Montgomery County Hospital District Scales Crisis Response Capability with Process Automation

The Montgomery County Hospital District (MCHD) is eliminating its reliance on paper forms and manual processes in order to keep employees and the public safe, protect information privacy and better enable remote work and communication in the midst of COVID-19.

When the novel coronavirus arrived in Texas, it changed almost everything about the hospital district’s operations, shifting many employees to work from home, and requiring new digital processes for information gathering and sharing. The hospital district had been using Laserfiche to create electronic forms and automate processes since 2019, but the pandemic would reveal new critical use cases for Laserfiche and accelerate digital transformation across the organization.

“Montgomery County Hospital District employees were using Laserfiche before COVID, but we’ve found that Laserfiche made it so much easier to work from home and maintain HIPAA compliance, and protect privacy for ambulance patients,” said Shawn Henners, Electronic Business Process Manager at the hospital district. “If COVID-19 had hit six months ago, we would have had to ramp up a lot faster, and things would have been a lot more chaotic. We’re grateful that we had begun our business process automation and electronic forms initiatives with Laserfiche at the time that we did.”

In the first few weeks of Montgomery County’s COVID-19 response, the hospital district rapidly rolled out a number of Laserfiche electronic forms and automated processes for exposure reporting, employee symptom tracking and case investigation.

Rapid Response: Automating Information Gathering with Exposure Reports

MCHD is responsible for providing indigent care, emergency medical services and public health to Montgomery County, Texas. As a publicly-funded organization, MCHD aims to provide quality care to the county while remaining a good steward of taxpayer dollars. In the past year, MCHD worked with Laserfiche Solution Provider DocuNav Solutions to unveil its first agency-wide online forms and automated workflows to increase access to services while improving efficiency.

“All healthcare organizations need to adjust to new ways of working, and technology is key to their ability to respond quickly to change,” said Cody Bettis Sr., CEO of DocuNav Solutions. “The team at Montgomery County Hospital District has really embraced a digital approach to operations, and their Laserfiche solutions are enabling them to rapidly deploy e-forms and automated workflows that meet changing needs.”

One form that was rolled out over the past year was for infection control. Initially created to report employee exposures to things like HIV or meningitis, the form and automated process behind it was used to report exposure to COVID-19 hit once the virus arrived in Texas.

“We used to use the exposure form once or twice a month,” said Henners. “In March, we had about 30 submissions due to the virus. Having those processes automated already made a huge difference for us.”

With the automated process, the infection control officer is able to document exposures and record them in Laserfiche without significant manual intervention. Information is automatically filed in a standardized manner in compliance with industry regulations, enabling authorized personnel to access the information when it’s needed.

“We were able to quickly give our employee health monitor access to the infection control form, so they can see what’s going on, stay in the loop, run reports and make sure that nothing is falling through the cracks,” Henners added.

The hospital district’s human resources team, which is working remotely, can also easily track processes, file workers compensation claims, and communicate with people in office as a result of Laserfiche forms and the repository.

The Front-line: Symptom Tracking for Safer Work Environments

In addition to tracking exposure, MCHD gathers data on employees’ temperature and symptoms to help protect the health and safety of its workforce — including doctors, nurses and EMTs — and those they serve.

“This has helped tremendously since we have employees spread over the county,” said Henners.

Employees who report to work take their own temperature at the beginning of their shift, and log it along with any symptoms they may be experiencing. They are required to do the screening every 12 hours, so if employees work for 12 hours, they would log the information at the beginning and end of their shifts. Those who work 24-hour shifts perform the screening three times.

If the employee becomes symptomatic, the system advises them on what steps to take next. The forms and workflow also enable dynamic case scenarios, so instructions may differ depending on the individual’s department or role. For instance, the protocol for an employee who reports symptoms in a care unit would look very different from the protocol for an employee in an administrative role.

The information collected provides MCHD insights such as the employee’s symptoms and temperature the day before, or two days ago. To protect employee privacy, only infection control officers have access to individual data, while incident command and executives have access to see totals and trends by unit.

“We connected that information on the backend with our scheduling software to look for people who missed their check-ins, so that supervisors can follow up with them,” said Henners. “We want to keep employees safe. Those who are in essential positions can’t work from home, and so we want to do everything we can in order to make sure we’re not exposing each other, and that employees feel safe when they come to work.”

The project took MCHD about a week to get up and running, and staff has been able to copy and paste from the Laserfiche workflow to repurpose it for other processes.

Case Investigation: Automating Information Gathering and Reporting

MCHD has also implemented a Laserfiche solution to automate case investigation, and the collection of data to inform county decisions about COVID-19. As a manual process, case investigation involved epidemiologists making phone calls twice a day to close contacts of people who had tested positive for COVID-19, to manually enter their symptoms into the system.

“On the public health side, they were monitoring hundreds of case contacts, and it was unsustainable,” said Henners. “We built an electronic form and automated workflows that take a huge burden off of the epidemiologists, who can now better focus on their jobs.”

MCHD rolled out the new electronic form and process which enables people to voluntarily self-report their symptoms every 12 hours. “For every positive case we get, we’ll do an investigation on it in the public health department and document our findings,” Henners said.

The information collected also enables MCHD to create reports in Laserfiche that provide critical insights into the health of the county, while protecting patient privacy in accordance with HIPAA. For example, MCHD staff can pull up reports on how many people are at home under monitoring or how many people have recovered. This aggregated data can be made available to county leaders who are making decisions about reopening, while details about individuals is only available to case investigators who need the information to follow up with patients.
Medical worker approaches car to administer COVID-19 test during the pandemic of COVID-19 disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2.

The New Normal: Accelerating Digital Transformation

MCHD is in the planning stages of offering telemedicine through an app; as part of this process, a Laserfiche workflow will support the collection, centralization and protection of patient information, signed consent forms and medical charts in the Laserfiche repository.

“We want to make sure that we have continuity of care, and all of the patient’s information is saved in a central location,” said Henners. “We already have a Laserfiche repository set up for patient records with appropriate security settings in place, so we are able to build and adapt processes easily, while staying in compliance with HIPAA requirements.”

Henners and the team at MCHD continue to experience increased adoption of Laserfiche and digital initiatives across the organization as employees discover new ways to streamline manual, paper-driven processes.

“COVID-19 has forced every employee to use Laserfiche for something — whether it’s specifically about COVID or not,” said Henners. For example, MCHD has a Laserfiche Form embedded on the employee website, where employees can ask questions. “If someone doesn’t know who to direct the question to, they can still get a response. If they don’t want to provide an email address, their question will be addressed in our all-staff calls. That’s another way Laserfiche is improving communication.”

MCHD is working to roll out new, key processes such as travel expense reports and inventory checkoff sheets for ambulances. “In the midst of all of this, I’m still getting emails from EMS chiefs and others who have paper forms that they would rather have in Laserfiche,” added Henners. “We are still improving processes, building checks and balances into our system, and maintaining ease of use for everyone.”

Oneida County Enhances Communication and Collaboration During COVID-19 and Beyond

SITUATION

• Pandemic response required quick solutions to support staff and residents
• Needed a way to immediately provision devices and enable access to systems remotely to support work from home
• Channels for reaching out to residents and local businesses impacted by COVID-19 did not exist

RESULTS

• Enabled remote work using Laserfiche
• Provided a way for the health department to reach out to people with COVID-19 and prevent further spread
• Collected local business surveys to gain an understanding of the pandemic’s impact on the economy

Oneida County, New York, faced an unprecedented set of challenges from the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. As a provider of essential services, the county government took measures to protect the health and safety of employees — especially important in one of the states with the highest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases. The county embraced digital transformation across its many departments long before the pandemic. County Executive Anthony J. Picente Jr. has prioritized the implementation of technology including Laserfiche to drive innovation and effective, efficient services for the county. This approach resulted in an easier transition to a remote workforce, and same-day turnaround time of Laserfiche processes related to the county’s COVID-19 response being accessible online.

Within the first 30 days of the pandemic in the U.S., the county transitioned over 60% of its workforce from in-office to work-from-home by using existing automated workflows in Laserfiche and other technologies. At the same time, the county rolled out three key automated processes using Laserfiche to assess employees’ abilities to work remotely; monitor and support constituents who have tested positive for COVID-19; and assess business impact in the wake of the pandemic.

“This pandemic has presented county governments with many challenges,” Picente said. “Early on in the crisis, Oneida County acted quickly and decisively to safeguard the public and those maneuvers put us in position to be one of the first places in the state to enter into phased reopening. Our use of technology has been a key factor in continuing operations, and enabling continuity of citizen services. We had been using Laserfiche in many different ways prior to this, and we were able to build on those solutions to develop new ones that fit our current needs.”

Springing Into Action: Enabling Work from Home

At the beginning of March, when many government organizations across the country were just starting to realize the impact the virus could have on day-to-day life, Oneida County used Laserfiche to create an electronic form that helped assess various factors that enable county employees to work from home.

Each employee was required to fill out the form confirming home internet access, whether or not they needed any county-issued devices to do their job properly (e.g., tablets, laptops, cellphones), the percentage of daily tasks that each individual worker could do with virtual access to the county network, and how long each employee estimated they could effectively work remotely.

“The form centralizes the overall transition process and standardizes the information collected from each employee, rather than leaving it up to various managers or individuals,” said Oneida County IT Director AnneMarie Ambrose.

County leadership knew, however, that in order to best serve citizens during an emergency, the county needed to go beyond transitioning its own employees to remote roles. The county needed to ensure better information sharing among departments that serve residents.

Monitoring and Supporting Citizens with COVID-19

As COVID-19 spread throughout the state of New York, local health departments were quickly taxed with determining what citizens may have had contact with the virus, who had been tested, the results of each test, and more. Oneida County staff realized immediately that the same Laserfiche technology the county had worked with since 2013 could be leveraged to assist the local health department.

Laserfiche electronic forms were rolled out to local healthcare providers across the county so that each practitioner could give the county’s health department information about people who had been tested for COVID-19, as well as their healthcare provider and physician’s information. This process now provides the county with basic information and the ability to reach out to people who have tested positive in order to make sure they have the proper isolation guidelines, follow up with them to see how their self-isolation is going, and prevent further spread.
Nurse using a laptop at the reception

Taking this a step further, the health department contacts those under monitoring each day, to track vital signs and give patients a channel to ask for additional assistance if needed. “Because there are hundreds and hundreds of people to contact on a daily basis, we decided to automate the process using Laserfiche,” Ambrose said.

The automated process enables patients to submit a consent form with their preferred method of contact (email, text or phone call) to the health department. Every day at 5 p.m., notifications are automatically sent to everyone in the database that needs to self-report, with a deadline of 11 a.m. the following day. The department also automatically receives a list of those who have not self-reported by 11 a.m., so they can be contacted by phone.

“During this challenging time in 2020, our technical staff quickly pivoted to help Oneida meet their needs with these digital forms and processes,” said Mike Rizzo, Laserfiche operations manager for ICC Community Development Solutions, the county’s Laserfiche solution provider. “Our team helped lighten the load of several county departments, especially the Health Department, in order for government operations to continue to function at the highest level during this unprecedented time.”

Outreach to Local Businesses and Planning for Post-Pandemic Life

Meanwhile, the team at Oneida County knew that local businesses were feeling the brunt of stay-at-home orders that were going into place in New York State and across the U.S. It was essential for county leaders to assess the economic impact on businesses as well as create a better avenue for communication between citizens and their local government.

The Oneida County Planning Department leveraged Laserfiche to automate the process of collecting business impact surveys aimed at local businesses. The goal was to enable businesses to digitally submit information that would help the county understand the current state of the local economy, and what impact the virus is having on local businesses. Business owners have been asked to fill out the form with information such as how many people they employed before COVID-19; how many people they employ currently during the crisis; what revenue was in 2019 in comparison to now; whether they have business interruption insurance that will cover current losses; and how they think business will be after the state of emergency is lifted.

While the county’s first priority is of course to keep citizens as safe and healthy as possible, it also realizes the importance of planning for life after the crisis. Thus far, over 300 submissions have been made. The county is making sure that local businesses are not alone in this crisis and working with local business leaders to plan for what resources local businesses will need once the area is ready to reopen the economy.

As a result of the business impact survey, the county has been able to assist employers that are required by the State of New York, under Executive Order 202.16, to provide their employees with personal protection equipment (PPE). The county formed a consortium to get a supply of masks at a fair price, a testament to the county’s commitment to keeping citizens safe and healthy.

Oneida County continues to work closely with its Laserfiche Solution Provider, General Code, and Laserfiche to assess additional areas where technology can be applied to streamline operations and to ensure continuity of citizen services. The county already plans to bring additional services online using Laserfiche to automate essential processes to enhance the citizen experience. In the meantime, Oneida County continues to use these tools to provide a better avenue for communication between its citizens and their local government. 

Download The Ultimate Guide to Business Continuity eBook to learn more about how to keep business moving when your employees, customers and constituents need it most.

For more on how Laserfiche can support your business continuity planning, visit the Business Continuity Planning (BCP) resource page.

Shufro Rose Embraces Process Automation to Keep the Focus on Clients

SITUATION

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

RESULTS

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

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

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

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

— Vibhaw Arya, chief operating officer at Shufro Rose

Building Flexible Workflows Driven By Front-End Needs

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

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

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

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

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

Supporting Compliance and Risk Management

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

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

Managing Increasing Complexity

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

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

More Benefits to Unlock

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

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

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

A Quick Shift to Remote Learning

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

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

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

Enabling a Quick Shift to Remote Work and Learning

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Accelerating Transformation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beachwalk Resort Puts Guests First by Streamlining Processes and Communications

At Beachwalk Resort, unit owners and guests come first. After opening in 2015, the four-star condo hotel in Hallandale Beach, Florida, quickly became a coveted destination, with a reputation for casual elegance and world-class service. Beachwalk Resort’s commitment to providing the best possible customer experience recently led its staff to assess key business processes. Today, the resort is using Laserfiche to automate and streamline key parts of its operations, easing compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI) and enabling the organization to take a digital-first approach with owner relations and guest communications.

Transforming Contract Management

Beachwalk Resort is a 33-story property that operates like a luxury hotel, with many condo owners opting into a rental program to earn a percentage of sales when units are rented as hotel rooms.

“Hospitality is our business,” said Gery Amaya, director of front office and owner relations accounting at Beachwalk Resort. “We are constantly looking at ways to provide the best possible service to our owners and guests.”

The resort’s focus on customer service recently led to the reassessment of how owner relations and guest communications were being managed. “We wanted to make sure that everything was organized and searchable,” said Amaya. “Streamlined, responsive service is so important in our industry. We had permits, email communications and other information that we needed to be able to retrieve quickly, which wasn’t easy when we were saving documents on different computers or shared drives.”

Hotel staff also must manage guest credit card information, which adds another layer of complexity to communications.

“We do not send credit card or banking information through email in accordance with PCI guidelines,” Amaya said. “The guidelines allow you to send that information through fax if you have a secure server, but that’s not ideal when not everyone uses that form of communication, or you’re worried about a document being left in a fax machine somewhere.”

The resort recently rolled out a new way of doing rental distribution, requiring owners who wanted to participate in the rental program to sign a new contract. Beachwalk Resort seized the opportunity to use Laserfiche to automate the contract management process.

“We had to cancel the old contracts and execute a new rental management agreement (RMA) with the owners,” Amaya said. The RMA and all relevant information is now sent to the owner with a unique link, which allows the owner to complete the contract and upload any personal information — including banking and tax information — without having to send it through email or fax.

Once the owner submits the RMA, an automated workflow routes it to the relevant Beachwalk Resort employees for review and approval. Documents are also automatically routed to a standardize file structure, eliminating the manual filing that employees once had to do.

Reimagining this these contracts as a completely digital, automated process has reclaimed time for employees to focus on customer service rather than chasing paperwork. Additionally, compliance with PCI guidelines is no longer a burden on employees, since they are not charged with transmitting credit card or banking information.

The entire process is also more convenient for owners. “Some unit owners like to run a separate vacation home business, so it makes it a lot easier for them as well,” Amaya said. “Owners can pull up their contracts easily, and remotely as needed. Many of our unit owners are from South America, and they either don’t or prefer not to speak in English. We can easily translate forms and send different versions. It’s introduced a new level of convenience for everyone involved.”

“Digital transformation in the hospitality industry is incredibly human-focused,” said Nareg Halajian, president of Dynamic Document Services, the Laserfiche Solution Provider that implemented Laserfiche at Beachwalk Resort. “Beachwalk Resort demonstrates a deep understanding of customer needs by leveraging Laserfiche technology to empower employees to spend more time on what matters: creating an extraordinary experience for their owners and guests.”

Enhancing Experiences Across the Resort

Since the success of the RMA initiative, Beachwalk Resort has uncovered new efficiencies by automating forms-based processes throughout the organization. Using this forward-thinking, digital and automated approach, the resort is able to provide efficient, responsive and customer-centric service.

From the moment guests arrive, resort staff aims to create a memorable experience. Owners have specific rights — such as beach services or parking services — and ownership also comes with six authorized users. “If a staff member doesn’t know a guest for whatever reason — maybe the owner doesn’t come here often, or the staff member doesn’t know their family or friends — we used to have to go and find out who is on the authorized user list, which could take longer than we’d like,” Amaya said. “At the concierge, we can now go into Laserfiche as the guest is standing there, look up the contract and see that they are on the list. It’s not an inconvenience to them, and we are able to provide that elevated service that they expect when they arrive at a four-star resort.”

Beachwalk Resort has also significantly simplified its credit card dispute and chargeback process, minimizing the headache involved for all parties. “Credit card disputes are tricky and not fun for anyone,” Amaya said. “There can be a lot of money involved. We have about 10 days to answer any disputes on credit cards. All the information we need in order to respond to the dispute is stored in Laserfiche. It used to take a day or two to find and compile the information, and now it only takes about 10 to 15 minutes per case.”

Owners and guests have noticed improvements in response times to inquiries. According to Amaya, the resort has received positive feedback from owners on how quickly they’re able to receive information back from staff.

“Laserfiche provided a solution that enables us to monitor everything. We know the information is automatically sent to where it needs to go; we know it’s not sitting in an inbox or a fax machine.”
—Gery Amaya, Drector of Front Office and Owner Relations Accounting at Beachwalk Resort

Building on Success

Amaya and the Beachwalk Resort team are now looking to automate and streamline additional processes to further the resort’s digital transformation. On the horizon is accounts payable. “The prospect of automating AP processes is exciting,” said Amaya. “All the content is already stored in Laserfiche, so we can’t wait to reinvent what we are doing with accounts payable.”

Using Laserfiche records management and business process automation, Beachwalk Resort is building the future of hospitality — a future with less tedious, manual tasks and more time to focus on customer relations and building better relationships.

“Almost every department is now using Laserfiche,” Amaya said. “It’s helped streamline our processes and communication. It’s really exceeded our expectations.”

Download The Ultimate Guide to Contract Management and learn more about saving your organization’s time and money, boosting productivity and creating a digital-first customer experience.


Riela Yachts: Superyachts on Their Digital Journey

For Riela Yachts Ltd — a company that provides cybersecurity, safety, technical, crew, fiduciary administration and emergency response services to superyachts — safety and quality service are top priorities. Using Laserfiche, the organization recently transformed the way that it manages information related to safety standards in order to make critical safety processes and procedures more efficient, effective and transparent. This digital transformation has supported crews in their ability to focus on their day-to-day jobs, and further enabled owners and their guests to fully enjoy their superyacht experience.

Navigating Digital Transformation

Modern superyachts — commercially operated luxury yachts that are 24 meters or larger — have some of the most advanced technology onboard, including engineering and navigational equipment, plus sophisticated “toys” like tenders, helicopters, cars and fully-equipped cinemas. Dedicated to providing services that fully complement superyacht operations, Riela Yachts also leverages leading technology in order to provide a modern experience for those they serve.
Large luxury motor yacht under way sailing out at sea

The company used this tech-forward approach when developing a new solution for meeting the International Safety Management (ISM) Code, an international standard for seagoing vessels.

“It was shocking to understand that on the bridge of these vessels they were operating with huge amounts of paper,” said Christian Moore, technical officer at Riela Yachts.

Riela’s Safety Management System (SMS) is made up of standard operating procedures, contingency plans, operating manuals, reporting forms and more. Prior to using Laserfiche, this information was managed manually, on paper — employees had to print, scan and file documents related to the ISM Code. When updates were made, manuals had to be flown to vessels’ locations, which could be anywhere in the world. A single superyacht could use over 5,000 pages’ worth of forms and manuals each year. The paper and manual processes involved with updating them led to the possibility of ships having outdated versions onboard, and made audits extremely cumbersome.

Riela Yachts recognized an opportunity to digitize and streamline the updating of these manuals, enabling yachts to work smarter and crews to focus on day-to-day operations.

Riela Yachts set out to reduce the amount of paper being used onboard, decrease crews’ administration load as well as improve auditability, to support and simplify ISM Code compliance. By digitizing the manuals that were once made of thousands of pages of paper, Riela Yachts can now store them in an electronic repository. The company also automated the process of updating the manuals of all the superyachts it serves, so that once a change is made, all vessels receive the latest information within minutes.

“We wanted to achieve a fully paperless superyacht where possible and improve the time spent on the SMS for crew, so they can get back to their real job, which is ensuring the owner enjoys their asset to the fullest,” Moore said.

Using Laserfiche Forms, Riela also developed more than 30 electronic forms in the SMS that help individual crews streamline regular procedures. These forms include arrival and departure in port, accident reporting, and checklists for when the engine room goes unmanned.

Now, all information related to these critical safety procedures is collected digitally and automatically sent to Riela’s staff at headquarters in the Isle of Man, so it can be reviewed and stored in a central repository.

Smooth Sailing

Riela Yachts and their customers have saved significant time and money from working smarter and digitizing, centralizing and automating safety manuals and processes. Vessels have the most recent information at their fingertips, making compliance with the ISM Code much less of an administrative burden. Crews are freed from many of the previously required manual tasks and captains are able to audit completed tasks as needed by the ISM.

The company is now also using Laserfiche to digitize more forms including permits for work, standing orders as well as management minutes. Also currently in the works: moving to a mobile app version of the SMS, which will allow captains to access the system through a tablet.

Riela has also been able to recoup administration costs associated with the manual processes and gain new clients as positive reactions to the modern, digital SMS system experience have spread through the docks and shipyards.

“We are excited to for the future and even greater returns on investments as the company grows and expands,” Moore said. “The savings, returns and new business we have gained from introducing Laserfiche have been significant and, after just celebrating our one-year anniversary as a company, we see Laserfiche aiding our success over the years to come.”

Coopesa’s Digital Transformation Takes Flight

The digital transformation of the aviation industry continues to create new ways for airline carriers, leasing companies and aircraft service organizations to compete.

While aviation has traditionally lagged behind other industries in digital innovation, Coopesa RL — a provider of service and skilled personnel to the aviation industry since 1963 — has prioritized investing in new technology to transform its business. Most recently, Coopesa used Laserfiche to digitize and automate its documentation processes, which has resulted in a reduction in employee hours spent on updating and tracking down paperwork, better oversight of documents and processes, and a boost in productivity. Additionally, the improvements have shortened the average time planes are grounded for service, enabling Coopesa to offer more value to clients.

“Every day, more and more airlines, competitors and suppliers are transitioning to a digital environment,” says Herbert Cabrera, IT director at Coopesa. “Additionally, many of our mechanics are millennials; they are very willing to work in a sophisticated digital ecosystem. We recognize the need to provide the tools that will empower them to be as effective and productive as possible.”

Safety and Compliance in the Cockpit

Based in Costa Rica, Coopesa offers major maintenance, inspections, modifications, upgrades, refurbishments and painting for the world’s aviation fleets and leasing companies. The company has three hangars, and plans to open a new facility that will accommodate additional offices, back shops and the service of even more narrow- and wide-body planes. As the company evolves its offerings, Coopesa has also embarked on a journey to digitally transform its business as well.

Coopesa’s IT team identified an opportunity to digitize the process of documentation, which is required for every task involved with aircraft repair and maintenance. Documentation enables the company to comply with numerous regulatory requirements from more than 13 aviation regulatory agencies in the region — plus requirements from clients’ countries. Traditionally very manual and paper-heavy, documentation for a single service could take up to three days.

Some of the challenges Coopesa faced as a result of manual, paper-heavy documentation processes included:
  • A lack of transparency and accountability, and an inability to assess the status of projects.
  • Significant amount of manual effort involved with finding, reviewing and approving documentation.
  • Limited ability to make informed business decisions about resource allocation and other strategic concerns.

The company sought a user-friendly, customizable solution that could help employees digitally and securely document service activities and purchases, as well as reduce the manual tasks involved with managing and updating documentation.

“In order to keep up with our growing clientele while continuing to honor our commitment to quality, safety and compliance with regulatory requirements, we turned to Laserfiche digital document management and business process automation,” Cabrera says. “Laserfiche helps us to meet one of our biggest challenges: complying with civil aviation control entities in each of our clients’ countries as well as our own.”

Laserfiche Takes Coopesa to New Heights

Using Laserfiche, Coopesa digitized critical documents related to services and automated many of the tasks related to reviewing, approving and updating documentation. The company also automated the process of material purchase documentation, which must be kept for two to five years for auditing, depending on material type and client requirements.

“Digitizing these processes allows us to avoid manual review of thousands of documents, and mitigated the risk of lost documents that previously had to be physically transferred between offices. We also have a full audit trail for all documents; everything is completely traceable. This digital experience puts us on par with the largest repair shops in the world.”

—Herbert Cabrera, IT director at Coopesa

The company has plans to integrate Laserfiche with other internal systems, to centralize information and enable employees to more easily locate certificates and other critical documents, no matter where they are stored. Another project on the horizon is the digitization of personnel files, which also require strict controls and security.

“For many years, the aviation maintenance industry was reluctant to adopt technological solutions, but now there is a new digital ecosystem,” says Cabrera. “Laserfiche has enabled us to not only participate but act as a leader in the digital transformation of the aviation industry.”

Offering First-Class Customer Experience

Coopesa’s Laserfiche initiatives have significantly reduced costs related to the printing, storage and transportation of paper documents. More importantly, the documentation process — which previously took up to three days — now only takes one to two hours. Clients automatically receive notifications immediately when they have corresponding tasks to complete.

“Streamlining this process is incredibly valuable,” says Cabrera. “We can shorten our turnaround time, while our clients can quickly schedule the return of their aircraft to operation. This has a positive effect on our revenue as well as the customer experience.”

The increase in transparency across the organization also allows for better planning. Staff are empowered with information regarding hangar space, technician and other resource availability to fulfill clients’ service and maintenance needs in the most efficient manner possible. Managers are also better able to measure performance and productivity by examining process data.

Another important benefit: Employees have reclaimed time from tedious, manual processes to be dedicated to more specialized tasks related to quality control and customer service.

“Our biggest satisfaction is seeing aircraft take off from our facilities, and operating safely and reliably,” adds Cabrera. “We will continue to invest in the technology solutions that enable us to be our clients’ partners in maintenance, and to meet their needs with high-value and competitive solutions for service.”

Learn more about why digital transformation is key to success in this white paper – download “Leading for Innovation and Growth: Five Strategies for Driving Digital Transformation.”

What is Optical Character Recognition (OCR)?

Optical character recognition (OCR) is a technological process which converts text in a scanned or photographed image into text that can be edited, stored or searched for electronically.

OCR is an important tool for businesses working to digitize information gathered from documents or photographs into an electronic system, and it’s especially useful for processing information in large quantities of documents.

What is OCR Used For?

OCR is used across industries and departments for a variety of business processes due to its flexibility and efficiency as a scanning tool. In the context of digital content management, OCR has two primary functionalities that are applicable to any business: eliminating data entry and capturing information.

The newly captured information can then be searched for and even be used to initiate or fill in data as part of a business process workflow.
OCR takes data directly from imported or scanned documents, then makes it searchable and usable within your business processes.

OCR Eliminates Data Entry

Data entry is a standard part of many job roles — but it doesn’t need to be manual task. OCR eliminates data entry by recognizing characters (letters, numbers and symbols) in a scanned document or photograph, and pulls the information from those images into your computer or mobile device. That information can then be dealt with on a digital platform, and even stored in a digital repository for ease of search and retrieval.

One such example of OCR’s powerful capabilities is within local government administrative tasks, such as historical document preservation. Tompkins County, NY scanned over 9,000 boxes of important documents and records from 1817 to present day. Meeting agendas, deeds, citizen records and more were digitized, saving the county over $5.5 million in storage costs alone. When scanning these historical documents, employees at Tompkins County used OCR to pull important information into their electronic records management system, making the history of the county easy to access for county workers and citizens alike.

OCR Enables Intelligent Capture and Search

OCR is important to intelligent capture, or the process of retrieving specific information from a scanned or digitized image. “Intelligent capture with OCR is not just taking in all the characters on an image, it’s recognizing which words you need and grabbing the exact information you need,” says Tessa Adair, Technical Product Manager at Laserfiche.

Take, for example, you’to receive a reimbursement from your AP department. Rather than manually typing out information from the scan, OCR can pull the characters from the receipt for you. Intelligent capture with OCR takes it a step further by only targeting and saving the information you need on the receipt, such as the date and total, and ignoring the sections for the receipt you don’t need, such as the phone number or the “thank you for your business” note at the bottom. With this technology, OCR is applied in a way that enables employees to take action only the most relevant information for your business.

Once information is imported with OCR into a computer or mobile device, that data can be stored and routed to fellow employees via an electronic document management system. When users within an organization search for specific keywords within their digital repository, that information can be made readily available with the click of a mouse.

For more information on how OCR technology enables improved search and retrieval of documents and records, click here.

OCR is Powering the Future of Work

In addition to improving file searchability and speed of data entry, OCR is also enabling developing technologies like machine learning to improve the jobs of employees dealing with information-heavy business processes. In the context of document management, machine learning is an important and evolving tool for eliminating redundant and time-consuming manual tasks.

OCR is an important component of evolving tech across industries and business functions. In addition to aiding in machine learning, OCR is a keystone element of:
  • Intelligent character recognition (for handwriting).
  • Sentiment analysis.
  • Object recognition.
  • Data privacy protection.

As the digital workplace continues to grow, OCR will continue to enable businesses to automate and simplify tasks across departments to help employees do more of the work that matters.

OCR Empowers Digital Transformation

OCR is an important component in an organization’s digital transformation journey. Phase 1 of a successful digital transformation involves digitizing documents for proper storage and access across an organization, and OCR enables businesses to gather information from non-digital sources like meeting notes, agendas, photographs, letters and more for use within a digital content management system. From phase 1, the benefits only increase.

“Storing and sharing the information in an ECM system isn’t the only benefit of OCR. The bigger benefit is getting the necessary inputs needed to kick off workflow automation, inform AI-powered decision making, and enable insightful reporting,” says Tessa Adair, Technical Product Manager at Laserfiche.

Ready to learn more about the benefits of OCR and intelligent capture? The Guide to Improving Capture and Document Imaging Management provides strategies for going paperless in your organization.

Researching OCR software? Check out the G2 grid to compare top vendors.
G2 Grid® for OCR Software

Merichem Increases Efficiency and Control in the Fast Changing Oil and Gas Industry

Merichem is a global company that serves the oil and gas industries with focused technology, and chemical and service solutions. Its proprietary impurity removal processes increase the quality of refinery products and oil and gas streams, and the company beneficially reuses spent caustics and other byproducts from oil and petrochemical plants around the world.

Merichem used Laserfiche to automate a number of approval processes, centralize information and improve information governance. The result has been a decrease in the burden on employees for meeting all of the requirements of ISO 9001, ASME and other documentation requirements, an increase in information accuracy and productivity, and faster turnaround times for customers—all critical improvements for an organization focused on operating safely and efficiently in a fast-changing, highly regulated industry.

“There has been a lot of change in the oil and gas industries,” said Amy Magee, project controls manager at Merichem. “It used to be that hiring a bunch of people wasn’t a big deal because the industry was making a lot of money. It’s never going to be the way it used to be—cost savings have become more important. Everyone in the industry is working to better understand how they are using money and how they are operating, so we can do things differently and more efficiently.”

Putting Quality and Safety First

With three U.S. offices and over 1000 treating units in refineries in 53 countries, Merichem must comply with a multitude of safety standards including those of the ISO, American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and other organizations related to pressure vessels and refinery equipment.

“Quality and safety are extremely important to us,” said Amy Magee, project controls manager at Merichem. “We need to ensure our systems are built to the right standards. Data sheets are needed for equipment; drawings for construction; plus a lot of testing has to be done. And anyone who operates any of our equipment or the equipment we purchase needs to know what they are doing.”

The company initially needed a new centralized repository for documents, but Magee also realized that the company’s needs went beyond digital storage. “We need the ability to manage licenses with customers and give them access rights to individual folders,” she said, adding that employees previously had to manually track access to specific folders via spreadsheets or on Word documents. “We also have to track versions of documents, and when we disseminate information or updates, we need to know if and when documents are received and reviewed.”

Another essential component of Merichem’s operations, data books, were time intensive to compile, and were often still printed on paper and sent to customers. When a project was completed, employees had to compile anywhere from 10 to 20 books—with about 750,000 pages in each book—in a short time frame. PDFs were manually uploaded, and any time a change is made, it must be carefully tracked and sent to the customer as well. This resulted in increased overtime hours at the end of every project. “Data books were being printed, and employees had to manually mark up the individual copies,” Magee said. “They then had to scan the page back in, and there was no way to know if a customer had opened or looked at it. It was just a monotonous process. You had to check that you didn’t duplicate efforts. A lot had to be done to ensure the information was correct.

“Our cycles are very fast, and a lot of projects are fast-tracked,” Magee added. “Manual work was delaying our processes, and employees had to work overtime to get things done within our time frames.”

The company ultimately turned to Accelerated Information Systems, a Laserfiche Solution Provider, to implement a Laserfiche system that would enable access control, provide tracking capabilities and automate manual processes, including data book compilation.

“Safety is serious business at Merichem,” said Zaheer Master, president of Accelerated Information Systems. “With Laserfiche we’ve automated a critical but monotonous task, freeing employees to work on more important projects.”

Control, Automate, Transform

Today, Merichem uses Laserfiche for document management; Laserfiche provides granular security control so that individual employees are no longer tasked with tracking access to information. Project assistants previously spent on average 750 hours—about half of the hours charged to a typical project—uploading and transmitting documents to multiple outside parties. Today, they have reduced that by about one-third, or 250 hours.

The centralized system also allows employees enhanced search capabilities, saving additional time finding information. “One of the biggest complaints we had about the previous software we were using was that you had to know the exact name of what you were searching for,” Magee said. “Being able to use Laserfiche and do partial or fuzzy searches, and search through OCR and metadata has been huge for us.”

Beyond improving the management of information, Merichem used Laserfiche to automate the process of data book compilation. Today, employees simply need to follow a naming convention for files and an automated workflow compiles the data book in 30 minutes to two hours—a process that used to take a full week.

“I’ve gotten a lot of feedback that Laserfiche makes our employees’ lives easier. It’s had a positive impact inside and outside of my department, across the rest of the organization. It helps all of our employees and alleviates stress related to deadlines, and we are able to expedite the turnaround time for preparing and submitting data books to customers. The end of a project is always a stressful time period, but it’s much easier now since very little manual work has to be done. We don’t have that rush at the end, where everyone’s putting in overtime hours.”

—Amy Magee, Project Controls Manager at Merichem

Continued Improvements, New Efficiencies

Merichem continues to explore new uses for Laserfiche and increase efficiency across the organization. Next, the company has plans to implement Laserfiche for specifications review, another time-intensive and paper-driven process. Magee explained that employees will also use Laserfiche in shipping and receiving, allowing employees to use tablets to take pictures of materials before they are shipped, so that they can upload them to the Laserfiche mobile app. This will assist employees in ensuring the company has records of the exact condition of items before they leave the premises, helping to fulfill requirements of ISO 9001.

Magee encourages her team members to obtain Laserfiche Certification and get involved with process improvement. “Laserfiche has helped in a lot of aspects,” Magee added. “It’s helped to keep everyone on track, and now as we are overseeing and facilitating work, we are able to make sure that people have the tools they need to get important information to customers in a timely manner.”

Mille Lacs Corporate Ventures Transitions Corporate Operations to Laserfiche Cloud

Mille Lacs Corporate Ventures (MLCV), created by the tribal government of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, manages the business affairs of the Band. This includes oversight of two casinos, Grand Casino Mille Lacs and Grand Casino Hinckley, which employ nearly 3,000 people and welcome millions of guests each year. The casinos, as well as the rest of the Band’s portfolio, use Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM) to automate and streamline key business processes.

Over the years, the casinos in particular have achieved great economic success thanks to a strong operations infrastructure powered by Laserfiche. That steady growth, however, has led to a very large and complex business environment that is catered to sustaining the needs of the casinos. The MLCV leadership team knew that they needed to create a separate business environment for corporate operations to maintain performance, so they made the decision to migrate MLCV content and processes to Laserfiche Cloud in order to create a more accessible and agile environment for corporate operations.

Transitioning Key Business Processes to the Cloud

For the last 10 years, Laserfiche has been instrumental in supporting the Band’s mission of building a sound economic future for generations to come by enabling the Band to standardize, automate and optimize core company processes. Having initially deployed Laserfiche on-premises, the MLCV team was confident that they could leverage Laserfiche Cloud to build an accessible corporate business environment quickly, with the added bonus of familiar technology.

“The digital workplace is constantly evolving, and the obvious next step for us was to start transitioning operations to the cloud,” said Angie Litchy, CIO of Mille Lacs Corporate Ventures. “We selected Laserfiche Cloud because we already had a successful on-prem solution, which means we could easily migrate key workflows and ensure business continuity while we made the transition.”

“Mille Lacs Corporate Ventures has always been at the forefront of using technology to create efficiencies,” said Ned Weizenegger, COO at Laserfiche Solution Provider Minokaw Technologies. “Moving operations to the cloud was a natural next step, and aligns well with MLCV’s vision of improving businesses and communities by infusing passion and ideas.”

Among the first workflows that Mille Lacs Corporate Ventures migrated to the cloud was the contract management process.

“Before our initial Laserfiche solution was implemented, contracts were impossible to get a status on because the process varied from person to person, which created bottlenecks and lost information,” said Andrew McElrath, strategic project manager at Mille Lacs Corporate Ventures. “Laserfiche introduced uniformity and a clear line of authority, which ultimately expedited the entire process from weeks to just hours. It was a priority to ensure that this process wasn’t interrupted as we transitioned operations to the cloud.”

The contract process was migrated to the cloud with few alterations. Today, associates can start the contract process by submitting a Laserfiche Form with the contract for review. The information is automatically routed to the submitter’s supervisor, contract coordinator, COO, CFO and legal counsel for review and approval. The document is then sent to the legal coordinator who prepares the document for final signature by the vendor, and then the countersignature of the MLCV CEO. The legal coordinator also stores a final version in the Laserfiche repository.

“In Laserfiche Cloud, it’s easier for us to determine where requests are in the process at a glance,” McElrath said. “And the transition itself was fairly easy. Our Laserfiche Solution Provider mocked up the forms and process for us, then we would review it and suggest changes. The most important part of the process is to communicate clearly and test thoroughly so that your solution fits your needs once it has been launched.”

Reevaluating Business Needs

Another major benefit of transitioning to the cloud was that it created an opportunity for MLCV leadership to reevaluate the organization’s established processes and make adjustments if needed.

“We have been using and building upon our Laserfiche Workflows for a number of years, and the way our business operates has evolved since that initial implementation,” said McElrath. “We wanted to introduce more efficiency into our processes, so we took a hard look at what we were doing and how we could do it better.”

For example, during the transition, the MLCV team realized that the purchasing process was cumbersome and it could be streamlined further. Migrating to the cloud provided the chance to take another look at the process and simplify it.

Today, associates can access Laserfiche Cloud in order to submit a purchase request. After logging into the online system, the employee navigates to the purchase request page, fills out required fields (such as the purchase amount, purchase order number and vendor IDs), attaches required materials, and submits the request. From there, the request is routed to an approver depending on the cost of the purchase. The appropriate reviewers will then approve or reject the purchase order through the system. If approved, the information is submitted to a purchasing agent who can then follow through with the request.

“The entire process is completed in the cloud,” said McElrath. “Every individual that is included in the workflow can complete their portion of the process from the comfort of their home, from a conference or on an airplane. All they need is a mobile device and access to the internet.”

Looking ahead

Mille Lacs Corporate Ventures has migrated many business processes to Laserfiche Cloud including contract management, purchase order requests, annual appraisals, direct deposits, system access requests, tuition reimbursement requests and more. This has been especially helpful since all the company officers now have remote access to one common business platform, enabling the organization to standardize, streamline and expedite major business processes.

“Laserfiche’s compliance tools in the cloud, and knowing that Laserfiche takes security very seriously have been important factors in our decision making.”

—Andrew McElrath, strategic project manager at Mille Lacs Corporate Ventures

Other benefits to transitioning to Laserfiche Cloud include:
  • The organization easily migrated key business processes to Laserfiche Cloud without introducing a learning curve or creating a gap in business continuity.
  • Employees no longer need to be on-site in order to complete work, which has reduced bottlenecks, improved efficiency and bolstered productivity.
  • MLCV simplified operations since Laserfiche Cloud requires no physical hardware and users receive instant updates.

“Once you’re invested in Laserfiche as a platform, you start to unlock a lot of the value,” said Litchy. “Now that we have the system, we are invested in leveraging it to its full potential to reach our business goals.”

Find out more about the benefits of managing content and automating business processes in the cloud. Click here to visit our Laserfiche Cloud page and get a free trial.