Intelligent Data Capture Archives | Page 11 of 17

Tecnoglass Powers Collaboration to Deliver Industry Leading Products and Services

Tecnoglass is a leading glass and window manufacturer, and the first Colombian company to be listed on the NASDAQ. Since its beginnings in 1984, the company has gained recognition for delivering high-quality products, competitive prices and timely delivery. In more recent years, Tecnoglass experienced tremendous growth, doubling revenue since 2014 thanks to the company’s vertically integrated business and strong, innovative product offerings.

To remain on the forefront of the industry and continue to meet customer expectations, Tecnoglass introduced automation to its operations. This transfomation has affected not only the fabrication of products, but also core business processes across the enterprise.

At the heart of Tecnoglass’s digitization and business process automation initiatives is Laserfiche, which the company uses to store critical documents, manage records and enable collaboration between employees and with external suppliers. This Laserfiche-enabled digital transformation has benefited the entire organization, increasing accountability, improving compliance and accelerating business across all units. Today, Tecnoglass continues on its growth trajectory using Laserfiche to eliminate repetitive, time-intensive manual tasks, and enable employees to maintain focus on fulfilling customers’ quality and service expectations and remaining competitive in the marketplace.

Positioned for Growth

In December 2013, Tecnoglass debuted on NASDAQ. Shortly after, the organization sought a better way to manage documents, since the company’s legacy system was no longer robust enough to meet the demands of a rapidly growing business and could not be integrated with other core technologies.

“Records were disorganized, and stored in warehouses making them difficult to find,” said Plinio Florez, document management coordinator at Tecnoglass. “This led to high storage costs and labor costs associated with searching for documents. It was almost impossible to consult files for decision-making, which delayed critical processes.”

Tecnoglass also faced challenges collaborating with suppliers. The legacy supplier registration process was manually driven and paper-based, which led to lost documents, and difficulties with authorizing suppliers and making payments.

The Tecnoglass team found that Laserfiche could meet the company’s document management needs as well as enable the automation of key business processes such as supplier registration and accounts payable. The Laserfiche platform was also easily integrated with Tecnoglass’s ERP system, helping to centralize data and operations.

Tecnoglass also enlisted the help of Colombia-based Laserfiche Solution Provider, Gestech, for the implementation. “Having local support was another important part of our decision making process,” said Florez.

“Laserfiche was the perfect choice to take Tecnoglass into the next phase of growth and expansion,” said Jaime Barrios Perez, CEO of Gestech. “By using Laserfiche to centralize information, and digitize and automate processes, Tecnoglass created a more seamless experience for employees and suppliers that is closely aligned with the company’s modern, global vision.”

Getting Ahead by Going Digital-First

The most immediate change Tecnoglass made was to digitize documents and store the electronic files in a Laserfiche repository, making information easier to process and share with outside parties when needed.

“We had to change the mentality of employees, which was that documents are only safe if they’re ‘physically available,’” said Florez. “To the contrary, by digitizing paperwork, we have enhanced controls and mitigated risk of information loss.”

Digitization made an impact across the company, especially in the foreign trade department, which manages significant amounts of Tecnoglass’s transactions and activities. The company was able to save nearly $73,000,000 Colombian pesos in costs related to shipping and processing paperwork alone. Today, the company’s Laserfiche repository houses more than 10 million files, all easily searchable by authorized employees.

Moving toward a digital-first environment also made collaboration with outside parties easier. The paper-driven legacy supplier registration process was replaced with a Laserfiche electronic form and automated workflow. By digitizing and automating the process, the company eliminated lost paperwork and accelerated registration, improving the experience for both Tecnoglass employees and the company’s suppliers.

Using Laserfiche, Tecnoglass employees can now easily search and retrieve documents without having to step foot in a warehouse. This has resulted in faster decision making, as well as a faster response times to internal and external audits — such as those related to Sarbanes-Oxley Act, ISO standards and the company’s Authorized Economic Operator certification, for which Tecnoglass has committed to both physical and IT security and safety standards throughout its supply chain by meeting requirements set forth by the Colombian Tax and Customs National Authority (DIAN).

“Laserfiche has helped tremendously with the company’s compliance with legal and industry requirements. Having the search functions at our fingertips has eliminated headaches for many of our employees, and automating processes has eliminated repetitive, error-prone manual tasks like data entry, allowing employees to focus on more productive work.”

—Tecnoglass General Counsel Andrea Zambrano

Accelerating Across the Enterprise

The company’s success with Laserfiche continues to spread throughout the organization since initial implementation. Additional departments have automated key processes including accounts payable, supplier updates, correspondence management, user profile confirmation and document loan control.

“Departments that have benefited from the implementation of Laserfiche include: purchases, treasury, accounting, document management, foreign trade, warehouse and internal control, all of which mainly needed a solution that allowed them to optimize time, space and the fulfillment of obligations to third-parties,” said Zambrano. “We have created and opened up new channels of communication with third parties, such as our suppliers. We’re now able to notify suppliers when we have an issue with a document or bill — prevent billing errors and delays — and we give our suppliers more convenient methods for updating data online.”

Tecnoglass’s Laserfiche implementation has created a more integrated work environment, where processes are standardized and transparent, enabling the company’s management team to more easily optimize resources and personnel. Employees and departments are accountable, which has led to better collaboration and better communication, even with third parties.

“Adopting Laserfiche technology opened up new possibilities for our organization that were previously dismissed,” said Zambrano. “It turns out we just did not have the foundation and practices in place that would enable more innovation. Once we started implementing automated workflows, we eliminated silos and our operations became more connected. We continue to work on integrating workflows and centralizing data and processes. Laserfiche is an extremely powerful tool for our organization.”

Ready to scale up and drive digital transformation enterprise-wide? Download our white paper, “Leading for Innovation and Growth: Five Strategies for Driving Digital Transformation.”

Technology Helps Frisco Independent School District Manage Unprecedented Growth

Frisco Independent School District (ISD), located about 30 miles north of Dallas, Texas, has grown over 800% in the last 20 years. A focus on providing strong academics and outstanding opportunities for students has made the district a destination for families moving to the area. In order to continue providing students with personalized high-quality education, however, the district needed to address staffing needs and the administrative growing pains that coincided with a high enrollment rate.

The district assessed that it would need to double the number of educators on staff — a challenge made even more formidable with legacy manual, paper-driven HR processes. To accommodate a short hiring season of approximately four months, the district turned to Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM) to automate the employee onboarding and resignation processes. Using electronic forms and an automated workflow created in Laserfiche, Frisco ISD’s onboarding process can now be completed in a matter of days rather than four to six weeks.

Staff and faculty members have since expanded their use of Laserfiche beyond human resources, in departments such as accounting, operations and student services. Laserfiche now streamlines more than 50 key processes throughout the district, enabling faculty and staff to spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time focused on the success of the district’s growing student body. Additionally, when the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in Texas, Frisco ISD was able to seamlessly transition to remote and hybrid work environments, and easily adjust its electronic forms and automated processes to address the needs of its staff and students.

Onboarding Employees at a Record Pace

Frisco ISD has almost 64,000 students, 73 campuses and 8,000 employees. The HR department is tasked with onboarding approximately 1,600 employees every year.

The legacy employee hiring process depended almost entirely on paper, and district leadership knew that it would not support future growth. The resignation process was similarly paper-based, and driven by manual, ad hoc tasks. As a result of delays in both processes—which often had to be completed simultaneously during a short, four-month period—it would take four to six weeks to onboard a single employee.

“The biggest challenge the human resources department faced with this level of growth was not having enough time in each day to get things done,” said Bob Allen, director of business applications and process at Frisco ISD. “The sheer volume of growth hindered our ability to keep up with not only the hiring process, but also real-life situations. Whether it’s a campus issue, an employee need, or just trying to get a project completed, time becomes a challenging factor.”

To manage the influx of incoming employees, Frisco ISD worked with DocuNav Solutions, a Laserfiche Solution Provider, to digitize and automate its HR processes.

First, Frisco ISD used Laserfiche to automate the new employee onboarding process and now, nearly 100% of the process is streamlined with electronic forms and workflow.

Today, when a candidate is recommended for hire, the HR department receives an electronic notification from the hiring manager that kick-starts the process. An employment-offer email is sent to the candidate, who can accept or reject the offer via a Laserfiche Form. If they accept, they can complete and submit all necessary paperwork online. The automated workflow then sends the information to the relevant personnel for reviews and approvals.

New hires also receive important information, such as the employee handbook and an overview of benefits, through Laserfiche. All of these activities can be completed remotely—which was not possible before digitizing and automating the process.

“The flexibility and convenience of being able to complete tasks from home expedites the entire process and creates a great experience for both the new employee and HR representative,” said Dr. Duana Kindle, managing director of human resources at Frisco ISD.

All employees involved also receive email updates every time a task is complete, or a deadline is missed. Onboarding documents are automatically filed and saved in Laserfiche, helping Frisco ISD maintain secure, consistent and accurate records management without placing additional burden on staff.

Automating the employee onboarding process benefited the district in new and unexpected ways when the COVID-19 pandemic hit Texas. Before COVID, the collection of the I-9 employee eligibility form and proof of identity was intentionally completed face-to-face, to personally welcome employees and provide a form of engagement. The district had to swiftly shift to virtual, however, when in-person interactions could put people at exposure risk. This overnight change was made possible by Laserfiche.

“Laserfiche streamlines the entire onboarding process from beginning to end,” added Dr. Kindle. “New employees are completing paperwork, receiving deadline reminders, and receiving new-hire documents through the system while we are receiving critical information in one centralized location.”

Today, Frisco ISD is in the midst of hiring new teachers and staff for the coming school year, with the aid of the American Rescue Plan Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ARP ESSER Fund) aimed at supporting educational agencies in addressing the impacts of COVID-19. The electronic forms and automated onboarding process are more important than ever before in supporting the district’s hiring needs while navigating uncertainty about the upcoming school year.

Taking a similar approach to the onboarding process, Frisco ISD has a Laserfiche automated workflow that routes the information to the appropriate managers for approval and notifies relevant employees along the way. In addition, the resigning employee is prompted to complete a questionnaire about their reasons for leaving Frisco ISD—providing valuable feedback for improving employee retention and organizational culture.

“Today, the resignation process is just as quick as the new onboarding process, which means we are no longer scrambling to free-up space for our new employees,” said Anna Koenig, managing director of human resources at Frisco ISD. “It’s all one seamless digital process.”

The new employee onboarding and resignation processes have improved tremendously since implementing Laserfiche. Today:

Onboarding an employee can be completed in a matter of days rather than four to six weeks.
Frisco ISD employees have the flexibility to complete tasks remotely.
The HR department has eliminated many repetitive, manual tasks, enabling employees to redirect time to addressing staff and student needs.
Employee records are stored digitally, in a central location using standardized filing practices.

Frisco ISD’s Journey Continues

Since these initial successes, Frisco ISD and Laserfiche have formed a strong partnership, and the district has continued to automate dozens of processes across the organization, including, but not limited to:

Invoice processing in accounts payable
Employee benefits document management
Compliance records management
Custodial, transportation, and general employee handbook acknowledgments
Employee address changes
Performance review acknowledgement and archiving
Employee transfer requests
Finance document management
Independent student mentoring registration
Student Gifted and Talented enrollment processing
Teacher certification tracking

Automating processes and eliminating repetitive, manual tasks has enabled the school district to scale as the student body continues to grow. In the district’s accounts payable department, for example, the staff is able to process 40% more volume with 25% less resources. Also critical to a fast-growing organization, the district now maintains a central location for records that is accessible to authorized personnel, improving information accuracy and governance district-wide.

Most importantly, however, Frisco ISD has established a culture of efficiency and automation. By streamlining the majority of its processes, the district can move quickly to respond to changes in policies or procedures, regulatory requirements and — perhaps most importantly — employee and student needs and expectations.

“We always talk about preparing students for the future,” Dr. Kindle added. “If we are not future-ready as educators, we can’t expect the same of our students. Laserfiche has supported us in being future-ready.”

District leadership knows that with this approach to processes, the organization will be able to gather data-supported insights into operations and make more informed decisions about allocation of resources.

“Our ultimate goal is to implement automation throughout the district so that we can collect process data and improve operations based on those analytics,” said Allen. “Laserfiche is an integral part of this strategy, and we look forward to implementing creative solutions that will ensure student success.”

Planning digital transformation for your district operations in line with the American Rescue Plan ESSER Fund? Join our education IT leadership panel for inspiration!

Barranquilla Chamber of Commerce Supports Economic Growth Through Online Services

Barranquilla is a cosmopolitan city and one of the largest ports in the northern Caribbean Coast region of Colombia. Rapid urban growth and economic development has transformed the region into a tourism hub and an active business community.

The Barranquilla Chamber of Commerce provides its services to over 72,000 companies that operate in northern Colombia and is tasked with fielding thousands of registry-related requests annually. To help support the area’s dynamic development, the chamber used Laserfiche to digitally transform its operations by giving affiliates the ability to access key services online. The initiative met government requirements and initially eliminated approximately $50,000 in annual costs related to document scanning. Additionally, the chamber’s use of Laserfiche created new opportunities to offer affiliates more convenient, faster online services by automating other core processes.

Changing With the Times

While the Barranquilla Chamber of Commerce prides itself on promoting the competitiveness and economic prosperity of the region, in 2015, the chamber’s processes were not keeping pace with the area’s accelerated growth. That year, the Colombian government mandated that chamber services must be made accessible online in order to meet modern business expectations and enable the country to compete in today’s global economy.

“One of our biggest customer service challenges was to take our traditional services on-site and make them available over the internet,” said Jorge Andon, public registry lawyer for the chamber. “We needed a platform that could satisfy the registry related requests of our more than 70,000 affiliates in a fast and safe way.”

The chamber’s services include enabling citizens to make requests related to the legal creation of businesses, modifying and renewing company information, and dissolving companies.

Previously, to access these services, citizens were required to travel or mail in the necessary documents to the chamber’s office in Barranquilla. For example, to create a company, citizens need to file documents—such as statutes of incorporation and standardized forms—which are received and reviewed by a lawyer who ensures they meet legal requirements. If they do, the documents are registered and the company is created. If information was incomplete or did not meet legal requirements, the process was delayed—documents had to be returned to requesting party, revised as needed and re-submitted to the chamber.

“Document returns constituted around 20% of our operation, which added up to many working hours,” Andon said.

In addition to streamlining these requests, the chamber also needed to make certain documents available online as part of the government’s initiative to increase access to public information.

After assessing a number of solutions, the chamber selected Laserfiche, which would enable the organization to digitally transform how it provides services while offering a centralized place to manage documents and make them available to the public. “Laserfiche met our expectations in regards to information security and integration with other core applications,” Andon added. “We also found that Laserfiche is characterized by innovative solutions in the field of document management software. Having a certified Laserfiche Solution Provider located in Barranquilla was another strong determinant.”

“As a Colombian-based business with many customers, we understand the challenges the Barranquilla Chamber of Commerce faced,” said Jaime Barrios Perez, CEO of Gestech, the Laserfiche Solution Provider that supports the chamber’s implementation. “Laserfiche is a great platform for the chamber since it meets the organization’s current digital transformation needs, while also enabling them to create new solutions and maintain scalability for future growth.

Streamlining Services for Affiliates and Employees

The chamber brought its paper-based registration process online by building a Laserfiche public portal, where affiliates can submit electronic forms to register for business licenses, update operational information and submit other requests.

Rather than having to fill out pages of paperwork and produce physical copies of documents for chamber employees to scan, affiliates can now log into the chamber’s online portal and complete a Laserfiche Form to request the desired service. There, affiliates can also upload documents related to their business’s public registry—such as articles of incorporation and bylaws; appointments of directors and administrators; or bankruptcy or liquidation documentation.

To streamline the process for chamber employees, the chamber used Laserfiche to design an automated workflow which routes information to a public registry lawyer for review. If documents meet legal requirements, the lawyer will approve them and Laserfiche will send the affiliate a tax and service bill, which can be paid online or on-site.

“The ability to request services online has brought an array of benefits for users, such as reduction in travel expenses, and reduced service response times,” Andon says.

Once payment is made, documents are inscribed in the public registry (performed by an application that is integrated with Laserfiche) and available to the public online through a Laserfiche portal. As part of the workflow, Laserfiche sends a notification letter to the affiliate once documents are inscribed. If documents don’t meet legal requirements, however, Laserfiche will notify the affiliate, and the system allows the affiliate to then upload corrected documents using the same filing number within one month.

“By reducing document returns, we also reduce reprocessing requests. As a lawyer, if I have a filing and I return it, then the chamber has to receive it again, and review it again, and scan it again,” Andon says. “Being able to reduce the percentage of documents returned is saving us time, effort and money.”

The automated process has dramatically accelerated the chamber’s response time, enabling better customer service.

“Some chambers of commerce take up to 10 to 15 days to process some registration requests and we take less than 24 hours to process them. Other chambers are now starting to look at us to see what we’re doing to solve these problems and deliver such fast service.”

—Jorge Andon, Barranquilla Chamber of Commerce Public Registry Lawyer

Growing Opportunity for Colombian Business

As a result of the Laserfiche solution, organization-wide savings include a reduction in employee time spent receiving, scanning and returning documents. The chamber has also enabled users to correct large documents without returning them by using Laserfiche’s version control function—which allows the organization to modify documents while keeping a record of changes as well as the intact originals. Improved process management has reduced the risk of complaints and consequential fines imposed by the regulatory commission.

Since the chamber’s success with affiliate service requests, it has implemented Laserfiche in almost every department, including accounting/finance, human resources, legal, operations, sales, executive, information technology, marketing and records management.

“The chamber saves approximately $50,000 per year as a direct result of our online services,” Andon says. “We have also seen increasing ROI at the organization-wide level that is yet to be determined.”

The automated processes have also enabled the chamber to become more data-driven. Using reporting and analytics features in Laserfiche, the chamber creates real-time reports on process health that have led to faster decision making, and improved customer service even further. This has led to reputational improvement of the organization at the national level.

“We implemented Laserfiche in the chamber for two particular reasons: to offer registration services online and to publish our public documents online so people could access them,” Andon explains. “But the benefits we received were much more than just that. Problems we’ve had in the chamber for years—we could solve them in just a couple of weeks. Designing and implementing processes in Laserfiche is so easy. If you can imagine it, you can do it.”

To learn more about implementing technology for enterprise-wide change, click here to download a free eBook, “5 Strategies for Driving Digital Transformation.”

Keller Independent School District Builds a Culture Focused on Students

Everything that Keller Independent School District (ISD) employees do is focused on providing an exceptional educational experience for students, whether it be teaching in the classroom, maintaining the facilities, or offering support and guidance for students and staff alike. This commitment to student success is evident in all of the school district’s business processes, many of which have been automated and streamlined using Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM). The school district now uses Laserfiche in almost all of its departments, increasing efficiency. This has resulted in staff time being redirected to address students’ needs, while also building stronger interpersonal relationships among staff members.

Championing Change

Keller ISD serves more than 35,000 students across Tarrant County, Texas, and employs more than 4,000 staff members. During a recent period of rapid growth, it became clear that there was a lack of uniformity across major business processes. Each department was leveraging a different ECM solution, and each team had their own way of managing core business processes and procedures. This created information silos, which delayed processes and built a culture of mistrust due to a lack of accountability.

New employee onboarding was one process in particular that lacked consistency. “Before Laserfiche the process was essentially a bunch of phone calls and hand-waves,” said Clinton Mehta, systems integration architect at Keller ISD. “It could take weeks, even months, before the process was complete because the process was different depending on the person or department involved.”

Previously, the onboarding process included more than 30 pages of paperwork that needed to be filled out manually. Once new employees completed the paperwork, they would have to physically mail in the documents or deliver them on-site. From there, the process varied from case to case.

Today, the process is completely automated using Laserfiche. The district implemented electronic forms in order to enable new employees to submit their required information online instead of being handed a pile of paperwork to fill out and return. After submission, an automated workflow shepherds the documents through the necessary reviews and approvals. Onboarding can now be completed in a matter of days rather than months, and all parties involved are kept up to date on the progress.

“The HR onboarding process was a quick win that we could use as a selling point to promote adoption in other departments,” said Joe Griffin, chief technology officer at Keller ISD. “There was an initial resistance to adoption because the trust and understanding was not there. This successful implementation in HR was the catalyst for a district-wide adoption.”

Reimagining Student Records

With the success of automating HR onboarding, the Keller ISD team wanted to use Laserfiche to completely reimagine how the district manages student records.

“There is one story that comes to mind when I think about how student records were managed before Laserfiche,” said Mehta. “We had an employee who was transferring student files to another location, and she had placed the folders in her Gucci bag. She had made a pit stop along the way, left the designer bag in her car, and someone broke into the car and stole the bag! Thankfully, we don’t have to worry about that anymore.”

Today, the district leverages Laserfiche to manage enrollment documents, test scores, sensitive personal information, legal documents, special education records and more. Laserfiche has enabled the team to centralize student information, manage the lifecycle of documents and automate routine tasks related to records. Authorized employees have easy access to accurate and up-to-date student information, and can seamlessly process student transfers. The electronic records management system has also helped the school district to standardize filing and better enforce records management policies, supporting regulatory compliance.

“Keller ISD is considered a pioneer in student records management, with other districts looking to them as the marquee example,” said Cody Bettis, CEO of DocuNav Solutions, the Laserfiche Solution Provider that supports Keller ISD’s implementation. “It’s exciting to see the district lead the way for tech innovation within the K-12 space.”

“It’s quite an accomplishment to have other districts mimicking our solution for student records,” said Griffin. “We have set up our system in such a way that if we were to ever change our registration system or process, we can easily migrate our workflows so nothing is lost and there isn’t a gap in performance. This has a major impact on student success, and it’s exciting to support our district’s mission through IT support.”

Looking Ahead with Laserfiche

Keller ISD has received a significant return on investment with Laserfiche. In addition to streamlining business processes and creating transparency throughout the district, the district has:

Replaced five different software systems with a single solution, initially saving the district $100,000, as well as an estimated savings of $70,000 annually.
Saved more than $11,000 as a result of reducing paper use in core business processes.
Met the requirements of the Paperwork Reduction Act, which imposes procedural requirements on agencies that wish to collect information from the public.
Created a culture of collaboration that has enhanced trust among district employees.

“Once we realized the full potential of Laserfiche, we were excited to expand the solution beyond the storage of digital documents,” said Griffin. “An added bonus was that the software doesn’t just streamline processes, but it also builds relationships by creating transparency and providing accountability. That was a major selling point for us.”

Today, Keller ISD uses Laserfiche in almost 100% of the district in departments such as human resources, finance, IT and student services. Looking ahead, Keller ISD has big plans for its use of Laserfiche in the future: With a successful district-wide implementation, the Keller ISD team is exploring how they can use the technology beyond administrative operations, and to improve processes for students and their families. Some of the student- and family-facing processes that the Keller ISD team plans to enhance with Laserfiche include student enrollment and registration, field trip permissions, and Career and Technical Education (CTE) practicum applications and processes.

“Eventually, we want to provide user-licenses to parents and students so they can be a part of the forms process,” said Mehta. “Right now, we are exploring how we can create a custom solution that would enable us to allow secure access to each parent. There is a lot more we can do in terms of use and integrations that go well beyond document storage. The options are endless.”

How Symbria Reimagined Patient Care

Symbria—a leading provider of rehabilitation, wellness and pharmacy programs and services for senior living and post-acute care providers—recently reinvented the way it manages plan of care documents for patients. By using Laserfiche to digitally transform the process, Symbria eliminated repetitive, manual tasks once required of managerial therapists, creating more time for them to focus on providing the best possible patient care. The new, automated process is also scalable, a priority for the company which expects continued growth in the coming years.

Moving Away from Manual Inefficiencies

As part of its comprehensive programming, Symbria provides services to partners in various settings including skilled nursing, assisted living, independent living, outpatient and home health facilities.

Symbria’s rehab program managers—managerial therapists at these facilities—are required to have “plan of care” documents signed by patients’ physicians. Like prescriptions, these documents prescribe occupational therapy rather than medications.

Initially, Symbria was using a manual process to obtain physicians’ signatures. Once a patient was evaluated, the rehab program manager would generate the plan of care document, which must be signed by a physician within 30 days of the evaluation in order to receive reimbursement for services and avoid denials.

Symbria staff would subsequently use implemented therapy software to print the plan of care form. The document would have to be physically carried to the physician within the building, or the rehab program manager would have to search for a fax number online in order to obtain the signature.

After finally receiving the signature, the rehab program manager would scan the paper form and upload it back to the therapy software to be attached to the patient’s file. Additionally, he or she many times would have to email the document or physically carry it to the medical records department at the facility, since a copy was required there as well. The process was time-consuming, particularly for the rehab program manager, who could spend considerable time locating the physician, reminding his/her office repeatedly to sign the form, and more.

“Our old process was completely manual and exceedingly costly to administer,” said Mark Candiotti, national director-operations liaison at Symbria. “It’s a huge burden on our rehab program managers that detracts from their primary job.” Beyond simply being a headache, the process took time from therapists’ primary focus: providing therapy to patients.

Seamless Digital Tools

The Symbria team worked with Laserfiche solution provider Proven IT to implement Laserfiche and automate the plan of care process, eliminating almost all of the manual tasks associated with it for managerial therapists. Today, the rehab program manager generates the plan of care digitally, uploading it to Symbria’s corporate office using a Laserfiche Form. The electronic form is automatically read for the physician’s registration number and other vital information, so the document can be identified and disseminated with minimal human intervention.

The plan of care form also includes a barcode, so once the physician signs it and sends it back digitally, Symbria can quickly correlate it to the appropriate patient. A Symbria data entry staff member verifies the signature and date on the document, then uploads the signed document to the therapy software—essentially removing the rehab program manager from the process. Simultaneously, the document is digitally sent to the medical records department.

The therapist’s role during the process is solely to generate the plan of care form and upload it.

“Our teams has been extremely receptive to the new process since making the switch,” added Candiotti. “We’ve really freed up the rehab program managers so they are really embracing the change. As we continue to use this process and automate more, the expected ROI is high and we expect scalability, which is important to us.”

The new process has already resulted in impressive time savings for Symbria. Since implementing the new automated process, individual rehab program managers save approximately two to five hours each week. With Symbria servicing over 150 clients, this increased efficiency has been significant for the entire organization.

Additionally, Symbria has automated key HR and accounts payable processes. The new optimized, digital processes support the organization’s aim to surround clients and partners with the creative, future-focused solutions they need to thrive in a fast-changing healthcare landscape.

“Digital transformation is a priority for Symbria,” said Hien Do, software development manager at Symbria. “For any company of our size, you’ll have a lot of legacy systems, and all of these efficiency gains through technology, such as Laserfiche, are what we’re pushing toward. We continue to challenge our employees to help us automate any processes they have in mind.”

To learn more about how process automation can support healthcare staff working on the front lines of patient care while supporting compliance and patient confidentiality, visit the Laserfiche Healthcare Solutions page.

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.

AFP Crecer, El Salvador

My name is Carlos Ramos. I work for AFP Crecer as the digitalization manager. AFP Crecer is one of El Salvador’s largest fund management firms. We manage the pension funds for about 1.7 million affiliates. Our mission is to guide our clients as they save for an important life change: retirement. We’re working on growing their savings, so that when they retire, they’ll be able to continue providing for their family and themselves.

From a technological standpoint, the biggest challenges that we faced was having a document management system that would be flexible, that would allow us to have quality control for our stored information, and also streamline the digital capture processes to serve our customers in a more efficient manner through our channels. We evaluated several tools and Laserfiche was the one we liked the best.

Somehow, we discovered that document management goes beyond just digital archiving. We’re giving the opportunity to all of our client representatives to access information in a timely manner. Thanks to Laserfiche, as a tool, we’ve been able to change our processes. We were able to shorten processes that took five days to three days. We reduced processes that took 15 days to just five days.

Using the product has opened up additional improvement opportunities. It is not only about archiving digital documents, but also having the necessary documents throughout our key business processes. In addition, the use of electronic forms allowed us to reduce our use of paper. We were using around 650 packs of paper, which equals about 350,000 sheets of paper per year.

We’ve been working with Laserfiche for about 10 months and the experience has been fabulous. Now we have more visibility and we can do more complex searches and reports. Throughout our journey, we learned that things that we imagined and believed couldn’t be done with a software can be done with Laserfiche.

Time savings, reduction in costs, and an easier capture and digitization process. A client file took close to 100 days from its creation until it was ready for record archiving. Now it only takes two days for the client file to be archived. We get notifications if we made an error or notifications if image capture was successful.

With Laserfiche, and where I see future opportunities, such as analyzing our processes to identify those we can automate, what documents are required for those processes, and not only opportunities to automate them, but also to completely redesign them, and see how we’re doing things now and how we can do them tomorrow.

We must remember that we work and are dedicated to serve our clients’ needs. Financial needs with regards to pensions, and for them it’s very important to get speedy service, and that’s why Laserfiche has been a fundamental part of that.

City University, Hong Kong

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

St. Paul’s College, South Australia

Laserfiche helps St Paul’s College automate various student services, saving staff hundreds of hours per year to better focus on value-added activities for students.

My name is Neville Atkinson. I’m the Business Manager at St. Paul’s College. My main responsibility is the financial oversight of the college.

My name’s Ann Haywood and I’m the Assistant Business Manager at St. Paul’s College.

St. Paul’s College is a Reception to Year 12 Catholic boys’ school in the Edmund Rice tradition. We’re part of a Catholic network across Australia of 5,000 staff and we employ around 80 staff here at our College.

What motivates me to come to work every day is the opportunity to help both staff and students access private education when they may not normally be able to afford that. The key bottleneck that we face is the management of any collection of data.

With the introduction of the Royal Commission in Australia, a lot of our student records and staff records need to be kept forever, so previously our system was paper-based and we needed a new platform to be able to retrieve the information in a timely manner.

I first realized that Laserfiche was a good solution for our organization when we began some training, and that was generally because we began to see the potential that the software product had and how we could apply in our situation.

Some of our expectations and goals for Laserfiche were the storage management and retrieval of large amounts of information that we used to hold in paper files. We were also trying to achieve easy searchability and retrieval for those documents.

The other key things that we use Laserfiche for is electronic forms. We’ve automated a number of our forms which means that our staff are able to access those anytime, anywhere and we’ve got a consistent process.

The feedback we’ve had from users about the system that it’s easy to use, the searchability obviously is a great function, and just to have things at their fingertips has been fantastic.

The Laserfiche project has delivered a number of good return on investment outcomes, one of the key ones is that all of our data that we got from our parents used to be keyed in manually and we’ve now been able to automate that process. We estimate that saved us over 200 days of input from our staff.

I see our organization using Laserfiche in the future with integration with our current software product, as well as online forms and the implementation of accounts payable.

Yeah, we’re really excited about the opportunities of using Laserfiche going forward. We’re continuing looking at our systems and processes and we’re hoping by the middle of next year we’ll have all of our documents digitized.

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