New Caney Independent School District’s District-Wide Digital Transformation of Student and Employee Records

New Caney Independent School District, located in the rapidly expanding Houston metropolitan area, serves more than 22,000 students across 23 campuses. With the area’s significant population growth, the district faced the challenge of scaling student services and operational processes to keep pace with soaring enrollment and hiring demands.

To proactively address these needs, district leadership embarked on a strategic initiative to digitize records, realizing this vision through the robust capabilities of Laserfiche’s search, electronic forms, and workflow automation.

“Laserfiche is one system with endless capabilities,” said Tammy Yarbrough, records management officer at New Caney Independent School District. “The solution’s user-friendly implementation enabled our small records team to create a searchable, secure database quickly — without investing significant time and resources into learning and training on the system. It has profoundly impacted the experience for students, parents, and staff alike.”

Creating More Efficient Employee Contracts

The district’s initial goal for using Laserfiche centered around updating HR contract processes. Using Laserfiche Forms, Yarbrough’s team digitized the creation, review and approval of employee contracts, as well as other HR documents including:

  • Incident reporting
  • Performance evaluations
  • Salary placements

The initiative was a quick win that demonstrated the power of Laserfiche, and paved the way for broader adoption beyond HR. “The deputy superintendent was amazed at the system’s capabilities,” Yarbrough said. “At a meeting about a district issue, he looked at my boss and said, ‘I don’t know what you need to do, but you need to make this ‘Fiche-y.’ We then created a process to help analyze and review the data.”

Digitizing Student Folders Simplifies Compliance and Enhances Access

Before Laserfiche, the district lacked a uniform approach to file management. A heavy reliance on paper led to physical storage challenges. “Every campus had huge storage spaces, filing cabinets after filing cabinets,” Yarbrough explained. “We were able to get rid of all of them, selling them in auction. We converted those storage spaces into offices or conference rooms. Across our 22 campuses, that’s at least 45 rooms now available for office or storage space.”

The district digitized over 17,000 cumulative student folders and created electronic folders organized by campus, grade level and student document categories and types. For both new and archived records, Laserfiche automatically applies document security by document type and employee role, enabling the district to assign and track nuanced levels of record access. Additionally, records retention schedules help administrators manage the lifecycle of student files, including disposition, facilitating compliance with recordkeeping requirements.

Yarbrough’s team now uses Laserfiche Forms to build solutions for every student and staff need, with over 400 forms currently in use. Administrators, teachers and staff can quickly upload documents —including new report cards, health forms, attendance notes and athletics physicals — into the digital student folder. The result is a more accurate, holistic student file that can be accessed on-demand through a web portal. “With Laserfiche, we will never have lost files,” Yarbrough said.

The shift to digital has been transformative for daily operations. “For instance, if a student is absent, parents can now use a Laserfiche form to upload the necessary documentation, including medical notes,” Yarbrough explained. “It flows directly to the attendance clerk, is coded into the student’s attendance file, and is either approved or denied.”

Even students are direct users. “In high school, students can exempt exams if they meet certain criteria, Yarbrough noted. “Students go in and request an exemption from a class, and then the teachers can review and approve it. So our kids are very familiar with Laserfiche as well.”

Expediting Student Enrollment and Record Transfer

By digitizing student files and forms, the district drastically improved the student enrollment process for both parents and staff. Parents now complete enrollment forms online in the district’s student information system, Skyward, and Laserfiche Workflow automatically files them in the relevant folders in the repository. For returning students, a database lookup populates the students’ information from the previous school year — reducing the number of forms that students and parents have to complete and lessening the document management burden on administrators.

Total enrollment processing time has been reduced by 75%. Additionally, all enrollment forms are available district-wide within 24 hours of submission. Beyond these benefits, the district’s student data is more accurate since Laserfiche eliminated much of the manual data entry and folder creation.

Because all student records are digital, file transfers with other school districts are also expedited. “When a student withdraws, you have to submit a TREx (Texas Records Exchange) record for the other campus,” Yarbrough explained. “We have it set up so there’s a Laserfiche form for a TREx Export.

Everything filed in that student’s folder is tagged as ‘TREx.’ Before, you’d have a folder you had to copy and copy. Now, it combines all tagged documents into a PDF file, and we just upload it to the state.” This process allows thousands of pages to be transferred seamlessly in just a few minutes.

Enhancing Public Information Requests and Staff Operations

Laserfiche has also revolutionized the handling of public information requests. “Public information requests used to be awful to deal with,” said Yarbrough of the requests, which are wide-ranging, from campus fight statistics to employee salaries. “Now, we are not going and searching for these documents. It only takes a couple clicks and we’re able to deliver those records in a timely manner, which is crucial, because on public information requests, you only have 10 days. Turnaround is very quick. We’re able to pull all the records we need and send them to the requestor, usually the same day.”

For staff, Laserfiche extends beyond contracts. “Not all our employees had a district email, like our bus drivers and custodians,” Yarbrough said. “So their notifications are through Laserfiche — whether it’s contracts or supplemental pay agreements. If they’re working extra hours, they fill out a timesheet, and Laserfiche calculates that for them to get paid.” This has streamlined processes for all 2,700 employees.

The Role of Ricoh Document Scanners in Digital Transformation

A critical component of New Caney ISD’s digital strategy is the widespread deployment of Ricoh scanners, specifically models 8190 and 8170. “We have about 500 scanners right now, with about 25 scanners per campus and five to six per department,” Yarbrough explained.

This pervasive access to scanning technology has fundamentally changed document handling. “When we first started, we used a copy machine, then emailed. That’s way too many steps,” Yarbrough said. “Now, with the scanners, employees can scan a driver’s license, all the documents they need, and get rid of paper. No one even has printers at their desk anymore. We can scan immediately right when the person is there during new student registration or onboarding, and give documents right back to them. There’s no copying needed.”

While the district aims for paperless operations, some physical documents remain, such as handwritten testing packets for special education students or parent notes. “We’re always scanning,” Yarbrough said, citing examples like teacher certificates, discipline statements, and out-of-state queue folders. The integration with Laserfiche ensures these scanned documents are immediately filed and accessible.

Tangible Benefits and Future Projects

The success of New Caney ISD’s Laserfiche implementation, bolstered by their investment in Ricoh scanners, has yielded significant, quantifiable benefits:

  • Massive Digitization: The district digitized over 370,000 HR records and more than 2 million student records and enrollment processes without requiring external IT expertise.
  • Cost Savings: Over $330,000 saved by implementing Laserfiche instead of outsourcing records scanning and storage. Paper usage has dropped by 40%.
  • Expedited Processes: Student enrollment processing time reduced from two hours to less than 30 minutes, with all enrollment forms available district-wide within 24 hours. Student file transfers to state agencies and other districts was reduced from 45 minutes to just two. And hiring new employees, which once took a month, can now be completed within a day.
  • Enhanced Compliance: Laserfiche has helped the district comply with FERPA and HIPAA regulations, enabling granular control and tracking of records access. Records retention schedules ensure timely destruction of files, a critical compliance measure that was previously unmanaged.
  • Improved Accessibility: Teachers and administrators can now access records from anywhere with an internet connection, eliminating the need to physically retrieve documents from a records warehouse.
  • Increased Efficiency: The district has saved significant time and money, enabling staff to “work smarter, not harder.”

The initial success of Laserfiche has led to rapid adoption across all the district’s administrative units. “When others see what Laserfiche can do, they want more,” Yarbrough says. “We can provide administrators with immediate solutions to district issues, like employee onboarding, class coding, and enrollment, and implement solutions in a matter of days by using forms and document management. When they ask for something, we can drop everything and can fix it quickly with Laserfiche.”

Looking ahead, New Caney ISD is expanding Laserfiche to operations, digitizing architect files for buildings and renovations, including three buildings being renovated and four new ones under construction.

Yarbrough frequently shares her district’s success, often hosting other districts interested in digital transformation. “Your possibilities are endless,” she added. “You’ve got to think out of that box because Laserfiche can do it. There is no limit to what Laserfiche can do.”

An Effortless New Hire Process

The Osceola County Sheriff’s Office transformed its Human Resources division by shifting from paper-based methods to become a digital agency using Laserfiche software. The digitization initiative increased efficiency, time management and accuracy, revolutionizing the ways in which the Sheriff’s Office stored documents, communicated within its department, and implemented its onboarding process with new employees.

Seamless Recruiting Tools

The Osceola County Sheriff’s Office is a local law enforcement agency based in central Florida. The agency is the largest and chief law enforcement agency in the county, with 850 employees within the department.

Before Laserfiche, the agency grappled with a diminished amount of storage room and needed a more effective solution for managing documents. Interdepartmental communication problems led to delays in the application process and, at times, lost documents when paper forms were mailed.

The agency first turned to Laserfiche to create a pre-employment application that is accessible to the public through the county’s website. The initial results were staggering, with application intake tripling from about 50 applications per month to now as many as 150 per month.

“We’re facing a nationwide shortage of police officers,” said Haylee Glasscock, Human Resources Technician, Osceola County’s Sheriff’s Office. “Making our application easily accessible online has helped with our recruiting efforts and was a good move for our agency. The application is extensive—it used to be 25 paper pages. With Laserfiche, we now can host recruiting fairs since the online application allows people to apply right then and there. Other applicants may apply via a secure link. In 2012, we had 446 paper applications. In the first year we had Laserfiche, we had 1,305.”

There are multiple job application forms the agency utilizes depending on the applicant, including a criminal history version which is longer compared to one created for recent graduates planning to move into the role of a deputy.

“With paper applications, people would leave fields blank; we had to call them to come in and fill out the information,” said Glasscock. “Now we no longer have incompletes and it saves us time. We can also have people upload files, photos of tattoos, and more—all within the application.”

After an applicant applies online, Laserfiche’s business process automation capabilities allow the agency to perform a paperless background check and file sign-off through its chain of command. Laserfiche simultaneously sends automatic email notifications to keep the applicant updated on the review process—a game-changer compared to years past, when updates on the Review Board date were sent through the mail.

Effortless New Hire Process

Once the application process is complete and an applicant receives an offer, the Sheriff’s Office uses Laserfiche to onboard new employees with digital forms. Laserfiche enables chain-of-command administration staff to sign off on specific files using conditions in a workflow. Relevant personnel say whether the file looks acceptable, and if so, it moves on to the next person. The process is smooth, accurate and far less time-consuming than the previous method of filling out a handwritten form as the official offer document with the salary and start date included.

The Sheriff’s Office’s Human Resources division is now a paperless environment thanks to implementing Laserfiche software. All employee personnel and medical files are stored in the repository and are easily accessible to HR staff. Additionally, Laserfiche has been integrated within the agency’s personnel management system. The software automatically pulls an employee’s information from the personnel management system, including his/her ID number, and completely fills out the template information—improving speed and accuracy.

“We like that information is accessible at our fingertips,” said Glasscock. “The training department now has one full-time staff assistant and a part-time student. They’re able to quickly find documents, email them to deputies if needed, and they’re easily viewed. Having those training files not in boxes anymore really helps them.”

The Sheriff’s Office also digitized the employee transfer form. Laserfiche automatically routes the form to the appropriate reviewer within the agency. The form has been further simplified by the use of variables, look-up tables (integrated with the organization’s computer-aided dispatch software and active directory), as well as field rules.

“Our recruiting department uses Laserfiche every day and a couple of agencies have reached out to me to see if we can share our process with them,” added Glasscock.

Since turning to Laserfiche, the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office has become more productive, effective and efficient. The agency digitized and secured more than 2,500 employee personnel files using Laserfiche software. Moreover, all new hire files are created digitally. The agency can process and prepare files for approval much faster, and automated email notifications mean that staff no longer need to call other departments as frequently to follow up on forms.

The agency realized an initial savings of $2,000 by eliminating supplies for new employee files, as well thousands more in departmental time-savings. Beyond cost savings, the Sheriff’s Office opened the door to a more digital, automated agency. By implementing innovative solutions like its Laserfiche digital records management program, the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office fosters a culture of efficiency and agility to better position the agency for success in a competitive hiring market.

City University, Hong Kong

City University of Hong Kong created a shared services platform for human resources and finance using Laserfiche.

Kensington Mortgages Automates Core Business Processes to Elevate Customer Experience

Kensington Mortgage Company implemented Laserfiche organization-wide and integrated it with multiple line-of-business applications.

My name is Farid Amin. I am a Solutions Architect at Kensington Mortgages. In my role I design, develop and implement to automate business processes across the operational areas using enterprise-level robotic and business process automation software tools.

Now in our 25th year, Kensington Mortgages is UK’s leading non-bank specialist mortgage provider and We manage over 11 billion pounds in assets. We have over 500 employees throughout the country, predominantly at our head office in Maidenhead.

In 2012, we needed to replace our aging document management system. It was becoming slow and unreliable. The core weakness of the system was that the historical documents were stored in a huge jukebox of some 250 optical discs run by a robotic arm and a subset of DVD drives.

As we grew, we had more documents to manage. We also had changing regulations, which meant we Needed access to those documents very, very quickly while we had customers on the phone. Therefore, we had to replace our system that would cater for our business needs.

Laserfiche fulfilled these requirements and we had foresight that its rich functionality of its various components could be utilized in other use cases and could be expanded across the business in later years. Today, we have over 56 million documents spanning over 7 terabytes of network storage.

We have 300 users that utilize Laserfiche day-in-day-out to serve and manage our accounts. The users’ feedback has been very positive. Laserfiche just runs in the background, unassumingly, and therefore as far as they’re concerned, it’s a system available all the time for them to carry out their work.

In 2016, we expanded the use of Laserfiche to business process automation and it has been a resounding success. Today we have business processes automated not just in servicing, but in finance and sales.

In 2019, we implemented our document online project. This has allowed our customers to view their documents online. We developed, in-house, a microservice using the Laserfiche SDK, which allows those customers to view their documents directly from the repository.

So here’s a system that has a use, but has got a whole lot of other tools that could benefit any organization. So Laserfiche has been in production for over 7 years and has provided service to us with stability and integrity.

MauBank Ltd

One of Mauritus’s leading banks enhanced the customer experience by transforming the account opening process using Laserfiche Forms and an automated workflow.

Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Group’s Digital Transformation

Laserfiche’s digital transformation model helps Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Group go above and beyond by digitizing and streamlining the claims process so customers have the confidence to do more.

Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Group Case Study

Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Group uses Laserfiche Forms to make the customer experience as seamless as possible.

PERI Group

A leading manufacturer and supplier of formwork and scaffolding systems, PERI streamlined operations and enhanced the customer experience through an online portal.

Digital Transformation Energizes County of Los Angeles Housing Agency

The Los Angeles County Development Authority (LACDA) digitally transformed its records management program, incorporating Laserfiche to digitize, centralize and manage the lifecycle of records. Since deploying Laserfiche, the agency has reclaimed significant time for its case workers while boosting its ranking with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to the designation of “high performer”—an improvement that helps secure funding and enables the LACDA to provide more services and programs to more people.

Case Managers’ One-Stop Shop

The LACDA is a public agency responsible for providing LA County residents essential programs related to subsidized housing, community development, and affordable housing development and preservation. Serving the most populous county in the United States requires the LACDA to house decades’ worth of records related to hundreds of thousands of cases. These span a wide range, from groups applying for Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) that provide resources to underserved areas, to people in need of Section 8 Housing Choice vouchers and residents of all ages applying for education and training in an effort to build better lives and better neighborhoods.

The LACDA previously stored records in filing cabinets and across various servers and systems. As the number of records grew, the agency identified the need to digitize and centralize them using a Laserfiche electronic records management solution. Laserfiche was also integrated with the LACDA’s property management software, Yardi, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, PeopleSoft, to eliminate the risk of duplicating information or work.

“Case managers don’t need to switch between applications to look up or copy information, they can view all the documents in one place,” says Rosa Chevarin, supervisor for Yardi/Laserfiche support. “They like the one-stop shop feel, and everything is streamlined in their natural workflow.”

Through this digital transformation, the agency made information more available, accessible and usable to authorized users.

“In an agency that manages more than 3,000 public and affordable housing units and assists more than 24,000 residents through a housing choice voucher program within the county, being able to pull up submitted information at a moment’s notice is vital,” says Doug Van Gelder, Manager of Information Technology at the LACDA.

This also enables the agency to:

  • Connect more people to the services they need in a more efficient manner
  • Mitigate risk of data loss or breach
  • Simplify the auditing processes

The LACDA’s new solution exceeds the basic expectations of records management and incorporates automation. Laserfiche automatically files documents with standardized naming and folder structure. Additionally, when a record’s retention period has ended, relevant employees are notified to handle disposition.

“The need for services is always going to be great, and everyone is always going to be busy doing their jobs,” Van Gelder says. “Finding and pulling documents, and making sure records are taken care of in accordance to regulations is time consuming. The new system takes that tedious work away from the case managers, so they can focus on the people they serve.”

Uncovering New Efficiencies to Serve More

Since transforming its records management, the LACDA has gained the ability to automate additional business processes. Agency staff has automated the new employee onboarding process, which previously required a new associate to spend about half of their first day on the job filling out paperwork. The new Laserfiche solution enables the agency to send the new employee a link to all the necessary forms that can be completed before their start date.

“I want to be as digital as possible,” says Van Gelder, adding that there are also plans to rebuild the LACDA’s housing portal to allow people to apply for programs online. The workflow for processing those applications would also be automated using Laserfiche to facilitate quicker response times, better transparency into the process for both the staff and applicant, and less risk for error.

The agency’s newfound efficiencies have proven essential in a time when the LACDA’s programs and services are needed more than ever. The waiting list to receive Section 8 Housing Choice vouchers has about 44,000 people on it, while the agency’s staff is down to about half of what it was a decade ago due to the economic downturn and attrition. “The only way we’ve been able to provide the same level of service with half the staffing is through technology,” Van Gelder explains.

Additionally, over 70 percent of the LACDA’s funding comes from HUD, which regularly audits housing authorities to ensure funding is going toward serving people who need these critical programs and services.

“If a housing authority does not rank well, HUD could potentially take funding back and give it to another housing authority that proves it is helping more people and running more efficiently,” Van Gelder says.

Since the LACDA deployed its Laserfiche records management initiative, it has boosted its ranking and maintained its status as a high performer.

“The need is always going to be greater than the funding, but IT is one of the units within the organization that has the ability to provide productivity enhancements while bringing cost down,” Van Gelder says. “We’ve been able to serve more people with quality services and programming with half the staffing we used to have through these technology solutions.”

Leading public sector organizations use an electronic records management solution to increase efficiency and improve citizen services. To learn more, download the free white paper: “Streamlining the Business of Government.”

Lebanese American University Shines with On-Demand Student Services

Lebanese American University (LAU) is an accredited American university operating in the Middle East with two main campuses in Beirut and Byblos, hospital facilities and an academic center in New York. The university consists of seven major schools and 800 faculty and staff serving approximately 10,000 students each year.

To maintain LAU’s status as a leading institution, the organization’s leadership is always looking for new ways to align its administrative services with student preferences, and reduce bottlenecks during busy enrollment and graduation periods.

Forming Digital-First Academic Services

“Students these days are digital natives, and they like to transact with us on their preferred devices, which are their phones,” says Camille Abou-Nasr, Assistant Vice President for Information Technology at LAU. “We needed really to automate all the processes that students carry out with the Registrar’s Office, and to do it in a manner that is plausible and really encourages them to do these kinds of transactions with us.”

Starting with the Admissions and Registrar’s Offices, the university used Laserfiche Forms to provide students with online access to transcripts and academic records. With on-demand digital access, academic advisors across student enrollment, recruitment, advising, student retention, outreach and student aid programs can now immediately review, approve or follow up with students in days instead of weeks.

Moving Towards Campus-Wide Mobility

Due to Laserfiche’s ease of use and open integrative capabilities with core systems like Banner and SharePoint, the university quickly expanded its initial mobile forms solution to other campus departments such as Student Development, Legal and Facilities Management. With a campus-wide solution, the university can truly enable students to submit any academic or administrative form online and get their results quickly.

Mobility has also benefited busy executives in the Facilities Management department, who oversee the numerous campus facilities. They can now use iPads to access and approve budget allocations in Laserfiche while traveling abroad.

“There is one platform where you can do document management, you can do forms, and you can do business process automation,” said Abou-Nasr. “It’s scalable.”

Benefits:

  • Student services, such as course petitions and transcript requests, can be initiated by students at any time via online forms.
  • Students receive immediate updates on their requests from advisors and can track the progress of submitted forms and requests at every step of the review process.
  • The university has greatly reduced the amount and cost of paper storage.

“Through mobility and document management, we were able to achieve our goal to go green, to make our services more accessible and deliver our services in a faster manner,” says Abou-Nasr.

Click here to learn more about using Laserfiche to enhance student services.