“In the modern business landscape, keeping pace with workplace trends and rapidly evolving technology gives organizations a competitive edge,” said Chris Wacker, CEO of Laserfiche. “With its Laserfiche initiative, Hitachi Capital Vehicle Solutions gives its employees the tools and knowledge they need to play larger role in their company’s success.”
As a division of Hitachi Capital (UK) PLC, Hitachi Capital Vehicle Solutions has been funding cars and commercial vehicles in the UK for more than 30 years. The organization used Laserfiche to automate many internal functions, including lease/proposal processing and records management. The cross-departmental initiative improved risk management while eliminating many manual tasks for staff, reducing the time to complete key processes, such as purchasing, from over a week to just minutes.
“Clear goals, strategic vision and the right technology enabled our organization to increase efficiency by an estimated 2,600 percent,” said Eamon O’Brien, Information Systems Configuration Manager at Hitachi Capital (UK) PLC. “We’re honored to be recognized for the initiative that’s had a huge impact on our business’s success and positions us to meet our growth targets.”
In the spring of 2020, in response to COVID-19’s impact on student communities across the country, institutions of higher education were tasked with distributing emergency financial aid grants to students as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (also known as the CARES Act) Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF) and Governor’s Emergency Education Relief (GEER) Fund. As soon as the team at Texas A&M University-Texarkana was notified of the rescue funds, they gathered a committee to develop an awarding process. This process included collecting applications aligned with the fund’s student eligibility criteria and tracked information for compliance requirements.
“We got a lot of applications; there was so much need,” said Kathy Williams, vice president for student enrollment, engagement and success. “We wanted a fast and fair way to collect applications and distribute the funds, and so we built the application in Laserfiche.”
As a result of the university’s efficient process, Texarkana was the first university in the A&M System to award the funding received from the state of Texas’ allocation of CARES GEER State Grant, at a time when students needed it most. “With Laserfiche, even after diligently triple checking the components, it took me only two to three hours to get the process off the ground,” shared Williams.
Providing Rapid Pandemic Relief to Students in Need
Texas A&M University-Texarkana is a public university that is part of the Texas A&M University System. Set in northeast Texas, the four-year college prides itself on its close-knit academic community, and outstanding faculty and staff who provide first-rate education in a nurturing, student-oriented environment. In March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in the state, the university made the decision to finish out the spring semester with online classes to protect the health and safety of students, faculty and administration.
The Texarkana team soon found that the impact of the pandemic would go beyond requiring their community to work, teach and learn remotely. Stay-at-home mandates exacerbated students’ financial instability across the country. When the Texarkana team learned they would receive CARES Act funding to distribute to students, they knew they had to move quickly.
“The A&M System office wanted to know our awarding strategy and plan,” Williams said. “So we put together a committee immediately, came up with a plan, sent it to the system office and they got back to us quickly. We jumped right on it.”
The Emergency Aid Grants Awarding Committee identified various potential areas of need, including for books, rent, transportation and more; they also defined parameters for eligibility, and developed a process for verifying student information against the university’s student information system (SIS), Ellucian Banner. Laserfiche Forms enabled them to customize an electronic form that students could access online. Students used the form to select relevant needs categories and eligibility information — such as whether they qualified for Title IV funds — and provide written context around their financial situation if they wanted to when submitting their information. The university also created formulas that determined how much money each eligible student would receive.
Texas A&M University System leadership approved the awarding process, and the university invited, via email, 1,188 eligible students to apply for CARES Act HEERF through the Laserfiche form.
“Students could submit the form, and provide supplemental information if they needed, and it was all saved in our Laserfiche repository,” Williams said. “Student information was easily verified against our student information system. Everyone who applied and qualified was able to get access to funds.”
In addition to being easy to use, the electronic form provided a transparent and accessible way to communicate categories and eligibility with students.
“We wanted to treat everyone equally,” Williams added. “We wanted to make categorization and how much money people would receive clear.”
The A&M System office initially planned for the university to award 30% of the funds in the spring, 20% in the summer and 50% in the fall, however, Williams explained that they received so many applications that they decided to revise that plan.
“After we received all the applications, we told the system office and they knew that these students needed the money now,” Williams said, noting that the university’s electronic form and efficient processing supported its ability to assess needs quickly. “We awarded 50% of the funds in late April/early May, and then 50% in the late September/early October.”
Supporting Compliance Through Changing Requirements
Beyond being a fast and fair way to determine eligibility and distribute funding, Laserfiche provided the Texarkana team with a way to create a secure and efficient process that standardizes and tracks the applications, adding accountability to all activities. Ultimately, the university awarded over $762,000 — its full HEERF student allocation — to 467 students, which is published on the organization’s website for transparency. The university used Laserfiche Forms’ built-in analytics and reporting capabilities to collect the data used for filling out expenditure reports tied to the funds.
“The system office audits different departments from the campuses,” Williams added. “Last year, our financial aid office and the CARES Act process were audited. We got a clear result.” Soon after the first round of CARES Act funding, additional funding from Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act (CRRSAA), a regents’ grant and the GEER State Grant were made available. Fortunately, the Texarkana team had already built out a Laserfiche form and process for fund distribution.
“We copied the CARES Act application and modified it,” Williams said. “In the fall, we were able to award the money from the A&M System Regents and the state, all through one application.”
With additional funding being made available through the American Rescue Plan, the university will repurpose its Laserfiche form again, while implementing digital transformation initiatives critical to navigating the post-COVID recovery era for higher education.
Texas A&M University-Texarkana was ultimately one of the first schools in the state of Texas to get the GEER State Grant rescue funding out to the students who needed it.
“It was because of our Laserfiche process,” Williams said. “It was really efficient. All the folks on the committee had input into the process, and we were able to help our students without spending, what I envision, probably weeks to create a process.”
To assist Americans across the country who face economic uncertainty, rental debt and housing insecurity as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. federal government launched the Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP) to provide financial assistance for housing expenses and housing stability services. Along with local governments across the country, Cabarrus County, North Carolina, took on the responsibility of developing an accessible way to determine people’s eligibility and get the funds out as soon as possible.
“The IT team decided that this was going to be the most important thing we were doing,” said Todd Shanley, CIO at Cabarrus County.
The county’s IT team took quick action to put the pieces together, creating an online Laserfiche form that would capture applicants’ information and route it to the relevant departments and systems. The form was integrated with a chatbot to walk people through important eligibility requirements, providing an intuitive experience for what could have been a complex process for applicants.
The solution enabled the county to collect and process hundreds of applications, quickly getting financial relief to people who needed it. The chatbot integration also helped to immediately redirect people who were not eligible, ultimately saving time for county employees who would have had to spend time reviewing hundreds of ineligible applications.
An Intuitive Solution for Capturing Information
Serving more than 200,000 residents over 360 square miles, Cabarrus County has been recognized for its visionary leadership and good stewardship. For nearly a decade, the county has been named a Top Digital County by the Center for Digital Government.
“One of our county priorities is healthy and safe communities; another is sustainable development,” said Debbie Brannan, area manager of technology and innovation at Cabarrus County. As part of these commitments, county employees took immediate action after hearing about ERAP would assist household unable to pay rent or utilities due to COVID-19-related challenges.
“Being in the county manager’s office, I heard about the money coming — $6.5 million,” said Brannan. “We needed to find the citizens who needed that money and get it distributed quickly.”
Beyond this urgent task, Brannan noted that the county would need to document as much as possible in order to ensure distribution was fair, and that the county would meet the federal government’s rules and requirements. “My vision was that there would be an online application, and we’d be able to vet the application as much as possible,” she added. “We also wanted to get relevant information over to our social workers. We have Northwoods [case management software] integrated with Laserfiche, so we also wanted to get that information over, and then get it to finance and into our ERP so we could pay people.”
Leveraging Laserfiche Forms and business process automation, the county pulled together an electronic form to be hosted online, and a workflow to route information to the correct departments.
“Mark [McIntyre, our senior software developer] pulled together a form over the weekend, and by Monday morning, he had it done and built,” Shanley explained. “We tweaked it from there; it was fast.”
In addition to building the Laserfiche form that residents could access online, the county integrated the form with a chatbot, with the goal of guiding applicants through specific eligibility requirements and providing immediate answers so that people did not have to wait just to find out whether they were eligible for ERAP assistance.
“The set of criteria from the government was very lengthy, and some of it was very restrictive,” Shanley explained, adding that people applying for funding or services may not want to read through pages and pages of fine print in order to identify the eligibility requirements. “We provided that criteria upfront through the chatbot, so that people would get immediate feedback — they could respond to these questions and realize they were or were not qualified without having to wait long after they submitted all of their information.”
Going Beyond Expectations
While the chatbot provided a more intuitive way for people to apply for funding, it also redirected would-be applicants who were not eligible for ERAP assistance. This process reclaimed desperately needed time for county government employees, who could focus on providing other critical services during the pandemic. The county has processed more than 500 emergency rental applications in just two months.
“We don’t want people to have to wait two weeks to find out that they’re not eligible,” Shanley said. “We wanted to provide that TurboTax-style environment, which provides customers the information they need in a timely manner.”
The Cabarrus County team also took care to ensure that the form was mobile accessible, to make it usable by as many people as possible. “Accessibility is an issue for some people, but a very large percentage of our population has a smartphone,” Brannan explained. “Even if they don’t have a computer, they can use a smartphone, and they can even upload documents if they need to from their phones or take photos with their phone and upload them.”
“That was probably one of the biggest benefits to this process,” Shanley added. “All of this paperwork that the federal government is requiring — people have that stuff stored in so many different places. Rather than having to have a scanner or having to take everything to a place where they have a scanner, you can just take a picture of it and upload it from your phone.”
Smiling mature middle aged business woman using laptop working on computer sitting at desk. Happy old businesswoman hr holding cv interviewing distance applicant, senior seeker searching job online.
The Future of Citizen Services
Cabarrus County has been using solutions that integrate chatbots and Laserfiche in order to help people use other digital services, including a personal status request (PSR) form for county employees, and a quarterly inspections process for the sheriff’s department. These solutions have enhanced users’ experience by auto-populating data from previous form submissions, cutting down time that people have to spend filling out forms.
“Cabarrus County continues to be a shining example of how enterprise adoption of a technology has exponential benefits to the organization,” said Traci Small, EVP of sales and marketing at MCCi, Cabarrus County’s Laserfiche solution provider. “The county’s deep knowledge of Laserfiche and desire to serve is second-to-none. We have even used this same chatbot technology at MCCi after we saw how well it worked at Cabarrus. We learn just as much from our customers as they do from us. Cabarrus County citizens have a top-notch team as do we in a client partner.”
“The importance of experience — it’s going to change how governments interact with their customers every day,” Shanley said. “People don’t want to submit information and then have to wait. That makes call volumes go up, and there are unintended consequences for governments. If you’re presenting people with overly complicated forms, it could cause someone who really needs help to just give up on the process.”
To date, the county has paid out over $330,000 in ERAP funding to eligible people.
“Without an established workflow application like Laserfiche in place, we would have been in trouble,” Shanley added. “We would have spent months trying to make this work.”
The county continues to digitally transform processes across the organization, with a focus on supporting more accessible, more transparent and more intuitive public services.
“My vision for Laserfiche Forms and our chatbots to present more of a conversation with our employees and citizens,” said Brannan. “We get feedback that people want to come and talk — they don’t want to fill out a form. But if we make our forms conversational, we make them more accessible and easier to understand.”
“We are trying to continue our growth and the growth of opportunities, while providing transparent and accountable government,” Brannan said. “Laserfiche does a good job of helping us do that.”
The information technology department for Leesburg, the largest town in Virginia, has a mission to “exceed the Town of Leesburg’s residents’ and employees’ expectations in delivering accessible and reilable technology services — creating a greater good for the local community.” This mission has the department constantly looking ahead to the technology solutions that will allow for the highest standards of customer service, security and system reliability, even in times of change.
The need for greater adaptability led the town to move itsenterprise content management (ECM) to Laserfiche Cloud. The cloud-based system has been an invaluable asset to Leesburg government staff as it allowed for flexibility during stay-at-home mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic, but also because it has enabled IT to quickly respond to all types of needs — from internal service requests to public-facing financial relief programs.
The town has been able to expand its digital capabilities beyond the limitations of self-hosted servers with Laserfiche Cloud. This flexible and scalable environment has enabled Leesburg to achieve business continuity while supporting both staff and the community, even as remote and hybrid work becomes more prevalent.
“Laserfiche has helped us to handle data collection digitally and be elastic while responding to major changes within our IT infrastructure as staff work from home,” said Jakub Jedrzejczak, Director of IT at Leesburg. “I’m so impressed by Laserfiche Cloud and its automated features and scalability.”
Automating processes in Laserfiche Cloud has helped Leesburg be more agile, while positioning the town for long-term success. Using Laserfiche’s electronic forms and business process automation capabilities, Leesburg reduced manual tasks under tight schedules and continues to improve the quality of service provided to the community. This has streamlined response times to citizens, businesses and other organizations while enhancing the overall digital experience and maintaining fairness and transparency
Solutions to Support Local Businesses, Nonprofits and Town Staff
“Access to documents was key for us,” Jedrzejczak said. “We had to streamline a lot of internal processes and external services that we offer to support to our community.”
Like many other localities, during the pandemic, Leesburg needed a solution to process $6 million in funding under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act to support eligible businesses and nonprofit organizations.
“Distribution of relief packages is very time sensitive,” Jedrzejczak said. “Businesses and nonprofits can’t afford to wait months for government IT to develop an effective solution, or for us to implement a new system. The faster we can process data, the faster we can provide support to our community.”
Though the town already maintained detailed information on local businesses and nonprofit organizations, the primary challenge for the Leesburg IT department was authenticating existing data and determining eligibility. Laserfiche Cloud was implemented to streamline the authentication and cross-referencing processes based on existing data on thousands of local businesses and nonprofit organizations in the finance department database. Using this data, a dedicated form was set up with required fields relating to license information, employer identification number (EIN) and other conditions. If a business or nonprofit did not meet specific conditions — such as the revenue threshold or funding information — a pop-up notification would appear to indicate that the applicant is ineligible for CARES Act funding. Applications were sorted into separate folders within the Laserfiche repository based on whether they were accepted or not, which were concurrently monitored by town staff to ensure accuracy.
The metadata from the forms submissions helped the Leesburg team determine that over 330 businesses and over 20 nonprofits were eligible for funding. Not having to sort through data manually streamlined this process, reclaiming time for staff members to focus on citizen services at a time when the town needed them most.
The form helped with the quality of CARES Act submissions as well. Applications completed using the Laserfiche online form could not be submitted with incomplete or incorrect information, meaning that staff members did not have to spend time manually verifying missing details, business licenses and misspelled organization names.
“The more that we can guide residents with requests, the faster we can respond to their needs — often in minutes rather than days if the right information in the right format is submitted,” said Jedrzejczak.
The Digital Transformation Domino Effect
Amid changing budgets and uncertain economic conditions, governments must digitize and standardize public services. At the same time, it is also increasingly important for governments to respond to disruptions quickly, using flexible and scalable solutions that enable them to keep information secure. For these reasons, Leesburg is relying on the cloud for core technology systems including ERP, asset management and ECM.
“I can eliminate the need for maintenance, and have a scalable system that has a predictable cost, and I always inherit functionality — that is why we choose Laserfiche Cloud,” Jedrzejczak said. “I don’t have to worry about uptime. I don’t have to worry about the security. I know these two components are being addressed by the Laserfiche Cloud platform. I can focus on the development of the systems and focusing on user needs versus the back end maintenance.”
While town staff work with Laserfiche Solution Provider MCCi for complex projects, Leesburg is preemptively developing solutions in-house, including the electronic forms and digital processes related to the CARES Act. Laserfiche has empowered IT department staff to create a digital town hall where innovative solutions modernize citizen services. This has enabled staff to train new users on the platform based on specific needs and connect with the Laserfiche community to share best practices on ways to streamline business processes to increase efficiencies.
Today, most of the municipality’s departments are using Laserfiche. “We support internal processes, such as in our finance department, as well as external processes,” Jedrzejczak said. “Our town council uses Laserfiche to review documents; our utilities department uses it to gather information from residents, and we process a lot of forms and approvals through Laserfiche.”
Jedrzejczak added that most local governments today experience information overload — too many emails, and too much data to process.
“Information overload is a problem, but Laserfiche helps us with it. We can’t rely on in-person or paper-based communication to gather and process information anymore,” said Jedrzejczak. “There is so much that needs to be digitized — we just can’t have paper driving processes outside the office.”
The town has been in the process of creating a digital town hall to increase access to services even further. Leesburg is also working on integrations between Laserfiche and other core systems that will enable further automation and enhanced collaboration across the organization.
Looking ahead, Leesburg is building on its success by reimagining can continuing to modernize how it delivers services.
Want to gain more insights into modernizing service delivery? Read the Center for Digital Government report: “The Way Forward: Insights for Government Leaders on Modernizing Service Delivery” to understand why technology plays a critical role in generating cost savings, continuing operations and meeting growing constituent demands.
Solution Contributed By: Jan Lawrence, Digital Process Manager; Jacob Hawk, Administration & Project Assistant; Jeannie McNeil, Enrollment Coordinator and Sierra Puckett, Archivist and Technical Assistant, Confederated Tribes of Coos Lower Umpqua Siuslaw Indians
The Confederated Tribes of Coos Lower Umpqua Siuslaw Indians based in Oregon has 1,269 members located around the country. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the tribe was awarded money from the federal government to provide emergency assistance to members. The confederated tribes used Laserfiche Forms to distribute $3 million worth of funds to tribal members quickly and efficiently. The tribe also used Forms to distribute computers to tribal members for use with school or telehealth appointments.
Emergency Assistance Process
The challenge faced by the confederated tribes was to create a process to disburse money from the federal government to provide financial assistance to every tribe member, on a short timeline. The tribes wanted to streamline communications throughout the process and mail out checks quickly. It was also necessary to make sure there were no duplicate applications.
“With this form we are able to distribute $3 million in funds. Laserfiche reporting is amazing. We ran reports daily and were able to catch duplicate applications early. This whole process was completely streamlined,” says Jan Lawrence, Digital Process Manager
The application was created in Laserfiche Forms. Members were able to fill out and submit the form from any computer or mobile device. If a member was unable to fill out the form electronically, they were still able to submit a paper form. A team member then transferred the information from the paper form into an electronic form.
Once submitted, the form is sent to the membership enrollment coordinator for verification of tribal membership. The membership enrollment coordinator looks up the member in the membership database and checks the form information for accuracy.
Once the form information is verified, the form is sent to finance as a check request. This check request form has all irrelevant information excluded, and only includes the information that finance needs to cut the check. Once the check is cut and mailed, the process ends.
To keep track of how much money was disbursed, and how many members have been applying for services, the tribes ran reports on a regular schedule. These reports were exported into a spreadsheet and shared with relevant employees across the organization.
Computer Request Process
With distance learning and telehealth becoming a necessity during the COVID-19 pandemic, tribal members without computer access were at a disadvantage. To close the digital divide, the tribes created a program of disbursing computers to those who could not afford one. This computer request and disbursement process is similar to the emergency assistance process described in the previous section.
The process starts with the tribal member filling out an electronic request form. The requestor has the option of picking up the computer at one of a few locations or having it mailed.
Once the form is submitted, the enrollment coordinator verifies the requestor’s tribal membership and program eligibility in the membership system. When the verification is completed, a notification is sent to the housing department. Department team members package and ship any computers that need to be mailed. If, at any point in the process, the requestor is deemed ineligible for the program, they are notified by email.
To keep track of how many computers were distributed, as well as which ones were to be picked up or mailed, the housing department ran regular reports. These reports were downloaded into a spreadsheet and shared with select individuals within the organization.
Want to see how Laserfiche can help your organization streamline customer-facing business processes? Schedule a free demo.
The Township of King, located in the Greater Toronto Area in Ontario, Canada, implemented Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM) to store and centralize content, making information more accessible across the organization. Since then, the township’s staff has leveraged the software for digital transformation initiatives that go beyond document management. The township now uses Laserfiche to modernize the government experience, where citizens can access public information and submit online service requests (i.e., permits and licenses) using Laserfiche electronic forms. The township’s staff has also integrated Laserfiche with other core technologies and automated key business processes in order to accelerate service delivery.
Centralizing Content Across Departments
Over the past several years, King has assessed its digital infrastructure with the goals of ensuring employees have access to necessary information, breaking down department siloes and improving efficiency. In 2018, the township built a new municipal center, prompting a large-scale initiative to digitize and centralize content that was previously stored in filing cabinets and banker boxes, and across individual and department network drives.
“We initially looked for a solution for electronic document and records management; we have been moving away from paper, and we wanted to have one central, streamlined filing system for all electronic documents,” said Manager of Legislative Services and Deputy Clerk Denny Timm. “We saw the opportunity and improvements that would be realized if we could increase department collaboration and information sharing.”
With the support of Ricoh Canada, one of the township’s workplace technology solution providers, King implemented Laserfiche as its central digital repository. Laserfiche allowed the township to reclaim time previously spent physically searching for information — which now is accessible at staff’s fingertips. Using Laserfiche, departments have transitioned off network drives, and content has been centralized while simultaneously strengthening the municipality’s information governance program.
“Implementing Laserfiche really allowed us to look at our filing methodology and filing structure from a corporate perspective,” Timm added. “It’s like building a house — you need to build a solid foundation, organize and plan what goes in the rooms, and assign the proper access to those rooms. With Laserfiche, we have one corporate folder structure as our foundation, filled with subfolders and documents, and appropriately assigned access privileges and controls. We now have greater integrity and confidence in our information management system. We know staff are accessing what they need to access, while elevating the protection of personal and confidential information.”
As King saw the benefits of digitizing and centralizing content, they began to learn more about taking their digital transformation to the next level by integrating Laserfiche with other core technologies and using Laserfiche’s electronic forms and business process automation capabilities.
“We saw that Laserfiche was more than just a place to put files,” said Timm. “That’s when we started to view tutorials, speak with our team at Ricoh, and understand that there’s way more capability within the system than we initially thought.”
Next-Level Digital Transformation: Electronic Forms and Process Automation
King’s document management project was a catalyst for the team to reimagine how they could now use the township’s digital information in its mission to deliver citizen services, maximize efficiency and ensure employees are well equipped to respond to customer’s needs. Laserfiche’s electronic forms and business process automation capabilities enabled King to increase access to information and public services. This mindset shift came just in time — before the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the region.
“We were fortunate to have had departments adopt Laserfiche before COVID-19 arrived,” Timm said. “Staff have access to all the information they need in a central resource that they can securely access remotely. Departments also see the immediate savings in administrative work, no longer needing to file paper copies, and now being able to easily search and retrieve information.”
Now, the township is using Laserfiche to actively replace paper forms with electronic forms to make more public services available online — a key benefit during the pandemic. King recently launched a new website where constituents can access applications, permits and other essential items with an integrated payment system, including:
Building permit payments
Bulky item pickup and garbage bag tags
Pet and service animal licenses
Fire permits
Freedom of information requests
Marriage service payments
Road occupancy permits
Property information requests
Tax certificate requests
E-Billing registration for property and water bills
Temporary sign permits
In addition to increasing access to these forms, staff leveraged Laserfiche business process automation to automate information routing and approvals. Now, when a resident submits an electronic form through the township’s website, the information is automatically sent to the relevant departments and approving parties for review and approvals. By removing the dependence on manual routing, automated processes streamline the flow of information and expedite service delivery, whether employees are in-office or working remotely. Laserfiche’s process reporting and analytics also increase transparency and create opportunities for continuous process improvement.
“We are excited to see our public forms integrate with our repository, too,” said Timm. “Now, forms and information will be automatically filed in the right spot, and our approval process moves to the digital realm — we’re able to track and start looking at the analytics.”
The central repository and automated processes have also supported business continuity during COVID-19 and as the King team navigates the staff changes that all municipalities must manage.
“We have staff retiring, and that previously meant information and institutional knowledge would be lost,” said Supervisor of IT Business Systems Angelo Castillo. “Having everything in Laserfiche provides that single repository that everyone is familiar with. If we use Laserfiche for forms and processes, our staff will be comfortable using them.”
Building a Digital Future
Today, the township continues to build on its success by automating processes across all departments, with a clear vision toward creating a more modern experience for employees and the people they serve. The IT team has plans to further centralize content and processes by using Laserfiche where possible to replace niche software that individual departments may have acquired or are looking to acquire for specific processes. “Laserfiche doesn’t make digital transformation seem overly complicated because the tools are all there — we are equipped to easily automate processes without having to acquire and learn multiple small, specific pieces of software,” Callisto explained. “For example, we just successfully launched and leveraged Laserfiche forms and its business process capabilities to automate our entire Performance Development and Recognition Program (PDRP). By expanding our in-house knowledge of the system, we are beginning to build more complex and corporate wide implementations. These new electronic and automated processes streamline core critical corporate processes, making them easy and accessible to staff.”
The IT division is now aiming to create a self-service model. “The goal is to have each department build their own digital forms and publish them online,” Castillo said. “The subject-matter experts in the individual departments are going to know the processes the best, and with Laserfiche’s ease of use, we know staff are eager to build and implement!”
Into the future, the township plans to further leverage Laserfiche’s process dashboard to analyze information such as the number of permits, applications and licenses received, what time of year is the busiest, etc. “We’re really excited to dive into the data and analytics, and look at them in terms of usage and output,” Timm said. “It’s going to give us a whole new area that we haven’t explored before.”
For more insights into modernizing service delivery and to understand why technology plays a critical role in generating cost savings, continuing operations and meeting growing constituent demands, read the Center for Digital Government’s report: “The Way Forward: Insights for Government Leaders on Modernizing Service Delivery.”
Robotic process automation (RPA) is a technology that enlists the help of bots, programs that can perform repetitive tasks directly from a user interface. Fast to deploy and easy to update, bots can be a powerful catalyst for system integrations.Bots can also help further business process automation initiatives.
Bots fill a special niche within a business process automation platform — where traditional automation methods would leave gaps in processes, bots can fill them in by working directly with the front ends of applications to simulate how a human would interact with the software.
Imagine a robot sitting in front of a computer looking at the same applications and performing the same keystrokes as a person would — while you hold the remote control that tells the robot when and how to work.
So, for example, in a process where you previously had to manually review a document, enter data or transfer information between systems, the robot fills in these gaps in what could be a more automated process. In addition, the bot by its nature will be more accurate and efficient than a human user.
Processes that are automated end-to-end, and more robust integrations for your systems mean more time for employees to concentrate on high-impact projects. Part of the beauty of robotic process automation technology is that it offers even non-technical employees the power to automate parts of their own workflows and gain the benefits that come from doing so.
The basics of RPA
Today’s organizations use a wide variety of business applications. When a legacy platform, web application, or in-house system lacks enterprise integration functionality, it’s likely that employees have to do manual work to keep information and content moving between systems as part of a business process. These manual steps in automated processes are sometimes called “automation gaps.”
RPA bots work directly from an application’s user interface, mimicking human actions, including logging in and out, copying and pasting data, opening emails and attachments and filling out forms. As they can act like a human, while still working with speed, efficiency and a lack of human intervention, these bots are particularly suited to fill automation gaps in business processes.
While this functionality may sound similar to screen-scraping or application macros, RPA has evolved beyond these solutions. For example, while macros follow a pre-determined script of fixed, linear commands, bots have the flexibility to learn over time and intuitively respond to changes in business processes. Also, in cases where you need multiple tools to run scripts for each business application, RPA can simplify the way users automate tasks by interacting with multiple applications at once.
The dynamic nature of robotic process automation makes it ideal for organizations that want to deploy integrations and automation solutions quickly in response to a need or a changing business climate.
The benefits of RPA
As a user-friendly and cost-effective tool, robotic process automation provides a number of advantages that are drawing interest from organizations across industries.
The business benefits of RPA include:
Low technical barriers: Programming skills are not necessary to configure a bot. Non-technical staff can use a process recorder feature to teach the bot how to perform a previously manual step in an automated business process, and integrate the bot-based automation into a larger automated workflow using a drag-and-drop process designer or similar tool.
Increased accuracy: Like many tools available as part of a process automation suite, bots are extremely accurate and consistent – they are much less prone to making mistakes or typos than a human worker. This can apply to common processes such as setting up or removing user accounts, copying information from one system to another, onboarding and off-boarding employees or populating forms based on information from another system.
Meet regulatory compliance standards: Bots only follow the instructions they have been configured to follow and provide an audit trail history for each step. The controlled nature of bots makes robotic process automation well suited for organizations that want to automate their business processes end-to-end while still meeting strict compliance standards.
No interruption of work: Bots can work tirelessly work around the clock, autonomously without requiring employees to re-activate them, allowing a more flexible schedule for business processes.
Existing systems remain in place: Unlike traditional integrations that may require extensive developer resources, RPA doesn’t require any changes to the systems you already use every day to be included as part of your automated business processes. Bots work directly from a user interface, just as a person would. This makes robotic process automation especially useful for integrating legacy systems, where APIs may not be immediately available, or in situations where organizations do not have the time or employee resources to develop custom code-based integrations.
Improved employee morale and employee experience: By utilizing robotic process automation as part of their automation tooklkit, organizations can open up further opportunities for employees to dedicate more of their time and talent to other work. While bots fill out forms, enter data and look up information from websites, employees can focus on high-impact projects that further drive growth.
Increased productivity: Process cycle times are more efficient and can be completed at a faster speed compared to manual processes.
What processes are suited for RPA?
Robotic process automation is a versatile, scalable technology that can be applied throughout the enterprise in a variety of industries. Top candidates for optimization with RPA are typically:
Consistent and routine
High volume
Prone to human error
Limited in requiring a person to make a decision
Manual data entry
In many cases, RPA can bring immediate value to core business processes including:
For example, if a wealth management firm needs to update CRM data with contact details from a spreadsheet, RPA can record the actions that need to be replicated, map fields between the two interfaces and automate this repeatable task, saving hours of employees’ valuable time.
A virtual business assistant
We may think of RPA in the context of organization-wide processes, but it can be applied as a personal productivity tool as well. Employees will be able to identify many opportunities for robotic process automation in their daily work where bots can assist.
With RPA, employees are empowered to automate their more routine daily tasks, regardless of technical expertise. This low barrier to entry enables employees across the enterprise to benefit from RPA, even if there isn’t a resource-intensive, organization-wide deployment.
Furthermore, since all bots can be monitored and audited over a centralized server, IT would still be able to manage bots in use, while promoting flexibility in the organization for employees to deploy their own custom solutions.
Having a bot as a de-facto virtual business assistant can help employees offload time-consuming, routine tasks in favor of high-impact projects and elevating the customer experience.
Bridging integration gaps with RPA
One of the immediate benefits of robotic process automation is its ability to integrate systems where gaps previously existed. Enterprises that rely on legacy systems or third-party, external sites for everyday operations but currently do not have the resources or the means to integrate them using other methods can deploy bots to do so. Fast to deploy and easy to update, syncing data and processes without human intervention. Bots enable organizations to quickly deploy integrations that sync data and processes without human intervention, filling in gaps between systems for more complete, end-to-end automation solutions.
RPA and digital transformation
RPA can be an important tool in solving automation challenges and pushing organizations to grow into digital workplaces. However, it is just one part of an organization’s digital transformation toolkit.
Going beyond automating everyday repetitive tasks, RPA combined with traditional content services and business process management technologies can help organizations further maximize their potential as they make the most of their of automation strategies.
Robotic process automation is an ideal technology for reducing costs and increasing productivity. Whether optimizing end-to-end automation initiatives or enabling employees to be more efficient in handling projects, RPA is a powerful addition to any business process automation platform.
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