Streamlining Student-Centered Processes at Colegio Alemán

Colegio Alemán Alexander von Humboldt A.C. is a network of three German-language schools based in greater Mexico City. Serving 3,000 students, the organization is one of the largest German educational institutions outside of Germany. In order to serve its growing student body, the organization found the need to reimagine the ways in which it provided core student services, such as enrollment, re-enrollment and scholarships.

The Colegio Alemán team seized the opportunity to digitize and automate key processes using a Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM) system, which enabled them to create electronic forms to capture student information digitally, and automate workflows to streamline document processing. The team started by creating a better experience for students and their families with the re-enrollment process, and has since built on their success by continuing to optimize and automate other key activities throughout the organization.

“We’ve experienced many benefits from automating our workflows using Laserfiche, we’ve found that what we need to do, we can do in the Laserfiche platform.”

—Victor Valverde López, technology manager at Colegio Alemán

Reimagining Re-enrollment

After managing many time- and resource-intensive re-enrollment cycles, Colegio Alemán Administrative Manager Ema Medina brought a challenge to the organization’s leadership: “We couldn’t continue the way that we were doing the re-enrollment process,” Medina said. “Parents had to come to the school with lots of paperwork, documents that we needed signed, and in the best-case scenario, it would take an hour or more to get through with all of the steps involved.”

The Colegio Alemán team worked with Apoint Mexico, a Laserfiche solution provider, to implement Laserfiche with the goal of reimagining re-enrollment as a digital, automated process that would save time for parents and administrative staff. In the new process, a Laserfiche form collects the necessary information from parents — because this is the re-enrollment process, parents only need to confirm and update information as needed. They can review the contract with the school, provide an e-signature and even pay tuition with the new Laserfiche-powered automated process.

“One of the most important parts of our Laserfiche implementation was the ease of integration,”said Valverde López. “It was easy for us to integrate our Laserfiche process with our ERP, Intelisis, which enabled us to streamline the activities — from inputting student information to payments. And with records management, our documents are organized and classified in such a way that it’s easy for administrative staff to find information.”

When COVID-19 hit Mexico in 2020, the Colegio Alemán team was grateful to have a process in place for parents to re-enroll their students online. Now that the staff has returned to the office, however, parents still prefer the online process. “For me, the biggest benefit has been the improvement in our customer service,” Medina said. “The parents are very happy with this process and they tell us all the time. And having all of our documents in a digital platform — it’s such an important tool.”

“Today, parents don’t have to physically go to the school to re-enroll; they don’t have to print a single page. They can do the entire process from their house, from their offices, wherever they are. It takes about five to 10 minutes — the contract, the payment, everything. It’s saved us time and money, but the most important thing is that our parents are happy because they don’t lose one to three hours doing this process.”

—Victor Briseño Candela, CFO at Colegio Alemán

Building on Digital Transformation Organization-wide

The parents and employees’ satisfaction with the new re-enrollment process led the Colegio Alemán team to continue digitally transforming other student-facing processes. Naturally, the new student enrollment process was a prime candidate for automation. “The new student process is very important,” Briseño Candela explained. “Today, we have an enrollment form for new students, so parents can give us information, all the documentation, and it’s all saved in the Laserfiche repository.”

Additional processes that the Colegio Alemán team have automated include:
  • Scholarship requests: Families can provide financial information, which is automatically routed to the relevant personnel to review and make a determination.
  • Bus transportation process: Colegio Alemán provides bus transportation for nearly 2,000 students per school day. This process streamlines the collection of authorizations from parents that their children can take the bus, and updated addresses to support efficient pick-up and drop-off.
  • Vendor registration: Vendors that work with Colegio Alemán provide legal and fiscal documents through this process, which automates validation and document classification.
  • Employees’ children enrollment: Colegio Alemán employees can enroll their children through a special enrollment and approval process.
  • Teacher benefit discount: School teachers can submit a form to receive discounts for different materials and services.
  • Legal or parent meeting attendance: A simple but important process allows Colegio Alemán staff to keep record of who attended meetings.

“Any school district or network of schools operates with a lot of different systems. Laserfiche has helped us to pull information from all of these systems that normally operate independently, so that we have more visibility into the data that we have.”

—Víctor Valverde López, technology manager at Colegio Alemán

A Digital-First Future

The team at Colegio Alemán continues to automate processes and move toward a digital-first approach to student services. As Colegio Alemán started with more student-facing processes, the organization’s future plans include assessing back-office processes for additional efficiencies.

“Ultimately, we want to implement a dashboard for our process data in Laserfiche,” Briseño Candela said. This will enable even more optimization moving forward, allowing the organization’s leadership to identify process bottlenecks or spot trends that can help them make informed decisions when resource planning.

“A lot of our current Laserfiche processes are communication between the school to our different publics — our parents, our associates, our teachers,” Briseño Candela said. “The next step is to use Laserfiche for our internal processes, to be more efficient in our day-to-day work. It’s our social responsibility not to print so much paper. And it is also our responsibility to be efficient with our time to support the people working in administration, as well as the parents. We want to create a good experience for everyone involved.”

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

MSIG Puts Customers First in Claims Processing

The focus on customer experience was one of the core drivers in the process automation strategy for MSIG Hong Kong (MSIG), embracing customer needs in light of a shifting technological landscape and major disruptions. The company sought to phase out legacy systems and increase efficiency for its claims submission service, requiring a highly adaptable content services tool to do so.

Since implementing Laserfiche for claims in 10 different product lines, the MSIG claims team can now manage all claims in a centralized platform, allowing staff to focus on more important claim assessment tasks. By investing in digital transformation for the organization’s EASY Claims System, MSIG has been able to differentiate itself in Hong Kong’s highly competitive insurance industry. The organization’s EASY Claims system has received wide recognition in Asia’s insurance landscape, as well as won MSIG a number of industry awards. In 2019, the company won a Laserfiche Run Smarter Award; in 2024, MSIG earned the Laserfiche Run Smarter Award for Best Program ROI.

“Laserfiche is the catalyst for our users and customers to improve their day-to-day work experiences,” said Alan Yue, Senior Vice President of Information Technology at MSIG.

Seeking a means to respond to customer needs and enable staff to transition to remote working arrangements, Laserfiche has also helped MSIG successfully achieve business continuity, maintaining a high level of operational efficiency and customer service through dedicated portals.

A Claims Processing System Made EASY

Providing general insurance solutions for more than 100 years, MSIG Holdings (Asia) Pte. Ltd. has a history of combining global and local best practices in the organization’s customer-focused approach, believing that the relationship between insurance companies and customers should be based on trust. This commitment to customers led the organization to reassess its reliance on manual legacy systems for process management. MSIG recognized that customers are embracing more digital solutions, presenting an opportunity to make correspondence with clients more seamless and efficient, as well as reengineer the IT infrastructure.

“As a core part of our business, the claims system is one of the most important parts of the MSIG customer journey,” Yue said. “We realized that the entire process was actually quite paper-driven, making it the perfect candidate to digitalize and automate.”

MSIG initiated a business transformation program known internally as “Transformer” in 2017. Laserfiche was chosen as MSIG’s core digital transformation solution with the goal of automating manual and paper-based core business processes, targeting the customer claims submission platform as a starting point. Eventually named EASY Claims, the system improved both operational efficiency and service with a focus on the customer experience. The platform supports self-service submissions, as well as provides transparency of claims status to MSIG customers.

Within the first three months of launch, EASY Claims significantly improved efficiency at MSIG, automating over 100,000 tasks that previously required manual user input. Additionally, the number of clients submitting claims via the new system has increased by up to 80%. This has streamlined and simplified the claims submission process for customers, aligning with shifting technological expectations and improving response times.

The EASY Claims system also improved the experience for staff processing customer submissions. Originally, acknowledging a newly submitted claim could take two days. Today, it takes fewer than 15 minutes. This translates to a savings of more than 200 work days a year for the claims processing staff organization-wide. The property claims management team specifically was able to save 57 days a year through the EASY Claims system.

The initiative has created the opportunity for ongoing optimization. In 2022, MSIG introduced Zero Touch for Helper insurance plan claims. Zero Touch is MSIG’s digital solution for claims assessment, enabling customers to submit their claims form, supporting documents and contact details online. The system then checks the customer’s claims history, policy validity and claim payment amount. For eligible clinical or dental expenses claims, payments are settled in just two working days. MSIG is planning to add Zero Touch to more products, creating a more seamless customer experience across product lines.

Along with facilitating claims submission for customers and acknowledgement in the backend, the automated process has helped save 12 days a year during the claims finalization stage. In terms of improved staff efficiency, MSIG has increased overall productivity by 1.4 times per hiring cycle within the Claims department alone. As a team with a significant amount of customer facetime and interaction, the Claims department’s increased productivity has improved both employee and customer experience.

In 2022, MSIG Hong Kong honored over HK$356 million, with a claims ratio of 92.9%, seeing a consistent increase for three consecutive years. The organization also reduced the number of complaints received by 50% in two years.

As the platform that powers the EASY Claims system, Laserfiche has helped to ensure a high level of customer service and a user-friendly, customer-oriented interface. The platform removes friction from the process of filing a claim, with intuitive features such as a “save-as-draft” function that enables customers to retrieve incomplete forms at any time using an email link, and smart suggestions that provide basic information and documents that customers will need to make a claim before they fill out the form. Customers can also receive SMS messages, email confirmations and tracking numbers to stay informed of the status of their claims.

“Claims is only the beginning of our digital transformation. Since implementing Laserfiche, we are looking at expanding to multiple channels, underwriting teams and core business processes to digitize and automate as well,” said Yue.

Investing in the Future

Recognizing that the insurance industry has historically relied on legacy processes, MSIG looked to digitize its claim service, rebuilding it to address both staff and client needs. With core business processes established between 10 to 20 years prior, the firm had an intimate knowledge of its users’ needs, refreshing a part of its business that focused heavily on customer and employee input. Working with Laserfiche to develop a nimble IT strategy, MSIG has been able to improve the customer and back-end experience within the claims process without disrupting day-to-day operations.
“Both business and technology landscapes have experienced so much rapid change and development,” said Yue. “These are the primary driver for MSIG’s digital transformation program, equipping us to anticipate our future needs as well as our customer expectations.”

Experiencing unprecedented and unanticipated changes in 2020, the EASY Claims System has proven itself to be highly adaptable, highlighting the need for digital transformation at MSIG. With claims as an obvious starting point, MSIG is looking to expand Laserfiche to other departments and processes. The organization is preparing to introduce claims process tracking for customers, allowing customers to track their claims in real time through the MSIG app or website — further enhancing visibility and continuing to build trust with customers.

“We now have a way to differentiate ourselves within Hong Kong’s insurance marketplace,” said Yue. “Laserfiche has helped users throughout the company to identify opportunities to improve day-to-day work. The sky is the limit.”

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

Santa Monica’s Digital First Approach

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

Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reimagining Records Management

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

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

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

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

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

Reclaiming Time in Accounts Payable

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

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

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

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

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

Simplifying the COR Audit Process and Enhancing Employee Experience

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

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

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

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

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

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

County-wide Digital Transformation Continues

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

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

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

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

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

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

FCA Packaging Strengthens Employee and Vendor Experience through Business Processes Automation

FCA Packaging designs and manufactures highly customized packaging products and solutions for major original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Following two recent acquisitions, the organization sought a solution to rebuild key business processes throughout departments. The company sought to address needs in engineering and human resources, as well as industry-specific requirements such as inventory management. Additionally, the FCA Packaging team wanted to process invoice and customer documentation with more efficiency and transparency to support company growth.

“Not only has Laserfiche helped to improve customer and vendor satisfaction, but our staff have also been able to focus more on higher-value processes,” said Sandra Lund, payroll manager at FCA Packaging. “It’s changed the way we function here and just made us so much more efficient working together as a team.”

Using Laserfiche, FCA Packaging transformed the accounts payable process — from a manual, paper driven activity to a streamlined, digital process that has accelerated response and payment times. FCA has since expanded its use of Laserfiche to manage a wide range of both internal and external processes, increasing productivity and accuracy across departments. In addition to automating business-critical processes, employees have been able to reclaim time and increase capacity, enabling the company to optimize costs while providing a high standard of service and products to an expanding client base of manufacturers around the world. “Implementing Laserfiche aligned with our core values of growth and empowerment,” said Steve Everett Jr., a president with FCA Packaging. “Our team members have been able to develop and deploy a solution that scales with us as we continue to grow organically and through acquisition.”

“Implementing Laserfiche aligned with our core values of growth and empowerment. Our team members have been able to develop and deploy a solution that scales with us as we continue to grow organically and through acquisition.”

— Steve Everett Jr, president at FCA Packaging

Buying Into Accounts Payable Transformation

Working with a long list of vendors and with over 1,000 employees across 35 locations, the FCA Packaging accounts payable team saw an opportunity to improve invoice management, which was previously a manual process using a legacy ECM system that was approaching end-of-life. Looking to improve compliance for audits, the team needed a solution that would support granular control access for accounting and financial documents, balancing both accuracy and ease of use. With the support of Laserfiche solution provider Momentum ECM, FCA found a solution in Laserfiche.

Before implementing Laserfiche, two staff members were assigned to reviewing financial statements and payment documentation manually and submitting completed invoices to stakeholders for approval. The manual process could take up to four days to complete. The updated invoice approval process now takes just five hours:
  • Vendors upload credit card receipts to Laserfiche for the AP team to review.
  • Laserfiche automatically extracts key information.
  • Laserfiche uploads the information, organizing it in specific file locations with granular access rights.

The streamlined process also provides an enhanced employee experience with increased accountability, while at the same time accelerating the payment cycle, improving FCA’s reputation among vendors.

“By enabling us to leverage automation and access rights for individuals, we have been able to finalize invoices more efficiently,” said Lund. “Now that we have greater visibility on our AP processes, we can respond to vendor needs more quickly with more accountability.

“In the beginning, some team members were concerned that automation would make certain roles redundant,” added Lund. “But after experiencing how the solution would free up their schedules, many employees were able to accelerate their own personal growth by taking on new projects in other departments. Laserfiche has done more than transform our operations, it has transformed the way we work as a team.”

Additionally, as a result of the Laserfiche initiative, the AP team can now quickly find invoices and other financial documents for review, simplifying the auditing process. The system has been used in a similar capacity for internal audits, as well as streamlining the overall audit process to support industry-specific OSHA documentation and ISO standards. This has further improved industry-specific safety and manufacturing management processes, allowing users to identify additional processes to manage through the digital platform. Laserfiche has provided FCA with more control over financial documents, giving specific members of the company access to the documents needed for internal and external audits to optimize the collection of this high-value data and improve turnaround and compliance.

A Full-Package Solution

After the initial success in the accounts payable department, other departments sought to automate and improve core company processes. Across 35 branches nationwide, Laserfiche has been implemented in almost every department. Laserfiche Forms help to manage processes in HR, accounts receivable, IT, staff safety and beyond. Serving more than 1,000 employees company-wide, the payroll department utilized Laserfiche to manage processes such as vacation requests and salary increases for full-time employees, helping FCA achieve substantial savings in time and resources. For example, compiling and processing sales and tax information for tax returns could take up to three days. Now, the process can be completed in four hours.

In addition to increased efficiency, Laserfiche has helped to increase accountability and for users, enabling staff to take ownership of their respective roles. Employees across all branches can manage invoices and other business-critical content, having access at any time of the day with insights on the progress of each open task. Users can use this information to identify obstacles and bottlenecks at any point of the workflow in order to streamline approval or turnaround a task overall. In an increasingly digital business environment, FCA Packaging has been able to boost efficiency and transparency company wide.

“Laserfiche has helped us to grow within our roles, take on additional projects and have a greater sense of ownership over the work we do,” Lund said. “For departments such as accounts payable, accounts receivable and payroll, our long-term goal will be to use Laserfiche as close to 100% as possible.”

To learn more about how Laserfiche can empower your organization with solutions to help you scale growth and improve the employee and vendor experience, schedule a demo today.

The Isle of Man Moves to Digital-First Government Services

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

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

Building a Foundation with Digital Records Management

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Continuous Innovation to Enhance the Employee and Citizen Experience

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Glasgow Credit Union Digitally Transforms the Member Experience and Supports Business Resilience

Glasgow Credit Union is one of the largest credit unions in Europe, serving the greater Glasgow area with a service scope focusing on savings and loans. Experiencing steady growth, the organization used Laserfiche to power a number of digital transformation initiatives aimed at reducing reliance on manual processes and ensuring that the organization could scale while maintaining the high-quality customer experience for which the credit union is known.

The organization initially implemented Laserfiche in 2016 as a document management platform, integrating it with Glasgow’s CRM system to improve access to information for customers and employees. Since then, Laserfiche has helped achieve business process automation to digitize and streamline loan processing. With a completely automated lending platform, clients are offered more competitive lending services, enabling customers to complete loan approvals in under an hour.

“Laserfiche is quite central to all we do,” said Paul McFarlane, chief technology officer at Glasgow Credit Union.

Additionally, Glasgow Credit Union’s digital initiatives have supported business continuity during the COVID-19 pandemic, enabling the organization to rapidly pivot to more digitally focused services. This aligns with expansion and scalability needs: Since implementing Laserfiche, membership has expanded to around 55,000 customers, representing nearly GBP 200 million (US$277 million*) in assets.

A Customer-Focused, Streamlined Lending Process

Founded in 1989, Glasgow Credit Union has grown substantially over the past four decades but its aim has remained the same: helping members and ensuring they have access to friendly, professional financial services that meet their needs. As member expectations have evolved, the credit union has prioritized digital transformation to provide the best possible member experience.

“It’s not just us, but in our sector, we didn’t have a lot of scalability in a lot of our processes,” McFarlane said. “So our application journey, specifically to onboard a member and apply for a loan, was quite a cumbersome process because it was paper-heavy and there was a lot of manual tasks. … There was no automation. Initially there were no web services as well.”

Using Laserfiche, the organization created an automated lending platform which digitized and centralized loan applications, increasing accessibility of information for staff; and ultimately accelerated loan processing for clients. With the understanding that an easy and fast new member onboarding is fundamental to a member’s experience, the credit union also digitized and streamlined the member onboarding process by integrating Laserfiche with its existing financial management application, Curtains, along with DocuSign. New members can now join the credit union and apply for funds within 15 minutes — a process that used to take up to three days.

With an eye toward enhancing the full client experience, Glasgow Credit Union also launched an initiative to streamline the borrowing process. This required as fast a turnaround as possible for customer loans to be issued once their loan applications were accepted. Previously handling around 24,000 loan agreements each year, the company manually processed and archived 120,000 sheets of paper. Customers were manually notified by staff at each stage of the loan journey, resulting in 10,000 resource hours each year.

“The feedback from members was phenomenal — the speed, the efficiency, the fact that we didn’t have to wait for the post to deliver the paper, and how easy it was to do business with us after we had improved those processes,” said McFarlane.

The Glasgow Credit Union team re-engineered and automated the loan agreement process so that loans could be completed in under an hour rather than several days. Approximately 80% of applications were completed digitally prior to the pandemic. COVID-19 increased reliance on digital processes, however, and today, nearly all loan applications are now submitted and processed in a digital manner, benefiting both clients and staff in terms of efficiency and turnaround.

“Our work with Laserfiche wasn’t about preparing for something like COVID — I don’t think anybody was preparing for something like COVID,” McFarlane explained. “Our decision to digitalize was all about efficiency; it was about speed and providing a better, slicker service to our members. But if we hadn’t done that, it would have been a different conversation that we’re having today.”

Improving the Customer Journey

Digitization has also benefited Glasgow Credit Union members by providing the ability to initiate joining and borrowing processes even after office business hours. An automated self-serve channel allows the processes to be kicked off without staff supervision. After initiating an application process, Laserfiche integrations with third party applications — DocuSign, Curtains, and a bespoke front-end platform — seamlessly drive the loan application process through a workflow from the initial application stage to final pay out.

Documents are delivered back to customers for signing, bringing them to the next application stage. The automated process saves more than 150 employee hours each week. Employees have reclaimed this time to focus on other parts of the business, expanding operational capacity.

“We’ve got Laserfiche integrated with our core technologies, so users can view documents through our front-end that are pulled from the Laserfiche platform, without having to open up separate applications,” said McFarlane. “Employees find it quite easy that they’re not having to work across multiple platforms.”

Underlying Glasgow Credit Union’s integration and process automation initiatives, the organization has robust records management practices — a critical element to success in the financial services industry. Laserfiche has supported the organization’s information governance, enabling the credit union to manage the full life cycle of documents and supporting compliance with European data protection regulations.

During the first year after deploying Laserfiche, Glasgow Credit Union experienced an income growth exceeding GBP 1 million (US$1.31 million*), as well as a GBP 40 million (US$52.44 million*) increase in loan volumes from 2017 to 2018. Followed by this business growth, the credit union’s team now feels they have an infinite operational capacity for loan processing. After four years, Glasgow Credit Union has achieved ROI equating to their original investment in the Laserfiche platform. Factoring in resource savings and improved customer journey times, the credit union has a scalable model that has resulted in significant growth in business.

As a central, business-critical software solution, Laserfiche has helped Glasgow Credit Union with existing scalability and project prioritization goals, as well as helped to respond to customer needs during the COVID-19 pandemic. Beyond member onboarding and loan applications, the organization is looking to implement Laserfiche in a similar capacity in mortgage applications and other business units.

“I’m amazed at the simplicity of integrating Laserfiche with our existing processes and other pieces of business-critical technology,” said McFarlane. “Our vision is to be the lender of choice within our marketplace in Glasgow – Laserfiche has helped us achieve that.”

*USD conversion subject to current exchange rate.

Find out more about how Laserfiche helps to transform credit unions here.

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

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

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

Testing the Waters for a Digital Future

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Transparent Pipeline of Content

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

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

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

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

A Clear Path for Digital Transformation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An Intuitive Solution for Capturing Information

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Going Beyond Expectations

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

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

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

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

The Future of Citizen Services

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leesburg, Virginia Supports Community and Local Businesses with Laserfiche Cloud

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

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

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

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

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

Solutions to Support Local Businesses, Nonprofits and Town Staff

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Digital Transformation Domino Effect

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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