Intelligent Data Capture Archives

PSSSF Achieves Over 90% More Efficiency in Benefits Processing

As the largest pension fund in Tanzania, the Public Service Social Security Fund (PSSSF) serves a vast membership base of nearly 700,000 individuals across the nation, supported by a staff of 1,000 and numerous financial partners. Formed from the merger of four distinct funds over the past seven years, the organization embarked on an ambitious mission: to become the country’s best provider of public sector pension services. This goal required a significant business reengineering effort, particularly to harmonize disparate systems and automate critical processes. PSSSF’s strategic investment in Laserfiche has proven to be a cornerstone of this transformation, fundamentally reshaping how they manage documents and deliver services.

Overcoming Legacy Hurdles and Manual Benefits Processing

Before adopting Laserfiche, PSSSF faced significant operational challenges stemming from its historical mergers and a reliance on manual, paper-based processes. Managing an immense volume of member documents was a constant struggle. “We had the challenges of searching documents during our processes, and storage occupied quite a big space. Security of the documents was also a challenge,” explained Erick Kato, director of information communication technology at PSSSF. This led to inefficiencies, delays, and a less-than-ideal experience for both staff and members.

The manual nature of operations meant that processing member benefits could be a lengthy ordeal. “Processing benefits could take up to 60 days in some cases,” Kato said. For members, this led to inconvenience and cost. “Some people used to travel more than 900 kilometers to visit our offices to submit documents or inquire about their benefits.” The organization recognized the need for a solution that could centralize records, streamline workflows and enhance accessibility.

Laserfiche as a Digital Core: Automating Benefits Processes and Integrating Systems

The pension fund undertook a thorough evaluation of various systems before selecting Laserfiche. Their decision was driven by Laserfiche’s proven capabilities in enterprise content management, its user-friendly interface, and its robust capacity for document storage and rapid retrieval. “We found Laserfiche was quite easy to use,” Kato explained. “Laserfiche can also store quite a large number of documents and the searching capabilities, when compared with other systems, are very fast.”

Laserfiche was strategically implemented to become the digital backbone of their operations, with a primary focus on membership and benefit processing and payment. The solution enabled the fund to securely store, classify and easily access member records, which is paramount for a pension fund. “With Laserfiche, we can store members’ records in the way that we want them to be stored — we can classify the information and make it easier for our staff to process payments,” said Neema Kuwite, PSSSF director of finance.

Another key aspect of the solution was seamless integration. “We have integrated [Laserfiche] with our system which processes benefits to create an easy experience and eliminate the need for switching applications,” Kato said. Laserfiche integration extends to other critical business areas, including contract management and procurement, creating a unified digital environment. “These integrations have streamlined processes because you don’t have to move from one system to another. For example, from within our benefit processing system, an employee can access member documents from Laserfiche, which can be checked, processed and routed. Processing becomes very fast and easy.”

Furthermore, Laserfiche supports the fund’s broader automation agenda. “We’re looking forward to having Laserfiche support us in other administrative chains,” said PSSSF CEO Abdul-Razaq Badru. “It will help us implement the full automation program that we are embarking on, which includes connecting internal systems and integrating with larger databases to boost overall efficiency.”

Unprecedented Efficiency and Member Satisfaction

The adoption of Laserfiche has delivered transformative results across the organization, validating PSSF’s investment. These include:

Dramatic time savings: The most significant impact has been on benefit processing times. “Processing benefits used to take up to 60 days, but now it takes about 3 to 5,” said Kato. This 90%-plus reduction in processing time has fundamentally improved service delivery.

Cost savings: Both the organization and its members have realized substantial cost benefits. “We save time and we save people the headache of having to be in the records office looking for documents,” said Kuwite. The shift from paper to digital has also freed up valuable physical space. “Laserfiche has helped us to reduce the space we used to keep those records on paper. We can now use the space to hire more people or rent out to others who need office space. It’s really given us a return on investment.” For members, the ability to apply for benefits online means they don’t have to travel, saving them time and money.

Enhanced customer satisfaction: The ability to process payments quickly and provide online access to records has significantly boosted member satisfaction. “With our members, Laserfiche provides increased customer satisfaction by shortening the time it takes to process benefits,” added Kuwite. A customer survey confirmed this, with results showing members are “so comfortable and happy with our services, and the fact that we can pay them in a timely manner. Laserfiche has played a big role in that.”

Strategic and cultural transformation: Laserfiche has become one of PSSSF’s two core systems, alongside the organization’s ERP. “Laserfiche is going to help us achieve our aim of becoming a fully automated enterprise,” Badru explained. The platform is also fostering a culture of technology-driven, evidence-based decision-making. “It is actually pushing us also to think of how we can take advantage of our existing database and use the data for decision making in the future.”

Future Outlook: More Automation and AI

By strategically implementing Laserfiche, this leading pension fund has successfully navigated the complexities of merging legacy systems and transforming into a highly efficient, member-centric organization. The dramatic reduction in benefit processing times, coupled with significant cost savings and enhanced member satisfaction, underscores Laserfiche’s pivotal role. “Laserfiche solves all your problems in processing, especially if you have significant amounts of manual processes or you’re a semi-automated organization,” said Badru. “Laserfiche takes care of all those manual troubles you have.” Looking ahead, the organization is excited about further integration with AI tools, anticipating an even brighter, more automated future.

Banking Industry Report: The State of Information Management and the Customer Experience

GMX Seguros Increases Claims Capacity by 75%

As one of Mexico’s leading insurance companies specializing in property, casualty and civil liability insurance, GMX Seguros has prioritized operational excellence and customer experience. Facing the perennial challenges of paper-intensive processes, escalating compliance demands, and the critical need for rapid claims resolution, the insurer sought to replace a legacy document management system with a more robust solution.

The insurer found a solution in Laserfiche, embarking on a journey that has dramatically streamlined operations, cut processing times, and fortified GMX’s position as a market leader. Through the organization’s automation initiatives, the insurer achieved an impressive 75% growth in claims handling capacity and a 20-30% increase in other business areas.

Reimagining Manual Processes and Costly Bottlenecks

Before adopting Laserfiche, the GMX grappled with a complex web of manual processes and physical documentation. Policy issuance, regulatory compliance and claims handling were bottlenecks that hindered efficiency and customer satisfaction.

“We were generating a lot of paper in different ways,” said Oscar Salgado, CIO at GMX Seguros, describing the sheer volume of paper as about the size of a two-bedroom apartment. This physical footprint wasn’t just about space; it translated into slow, laborious workflows. The claims process, a cornerstone of customer trust, was particularly impacted.

“Claims processing used to take more than 15 days,” Salgado said. Longer timelines in claims processing, however, test customer patience in their time of need.

Beyond operational inefficiencies, the company faced stringent regulatory requirements, such as those from the Comision de Seguros, demanding meticulous collection and secure storage of sensitive customer documents (IDs, proofs of address, financial statements) to comply with anti-money laundering regulations. Managing these crucial personal documents across disparate systems was a significant hurdle.

Laserfiche as a Digital Backbone

The insurer began implementing Laserfiche with a focus on policy management, digitally archiving all issued policies and integrating them with a customer portal for easy download. This initial success paved the way for more expansive applications.

A key area of transformation was regulatory compliance. “We need to collect IDs, address, proofs of address, statements — all these documents are personal and sensitive data,” Salgado said. “We store them in Laserfiche, and this helps us organize all the documents within our customer folders.” The centralized, secure repository became indispensable for managing sensitive data and demonstrating compliance.

The most significant impact, however, was felt in claims. The company developed a digital claims solution, which collects all necessary documents from customer and automatically builds a digital file. The GMX team built an integration between Laserfiche and the company’s claims system via Laserfiche API which links every claim document to its corresponding policy and customer file, creating a comprehensive digital record.

The insurer’s use of Laserfiche extends to other departments and critical processes including:

Legal: Manages contracts with providers and agents, from initial petition through revisions and final signatures.
Policy services: Supports legal compliance by digitally capturing customer signatures on policies, verifying their awareness of terms and conditions, and securely storing these signed documents.
Human resources: Streamlines the collection, review and storage of numerous legal and personal documents required for new agents.
Finance: Connects with the ERP system for processes like purchase orders, further unifying the digital ecosystem.

Dramatic Time Savings and Efficiency Gains

The implementation of Laserfiche yielded immediate and profound benefits, most notably in time savings and operational efficiency.

“The time that we are saving is tremendous,” Salgado explained. The most striking improvement was in claims processing: “Claims that used to take more than 15 days now less than five. In some cases, we can process a claim within the same day.”

This strategic advantage became especially evident during a crisis, when GMX experienced an influx of claims in a short period of time. In 2023, Hurricane Otis made landfall near Acapulco and became the costliest tropical cyclone to strike Mexico on record.

“We had the best turnaround time for claims related to Hurricane Otis,” Salgado said. While competitors struggled to process claims for months, the GMX Seguros’ Laserfiche-powered processes allowed the insurer to pay customers in less than a month. “With this efficiency, we can process more claims in less time.” This increased capacity, he added, amounts to 75% growth in claims handling.

Handling 50,000 – 60,000 claims per year and issuing more than 300 policies per day, GMX employees use Laserfiche on a daily basis to support critical service delivery. Beyond claims, the insurer has experienced 20% – 30% growth in other business areas.

GMX has also implemented Laserfiche to increase efficiency in:

Purchase orders
Travel expense reports
Contract management
Invoices
Supplier management
Compliance related to Article 492 of the National Insurance and Bonding Commission

The importance of the company’s standardized document management and automated processes is further magnified by audits, which are done internally as well as by regulatory entities. “We use Laserfiche to review and compile all documentation needed for audits, which used to be a very time consuming process,” Salgado said.

The paper reduction has also liberated valuable physical resources, freeing up office space and allowing for better utilization of facilities.

Building a Resilient Digital Future

GMX Seguros has not only automated critical processes like claims, compliance, and policy management but has also built a resilient, highly efficient digital ecosystem. The ability to dramatically reduce claims processing times has translated directly into enhanced customer satisfaction, particularly when responding to high-volume events like natural disasters.

“We have some of the best response times in Mexico,” Salgado said. “Laserfiche is not just a document storage system for us. It’s a competitive advantage.”

Airline Hydraulics Digitally Transforms Processes with Laserfiche

Imagine a 25% increase in net revenue over five years without adding additional staff. Airline Hydraulics — a distributor of industrial technologies for a broad range of markets — made this a reality using Laserfiche.

Managing data associated with Airline Hydraulics’ myriad products and custom-engineered technology solutions requires robust information handling processes and procedures. However, with information coming from many sources — suppliers, customers, sales and other departments — the organization needed a way to standardize data collection and dissemination.

Driven to better manage the company’s data to optimize operations, the team implemented Laserfiche.

“Laserfiche was a solution that gave us the best of both worlds: the forms and workflow processes as well as the data integration,” said Todd Schnirel, CTO and director of business development and agility. “We’re now able to record and mine that data for trends and outliers — the potential that Laserfiche unlocked with our data was really the differentiator for us.”

The company has since reduced the time and effort wasted on outdated processes, using Laserfiche to:

Eliminate manual data entry
Minimize inaccuracies
Reduce development burden on IT
Increase capacity without adding staff

“We’re a 100% employee-owned company, so everyone has a stake in organizational efficiency,” said Schnirel. “If you add 25% to the top line and add very little to your operating expense, the money goes right into the profitability of the organization. And for us, that gets distributed amongst the employees.”

Standardizing Data From Multiple Sources

Airline Hydraulics’ business dates back to 1949, when the company focused on equipment used in conjunction with factory air lines. Since then, the company has grown in size and in offerings. With this growth, the organization has had to scale operations, which proved challenging without standardized business processes. Information about requests was trapped in PDF documents that bounced back and forth via email and had to be manually typed into the ERP system. This manual approach led to inaccurate data; every employee’s unique method for recording data led to inconsistencies.

“If you’ve got 20 different people they might have 10 different ways to do something,” said Schnirel. “The person who’s then on the receiving end has to deal with all those differentiators.”

The company’s ERP system, Epicor, also lacked the right automation, analytics and data validation tools that would support more standardized data collection. Teams like business development or accounting couldn’t take quick action on requests from sales, customers and suppliers when they received incomplete or inaccurate data. To create more consistency in processes, the team now uses Laserfiche Forms and workflow.

For example, they created a new vendor management form, critical for managing data about the organization’s hundreds of approved suppliers. Previously a very manual process, vendor management often required the accounting team to follow up with requestors to collect W-9s and other information. Misspellings and “bad data” being entered in Epicor was commonplace.

“Laserfiche allows us to do data validation, and we can flush out inaccuracies before we put bad data into our ERP system. Laserfiche definitely helps to keep our Epicor database clean.”
Todd Schnirel, CTO and director of business development and agility

Additionally, the team can now enforce certain procedures — such as collection of vendor W-9s — by not allowing a form to be submitted without the necessary documentation. Laserfiche’s integration with Epicor facilitates the data entry process, avoiding duplicate manual entry. “If we can make a task 10 minutes faster, and we continuously do this, we are making processes faster by hours over time,” added Schnirel. “So that’s our approach. It really starts to add up.” In addition to time savings, the organization avoided replacing their ERP system, saving around $2.5 million in initial costs.

Without application switching or excessive data entry, staff can now focus on higher-value tasks. There are fewer manual errors and less stress around data accuracy. The new solution has also opened the door to more analysis of manual tasks and process optimization.

Shortening a Month-long RMA Process Down to a Few Days

Airline Hydraulics’ return material authorization process (RMA) is a prime example of how the team used Laserfiche to automate a complex process. Prior to Laserfiche, RMAs relied on multiple manual steps, and often resulted in inaccurate records.

“The RMA process was many, many emails through many different people, and there was no trackability,” said Jennifer McCalicher, product data team manager at Airline Hydraulics. McCalicher and her team spent hours hunting down information that should have been provided with the initial request.

The business development team streamlined the RMA process, again with Laserfiche Forms and workflow.

The new process introduced:

An initial request form that triggers an approval process before Epicor entry
Automated routing of requests based on reason codes
Automated email notifications to appropriate team members
Automated creation of RMA PDF for customer visibility

Laserfiche also automatically creates associated Epicor records upon RMA approval, as well as a packing list.

The organization has since reduced the time to complete this process from more than a month to less than a week.

RMA process optimization resulted in:

More than 50% reduction in process steps
More than 60% reduction in staff involvement
A 40% reduction in departmental involvement

Beyond the RMA process, the organization implemented a similar solution for special pricing agreements (SPAs).

“Originally this would go into a ticket system,” said McCalicher. “Someone would then have to review the documentation and get it into our ERP system.”

The team replaced this ticket system with a one-stop form that makes it easy for on-the-go salespeople to get pricing approved quickly and secure orders faster. Data is pulled directly from Epicor to make it easier for salespeople to properly fill out required fields. Workflow routes agreements to the pricing department for approval, giving the organization more control over pricing strategy. Finally, more accurate data in Epicor means better financial reporting and easier audits.

Empowering Non-Development Staff to Tackle Automation At-Scale

With the business development team’s achievements with internal processes, they are now looking to expand Laserfiche to customer-facing processes. Schnirel expects to see more improvements in efficiency organization-wide. With Laserfiche’s low-code automation tools, the company’s business users can build most of these processes with ease, even without deep technical or coding skills.

“Our team is not made up of developers; they’re not programmers; but they’re able to create all this because of the tool set that exists within Laserfiche,” said Schnirel. “This was a huge differentiator for Laserfiche, this workflow ability and having the whole gamut of programmability from HTTP requests and JSON creators and VB scripting and all the different kind of advanced stuff you can do, but in a very visual, very low-code way.”

Internally, the team has seen a culture of automation and optimization spreading throughout the company. “As we’ve deployed it departmentally, it’s picking up a lot of momentum,” said Schnirel. “We’re getting that snowball rolling down the hill effect. We’re constantly receiving requests for new forms and new processes.”

“At Airline, we look at processes through the lens of, ‘How can we do that more efficiently, so it can benefit all of us?’” said McCalicher. “The amount we can do within these workflows is amazing.”

Laserfiche Named a Leader in Nucleus Research Content Services and Collaboration Value Matrix 2025

Laserfiche is a Leader for the 10^th consecutive year, ranks highest in usability.

LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA, JULY 23, 2025 — Laserfiche — the leading SaaS provider of intelligent content management and business process automation — is a Leader in the Nucleus Research Technology Value Matrix for Content Services and Collaboration for the 10^th year in a row. Among the vendors evaluated, Laserfiche ranks highest overall in usability. Download a copy of the report here.

“As a leader in this year’s Value Matrix, Laserfiche was rated highest in usability for its AI productivity tools, new administration hub, process automation and integration capabilities,” said Evelyn McMullen, research manager at Nucleus Research and author of the report.

Nucelus Research CSC Technology Value Matrix™ 2025.

CSC as a Strategic Advantage: AI-powered Information Management

Recently released Laserfiche AI-powered features are aimed at boosting productivity even further and enabling automation at scale. Smart Fields, an out-of-the-box intelligent capture tool, allows customers to extract data automatically using natural language instructions, no matter the source or format. Smart Chat provides an intuitive chat interface that enables users to quickly gain insights from their repository content.

“As AI matures at an accelerated pace, vendors in the CSC market have the unique advantage of managing both structured and unstructured data from across the entirety of an organization,” the report’s Market Overview states.

Laserfiche AI features alongside powerful workflow automation, information governance and records management tools create new opportunities for organizational efficiency. Customers across industries use Laserfiche to increase productivity, create competitive advantage and drive growth.

“Laserfiche gives us the forms and workflow processes as well as data integration that enable efficiency at scale,” said Airline Hydraulics Chief Technology Officer Todd Schnirel. “Our Laserfiche-powered process improvements have supported us in achieving a significant increase in net revenue while adding very little operating expense.”

“Being ranked a leader for 10 consecutive years is a testament to our product innovation,” said Thomas Phelps, senior vice president of corporate strategy and CIO at Laserfiche. “Our top ranking in usability reflects our core value of putting people first and our commitment to delivering intuitive solutions that empower users.”

To learn more about Laserfiche’s position in the Content Services and Collaboration market, download the report here.

About Laserfiche

Laserfiche is a leading enterprise platform that helps organizations digitally transform operations and manage their content with AI-powered solutions. Through scalable workflows, customizable forms, no-code templates and AI-enabled capabilities, the Laserfiche® document management platform accelerates how business gets done. Trusted by organizations of all sizes — from startups to Fortune 500 enterprises — Laserfiche empowers teams to boost productivity, foster collaboration, and deliver a superior customer experience at scale. Headquartered in Long Beach, California, Laserfiche operates globally, with offices across North America, Europe, and Asia.

EMEA/APAC: Unlocking the Power of AI in Laserfiche: Boost Efficiency with Smart Chat & Smart Fields

Beyond Efficiency: How Generative AI from Laserfiche Unlocks Strategic Value for the Public Sector

In recent months, the conversation around generative AI (Gen AI) has moved beyond productivity and hype. While early use cases in the public sector focused on time-saving and process efficiency, the broader narrative is evolving toward the transformational potential of AI to unlock insights, improve public services, and anticipate citizen needs. As public sector leaders confront rising service expectations, tight budgets, and growing data complexity, the strategic deployment of Gen AI particularly through enterprise content management (ECM) and process automation presents a powerful path forward.

Laserfiche is at the forefront of this evolution. By embedding Gen AI capabilities such as Smart Fields into our platform, we enable agencies, municipalities, and educational institutions to move beyond automating tasks and begin unlocking institutional knowledge at scale. This article explores the forces shaping Gen AI adoption in the public sector and the unique value Laserfiche brings to this new chapter.

Technological Innovation: From Automation to Insight

Across the public sector, Gen AI is transitioning from a tactical tool to a strategic enabler. Initial use cases centered on automating repetitive work summarizing documents, generating email drafts, or assisting with data entry. But the technology’s next wave is defined by its ability to reveal patterns, surface actionable insights, and synthesize complex information across siloed systems.

Laserfiche’s Smart Fields exemplify this shift. By using AI to detect and understand content in real time, Smart Fields reduce manual data tagging and improve metadata accuracy. This goes far beyond convenience. It allows public sector organizations to create more intelligent content repositories, where relevant information is surfaced proactively and used to inform decisions from public health trends to policy implementation to citizen engagement strategies.

Moreover, the Laserfiche platform integrates Gen AI into core business processes, enabling more responsive workflows. For instance, natural language processing (NLP) capabilities can be used to classify incoming service requests, assign priority based on urgency, and trigger automated routing ensuring faster and more consistent delivery of services.

Changing Customer Behavior: From Task Automation to Data Stewardship

To fully realize the benefits of Gen AI, public sector organizations must rethink how they manage data and measure outcomes. The old model of digitizing for the sake of efficiency is giving way to a new imperative: leveraging digital assets for continuous learning and improvement.

This shift demands a cultural change. Agencies need to embrace their role as stewards of public data not just curators of records but strategic users of information to drive policy and operational excellence. In this context, Laserfiche acts as a connective tissue between structured processes and unstructured data, enabling agencies to treat every document, form, or communication as a potential source of insight.

Equally important is the need for responsible innovation. Citizens and students expect transparency in how AI is used, especially in areas like eligibility determination, grading, or benefits administration. Public sector leaders must pair Gen AI adoption with robust governance, including audit trails, consent tracking, and AI explainability features. Laserfiche’s commitment to compliance and transparency ensures that agencies can adopt AI with confidence.

Navigating Regulatory Change: Building Trust and Alignment

Governments around the world are moving quickly to regulate AI, with a growing emphasis on fairness, accountability, and data protection. In the United States, executive orders and state-level legislation are beginning to shape expectations for the use of AI in public services. The European Union’s AI Act, although not directly binding on U.S. institutions, is setting the tone globally by categorizing AI use cases by risk and imposing strict obligations for public sector applications.

Laserfiche is designed with these realities in mind. Our platform includes role-based access controls, automated retention policies, and end-to-end encryption to help organizations align with privacy and data management requirements. More critically, the platform’s explainable AI capabilities provide clarity into how decisions are made an essential safeguard in regulated environments.

As regulations mature, public sector leaders will need technology partners that offer more than just AI features. They will need systems that are auditable, secure, and aligned with emerging compliance frameworks.

Growth Opportunities: Serving Citizens and Students More Intelligently

The greatest untapped opportunity for Gen AI in the public sector lies in its potential to personalize and improve the citizen and student experience. Today’s constituents expect the same responsiveness from government that they receive from the private sector yet many agencies are hampered by legacy systems and data silos.

With Laserfiche, organizations can unify disparate data sources and automate multi-step interactions, allowing for intelligent service delivery. Imagine a student applying for financial aid who is guided through the process via an AI assistant that understands eligibility rules, validates documentation in real time, and tracks application status all integrated with a secure ECM backbone. Or a constituent filing a complaint about street repairs who receives proactive updates based on workflow progress, without ever needing to make a follow-up call.

These scenarios are not science fiction. They are being implemented today by forward-looking agencies using Laserfiche to reimagine how the government and education serves its stakeholders.

Conclusion: The Strategic Role of Gen AI in Public Service

As the Wired article suggests, the real value of Gen AI is not just in how fast it operates but in how deeply it can transform how organizations think and act. For the public sector, this means using AI not simply to accelerate processes, but to deliver on the promise of better governance, equity, and trust.

Laserfiche’s AI-powered platform, including capabilities like Smart Fields, helps agencies shift from reacting to anticipating, from managing data to unlocking insight, and from compliance to transformation. For leaders seeking to modernize operations, improve service delivery, and embrace the future of digital governance, the time to act is now.

The opportunity is no longer just to do more with less. It is to do better with more, more intelligence, more context, and more strategic value from every interaction.

See More on how Laserfiche is unlocking a new era in productivity and insight.

eBook: The Intelligent Document Processing Playbook

Simplifying Government Services at Hurunui District Council

New Zealand’s Hurunui District has a population of more than 13,000 spread across 864,640 hectares just north of Christchurch. Serving a largely rural area, the Hurunui District Council excels at developing a sense of community, partnership and well-being.

“Our services are extremely broad,” said Stewart Tayles, digital transformation and IT team leader at Hurunui and Kaikoura District Councils. “From dog registrations to consents, or running youth programming to providing social housing — we really do everything essential for our community.”

This wide-ranging scope requires a flexible technology infrastructure where systems can be integrated and adapted to the territory’s growing needs.

“Our CEO wants the council to be a 24/7 operation — we need to be engaged with the community and enable them to engage with us,” Tayles added. “We need forms. We need to make information available. We need to be able to provide access to these services when people need them.”

Replacing Legacy Document Management with Robust Content Services

The council initially procured Laserfiche to replace a legacy document management system (DMS) when the growing amount of information generated proved too much for the legacy system to efficiently handle, control and retain.

The Hurunui team worked with Ricoh New Zealand to find an ideal solution in Laserfiche, which would meet the council’s changing needs. Today, Laserfiche serves the council as a versatile, enterprise-wide solution. “Being New Zealand’s eighth-largest district by land size, we needed a system with the capability to connect our multiple offices,” said Scott Linton, IT and GIS manager for Hurunui District Council. “We were really impressed at how easy it was to implement Laserfiche and connect our main office with five satellite locations. It was up and running in no time.”

Building Consents Made Simple with Laserfiche Forms

Beyond basic document management, the district manages vital processes — including resource consents — using Laserfiche’s forms, integration and workflow capabilities, supporting the development and economic growth of the territory.

Building consent applications typically come in through Simpli, which provides a standard form for building control authorities — however, the council found the vetting of these submissions to be laborious and prone to human error. “Before we can process an application, we need to check that all the information is there, it’s valid and it’s suitable,” Tayles said. To address this manual review bottleneck, the team created a Building Consent Vetting Checklist in Laserfiche, which checks and validates the information before it’s officially submitted and reviewed by the district council. “It checks what we call the ‘Hurunui-isms,’ or the requirements that are very specific to our district.”

With 500-600 applications per year, the checklist process has solved a long-standing headache for the building department and simplified consent review.

On the back end, Laserfiche enables the council to keep records in a standardized way that is easy to navigate.

“Each property has its own folder that contains an average of 40-50 pages on the details,” Linton said. “We have tens of thousands of documents that need to be identified and placed with the correct property. We applied a Laserfiche template with metadata information such as the building type, number, property ID, evaluation number and address. Laserfiche Workflow then automatically identifies, filters and files the documents in their correct folders.”

Enhanced Contract Management with a Centralized Contract Register

Also an integral part of the council’s infrastructure responsibilities is its ability to work with contractors to provide various services such as road construction, maintenance, waste management or cleaning services. A recent audit uncovered the need for more robust processes surrounding these contract approvals and service procurement — another area that Tayles understood Laserfiche could help.

“We had a short time to implement a more robust, multi-step process,” Tayles said. “We sat down and said, ‘We can build this in Laserfiche Forms.’”

The council now has a Contract Register in Laserfiche, which helps to centralize and organize the many projects, subcontracts under those projects and associated documentation that the council must manage.

“Database lookups query the Laserfiche database directly to pick contract numbers and project numbers, so that we get a standardized naming format,” Tayles explained. “All those records automatically go into that contract or project folder, and we know they are correctly named and easily found later.”

The biggest benefit to the council has been the transparency of the process. “By recording the decision-making, we can show why we went with a particular supplier, and show stewardship of the funds we receive from the central government,” Tayles said. After the new Contract Register was implemented, the council received glowing feedback from the central government on the new process. “We went from one end of the spectrum to the other.”

Building Trust: Improving Accountability and Transparency

As part of its expansive range of services, Hurunui District Council prioritizes community engagement to build a strong community as well as ensure the mutual respect between government and constituents. Laserfiche’s ability to put information at the fingertips of those who need it provides a strong foundation on which to build that engagement.

“We have a policy where we must archive every email, so another big project we’ve done is create our email archive in Laserfiche,” Tayles said. This archive provides referenceable information for legal compliance, auditing and accountability, as well as historical record and disaster recovery. “Now, all emails go into Office 365, and we use Laserfiche Connector to archive them in Laserfiche.”

Tayles explained that Laserfiche was the right choice for the project not only for its archiving capabilities but also for its security tools. “Hurunui grows by 25,000 emails a week, and we are heavy on security,” he said. “We only want people to see their own emails. But we’re also subject to LGOIMA — the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act — where people can request all the information about a subject, so we’re able to give some people delegated access to the whole repository for searches.”

Prior to using Laserfiche for the archive, the council was spending $50,000 per year on Mimecast, which they were able to retire and redirect funds toward additional security measures and other IT projects.

A Flexible Solution to Any Problem

Today, Hurunui District Council has over 220 active Laserfiche Forms, which span the organization’s full operations. “Forms are the backbone for multiple departments in the council,” Tayles said. “Other councils just can’t believe what we do with Laserfiche and how we make it work for our users. Laserfiche is an essential technology at Hurunui.”

In addition to the processes that are ubiquitous in the government space, niche operations that are more common for district councils — from toilet cleaning and mowing to youth programming — also benefit from Laserfiche. One such process that illustrates Laserfiche’s flexibility: connecting lost dogs to their owners.

“Because we manage the IT for [neighboring district council] Kaikoura, we built a solution to help them with lost dogs,” Tayles said. “They can get a call any time during the day or night about a dog, so they’ve implemented a solution called Doggone. Owners can consent to being texted so that they can be reunited with their dog quicker. Naturally, we had to get all the owner information into that system, but we also had to track whether people had given consent, because we are sharing contact information with a third party — there is a Laserfiche form for that.”

Tayles and his team also used the Laserfiche API to connect Doggone to Kairkoura’s ERP system that houses the owner information. “We’re using Laserfiche workflow to get the owner information from the ERP and push it to Doggone,” Tayles said. “It also handles any requests for changes in the database, so that as dogs move or change owners, all systems remain up to date.”

As Hurunui District Council works toward the CEO’s vision for 24/7 service, Laserfiche remains a core technology that will support its growing and changing needs.

“What I enjoy about Laserfiche the most is the creative flexibility it gives,” Tayles added. “It gives me a lot of different tools to solve problems. There’s nothing prescribed about it — we can build our forms how we want, and we can set the metadata up the way we need it. There really hasn’t been a problem that I haven’t been able to solve using Laserfiche.”

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