Beyond records management, Coopecaja is now using Laserfiche to automate key processes. Previously, joining the cooperative was a time-consuming, manual experience. Members were required to visit branch locations in person to complete registration paperwork. This reliance on physical presence and paper forms created delays and administrative burdens for both members and staff.

Coopecaja transformed the experience by implementing a fully digital onboarding process. “Once members complete the registration process online, the digital documents are automatically uploaded to Laserfiche,” said Norori. “This has saved both our members and our staff a lot of time.”

This also ensures that member information — such as social capital contributions and membership files — is complete, eliminating the back-and-forth that results from forgotten documents.

The transition has accelerated service delivery and improved member convenience. Staff can now complete reviews instantly online rather than handling physical paperwork, significantly reducing processing time.

As Coopecaja plans for the future, the team is confident that they have a scalable foundation. “As we continue adding documents and storage needs grow, with our Laserfiche Cloud infrastructure, we can expand as needed,” added Sánchez.

A Cure for Complexity: How a Multi-State Skilled Nursing Facility Streamlined Over 100 Processes

In the fast-paced, often chaotic world of healthcare, every second counts. For a multi-state healthcare organization with 50 locations, the challenge wasn’t just delivering quality patient care; it was also managing the complex web of administrative tasks that often pulled their staff away from what mattered most — patients.

“Our corporate mission statement is to deliver quality, effective nursing care to our seniors, pediatrics and young adults,” said Jeff Nichols, chief technology officer at The Alden Network. “But our mission from an IT perspective is to deliver a great experience to our clients, who are also our fellow employees.”

One factor getting in the way of that mission was the organization’s reliance on manual processes. Documents were being faxed, emailed, or physically carried from one department to another. This led to delays and prevented staff from spending all their time and skills on patient care.

To address the issue, Alden turned to Laserfiche. Now, instead of faxes and emails, the organization has over 100 automated Laserfiche Forms processes in place, with even more on the way. The solution has improved efficiency by 70% to 80%, allowing staff to refocus their time and talent to patients.

The Problem: Monotonous Tasks and Wasted Time

Before Laserfiche, core business processes — like those in human resources or accounts payable — were not only manually driven but also largely inconsistent across Alden’s 50 locations. When the Alden IT team began looking for an electronic document management system, they saw in Laserfiche a larger opportunity for consistent data orchestration.

“We thought that document storage was going to be 90% of how we used Laserfiche,” Nichols said. “But we are now using Laserfiche Forms and workflow automation in a significant way. Laserfiche Forms helps us get the tasks into the hands of our users, and workflow does all the backend processing of the data.”

In the accounts payable (AP) department, for instance, employees were using triplicate carbon copy forms for purchase orders (POs). “Correspondence [was] going back and forth in email, or some buildings were even just sending a stack of paper in a tote via courier to the AP department,” said Ralph Reinhofer, IT project manager at Alden Network. AP processors had to manually match invoices to receipts, a cumbersome process that could easily lead to delays.

Another company-wide activity — the onboarding process for new hires — was also full of manual, disconnected tasks. “There were times IT would find out that when someone started, they didn’t get a notebook, or door access, or whatever they needed,” Nichols explained. These manual tasks were not just frustrating; they also detracted from the core mission of providing excellent care.

The Solution: Streamlining with Forms and Workflow

“One of the main goals with Laserfiche was removing monotonous, repetitive tasks from our employees, so they can spend more time focusing on the patient, or things related to patient care, rather than moving data from one place to another,” said Reinhofer.

Laserfiche Forms and workflow were the key to solving some of Alden Network’s biggest challenges. Working with Laserfiche solution provider Proven IT, Alden used Laserfiche as a solution to automate AP processes and streamline HR administration. This initiative allowed Alden to digitize and standardize operations across all 50 locations.

Now, instead of relying on couriers or faxes to send information between locations, the organization manages a wide range of tasks digitally. These include:

Purchase order approvals: A digitized PO process replaced the old triplicate carbon copies, allowing locations to upload delivery receipts and confirm orders digitally. This resulted in significant time savings, plus more on-time payments and a better experience for vendors.
Onboarding and offboarding: The new onboarding process ensures that new hires have everything they need on their first day, from temporary passwords to door access. This process was a critical improvement, Nichols noted, not only for new hires, but also promotions and intracompany transfers.
Customer care surveys: The organization’s customer care surveys are now streamlined through Laserfiche, providing a more efficient way to collect patient feedback.
HR and payroll tasks: Rate changes, uniform orders, and other HR-related tasks are all handled through standardized forms, supporting consistency and accuracy. A Laserfiche integration with Alden’s HRIS pulls milestones like new hire dates and anniversary dates to further streamline these processes.
Expense reimbursement: Requests submitted by employees are automatically routed to the appropriate personnel. These requests are resolved swiftly, with receipts and other documentation archived as needed.

“Name any internal business process at Alden, and there’s probably a Laserfiche form for it,” Reinhofer said. “And we’ve now given everyone a single way to do everything, so there’s a lot of consistency now.”

The consistency is not only more efficient, but it also helps with employee retention and recruitment. When a new employee needs to learn a process, “there are four other buildings doing it the same way and there’s certainly enough people they can lean on to ask, ‘How does this work?’” Nichols explained. “And it’s always the same answer.”

The Results: A Shift in Focus

Since implementing Laserfiche, Alden has seen dramatic improvements in efficiency and productivity. The team has automated over 100 Laserfiche Forms processes with more on the way. Many of these automated processes now run 70% to 80% more efficiently than the manual workflows they replaced. Work that required a full week of manual effort can now be completed in an hour, allowing the IT team to manage workloads that were previously difficult to scale. “We created a monster, because we let the staff think outside of the box,” Nichols said. “Anything that they’ve asked for, we’ve made it into a process. We don’t fault them, because we started this — and it’s effective.”

Alden also relies on Laserfiche to support evolving Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services CMS administrative requirements. The platform’s flexibility allows the team to respond quickly to regulatory changes while maintaining consistent documentation and tracking across the organization.

The most significant benefit has been empowering staff to focus on their core duties. By automating repetitive administrative tasks, the organization has freed up employee time. “We know people have other things to do,” Nichols said. “They have better uses of their time than these manual tasks you can deploy a robot to do. That’s essentially what Laserfiche has done for us.”

Ultimately, the goal has been to get back to the heart of the organization’s mission. “We want our clinicians to do clinical work,” Nichols explained. “The IT department doesn’t know how to take care of your mom or dad or grandparent. We want the clinicians to do that. We don’t want processes to take our healthcare providers away from what they do best.”

Unlock Your Organization’s Content with AI-Powered Document Management

Empower 2026 Key Takeaways: Intelligent Document Processing with Laserfiche AI Agents

Scott Lingenfelter on stage at Empower 2026

The most useful AI experiences are the ones that fit naturally into the systems and workflows employees already use every day. That’s where AI moves beyond isolated tasks and becomes part of how operational work actually gets done.

At Empower 2026 — Laserfiche’s premier annual conference— we introduced Laserfiche AI Agents, new virtual assistants designed to help teams bridge the gap between manual work and traditional automation. Using the Smart Chat interface in Agent mode, these digital coworkers tap into advanced generative AI reasoning models to analyze content and take meaningful action, all within the secure, governed environment of the Laserfiche repository.

Here’s what that looks like in practice.

Offload Tedious Tasks to AI Agents: Reorganize, Classify, Identify and Extract

Because so much work still gets stuck between manual effort and full automation, teams are often left managing repetitive operational tasks that don’t quite justify building a dedicated workflow. As anyone handling records at scale can tell you, that work multiplies quickly when policies or compliance requirements change, or large sets of records need to be reorganized.

One example we demonstrated at Empower involved the new California Senate Bill 513 (SB 513) that expanded the definition of personnel records to include employee training and education materials. For HR teams, that seemingly small change can create hours of tedious administrative work, from reviewing records to creating new folder structures to moving documents into the right employee files.

With Laserfiche AI Agents, an HR manager can simply use natural language prompts to tell Agents to move training records into matching employee personnel folders and create a new Training and Education subfolder. The Agent analyzes the request, recommends actions and carries out the work while still allowing the manager to review and approve each step before moving forward. With intelligent content management, tasks that previously required hours of manual effort can now be completed in seconds.

That same approach can help simplify a wide range of everyday work across departments:

Reorganizing records and metadata based on updated business policies or compliance requirements

Classifying incoming documents and automatically routing key business information into workflows and business systems

Identifying sensitive information that may require additional review or governance controls

Extracting action items, deadlines and responsibilities from unstructured emails or documents

Improving knowledge discovery through semantic search that understands context, meaning and intent

Individually, these tasks might seem incremental, but together, they can dramatically improve how work moves through an organization.

See an in-depth list of Laserfiche AI Agent capabilities.

Smarter Search for Instant Discovery

The first step in moving work forward is being able to find the right information quickly. Anyone who’s spent time digging through repositories and shared drives knows how frustrating this can be. Most organizations have enormous amounts of information spread across repositories and business systems, but finding what you need often depends on knowing precisely where to look.

Laserfiche’s agentic semantic search helps change that experience. Employees can search based on concepts, intent or meaning rather than relying entirely on exact keywords. For instance, a user can instantly surface vendor agreements related to “indemnification,” even if the document only uses terms like “liability” or “damages.”

The real-world speed of these capabilities was on full display at Empower. Business users configured AI prompts and extraction rules in minutes using natural language instructions instead of traditional technical configuration methods. In one internal onboarding demonstration, AI-powered document and metadata management reduced manual data capture work by 90%.

That accessibility empowers the employees closest to operational bottlenecks to solve them directly, allowing organizations to adapt instantly without waiting for IT support.

None of this works without trust. Laserfiche AI Agents prioritize human review, transparency and auditability, giving organizations total visibility. Agents strictly inherit your existing user permissions and governance policies, so you stay in control of every action.

The Next Phase of Autonomous AI Agents

The next phase of Laserfiche AI Agents will be even more dynamic, context-aware, and autonomous. Today, they help users complete one-off tasks interactively through natural language requests. Soon, process agents will seamlessly embed into existing workflows, replacing complex decision trees—like invoice approval routing—with intelligent automation.

The next evolution of Laserfiche AI will introduce background agents that run autonomously in the background to monitor repositories for specific business signals. For example, a marketing manager can task an agent with tracking files for a specific campaign. Using contextual reasoning rather than rigid keywords, the agent will automatically identify relevant documents the moment they are published and curate them for the team. Information actively helps move work forward rather than sitting inside siloed systems.

At its best, AI should help organizations reduce operational friction, adapt more quickly and give employees more time to focus on meaningful, high-value work. That vision shaped many of the conversations we had at Empower this year, and it continues to guide how we think about the future of work at Laserfiche.

Read more about What’s New with Laserfiche AI Agents or download our new eBook to discover how to drive digital transformation and operational efficiency using AI.