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SITUATION
• Capturing, routing and storing member information was manual and lacked consistency
• Operations needed to scale at a pace that aligned with the credit union’s growth trajectory
• The credit union sought a platform for automation that would integrate with existing tech stack
RESULTS
• All staff now use Laserfiche regularly in a variety of key processes
• Saved hundreds of hours each month
• Alleviated the burden of mergers as the credit union grows
“We address people’s needs and solve problems — it’s what credit unions do,” said Matthew Tingey, senior applications specialist at American United Federal Credit Union (FCU).
The philosophy has powered American United FCU since 1952, driving the organization’s growth to serve more than 26,000 people today. And along with that growth has come transformation, to create a single source of truth for records, integrate core technology systems and enable easier self-service for members.
“I was originally asking questions like, ‘Can I automate this? Can I batch process these things? Where can I take the annoying parts out of this process?’” said Tingey. “But it’s never good enough to solve my own problem. I need to solve problems for everyone in the organization. That’s where Laserfiche came in.”
The credit union now uses Laserfiche as its repository for member information, and the main workflow engine for automated processes across the organization, including finance, member relations, money movement and more, saving hundreds of hours each month and alleviating the burden of mergers as the organization continues to grow.
Like many growing organizations, American United FCU had information — including member documents, HR employee records, financial records and more — incoming from a multitude of channels, being handled in a variety of ways. Tingey, a dedicated credit union professional who has worked in every department across the organization, recognized a need to standardize archival of documents. At the same time, he saw an opportunity to automate information capture.
The credit union began using Laserfiche process automation to automate records management activities, routing documents to where they needed to be stored within the repository, with the needed metadata, no matter the source.
“We’ve processed multiple millions of documents through there,” said Tingey. “Employees just need to click, and it gets to where it needs to go.”
American United FCU, supported by Laserfiche solution provider Millennial Vision (MVi), has built out a Laserfiche program that also supports the organization’s total quality management initiative, which aims to improve processes with an eye toward growth and profitability.
“These tools help us do things more efficiently, bridge the gap between some of our other software tools, and let our teams work in better collaboration. They really solve a lot of problems.”
With the initial solution in place, it was time to connect other systems to eliminate human error and make the repetitive tasks around document capture and storage even easier.
“From there, I wanted Laserfiche to talk back to our core [account system] to verify the information being captured,” Tingey said. “Now, it’s not just member documents that we’re processing through the system but applications, loan documents, and other daily work. The process has expanded and grown. It’s the single source of truth, and really the backbone of our process automation.”
In addition to having Laserfiche verify information from the organization’s core, CUProdigy, the credit union has a number of integrations that support a more seamless everyday work experience for employees.
“We’ve also built a large database of information that we want to track and report on in Microsoft Power BI, and Laserfiche plays a big role in that,” Tingey said, adding that he keeps track of data issues — caused by activities like an employee leaving the organization, for example — through daily reports. “Laserfiche is a big part of managing the data that is used to create those Power BI reports.”
Similarly, Tingey has transformed the way that the organization validates data, identifying potential issues through Forms processes (started by Laserfiche Workflow) that trigger when an issue occurs. These items were previously actively tracked by an employee on a continual basis; today, no one needs to remember to review the reports since processes are triggered in Forms when issues occur — plus, instructions are integrated into the form so that less training and individual knowledge is required to address them.
“More recently, we’ve added some API integrations with the core to this process,” Tingey explained. “We pull information out of CUProdigy to use in Laserfiche Workflow and Forms via database queries. Notes can be pushed back to accounts with a click of a button in a form. A couple of the items that instructed the user to fix an issue can now be resolved automatically via the API without human intervention. These data validations and the automation around them have allowed our QA to be more efficient, effective and consistent.”
One game-changing integration for the credit union was between Laserfiche and DocuSign, which allowed Tingey to automate a common activity for credit unions: member information changes. The legacy process was manually driven and admittedly not very employee- or member-friendly.
The organization has enhanced the overall experience for employees and members by embedding the entire process into Laserfiche Forms:
Similarly, the credit union’s wire transfer process has benefited from Laserfiche Forms and an integration with DocuSign.
“In terms of solutions, I borrow from myself,” Tingey said, explaining that he’s often able to build on successes by taking a process and repurposing it by making tweaks to forms or steps.
The legacy wire transfer process, which involved many manual activities performed by employees, left members and auditors with little visibility into the required steps. The new Laserfiche process, however, gives the credit union the ability to provide helpful context to the member about what they are signing and the wire disclosure via the DocuSign integration.
“Once complete, employees only need to click a button to attach it to the form, and processing of the wire in our core is done via API, with minimal tasks required by the employee,” Tingey said. The form is automatically routed to the necessary employees for review and processing, and all supporting documentation is archived in the Laserfiche repository with standard naming conventions and metadata.
The new wire transfer process saves up to 25 hours of staff processing time per month, while also reducing opportunities for human error and increasing staff satisfaction.
“We’ve taken all the annoying little parts out of the process, like downloading a PDF, uploading it to DocuSign, marking fields on it, manually sending it to the member, downloading it again, etc.” said Tingey. “Another benefit is that when the member is prompted for signature, information will pop up to tell them exactly what they’re doing. It will let them know we’re doing a change of information process and here’s that we’re changing, or a wire transfer and here’s our wire disclosure. So instead of just signing something because they’re being asked to sign something, members feel more informed and taken care of.”
Since the initial implementation of Laserfiche for process automation, American United FCU has had a lot of success automating back-office activities as well as some member processes that employees handle. Going beyond the back office to positively impact the member experience has always been the ultimate goal, however.
“These automated processes are all increasing member satisfaction,” Tingey said. “Whether our members are in-branch or doing things remotely, they are saving time and don’t have to wait for a teller to manually find all the documents they need to get things done.”
Today, Tingey is focused on transforming the member experience with the launch of a new website, which will feature enhanced self-service features powered by Laserfiche Forms. One such feature is the rewards claim request, which enables members to claim an end-of-year dividend that the credit union offers as a perk for members based on the products and services they’ve used throughout the year. The claim form lists all of the possible products and services that qualify for a reward amount, and the member enters a few details to verify themselves. The form verifies this information against the database to qualify the submission, and a Laserfiche workflow sends an email confirmation, recording all activities into a database so that rewards can be paid out at the end of the year.
Laserfiche digitization and automation projects have supported increased focus on the member experience, even through significant periods of growth for the credit union. Since 2007, the organization has completed 10 mergers, enabling asset growth from about $39 million to just over $370 million (as of April 27, 2023).
While mergers are always a huge undertaking, the process was made less painful with standardized and automated processes in place. “Mergers are very, very large projects — everything gets dumped into a central location, and there’s cleanup and moving things around,” said Tingey. “If it weren’t for the structure from Laserfiche and the tools like Workflows, they would be nearly impossible.”
Laserfiche has become such a vital part of American United FCU’s infrastructure that many employees aren’t able to imagine life without it today.
“Laserfiche is a cornerstone of our environment. The automation functionalities alone save us thousands of hours annually, but on top of that it helps us in so many ways to gather, process, and document nearly every piece of information that passes through our organization. There isn’t a single member of our team that doesn’t interact with Laserfiche, and most of them are working with the system throughout the day, every day.”
SITUATION
• Needed a way to centralize information
• Reliance on manual processes such as order management and accounts payable
• Lack of standardization and automation in processes
RESULTS
• Automated manual processes and created a digital-first, streamlined employee experience
• Increased productivity, transparency, and accountability
4Front Engineered Solutions has nine facilities in North America, and designs, manufactures and installs loading dock equipment solutions that are aimed at supplying the critical needs of customers across warehousing, manufacturing, retail, and distribution centers. As a result, productivity is a high priority. Commanding that accounts payable processes conform to the demands of today’s digital world is imperative. Like the modern and efficient approach taken with its products/solutions, 4Front wants to ensure it complies with industry regulations and more importantly, that customer needs are met with speed and accuracy.
“We initially wanted a quick way to process and access files ranging from order records, invoices and credit memos across different offices,” said Amy Skoug, director of IT — Applications at 4Front. “By developing a system that employees can use to manage core business documents from across the country, we have been able to use Laserfiche to improve efficiency and transparency for our customer service teams and other departments.”
4Front has been able to centralize information across departments in multiple locations, including accounting, customer service, engineering, and distribution, using Laserfiche repositories that enable standardized records management practices and simultaneous collaboration on documents. Employees use Laserfiche to digitally capture, manage and process order documents from purchase orders through invoicing, boosting accuracy and accountability. These initiatives have also enabled employees to work remotely during the pandemic, contributing to the company’s long-term business continuity and resiliency. Additionally, 4Front has leveraged Laserfiche to gain greater insight on how to continually improve efficiency, using to the process data from Laserfiche to rapidly identify and address process bottlenecks and opportunities for optimization.
4Front initially implemented Laserfiche in 2016, driven by a need for a digital document management system that could provide long-term access and easy retrieval for manufacturing order information. With a previously paper- and manual task-driven order process, the organization scanned existing files and input new orders into a centralized Laserfiche repository for office locations in the U.S. and Canada. 4Front used the Laserfiche platform to build a digital customer and order information system, enabling staff to search for files with metadata and monitor real-time status for orders. This digital system has improved responsiveness to customers in need of service, as well as enabled departments such as accounting and customer service to digitally update and approve amendments to orders. Through an automated Laserfiche workflow, documents in need of review are routed to the relevant team, who can then cross-reference submissions across multiple locations and approve of changes within the system. Staff can work off one master copy of the document, which minimizes errors associated with managing multiple document versions.
“We gained a lot of interest from many departments after implementing Laserfiche Forms, including customer service to distribution, accounts payable and accounting,” said Skoug. “It provided us with a new way to do approvals for many of our existing processes.”
Implementing Laserfiche has also supported global expansion at 4Front. The company used the solution to digitize the check filing process within its Canada office. Using this system, staff can now process large batches of checks, which are digitally paired with corresponding invoices and filed within the repository by vendor name.
The company also integrated Laserfiche with 4Front’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to process invoices and work orders more easily. Files are automatically sorted and populated with the relevant sales order metadata, allowing interdepartmental collaboration, digital search and retrieval by leveraging metadata for order information. Using Laserfiche, 4Front also automated the three-way match between invoices, receipts and order forms. Laserfiche generates reports and checklists throughout the approval processes to help staff stay on track, identify areas of improvement, and minimize manual errors. Starting as a manual, paper-intensive process, the new invoice and work order processes have enabled more transparent customer and order information and opened up new opportunities for digital transformation.
After implementing its automated invoice and order management system, 4Front has achieved substantial savings in time originally dedicated to manual, paper-based tasks. This has been especially crucial during periods of expansion, as well as during pandemic-related operational disruptions.
Digital, centralized information has supported business continuity at 4Front as well, providing employees with a means to access and share files during the pandemic when staff needed to work remotely.
Solution-driven metrics are another component contributing to 4Front’s digital transformation initiatives, utilizing monthly reports that provide insights on overall productivity, staff performance and trends on reason codes. Additionally, the company is actively identifying other departments and processes where Laserfiche could be deployed, including the HR department to centralize employee files, facilitate the onboarding process and track trainings and safety reporting. 4Front is also looking to digitize common manufacturing industry processes such as generating and managing bills of lading (BoL), as well as new product information documentation. To continue driving change, plans are in place to deploy Laserfiche in departments handling input and feedback from external stakeholders, such as the warranty team and in-records retention processes, as well as engineering change processes.
“The manufacturing sector is becoming increasingly data driven. Our digital transformation initiatives have enabled us to provide a better experience for our customers and staff members. We can respond to customers more quickly, retrieving relevant documents in seconds while speaking to them.”
Amy Skoug, director of IT — Applications, 4Front
Banking institutions — including banks and credit unions — place high value on the interaction between customers or members and employees in order to build loyalty and drive business growth. Today, the customer-first approach is more important than ever before, and the digital customer experience is at the top of their priorities. While brick-and-mortar branches are here to stay in the post-pandemic era, customers expect consistent in-branch service as well as a seamless omnichannel experience. Recent BAI research reported that consumers expect 61% of their banking business to be digital and 39% to involve human intervention by 2024. To achieve omnichannel excellence, banking institutions need to provide 24/7 access to services and digital self-service for activities ranging from new account opening to loan applications, as well as an online portal for clients to access their own documentation.
In order to keep pace with customer expectations, banking institutions are leveraging process automation to enhance human interactions — by supporting customers’ ability to access the services they want when they want them; reclaiming time for employees to spend on value-added activities and customer service; and easing collaboration between teams, departments and branches. Digital workflows and processes are also key to boosting productivity so that banking institutions can take on more customers and add new services without the resource strain or sacrificing quality of service. Here are some of the top transformative process automation initiatives that forward-looking banking institutions are leveraging to enhance the customer experience:
1. Self-Service Portals and Online Forms
Even when digital, incoming applications and customers’ records are often scattered electronically across organizations’ local network drives and individual repositories without a standardized folder structure. Studies have shown that the average employee spends 3.6 hours each day searching for information. When customers are waiting — whether in-person at a branch or online — this translates to longer wait times and decreased satisfaction. Self-service portals with links to online forms where customers can easily initiate service requests or send in information — which can then be automatically routed to the appropriate departments or personnel for approval, or to customer folders — help to alleviate the headaches of manually routing data and shorten processing time, while also creating a 24/7 access to services for customers.
2. A Single Source of Truth: Automated Records Management in a Central Repository
Digitization of paper files is nothing new to banking institutions, however, many of them can take these efforts much further. By establishing a centralized repository, and leveraging process automation tools to auto-file customer information into a standardized folder structure, banking institutions can save time for employees who are able to be more responsive to customer needs since they have customer information at their fingertips. At the same time, automating processes related to customers’ data eliminates error-prone manual tasks, improving accuracy of information. With a centralized repository that has granular access controls, too, banking institutions support information governance and compliance with regulatory requirements. As a result, organizations mitigate the risk of unauthorized access to customer information and build and maintain trust with their customers.
3. Integrate Line-of-Business Applications for End-to-End Automated Solutions
Many banking institutions took a piecemeal approach to digital transformation during the pandemic as a reaction to immediate needs. Today, however, organizations need to assess the technologies adopted over the past few years in order to consolidate and optimize IT investments. Integrations can help to connect the different applications, systems and sites where customer data is stored, enabling banking institutions to create more holistic automated solutions and a complete digital experience for customers and the employees who serve them. For instance, integrations can further reduce manual and repetitive data entry by prepopulating customer information into electronic forms. Integration tools such as integration-platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) connectors and APIs can support organizations’ increasingly complex integration needs. By creating a more connected enterprise, banking institutions can better facilitate information flow and avoid repetitive data entry; provide branch employees with accurate, real-time information; and enable a better, more personalized customer experience overall.
The Member-Centered Digital Transformation Journey
Even as many banking institutions are accelerating digital initiatives, the human element remains the most important piece of the transformation puzzle. A recent survey found that more than 80% of credit unions are prioritizing digital as a competitive differentiator, however, only 14% provide solutions that focus on their members’ digital experience. Banking institutions are at an inflection point, and it’s critical that business leaders make decisions about digital initiatives — whether it’s creating an automated customer onboarding process or implementing an AI-powered chatbot — through the lens of the customer experience.
How can Laserfiche help banks and credit unions enhance the customer experience with process automation?
Check out our banks and credit unions solution page for more information!
SITUATION
• Complex processes surrounding procurement, service requests and other business needs lacked consistency and oversight.
• The organization sought a solution to automate business processes and streamline them for staff.
RESULTS
• Automated solutions accelerated key workflows including the timesheet process, which was reduced from one week to less than a minute.
• Digitization and automation initiatives supported staff satisfaction, new hybrid work models, interoperability and compliance across the organization.
SIU Medicine is a publicly assisted medical school and clinical practice with more than 2,000 providers, researchers and staff members across the state of Illinois. Additionally, SIU is home to a world-class scientific research facility. The facility’s more than 100 active projects complement the institution’s mission of optimizing the health of the people of central and southern Illinois through education, patient care, research and community service.
SIU’s multi-pronged approach requires complex business processes for procurement, service requests and other everyday activities. The organization has been using Laserfiche for digitizing records for the past 10 years, partnering with Laserfiche solution provider TKB Associates. Recently, SIU found a need to modernize processes and expand use of Laserfiche to include Laserfiche Forms and workflow.
“[We saw] an opportunity to get executive buy-in and automate processes like online timesheets,” said Jennifer Washburn, IT manager at SIU Medicine. “And since then, we’ve had people lining up and really wanting us to tackle their projects.”
Today, the organization has embraced process automation across departments, leveraging Laserfiche as a capture, decision-making and workflow engine. With streamlined processes and automated records management that reclaims time for employees to focus on more value-added work, Laserfiche supports the organization’s goals, enabling SIU to sustain high employee and patient satisfaction.
Like healthcare IT teams across the country, SIU Medicine’s Process Automation Team has navigated three significant challenges in recent years:
The Process Automation Team’s commitment to continuous improvement has been a boon to the organization’s ability to respond in innovative ways.
“Laserfiche allowed us to tackle problems and solve them in ways that I don’t think would have been possible otherwise,” said Jennifer Washburn, IT manager at SIU Medicine.
To support hybrid and remote staff, the organization started by automating the timesheet process with Laserfiche Forms.
“Laserfiche Forms allowed us to help our staff continue to do their jobs from wherever they were,” said Washburn. The team created electronic forms and associated workflows for different types of timesheets in various employee categories.
“SIU’s timesheet process was reduced from 1 week to less than a minute.” align=”left”>The difference in the automated process was significant. “Previously, the manual processes could take a week or longer,” Washburn said. “Today, it takes less than a minute.”
This initial automation project also sparked a shift in which many departments began to see real value in digital transformation.
The selection of timesheets for a pilot was also strategically successful for the Process Automation Team. “Not only was it a huge efficiency gain for us, but it also introduced every single member of our workforce to Laserfiche Forms,” Washburn explained.
The Process Automation Team has continued to take on new projects with the goal of enhancing the employee experience and empowering users to do the work and research that supports the organization’s mission. Meanwhile, Laserfiche tools like electronic forms, automated workflows and electronic records management also support compliance with internal and external requirements, as well as users’ ability to access data across different systems.
SIU Medicine has automated both simple processes such as animal requests — enabling researchers to request animals for research projects, with streamlined approvals and documentation— and more complex workflows that are used organization-wide.
For example, purchase orders are now on Laserfiche Forms. What was once a manual process that involved PDFs being emailed or paper forms being passed from desk to desk is now completely digital and automated.
“We created a Laserfiche form that pulls budget purpose numbers and auto-populates the necessary information from another system, which then brings in the fiscal officer that’s responsible for that budget number,” said Mike Overmeyer, data architect at SIU Medicine. The automated system also helps employees by auto-routing POs that may need to go to multiple officers, or that are rejected by one or more officers. “We also give purchasing the ability to run POs by IT or an administrator, if they need to. It’s conditional, and we’re not putting the onus on the employee to make those decisions or execute those manual tasks that can end up causing delays.”
Washburn said that budget purpose numbers are housed in a separate, legacy accounting system that can be leveraged via lookups from Laserfiche Forms. “Users enter a number and it all pre-populates. They click submit and it’s near instantaneous getting to the next person. The end users are amazed that they can do all of this in one place.”
Feedback has been so positive that the project was expanded to include purchases that are made through state procurement cards. “The intent is now to use it for everything that gets purchased for the school, from paper towels and office supplies to computer or laboratory equipment,” Washburn added.
SIU also used Laserfiche to expedite the collection of patient information when a local healthcare provider retired. “There was a local practice where the provider retired, and all of their patients were transitioned into our practice,” Washburn explained. “We had to collect release of information notices, so we quickly deployed a Laserfiche form to streamline that process. Our clinical staff just had to enter the patient’s health record number. Our system integrates with our practice management system to pull everything automatically, which significantly reduced the time it would have taken manually.”
SIU Medicine’s IT department also stood up its own Laserfiche-powered system for entering requests. Employees fill out an electronic form to request a variety of IT services, including reports, software installation, or even new processes through Laserfiche Forms. “Prior to using the forms, we would get requests that were very unstructured, and there might be a lot of follow-up questions to find out, for instance, what reports someone needed, or what we could to do provide support,” said Jeff Wilson, IT director at SIU Medicine.
Other processes that the organization has transformed using Laserfiche include:
SIU leverages Laserfiche’s robust records management capabilities on a daily basis for compliance with industry and state requirements. All forms and information generated from Laserfiche processes are saved and managed in the Laserfiche repository, supporting information governance practices at SIU.
“We have well over 2 million documents in our repository,” said Washburn. “If there’s not an existing folder structure for the area that we’re working in, Laserfiche Forms can create it dynamically. We make sure that everything lands in Laserfiche at the end of the day.”
Finally, the organization’s digital efforts have extended beyond process, productivity and compliance improvements, into staff resilience and satisfaction — which has been invaluable in the current healthcare climate. “Working in healthcare, there’s a lot of pressure and demand, so we are constantly thinking about how our staff is doing and what we can do to make the experience better,” Washburn said. “SIU’s executive leadership has emphasized that staff are more contented in their roles when they feel supported and know what they can expect from their leaders. In the most recent employee satisfaction survey, we were rated highest in staff understanding of their roles and responsibilities, and we ranked steady in satisfaction.”
Recent advancements in artificial intelligence, or AI, have captured attention and imagination around the world. In fact, AI and its enabling technology, machine learning, have been around long enough to drive game-changing benefits that we already enjoy as clients and staff.
For wealth managers in particular, AI can improve what both clients and staff experience, while saving on operational costs — in effect, better results for less investment. Supporting interactions with AI-driven tools such as automatic form fill, chatbots and automatic documentation filing can streamline operations and reduce the potential for human error. It also frees employees to focus on higher-value tasks such as supporting clients and developing new business. AI-driven automation can improve the top and bottom lines, while helping organizations tighten their compliance programs.
For example, the implementation of AI makes workflow automation tools for processes like client data transfer even more powerful, further elevating positive outcomes, such as freeing up back-office administrators from repetitive tasks. Imagine having a cleaner, better-documented process with fewer data-entry errors to resolve, and more time for staff to spend on higher-value tasks such as resolving those errors — or automating more processes. Moreover, making client data available across a wealth manager’s systems also creates opportunities to leverage that information to provide tailored services. The ability to offer clients new products and services at the right time can further improve the investor experience— particularly when wealth managers can offer these opportunities before clients are even aware they need them.
AI-driven process automation tools are already available and can be simple to customize or even build using low-code or no-code platforms. In other words, you don’t have to be a software engineer to get started. The key for advisors looking to take advantage of these tools is to take an incremental approach. There’s no need to do everything all at once—however, it is important to have a broader digital transformation strategy to serve as a guide and to prioritize your efforts in a way that yields the greatest operational impact over time.
Download the whitepaper “What ChatGPT Means for Wealth Management”.
By Grace Nam, Laserfiche strategic solutions manager for manufacturing and healthcare.
Hyperautomation started as a tech buzz word but is now influencing leaders as a top strategic technology trend, with many seeing the potential value in leveraging RPA (robotic process automation) and AI (artificial intelligence)/ML (machine learning) to transform legacy processes. According to Gartner®, “ hyperautomation is a business driven, disciplined approach that organizations use to rapidly identify, vet and automate as many businesses and IT processes as possible”1 It is increasingly becoming a vital part of organizations’ digital transformation roadmaps as a means to achieving digital resilience and agility.
As you dive headlong into hyperautomation at your manufacturing organizations, it is critical for leaders to plan strategies to accelerate processes and deliver value without getting lost in the current technology weeds. After several years of planning and implementing digital transformation and smart manufacturing initiatives, how far do the benefits currently extend at your organizations? Even with recent events and disruptions like COVID-19, supply chain issues, and staffing shortages, 60% of executives say digital transformation is their most critical growth driver.2 Though digital transformation can be difficult as it requires organizations to change culture and traditional structures, digitalization is crucial to the industry’s ability to increase efficiency in production and drive further growth of the enterprise.
While disruptions and challenges have stalled out, major challenges with the supply chain and increased operational costs can persist through digital transformation initiatives. Of course, it’s not realistic to expect to eliminate longstanding challenges in such a short span of time. Currently, many leaders share common challenges in justifying ROI for smart manufacturing investment using end results.3 While having access to data is now certainly realistic for most organizations, building visibility into real-time data across multiple databases at the organization remains as a huge roadblock. Siloed data and unstructured data sets, multiple versions of pieces of digital content without the ability to track them — such as sales contracts and datasheets — and the inability to streamline business processes across different applications and departments are just some of the unimproved roadblocks that are still managed manually. When envisioning the end-results of our digital transformation efforts, it may not be what leaders were expecting: It is a common reality that employees are still spending hours on repetitive manual tasks.
Download the whitepaper, “Making Automation Accessible, Connectability Universal & Workforces Eager To Contribute“.
1Gartner IT Glossary, “Hyperautomation,” as of 16 January 2023. https://www.gartner.com/en/information-technology/glossary/hyperautomation. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
2PWC Pulse Survey: Executive views on business in 2022.
3SME, 2022 Smart Manufacturing Market Survey.
SITUATION
• Company expansion led to a need to optimize paper-based accounts payable processes.
• NWFM sought a means to manage invoices digitally and increase transparency between back office and field operations.
RESULTS
• Achieved hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings
• Increased accuracy in invoice processing
• Over 300% increase in invoice capacity
• Increased investor confidence in the company
NWFM is a locally owned, full-service farm investment and property management company based in Yakima, Washington. Established in 2018, the company had initially processed all its vendor invoices manually. However, as NWFM expanded, the amount of paper invoices increased proportionally with its growing operations and client base.
“Originally, we manually processed about 250 invoices a month,” recalled Tim Hull, administrative manager at NWFM. “As a few hundred acres of new land came under our management, I could see a paperwork tsunami coming.”
Recognizing an opportunity to optimize paper-based accounts payable processes and improve back office and field operations, NWFM searched for a digital capture and workflow solution. Due to its reputation as a robust cloud content services platform, Laserfiche was chosen, and NWFM worked with solution provider FreeDoc of Lynnwood, Washington, to design a dedicated, customized accounts payable workflow.
Since implementing Laserfiche to keep up with a rapid growth trajectory, NWFM has achieved substantial cost and operational savings, as well as gained the ability to leverage data and metrics built into Laserfiche to improve transparency and accuracy throughout its operations.
Managing hundreds of acres of farmland across Central Washington, NWFM recognizes the value of automation and technology in its operations for the sake of efficiency and accuracy. Assessing its original invoice processing system, the company identified significant challenges:
“As we took on more farmland to manage, I wasn’t sure how I was going to handle such a big influx of invoices every month,” said Hull. “Laserfiche helped us to create a solution to connect our employees located almost 100 miles away to our central office and resolve many of our major challenges.”
The digital accounts payable system at NWFM routes all electronically imported invoices into a dedicated folder within the company’s Laserfiche repository. Each invoice can be reviewed for accuracy before sending it for final approval and payment processing. Throughout the process, the administrative team can make changes to expense category codes and make notes to the bookkeeper.
NWFM’s Laserfiche system is integrated with FastField purchase order software, which allows area managers to upload pictures of invoices directly to Laserfiche from remote locations. The integration extracts vendor names, ranch names, individual blocks, numerical codes and other relevant information needed for processing and approvals; facilitating the management of clear, categorized information while processing invoices.
This has significantly increased the efficiency of invoice review and finalization. NWFM has gone from processing 250 invoices a month to more than 1,000, with the potential to scale up as the company continues to grow.
“Laserfiche has really proven to be the backbone of many of our processes,” said Hull. “Its cloud-hosted infrastructure and the ability to search for specific words within documents has helped us to form a solid connection between our central office and the ranches we manage — we are able to understand each other more clearly in terms of orders and financial documents.”
In addition to the need to establish a revamped AP system, the NWFM team wanted to give investors located out-of-state the ability to review invoices and financial documents digitally. Rather than continue with the legacy process of storing invoices in filing cabinets, NWFM now has a standardized digital repository and has been able to increase its financial transparency when working with investors, giving them access to invoices in real-time. Built with email import functionality, purchase order integrations and granular access rights, the new AP management system has supported NWFM’s efforts to modernize its operations and position the company for growth.
Hull explains that NWFM initially tracked cost savings from the AP automation initiative for the first several months after implementation.
“We happily stopped counting savings after it exceeded $1,000 per month,” he said. “The savings was used to hire a chemical inventory specialist who now tracks inventory movement and returns unused stock. This allowed us to already return $72,000 in unused chemicals this year alone.”
NWFM’s new AP system also enables employees to process invoices while checking the price of products against bid sheets. In addition to the time savings from managing invoices, this process has additionally saved NWFM thousands of additional dollars by enabling the company to catch vendor billing errors, identifying $14,000 in billing errors per year. Leveraging data extracted from its invoice repository, the company is now making more accurate and productive purchasing decisions, and identifying savings opportunities.
Following the success of its AP system, NWFM has plans to establish satellite offices to further localize invoice processing in a more distributed strategy. This puts invoice processing closer to the ranch managers who make the purchases and generate the purchase orders. As the company continues to expand, Laserfiche has proven its effectiveness as a scalable solution.
“Organizing invoice and purchase order information by project or by ranch and block for review would have taken me weeks,” stated Hull. “Now I have it all at my fingertips.”
With economic uncertainty being the new normal, the demand for reliable financial institutions has risen tremendously. F&M Bank is one institution that has been able to maintain its customer trust for the past century, seeing significant growth particularly in recent years. Now with 25 branches across Los Angeles, Orange, and Santa Barbara counties, F&M’s expansion has led to more information management needs, technology demands and regulatory compliance requirements.
The bank initially implemented Laserfiche as a document management system and quickly expanded its use organization-wide. F&M’s experience using Laserfiche as a document management system was the foundation for the bank’s expanded usage of Laserfiche for process automation.
“What started as a way to scan and search for information is now a fully integrated enterprise content management solution,” said Morgan Wheeler, business intelligence manager and vice president at F&M Bank. “We have roughly 90 different active workflows running to the tune of about 1,500 times per day. We have about 60 different production forms, and nearly every single bank employee uses Laserfiche as part of their job.”
As F&M grew and workplace needs evolved, the bank sought a business process automation solution to create more efficiency and connect with its core banking system for a seamless employee experience.
The bank turned to Laserfiche, and its Laserfiche solution provider CDI for support in leveraging the platform’s business process automation and integration capabilities. F&M integrated Laserfiche with its core banking system and deployed automated workflows that have sped up processes such as financial certification and loan applications, helping the organization to scale. Meanwhile, Laserfiche’s robust governance tools support compliance with regulatory requirements.
“At the close of 2019, the bank had $7.6 billion in assets, and we have now reached $11.7 billion,” said Wheeler, adding that there was a period during the onset of COVID during which F&M’s assets grew more in 100 days than the institution did in its first 95 years of operation (1907-2002). “Laserfiche has been a critical component in our growth.”
“Just storing things digitally isn’t enough. The information we store needs to be functional digital assets within wider business processes, and that assumes not only automation but integration.”
— Morgan Wheeler, Business Intelligence Manager and Vice President at F&M Bank
One process F&M has reimagined to achieve impressive efficiency is financial certification, which previously required tremendous amounts of manual tasks to coordinate dollar amounts with all of the branches, emailed spreadsheets between managers and departments, and validation against historical information.
“For our branches, it means counting cash, teller drawer amounts, vault and cash center amounts — and we have all these different accounts, cash in transit, night-drops, merchant services … it’s a high-volume, complex activity,” Wheeler explained.
The bank deployed a Laserfiche solution that allows all departments across all branches to enter information about their accounts in a Laserfiche Form, which is prepopulated with information about what their financial position should be. The form calculates the difference and routes it to the bank’s finance and accounting department, and through proper approvals.
“The Laserfiche process has streamlined how we present our financial figures each month,” Wheeler said. “These figures are audited both externally and internally.”
The new process has saved the bank an estimated 700 hours per month of employee time, while providing a more transparent, prescribed procedure for certification. After the solution was deployed, employees were able to better utilize their time on value-added activities.
As a bank deeply embedded in its community, F&M acted quickly during the COVID-19 crisis when information about the Payment Protection Program was released. It was an opportunity to help people when they needed it most — and the team had the tools to deliver with Laserfiche.
“There was very little guidance on how the payroll protection loans were supposed to go out,” Wheeler said. “When the dust settled, F&M Bank issued more than $1 billion in PPP loans to the local community.”
The executive team assembled to map out how the bank would receive applications and distribute the money, and the F&M team stayed up all night creating a Laserfiche Form and PPP Loan application process.
“Within a matter of days we were funding loans. The nimbleness of Laserfiche Forms and workflow, plus SQL allowed us to build out an application process for those PPP loans literally overnight. I was not only impressed by F&M as an institution, but I was also impressed with our ability to create literally something out of nothing.”
— Morgan Wheeler, Business Intelligence Manager and Vice President at F&M Bank
Applicants began seeing their loans funded in a relatively short time frame, underscoring the bank’s commitment to its community, especially in a time of need.
Today, most of the bank’s loan processes involve Laserfiche, including the Loan Document Draw process: When a client asks for a loan, Laserfiche helps the bank centralize the process and effectively prepare the pieces of content that need to be gathered for the final document draw when the final loan agreement is drawn up for client signature. Having a strong presence in the commercial real estate industry, F&M has streamlined the collection of loan documents — which can be hundreds of pages long — in order to help ensure accuracy and speed.
As an institution regulated by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Federal Reserve Bank, and California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI), F&M’s standardized compliance processes continue to pay dividends for the organization and its clients.
In today’s uncertain economic conditions, F&M has also leveraged its technology to build stronger business resilience. The bank’s team worked closely with Cities Digital to build a resilient infrastructure that allows the bank to confidently handle unplanned network events, and gracefully failover for planned upgrades and maintenance. “Due to the cooperative effort of Laserfiche, Cities Digital and our IT team, Laserfiche regularly achieves 99.99% uptime during business hours,” Wheeler said.
F&M’s use of Laserfiche has evolved along with the bank, empowering staff to innovate the way they do business while remaining compliant with industry regulations, and protecting client information and assets.
“Laserfiche is a critical way in which we deliver to our auditors, to our community, to our employees and, most importantly, to our clients.”
— Morgan Wheeler, Business Intelligence Manager and Vice President at F&M Bank
Learn more about how to invest in a Laserfiche solution today.
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