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.

Introducing the Laserfiche API

As our users and solution providers know, Laserfiche offers a robust toolkit of integrations to help you bring Laserfiche Cloud into your digital ecosystem.

We’re here to introduce yet another addition to your integration toolkit, the Laserfiche API, allowing all kinds of applications to interact with the Laserfiche Cloud repository.

What is the Laserfiche API?

The Laserfiche API is a RESTful application programming interface (API) for Laserfiche Cloud.

An API is a set of functions that facilitate communication between two applications. For example, in the case of the Laserfiche API, these functions help other applications interact with the Laserfiche Cloud repository.

RESTful is a standard for APIs, allowing third-party or home-grown applications in virtually any language to send and receive information from web applications in a consistent format. The Laserfiche API can also run on most operating systems, including Windows, Mac, Linux, Android and iOS.

Future releases will also include official client libraries that make it easier for developers to work with the Laserfiche API in their preferred programming language.

In summary, an API allows communication between two applications, and the RESTful standard makes sure the applications are speaking the same language. The Laserfiche API allows your Laserfiche Cloud repository to interact with home-grown and third-party systems.

What can you do with the Laserfiche API?

The Laserfiche API enables you to interact with your Laserfiche Cloud repository in a variety of ways, including:

  • Import and export documents
  • Read and write metadata values
  • Create folder structures
  • Retrieve search results

Other exciting features, including process automation and OAuth authentication, are coming soon.

What are the use cases?

The general use case for the Laserfiche API is to facilitate information sharing between the Laserfiche Cloud repository and other system your organization uses day-to-day. For example, an educational institution may find that Laserfiche is the most cost-effective and secure enterprise content management solution available to them, but information comes to them from their student information system (SIS).

Below are some of the many system types you may want to integrate with your Laserfiche Cloud repository using the Laserfiche API:

  • Customer relationship management (CRM) – sales teams can avoid entering customer and prospect information twice. The Laserfiche API can facilitate the transfer of customer data and documentation from a CRM to Laserfiche when sales closes a deal.
  • Enterprise resource planning (ERP) – handle AP processing efficiently with a custom integration that can move invoices and receipts between Laserfiche – which can help you automatically match and capture data from invoices — and your ERP system.
  • Human resource management system (HRMS) – seamlessly move employee records, W-4s, contact information and more between your Laserfiche Cloud repository and your human resource management system (HRMS) when onboarding and offboarding employees.
  • Student information system (SIS) – Keep systems in sync, using your Laserfiche Cloud repository as a source of truth. Use the Laserfiche API to ensure that transcripts, mailing addresses and other important student information is updated across your systems and platforms.

How do I get started with the Laserfiche API?

We are incredibly excited about what developers will be able to create. To get started with the Laserfiche API, visit our developer page for how-to-guides, reference materials and more.

UWO’s King’s University College Increases Student Enrolment and Retention, Enables Remote Work Using Laserfiche

Colleges and universities have always been at the forefront of imagining change. And King’s University College, an affiliate of Western University Canada, is no exception — having leveraged technology to navigate shifts in learning, culture, technology and student expectations, the college has relied on student success as its guide.

In recent years, the college recognized a need to become more digitally driven to improve collaboration across departments and provide more responsive services to students. Using Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM) to digitize student forms and automate business processes in various departments across campus, King’s University College completely changed the way that departments communicate with each other and with students. This digital transformation prioritized student needs over time-intensive paperwork and manual processes. With the increased efficiency, King’s continued to provide excellent service to its applicants while managing a 49% increase in applications. In addition, King’s recruited more qualified students by increasing its admission requirement from 75% to 79%.  With the higher average, more students were successful and retention increased over all years.

One Solution for Digital Document Management, Electronic Forms and Process Automation

Founded in 1954, King’s University College prides itself on maintaining internationally recognized academic programming, comprehensive student services and outstanding faculty, all while keeping class sizes small so that students receive the best possible education. In 2011, King’s began to look for a system to digitize student files, giving the departments a better way to manage student information and align the student experience with the world-class education for which the college was known.

With the help of Ricoh Canada, one of the college’s workplace technology solution providers, King’s University College implemented Laserfiche, starting in Enrolment Services.

“The initial idea was to have files stored electronically,” said King’s University College Associate Registrar Tracy Cunningham. “Although our campus is fairly compact, many of the student service departments are spread throughout different buildings. There was a lot of singular paper files moving between one office or another, making it difficult to track down at times.”

More departments — including academic counselling services offered by the Academic Dean’s Office  — soon followed, digitizing their student files as well. The electronic access was a boon to King’s efficiency and reduced the risk of lost documents while en route to other buildings or departments. With institutional records newly digitized, staff looked for more ways to deliver a more modern, streamlined experience to students.

After attending the Laserfiche Empower conference, a group of King’s department leaders were inspired to explore the functionality of Laserfiche Forms. With Ricoh’s help, and over the span of just a few months, Enrolment Services was able to replace all paper admissions forms with electronic ones created in Laserfiche, and eliminated manual routing and other repetitive, manual tasks using Laserfiche business process automation.

“Everything is managed electronically in Laserfiche,” said Admissions Coordinator and Liaison Robin Ellis. “Admissions letters are automatically sent out to the student and all documents are archived in Laserfiche. We’re also able to go back and audit the workflows, to see what actions were taken and when. We saw what was possible at the conference, and just kept coming up with more ideas from there.”

“The King’s team has had a clear vision for using digital transformation to enhance the student experience since they began working with Ricoh Canada over five years ago,” said Eric Fletcher, VP of Marketing for Ricoh Canada. “Their initiatives have since gone beyond storage and retrieval, and we have been excited to partner with them to implement innovative electronic forms, online student services and integrations that give King’s students and employees access to the data and processes they need to be successful.”
Student studying on tablet pc

Building a Future-Ready Institution

Since COVID-19 forced many organizations to shift to remote work, King’s has found further value in Laserfiche beyond improved efficiency.

“We ended up exceeding our enrolment goal this year, and I honestly don’t know how we could have managed admissions through a pandemic — with everyone working from home — without Laserfiche,” said Ellis. “We couldn’t have timed it better. The admissions form went live this year, and we were able to use it for this fall semester.”

“In March, our whole world changed — we were at the peak of our admissions cycle when we suddenly had to do everything online,” added Cunningham. “Fortunately, we put our summer academic orientation — which all our first years go through — online. We created one-on-one course counselling sessions allowing new-to-King’s students the opportunity to meet with a counsellor and follow along on a Laserfiche form as we went through it with them. Copies were automatically emailed to students and routed to their folders. Having all these Laserfiche processes in place helped us provide a user-friendly experience for students. The feedback of students was excellent. Our personal approach online was supported by the Laserfiche form as well as the fast delivery of their registration and timetable documents.”

Quickly Adapting to Change

King’s benefited from having implemented digital solutions for admissions before the pandemic hit, however, staff continue to find new uses for Laserfiche even as employees continue to work from home, and faculty and students have transitioned to remote learning.

For example, Information Technology Services (ITS) used a Laserfiche form to securely distribute account information for a recently rolled out VoIP-based phone system, to avoid having to email individual passwords to staff.  In addition, the ITS team was also able to quickly deploy a form that gave instructors a central place to sign up for webinars on pedagogy and curriculum when professors were faced with moving their  courses online within days as a result of COVID. Pulling from the college’s authentication system, users are verified before they get access to these forms.

“Being able to authenticate makes a big difference that has saved ITS a lot of time,” said Systems Analyst Sheldon Lopes.

Other student-facing processes that have been transformed by Ricoh and Laserfiche include scholarship applications, which previously required students to conduct research scattered in different databases and submit duplicate paperwork if they wanted to apply for multiple scholarships. Today, an integration with Western University’s PeopleSoft ERP system enables the enrollment management team to manage the flow of information and pre-populate Laserfiche Forms with existing student data. The form creates a centralized experience for students to search scholarships by keyword, returning the scholarships for which the student is qualified. If the same information or documentation is required for multiple scholarships, the student only needs to enter or upload it once, and it is routed to the relevant scholarship applications. Once a decision is made on the scholarship, the integration enables an immediate update to the student’s information in PeopleSoft.

“This form is phenomenal, and really easy for students and staff,” said Ellis. “Laserfiche automatically sends scholarship information to the student finance office, and students can be automatically emailed if they receive a scholarship. It’s been a win-win for everyone.” With the new scholarship form, the number of student applications skyrocketed. In the past, King’s had difficulty having students apply.  With this new success, King’s will look to Laserfiche to find more ways to automate the process.

Leveraging the Ricoh team’s knowledge and experience with Laserfiche has made a significant impact in how students interact with King’s, which may be most evident in the academic counseling department.

“We had students emailing our team with academic questions — and oftentimes they would email many members of our team with the same question,” said Academic Data and Operations Coordinator Thomas Gray. “As a result, response times were slow and inquiries were difficult to track.”

The academic counseling team worked with Ricoh Canada to develop an inquiry submission form in Laserfiche. Now, students submit the form with their question and it is automatically triaged to a specific team member based on student information in King’s student database that is automatically populated in Laserfiche Forms.

“This enabled us to manage the workload and improve our student service,” Gray added. “King’s also has students from across Canada and around the world. We found that international students can connect to us and communicate seamlessly through Laserfiche Forms.”

The academic counseling department also collected and analyzed process information and reporting dashboards created using Laserfiche Forms to inform decision making. They were able to identify certain inquiries as more common than others, enabling them to better allocate resources toward responding to those inquiries. The team also noticed the times during which students preferred to contact them, and as such adjusted the department’s hours to better accommodate student schedules. The impact of insuring that inquiries are only received once, and immediately are directed to the right person was huge. The change in office hours was applauded publicly by the King’s University College Student Council as a result of the students’ appreciation.

Planning for the Future

King’s use of Laserfiche and Ricoh team support has facilitated a campus-wide digital transformation, which aims to enable King’s to adapt and respond to change, facilitate ongoing improvement and maintain the flow of communication.

“Digital transformation is letting people break down the digital siloes that they didn’t know existed. We know that we have one true data source, and we can truly share information. We’ve seen a reduction in error rates that comes with data entry, and don’t have to worry about what information is the most updated.”

—Manager of Infrastructure and Digital Pedagogies David Thuss.

“It helps us communicate as a campus in real time,” added Cunningham. “Laserfiche has helped us function faster, more collaboratively, and has positively affected our student retention.”

Since 2012, King’s has increased its applications, its admissions average and its student retention. The shining achievement is an increase of 15% in student enrolment this year in the midst of a pandemic.  With the majority of universities in the region seeing a decrease in enrolment and many smaller institutions (like King’s) facing financial difficulties including deficits and staff reductions, King’s has been able to achieve significant milestones through its Laserfiche initiatives, Ricoh partnership and digital transformation efforts.

“We are constantly looking to support students in a way that’s more efficient so we can focus on program planning or retention work,” said Gray. “We can use our time more wisely, and do more meaningful work. This meaningful work creates an enriching experience for all of our community-students, staff and faculty.”

Looking to digitize student records and paperwork processing at your institution? Schedule your free demo of Laserfiche for colleges and universities. 

New Account Opening in 30 Minutes

SITUATION

• New account opening process depended on paper forms and direct mail
• Legacy new account opening process could take from three to seven days
• Difficulty tracking activities taken on documents resulted in challenges with audit preparation

SOLUTION

• Accelerated new account opening process from one week down to 30 minutes
• Simplified audit preparation
• 40,000 hours of annual time savings

An independent investment advisory firm that provides financial consulting services to more than 4,000 households with approximately $2 billion in assets under management needed a way to expedite client services.

The firm sought out document management technology to automate its new account opening process. The legacy process was paper-based, requiring the firm to prepare stacks of paper forms and individually mail them between advisors, a client service representative, the firm’s cashiering department, the client and the custodian. This typically took three to seven days and often delayed important client transactions.

“New account documents are extremely time sensitive. At times, we would have to interrupt advisors during meetings to get a signature,” said the firm’s IT director. “We were looking for a paperless system with efficient workflow, SEC and FINRA compliance and a strong integration capability.”

Accelerating New Account Opening from a Week to 30 Minutes

After a demonstration of Laserfiche software, the firm’s IT team felt that Laserfiche’s configurable workflow tools could easily address their operational needs.

To automate account opening, the firm integrated Laserfiche with DocuSign, its Tamarac customer relationship management (CRM) system and Laser App. By integrating these systems, client paperwork can be reviewed, signed and finalized in under half an hour:
  • Laserfiche pulls the new client contact record from Tamarac CRM and routes it to Laser App.
  • Laser App automatically populates an electronic form with the client’s account information.
  • The system automatically identifies who should receive the form next and routes it to the client service representative for review.
  • The applicable advisors electronically sign the form using DocuSign.
  • The custodian and client each receive a copy of the form for final sign-off.
New Account Opening in 30 Minutes

Compared to the legacy system, this new process has generated a week in time savings. The process is not only quick, but enhances personnel accountability from start to finish.”

“If a document that requires review sits for more than 24 hours, the system emails a reminder to the responsible person,” said the IT director. “If the same document sits for more than 72 hours, the system emails that person’s boss.”

Creating Comprehensive SEC and FINRA Compliance

Improving operations was only part of the firm’s information management overhaul. The firm also needed comprehensive compliance functionality to meet the strict standards of its industry.

“The SEC and FINRA require that firms use a certain type of document management technology, such as unalterable database software,” said the IT director. “Our research showed that Laserfiche’s technology is not only the most flexible, but also offers the option to use numerous add-on features.”

 New Account Opening in 30 Minutes

One feature that simplifies audit preparation is Laserfiche’s event log capability, which tracks the creation, deletion and modification of documents.”

“Our system logs every possible interaction with a document,” said the IT director. “Even if a document is deleted, it is still available in the Laserfiche repository and we can see who modified it.”

The firm’s DocuSign integration also verifies the identity of a document’s signer. Detailed security questions, social security verification and access code protection maintain the integrity of client transactions and prevent fraud.

 New Account Opening in 30 Minutes

“It’s pretty astounding when you consider the time savings,” said the IT director. “We estimate that Laserfiche saves us up to one hour per document. “Given the firm’s estimated average of 165 documents processed per day, Laserfiche produces an annual time savings of roughly 41,415 hours.”

Accounts Payable Transformation Supports Community Health Centers Mission to Provide High-Quality Care

As one of the region’s largest nonprofit healthcare and wellness services providers, Florida’s Community Health Centers (CHCFL) is committed to providing personalized, high-quality care to its community members at greatly reduced cost. Managing information efficiently, accurately and responsibly is core to achieving the organization’s mission, making digital transformation increasingly more important as CHCFL responds to the COVID-19 pandemic and growing patient needs.

The organization implemented Laserfiche to automate accounts payable (AP) processes, resulting in CHCFL cutting processing time by 50%. Through its digital leadership, the purchasing department’s role has transcended beyond a necessary part of operations and become a significant source of new efficiencies.

“If you can spend less time pushing paper around, that’s money saved,” said Dee Bradshaw, director of purchasing at Community Health Centers. “Every dollar we save goes into critical resources. We all benefit. That’s our goal — to make things more efficient, to save money without sacrificing quality.”

Eliminating Manual Data Entry and Automating Accounts Payable

Originally called the West Orange Farmworker Health Association, CHCFL was incorporated in 1972 as a nonprofit health organization “to be operated by and for its consumers.” Today, the organization has 16 physical locations across central Florida, providing pharmacy, on-site lab and comprehensive primary care services, in the areas of behavioral health, dentistry, family medicine, internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, optometry and pediatrics.

“The breadth of our services is amazing,” said Bradshaw. “We see homeless people; we give flu shots to anyone who needs them; we deliver babies; we have optometry and mental health. We’re a medical hub. When somebody has to take two buses and a train to get here, we want to make sure that they get everything they need.”

As a nonprofit providing a wide array of services, CHCFL must procure everything needed for its patients’ care — including pharmaceuticals, medical supplies and equipment — at the highest quality for the lowest cost. Before implementing Laserfiche, the purchasing department used a product that was meant to automate AP processes and minimize data entry, but produced too many errors and didn’t work well with the CHCFL’s Abila MIP Fund Accounting system.

“Even with this other product, we ended up doing a lot of manual data entry, and it was so difficult to use,” Bradshaw said. She got in contact with Hemingway Solutions, a Laserfiche solution provider that focuses on community action partnerships, nonprofits and small businesses.

“Laserfiche was the perfect accounts payable automation software for Community Health Centers because it could accurately capture the necessary data and seamlessly integrate with the Abila MIP system. Plus, the staff found it very easy to use. Now, AP processes are hands-off. Staff is saving time and money, and can focus on providing care and essential services to patients.”

—Larry Phelps, sales and marketing manager at Hemingway Solutions

With the automated ordering process, staff submit a requisition form in the Abila MIP Fund Accounting system, where a PO is created for each vendor. The POs are moved into Laserfiche, which automatically routes them for approval and to the purchasing department to place the order. When the product arrives, staff check in the items against the packing slip and PO. Then the packing slip is scanned into Laserfiche. When the invoice arrives via email it is dropped into Laserfiche and workflow captures the relevant information — including vendor name, invoice number, invoice total, PO number and due date. Through the Abila integration, the automated process is able to look up information related to the purchase, including the vendor name, vendor code, general ledger (GL) code and the purchase order to make sure the invoice matches.

A workflow within the automated business process finds the PO and packing slip and attaches them to the invoice, which are then routed to the appropriate people for approval. Once approved, all data is written into Abila, eliminating manual data entry.

“Everything is automatically stored in a Laserfiche repository that we’ve set up to manage our records,” Bradshaw said. “Everything that’s closed is batched and put into our Abila system.”

Throughout the process, Laserfiche sends automatic notifications to the submitter so they are kept informed. CHCFL plans to give staff the ability to participate in processes via a mobile device, and reduce friction around tasks that can’t be automated.

As an organization that must process thousands of invoices per month and match them to corresponding purchase orders and packing slips, CHCFL has realized significant time and cost savings, reducing complexity for staff who have reclaimed hours previously spent on repetitive manual tasks.

“I cannot fathom processing the current volume of invoices ‘the old way,’” Bradshaw said. “Laserfiche has cut our processing time in half.”

Expanding Digital Transformation Enterprise-wide

Bradshaw and her team have championed digital transformation across CHCFL, and the finance department is now rolling out a Laserfiche solution to support the processing of direct pay invoices that are not PO-based. The organization is also planning to evolve its purchase requisition process with the goal of giving employees a convenient, intuitive Amazon-like experience. As the team has examined its business processes, CHCFL has found efficiencies by eliminating a number of individual software solutions and replacing them with Laserfiche.

“The more things I can do with one software, the less software I have to manage,” Bradshaw added.

CHCFL continues to work with Hemingway Solutions to identify more ways to automate and transform various activities, and create efficiency so that the staff can focus on serving its community with the highest quality care possible.

“Laserfiche is so user friendly — anybody can learn and get it set up quickly,” Bradshaw said. “And business and circumstances are always changing, especially today. You never know when you may need to change something in your system. With other systems I’ve used, making changes to fit your needs is just not intuitive. In Laserfiche, everything is at your fingertips; you’re not going to have to reinvent the wheel if you need to update your process or new needs come up.”

Learn more about Laserfiche AP automation and other core solutions to modernize your healthcare organization.

Streamlining Contract Management to Put Clients First

As a stable, independent, family-managed business, Fiducia has supported mid-market firms to navigate change and seize business opportunities in China for over 37 years. Extensive local know-how and network, coupled with technical and international industry expertise has enabled Fiducia to provide a wide variety of advisory and outsourced services, including finance and accounting, trade and technology consultation, strategy advisory, executive search and tax advisory.

Fiducia’s dedication to high-quality, responsive client service recently led the firm to digitally transform key processes, integrating line of business technologies and introducing business process automation. Implementing Laserfiche as a core solution for contract management, Fiducia streamlined the quotation generation and contract approval processes, allowing for more transparency and efficient communication between key company stakeholders and clients. The initiative has also reclaimed time for employees, enabling them to focus more on supporting international clients seeking Fiducia’s business expertise in the region.

“Adopting Laserfiche has helped us streamline our approval process, improving accuracy and efficiency,” says Addison Kwok, Financial Manager at Fiducia. “The process has been centralized in one platform, representing a true digital transformation.”

Seamless Integration with Existing Applications
Service proposals at Fiducia previously required employees to manually input significant amounts of client and project information. Up to 30 different templates were used, and the template depended on the specific scope of the project. Internally-reviewed cost estimates were also completed manually and submitted to finance managers —  a process that required employees to perform their own calculations to determine whether submitted proposals were profitable. Keeping track of these documents also heavily relied on manual tasks performed by service managers, the managing director, finance managers and clients. The time-intensive process hindered productivity and growth, ultimately slowing project turnaround times and creating silos across the organization.

The firm identified a lack of a centralized repository and content management system as one key issue. Projects and documentation were spread across a number of different applications and file locations, resulting in misplaced documents and various copies of the same proposal stored in different staff members’ computer drives or inboxes.

In order to accelerate proposal generation and continue upholding the firm’s high standards of service, the Fiducia team knew they needed to standardize the way information was shared across the organization. A new system would also need the ability to integrate with existing applications that were key in managing client details and creating project proposals.

Fiducia implemented a Laserfiche enterprise content management system to centralize account information, integrating the platform with the firm’s Salesforce CRM to support seamless contract management. Laserfiche also enabled Fiducia to create an automated workflow to eliminate much of the manual tasks and data entry that was previously required to generate proposals and get them approved.

Service managers begin by loading client information from Salesforce via dropdown menus into a Laserfiche form, which automatically allocates Fiducia team members to respective projects. After submitting the necessary client details, Laserfiche generates an initial proposal and financial breakdown, which includes service scope and cost. The Laserfiche workflow then automatically routes the proposal to the managing director and an assigned financial manager for approval with a priority-based deadline within Fiducia’s Laserfiche repository.

Following internal and external approval, the contract signing process can be initiated: Using DocuSign, clients can either sign the proposal or reject it. If signed, the final project proposal is then delivered to both the service manager and managing director. If approved with signatures and initials by both parties, the project proposal and final approved copy are then appropriately labelled, indexed and archived in Laserfiche.

This approval process can be completed by the managing director and Fiducia members whether or not they are in the office, since the Laserfiche mobile app enables them to complete approvals remotely from any device.

Within a few months of implementation, Laserfiche has helped to streamline Fiducia’s initial quotation generation process, facilitating the creation of service contracts and financial forms.  Automating key steps in quotation creation and contract approval processes has also enabled more efficient collaboration between internal and external parties, representing a savings of around 150 hours per year.

Improving Staff and Client Experience
In addition to making key process improvements, Fiducia has used Laserfiche to modernize the way the firm manages documents with access controls that have improved information governance across the organization. Integration between Laserfiche and applications such as Docusign and Salesforce has resulted in an overall better experience for clients and employees, who can now better focus on navigating the business landscape.

Fiducia’s digital transformation has also contributed to business continuity and staff confidence in the wake of COVID-19. The ability to access documents and processes from home, and perform remote approvals has been especially beneficial during work-from-home arrangements resulting from the pandemic.

Following the streamlining of their quotation generation and approval processes, Fiducia has plans to deploy Laserfiche in supplier-focused processes as well — this project will pair Laserfiche and ABBYY, a third-party scanning solution, to capture and subsequently organize important company information and content. This project represents Fiducia’s continued commitment to process automation and digital transformation.

Shufro Rose Embraces Process Automation to Keep the Focus on Clients

SITUATION

• Shufro Rose needed a platform to automate key processes and integrate with the firm’s tech stack.
• The firm wanted to standardize the experience for advisors so that they could continue providing the highest standard of service to clients.

RESULTS

• Built a digital infrastructure strategy with Laserfiche that has enabled the firm to thrive through change
• Improved back-office efficiencies that make employees’ lives easier
• Kept client-facing staff focused on clients

Wealth management firms need consistent, standardized processes to scale their businesses successfully. When Shufro Rose began looking for ways to digitize its workflows, its customer relationship management tool was unable to produce the robust audit trails or perform the sophisticated workflow logic the firm needed to support its growth. It turned to Laserfiche to manage its books and records document repository and manage its workflows.

Today, the New York City-based independent wealth management firm manages approximately $2 billion in assets across 1,200 households and roughly 2,700 accounts. As it has grown, it has also steadily converted more and more of its business processes to digital workflows that integrate tools such as Tamarac and Docusign with Laserfiche.

“[Laserfiche is] our books and records document repository, storing all the client paperwork we’re required to have by regulation, but it also serves as an operational workload tool for things like account opening, moving money, so that our client-facing and operational teams can work as efficiently and effectively as possible.”

— Vibhaw Arya, chief operating officer at Shufro Rose

Building Flexible Workflows Driven By Front-End Needs

Laserfiche allows Shufro Rose to design automated workflows that make its front-end and back-end processes more efficient simultaneously. The firm approaches digitizing a process by starting with a front-end client request. That requires the team to think about the data points it needs to move forward each step of the way. The ability to integrate the process with Tamarac means the firm can pre-populate information it already has, minimizing data entry errors and enabling advisors and their staff to focus on client service, and obtaining only the information they still need.

Digitizing the firm’s money movement process was an early target. The ability to create electronic forms using Laserfiche, which are pre-populated with information saves administrative time and energy. The process also employs sophisticated logic to mitigate risk dynamically, based on the type of transaction taking place. For example, a request to write a first-party check from an investment account with all the information on file and documented can be approved without as much intervention as a client request to wire funds to a car dealership. In the latter case, the firm would need a letter of authorization on file, and may also need to get approvals from the portfolio manager and chief compliance officer.

Using workflows built with Laserfiche, Shufro Rose was able to automate the sending of approval requests as appropriate depending on the situation. The system prompts the appropriate people for secure, electronic approvals, reducing bottlenecks that could slow the process. Because the workflow automatically produces and files a paper trail in the Laserfiche repository, the firm’s record-keeping and compliance requirements are met without the need for additional intervention by staff.

“The repository is our books and records,” said Arya. “We have it all within one platform that keeps it all together and ensures we’ve got full audit trails.”

One of the firm’s significant Laserfiche initiatives has been to streamline the account opening process. This process originally relied heavily upon manual data entry and manually scanning numerous account documents. Shufro Rose created an electronic account opening form in Laserfiche that captures all client information necessary to open a new account in a consistent digital format. A Laserfiche workflow then automatically routes information to relevant operations and client service personnel for execution and review. Any required signatures required for account opening are executed through an integration with DocuSign.

Supporting Compliance and Risk Management

As Shufro Rose turned its attention to other business processes, it uncovered additional benefits to its operations. “The other thing Laserfiche Forms helps us do, given that it’s very checkbox-oriented and data-entry oriented, it also helps us create the operational procedures within Laserfiche itself—it’s become our digital operations management in a lot of ways,” said Arya.

Operational procedures are automatically documented because they live on the Laserfiche form used for the process. Because the process is digital, it’s also consistent. With workflow logic built into the process, steps don’t get forgotten or skipped. And the firm is able to keep track of things at all times using dashboards to monitor the status of requests. “It actually helps us onboard new employees as we’re trying to grow—it becomes a type of training tool, because the process helps you drive what’s needed,” Arya said.

Managing Increasing Complexity

With the help of its Laserfiche implementation partner, Accelerated Information Systems, Shufro Rose has been able to take advantage of the flexibility provided by Laserfiche’s API functions to automate more complex processes.

When teams initiate requests for gift letters, produced when clients donate stock, often to unlock tax benefits, Laserfiche uses an API connection to pull in the historical prices of the stock or stocks being gifted. The process then automatically generates the gift letter to send to the client, which the client can then pass to their tax accountant. At the end of the process, the paperwork and audit trail are filed in the Laserfiche repository without the need to scan paperwork manually.

More Benefits to Unlock

As Shufro Rose continues to grow, it has additional enhancements already in the pipeline. In 2023, it plans to automate the creation of investment policy statements for new and existing accounts, as well as the complex process of splitting existing accounts, for example, when transferring IRA account assets to beneficiaries.

“Shufro Rose’s approach to digital transformation is firmly rooted in its dedication to serving clients,” said Zaheer Master, president of Accelerated Information Systems, the solution provider that implemented Laserfiche at Shufro Rose. “The firm’s vision and use of Laserfiche has positioned it for success, even in times of dramatic change.”

Improving back-office efficiencies makes employees’ lives easier and keeps client-facing staff focused on activities that produce value for clients. With compliance functions automated and processes well documented, operations can run more smoothly without compromising on risk mitigation. “There are so many intangible values that have come out of this process,” Arya said. As organizations scale, process automation can ensure those benefits multiply.

A Quick Shift to Remote Learning

When the COVID-19 outbreak hit the U.S., the team at Linn-Benton Community College sprang into action. To protect the health and safety of students, faculty, staff and community, the college had to get classes online and prepare faculty, staff and students to work, teach and learn remotely. Linn-Benton Community College, which works closely with Laserfiche solution provider CDI, previously used Laserfiche to automate more than 200 processes across campus, but this unprecedented challenge would put the organization’s digital operations to the test.

Using Laserfiche as a key tool for communication and collaboration, the IT team has been working tirelessly to ensure everyone has access to the information, systems and processes necessary to keep business moving at the college, and enable classes for the spring semester to begin remotely April 6.

“Our No. 1 priority is health and safety,” said Michael Quiner, CIO at Linn-Benton Community College. “I know it has been extremely difficult and stressful for everyone, but we can help to protect students, staff and faculty, by having people work from home, and having students learn from home. To be able to use technology to enable that — I think that’s pretty amazing.”

Enabling a Quick Shift to Remote Work and Learning

Linn-Benton Community College serves more than 10,000 students, with almost 600 faculty members, and over 300 staff members. As concerns around the COVID-19 outbreak grew, the college braced for unprecedented change.

“I don’t think anyone’s seen or experienced anything like this before,” said Quiner. “But I believe that the team we have at Linn-Benton Community College is very innovative, and we are used to leveraging technology to enable agility and flexibility.”

On March 19, Oregon Governor Kate Brown issued an executive order to immediately implement measures for significantly reducing in-person operations at Oregon colleges and universities. The order also advised colleges and universities to continue learning and teaching operations, but to shift to remote or online delivery.

The immediate challenge was communication. With staff and faculty working both on- and off-campus, and the situation changing by the day, the college needed to make sure everyone knew where everyone else was, and how to get in touch if needed. The college’s institutional research department quickly created an automated process in Laserfiche that emails everyone employed by Linn-Benton Community College each morning, prompting them to fill out a form to indicate where they were working that day and the best way to get in contact with them. “That information is automatically posted in a web portal so people know how to contact each other,” Quiner said.

Next, to quickly transition everyone to operate remotely, staff needed to request remote access to systems they typically use on campus. “This seems simple, but it’s a big workflow that involves staff who have to install software on people’s machines and staff to provision accounts, and more,” said Quiner. The college again used Laserfiche Forms to enable staff to make these requests digitally, and route them to the relevant parties.

“The main benefit of using Laserfiche has been that we’re able to quickly create an automated process, and have that process save all the necessary documentation, contain all the right information, and be seen by the right people so that we can get these activities done right the first time,” Quiner added.

At the same time the college was managing the enormous shift, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA or Act) was passed, requiring certain employers to provide employees with paid sick leave or expanded family and medical leave for specified reasons related to COVID-19. From the passage of the act to the time when organizations were expected to comply was very short.

A cross-departmental team from human resources and IT quickly tackled the challenge and created a work process which has seven unique forms, six decision points, and 16 process tasks. This was made available to college employees inside of 48 hours.

“Laserfiche allows us to keep the college in compliance during a fast-moving situation while dealing with constantly shifting requirements, interruptions, and urgent priority requests,” Quiner added.

Additionally, Linn-Benton Community College modified an existing Laserfiche Form to track the equipment being loaned out to staff and faculty, and enable people to request other equipment they might need. “Before, we were just using this form for staff to request if they needed something new,” Quiner said. “We adapted the existing form so that we could track loaner equipment, and we can still see what additional or alternative support our staff needs.”

Accelerating Transformation

The rapidly changing COVID-19 situation continues to pose challenges for all organizations that are transitioning employees to work from home, and working to standardize and digitize business processes to enable business continuity.

“While this has been extremely difficult for everyone, Laserfiche is helping make an impossible task possible,” Quiner said of the experience.

And while student, staff and faculty health and safety remains the college’s top priority, Quiner explained that the organization’s digital transformation efforts will continue.

“Transformation is the idea that we can use technology tools to better leverage our staff’s time,” he said. “We’ve only started to transform. There are so many exciting things — for example, robotic process automation — that we’re dipping our toes into, that will take a lot of the repetitive work from our staff so we can concentrate on supporting each other and supporting our students.”

Future plans include automating time sheets, and employee onboarding and offboarding processes. Quiner is also interested in working with other community colleges in the region to share data and collaborate on processes, so that the larger community of educational organizations can build on each other’s success.

“We’re saving a huge amount of our staff’s time — and not just IT staff but college staff, too — by using business process automation, and moving documents to the right location using Laserfiche Forms,” said Quiner. “Tools like business process automation and RPA can help us get away from chasing down forms or responding to emails, and enable our staff and faculty can do what they were hired to do, which is to make better people, better families and better communities through education.”

Download The Ultimate Guide to Business Continuity Planning for tools and strategies to keep your business moving in times of uncertainty.