Every business’s day-to-day operations can be broken down to its compromising tasks and communications. While changes in the organization may cause a rift in the system, most of these daily processes – also called workflows – are routine and stay rather consistent despite outside disruptions or changes.
When businesses go beyond just performing these actions, and design new strategies or deploy innovative technologies to enhance their operations, they can achieve a higher level of efficiency and accuracy in business processes, while saving valuable resources. One of the best ways to achieve those goals is with workflow automation.
Read on to learn what workflow automation is, and how designing new workflows can improve business processes across the enterprise.
What is workflow automation?
Workflow automation is the digitization and automation of business processes to reduce manual labor and process inefficiencies. In addition, workflow design refers to the creation of these digital workflows.
When a business process has many steps, it can be difficult to eliminate bottlenecks, miscommunications and even mishandling of information. Workflow automation aids in removing human error, speeding up reviews and approvals, as well as providing insight into how you can improve these workflows going forward.
What types of workflows can be automated?
There are a few things to consider before your first workflow design. Although any workflow initially designed to require multiple, manual steps are strong candidates, below are a few examples of processes that can benefit from automation:
Filing, renaming or making changes to a document
Reviewing and approving document changes
Notifying others when a change to a document has occurred
What does the best workflow automation software do?
A workflow automation software solution should improve productivity, consistency and transparency across the enterprise when you use it to design new or improved workflows. When considering workflow automation, look for a solution that can:
Route documents in response to content creation or status updates
Provide functionality to notify stakeholders of changes to or the creation of documents, as well as automatic filing capabilities.
Extend automation across departments and integrate with existing applications
Automate complex processes like vendor and contract management, invoice processing, travel and expense management and records management.
Integrate with third-party and legacy systems for the seamless flow of information across the enterprise.
Enable real-time editing and monitoring access to documents, workflows and reports via laptop, desktop or mobile devices.
Monitor, report and analyze business processes
Provide reporting dashboards that enable process managers to view each step of a workflow to eliminate bottlenecks and improve processes over time.
Offer the capability to present users with a full history of all business process steps related to a document in the workflow.
Provide a customized workflow designer for building a business process automation solution for every need
Enable information extraction from external sources, such as PDFs or digital forms, for automated decision-making and process updates.
Workflow automation is an important step in an organization’s digital transformation. By optimizing processes across departments, businesses can save valuable resources while improving operational speed, accuracy and transparency both internally and externally.
Colleges and universities have always been at the forefront of imagining change. And King’s University College, an affiliate of Western University Canada, is no exception — having leveraged technology to navigate shifts in learning, culture, technology and student expectations, the college has relied on student success as its guide.
In recent years, the college recognized a need to become more digitally driven to improve collaboration across departments and provide more responsive services to students. Using Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM) to digitize student forms and automate business processes in various departments across campus, King’s University College completely changed the way that departments communicate with each other and with students. This digital transformation prioritized student needs over time-intensive paperwork and manual processes. With the increased efficiency, King’s continued to provide excellent service to its applicants while managing a 49% increase in applications. In addition, King’s recruited more qualified students by increasing its admission requirement from 75% to 79%. With the higher average, more students were successful and retention increased over all years.
One Solution for Digital Document Management, Electronic Forms and Process Automation
Founded in 1954, King’s University College prides itself on maintaining internationally recognized academic programming, comprehensive student services and outstanding faculty, all while keeping class sizes small so that students receive the best possible education. In 2011, King’s began to look for a system to digitize student files, giving the departments a better way to manage student information and align the student experience with the world-class education for which the college was known.
With the help of Ricoh Canada, one of the college’s workplace technology solution providers, King’s University College implemented Laserfiche, starting in Enrolment Services.
“The initial idea was to have files stored electronically,” said King’s University College Associate Registrar Tracy Cunningham. “Although our campus is fairly compact, many of the student service departments are spread throughout different buildings. There was a lot of singular paper files moving between one office or another, making it difficult to track down at times.”
More departments — including academic counselling services offered by the Academic Dean’s Office — soon followed, digitizing their student files as well. The electronic access was a boon to King’s efficiency and reduced the risk of lost documents while en route to other buildings or departments. With institutional records newly digitized, staff looked for more ways to deliver a more modern, streamlined experience to students.
After attending the Laserfiche Empower conference, a group of King’s department leaders were inspired to explore the functionality of Laserfiche Forms. With Ricoh’s help, and over the span of just a few months, Enrolment Services was able to replace all paper admissions forms with electronic ones created in Laserfiche, and eliminated manual routing and other repetitive, manual tasks using Laserfiche business process automation.
“Everything is managed electronically in Laserfiche,” said Admissions Coordinator and Liaison Robin Ellis. “Admissions letters are automatically sent out to the student and all documents are archived in Laserfiche. We’re also able to go back and audit the workflows, to see what actions were taken and when. We saw what was possible at the conference, and just kept coming up with more ideas from there.”
“The King’s team has had a clear vision for using digital transformation to enhance the student experience since they began working with Ricoh Canada over five years ago,” said Eric Fletcher, VP of Marketing for Ricoh Canada. “Their initiatives have since gone beyond storage and retrieval, and we have been excited to partner with them to implement innovative electronic forms, online student services and integrations that give King’s students and employees access to the data and processes they need to be successful.”
Student studying on tablet pc
Building a Future-Ready Institution
Since COVID-19 forced many organizations to shift to remote work, King’s has found further value in Laserfiche beyond improved efficiency.
“We ended up exceeding our enrolment goal this year, and I honestly don’t know how we could have managed admissions through a pandemic — with everyone working from home — without Laserfiche,” said Ellis. “We couldn’t have timed it better. The admissions form went live this year, and we were able to use it for this fall semester.”
“In March, our whole world changed — we were at the peak of our admissions cycle when we suddenly had to do everything online,” added Cunningham. “Fortunately, we put our summer academic orientation — which all our first years go through — online. We created one-on-one course counselling sessions allowing new-to-King’s students the opportunity to meet with a counsellor and follow along on a Laserfiche form as we went through it with them. Copies were automatically emailed to students and routed to their folders. Having all these Laserfiche processes in place helped us provide a user-friendly experience for students. The feedback of students was excellent. Our personal approach online was supported by the Laserfiche form as well as the fast delivery of their registration and timetable documents.”
Quickly Adapting to Change
King’s benefited from having implemented digital solutions for admissions before the pandemic hit, however, staff continue to find new uses for Laserfiche even as employees continue to work from home, and faculty and students have transitioned to remote learning.
For example, Information Technology Services (ITS) used a Laserfiche form to securely distribute account information for a recently rolled out VoIP-based phone system, to avoid having to email individual passwords to staff. In addition, the ITS team was also able to quickly deploy a form that gave instructors a central place to sign up for webinars on pedagogy and curriculum when professors were faced with moving their courses online within days as a result of COVID. Pulling from the college’s authentication system, users are verified before they get access to these forms.
“Being able to authenticate makes a big difference that has saved ITS a lot of time,” said Systems Analyst Sheldon Lopes.
Other student-facing processes that have been transformed by Ricoh and Laserfiche include scholarship applications, which previously required students to conduct research scattered in different databases and submit duplicate paperwork if they wanted to apply for multiple scholarships. Today, an integration with Western University’s PeopleSoft ERP system enables the enrollment management team to manage the flow of information and pre-populate Laserfiche Forms with existing student data. The form creates a centralized experience for students to search scholarships by keyword, returning the scholarships for which the student is qualified. If the same information or documentation is required for multiple scholarships, the student only needs to enter or upload it once, and it is routed to the relevant scholarship applications. Once a decision is made on the scholarship, the integration enables an immediate update to the student’s information in PeopleSoft.
“This form is phenomenal, and really easy for students and staff,” said Ellis. “Laserfiche automatically sends scholarship information to the student finance office, and students can be automatically emailed if they receive a scholarship. It’s been a win-win for everyone.” With the new scholarship form, the number of student applications skyrocketed. In the past, King’s had difficulty having students apply. With this new success, King’s will look to Laserfiche to find more ways to automate the process.
Leveraging the Ricoh team’s knowledge and experience with Laserfiche has made a significant impact in how students interact with King’s, which may be most evident in the academic counseling department.
“We had students emailing our team with academic questions — and oftentimes they would email many members of our team with the same question,” said Academic Data and Operations Coordinator Thomas Gray. “As a result, response times were slow and inquiries were difficult to track.”
The academic counseling team worked with Ricoh Canada to develop an inquiry submission form in Laserfiche. Now, students submit the form with their question and it is automatically triaged to a specific team member based on student information in King’s student database that is automatically populated in Laserfiche Forms.
“This enabled us to manage the workload and improve our student service,” Gray added. “King’s also has students from across Canada and around the world. We found that international students can connect to us and communicate seamlessly through Laserfiche Forms.”
The academic counseling department also collected and analyzed process information and reporting dashboards created using Laserfiche Forms to inform decision making. They were able to identify certain inquiries as more common than others, enabling them to better allocate resources toward responding to those inquiries. The team also noticed the times during which students preferred to contact them, and as such adjusted the department’s hours to better accommodate student schedules. The impact of insuring that inquiries are only received once, and immediately are directed to the right person was huge. The change in office hours was applauded publicly by the King’s University College Student Council as a result of the students’ appreciation.
Planning for the Future
King’s use of Laserfiche and Ricoh team support has facilitated a campus-wide digital transformation, which aims to enable King’s to adapt and respond to change, facilitate ongoing improvement and maintain the flow of communication.
“Digital transformation is letting people break down the digital siloes that they didn’t know existed. We know that we have one true data source, and we can truly share information. We’ve seen a reduction in error rates that comes with data entry, and don’t have to worry about what information is the most updated.”
—Manager of Infrastructure and Digital Pedagogies David Thuss.
“It helps us communicate as a campus in real time,” added Cunningham. “Laserfiche has helped us function faster, more collaboratively, and has positively affected our student retention.”
Since 2012, King’s has increased its applications, its admissions average and its student retention. The shining achievement is an increase of 15% in student enrolment this year in the midst of a pandemic. With the majority of universities in the region seeing a decrease in enrolment and many smaller institutions (like King’s) facing financial difficulties including deficits and staff reductions, King’s has been able to achieve significant milestones through its Laserfiche initiatives, Ricoh partnership and digital transformation efforts.
“We are constantly looking to support students in a way that’s more efficient so we can focus on program planning or retention work,” said Gray. “We can use our time more wisely, and do more meaningful work. This meaningful work creates an enriching experience for all of our community-students, staff and faculty.”
The Papua New Guinea Department of Education (DOE) created a completely digital Requisition Task Management System using Laserfiche Forms. Modernizing the formerly paper- and manual task-driven process was a significant step in the department’s digital transformation journey, which expedited purchase requisitions and shortened the time it took to get approval to purchase essential supplies, services and resources for the department.
“As we are such a large organization, processing claims and funding requests was formerly a highly manual and time-consuming process,” said Papua New Guinea DOE Assistant Secretary Thomas Podarua. “Laserfiche is a valuable technological tool, helping us take control and streamline our many business processes so that we can dedicate more resources to addressing the education needs of the nation.”
Since implementing Laserfiche, the DOE continues to digitize and automate additional business processes, reclaiming time for staff to focus on the department’s mission of improving the quality and participation in the educational system at a national and local level.
Tackling Complex Processes Through Digital Transformation
The DOE initially implemented Laserfiche in 2019 as its primary document management system. As the organization looked to modernize core business processes, DOE information communication technology and procurement staff learned that Laserfiche Forms could help streamline and simplify some of the DOE’s most complex business processes, starting with purchase requisitions.
Prior to implementing Laserfiche, purchase requisition applications were paper forms passed between department heads to higher officials for review. Covering a wide range of parameters and categories, these forms served the entire organization, reaching the highest authority of the DOE for final approval and sanctioning of funding claims. The approval process often took several months and could take up to a year due to a dependence on paper and manual tasks. Additionally, the risk of the paper forms getting misplaced or incorrectly filed was high, and individual requisitions were impossible to track with very little capacity for follow-up by the original requesting officers.
The DOE worked with its Laserfiche solution provider, Digitec ICT, to develop the new Requisition Task Management System with the goal of digitizing and automating requests submitted from various organizational units.
“This was a very complicated business process involving a number of claims categories, with a different workflow for each one,” said Podarua. “We needed a single system that was granular enough to handle these complexities for the entire organization on the front end and back end.”
All employees can now submit purchase requisition applications through a Laserfiche electronic form. Once submitted, requests are automatically routed to the relevant business unit based on variables such as different claims categories. Requisition applications are reviewed, approved or rejected by the relevant personnel, and all documentation is managed in the Laserfiche repository.
The DOE took its digitization efforts further by automating the correspondence request process with Laserfiche Forms. Previously, correspondence requests often took months to complete and were difficult to monitor, requiring a substantial amount of paper. A dedicated Laserfiche Forms process captures a wide range of details related to correspondence, including relevant dates, responses and personnel involved, to optimize how each case is monitored and tracked, sending automated notifications to project managers upon completion of every major task. Checks for approved claims are also issued through a dedicated Laserfiche Form, creating an end-to-end request and approval solution for the department’s needs.
One Solution with Benefits Organization-Wide
Since deploying the new Requisition Task Management System, the DOE has taken a major step in its digital transformation journey. In addition to modernizing the experience for staff who no longer need to complete and submit applications on paper, the DOE improved accountability: Deadlines are assigned to each task, and the original requester can now monitor the status of their requisition application. The DOE built on the success of its first Laserfiche Forms process by digitizing correspondence requests, and now issuing checks for approved claims through Laserfiche. Instead of taking months to resolve, correspondence requests can now be processed within two weeks.
The DOE’s Requisition Task Management System also generates automated reports that the DOE can use to evaluate the progress of tasks between departments, identify bottlenecks and make strategic decisions about process tasks and resources. The organization is developing automated business processes using Laserfiche to streamline and manage school registration, query management for instructors and for duty travel requests.
“Digital transformation is especially important for organizations in the education sector which often face underfunding and understaffing obstacles,” said Nirmal Singh, CEO of Digitec ICT. “The ease of implementation and flexibility of the Laserfiche system really helps streamline costs and productivity while supporting the broad educational efforts of the DOE.”
The DOE continues to optimize its processes and find new areas for digital transformation. To date, the organization has significantly reduced the turnaround time for requisition tasks, with most requests processed within a month. This has enhanced interdepartmental collaboration, improved project management organization-wide and saved valuable time and resources, which the DOE can redirect toward its commitment to improving the quality and delivery of education throughout Papua New Guinea.
The fast-changing economic landscape of the credit union industry has highlighted the importance for firms to leverage technology to meet customer needs.
Many credit unions that rely on legacy systems built around proprietary technology and manual processes have found it challenging to maintain and attract new members and stay ahead of the competition. Committed to putting its members first and continuously improving its service offerings, Dakotaland Federal Credit Union (“Dakotaland”) — a full-service, not-for-profit financial cooperative — has challenged the status quo, transforming traditional paper-based workflows to digitally transform its business. In 2004, the firm implemented a Laserfiche electronic document management system and has since expanded its use across its departments, while continuing to explore new ways to drive efficiency throughout the organization.
Dakotaland started with just 10 members in Huron, South Dakota, in 1935. In 2020, celebrating its 85th anniversary, the firm spans across 11 branches and serves nearly 40,000 members in 46 states. This growth further underscored the need to build more automated business processes in order to streamline information sharing and accelerate collaboration. “With Laserfiche, we can develop and assign tasks regardless of location, share that information easily across branches and automate notifications, and know exactly where we are in the process,” said Gina Hansen, vice president of product development at Dakotaland.
Additionally, increased regulatory burden, and a growing expectation of incorporating advanced technology solutions, have all presented opportunities for Dakotaland to acquire other small institutions to help these firms align their services with the evolving industry landscape. With the help of Laserfiche’s customizable technology solutions, Dakotaland has been able to continue providing the best possible service to its current member base while also growing its business.
Boosting Operational Efficiency Firm-wide With Electronic Document Management
Before implementing Laserfiche, Dakotaland’s information storage took the form of five rooms stacked with filing cabinets. The team realized it needed to store documents electronically to save space and avert document loss, while addressing recordkeeping requirements enforced by different regulatory bodies. These needs led Dakotaland to select Laserfiche for its robust electronic records management and automated workflow capabilities.
“Regulators and examiners expect us to document everything, requiring us to show proof of the firm’s work,” Hansen said. “Laserfiche helped us present all our data — including all mandatory details — in a format that leaves no room for error.”
The Laserfiche implementation enabled Dakotaland to digitize its records, while preserving record integrity and simplifying compliance processes. The efficiency driven by the Laserfiche initiative spurred the expansion of Laserfiche’s use in other projects aimed at improving the end-user experience and creating a stronger operational infrastructure across departments, including human resources, IT, insurance, mortgage, and more.
“Today, we heavily rely on Laserfiche for almost all our day-to-day operations, automating nearly 250 running workflows and almost 100 active forms processes,” Hansen said. “I do not believe there is any part of our organization that is not using Laserfiche in some capacity. While some forms and workflows are simple routing to logically file documents, others are utilizing the report feature to provide tracking ability, and some automate more complex processes such as our new hire or vendor management tracking process.”
Business Advancements Driven by Human Resource Innovation
While all departments within Dakotaland use Laserfiche in some shape or form, one department that has harnessed the great values of digital transformation is human resources.
Multiple teams across different departments are impacted whenever an employee is hired or terminated, or moves to a new department. To keep employees and teams informed, Dakotaland used Laserfiche to create an end-to-end solution to process employee and candidate records, and combat information loss. The platform streamlines the workflow through a new-hire checklist, comprising of analyzing applications, processing forms, sharing the database with the supervisors, helping them classify the applications, and developing a comprehensive pool of interview candidates. By automating the HR processes, the firm is able to save countless hours — allowing teams across a multitude of departments to focus on more client-facing services that require a human touch.
Most recently, the firm also used Laserfiche to automate a key process for its now-virtual Employee Enrichment Day — a team-building program, where the firm engages in activities that enhance staff connection and give employees an opportunity to learn about each other. During this day, the team works on a spotlight commemoration developed and assigned to the staff in Laserfiche Forms with questions directed to the respective personalities of the employees. The answers then develop a quiz that goes back to all employees, and within that process, the team uses Forms to analyze and file the answers. Automating the process with Laserfiche saves the firm around 10 to 15 hours, analyzing the scores of more than 160 employees in one day.
Technology Guiding the “New Normal”
COVID-19 has compelled firms across different industries to challenge their technological capacities and reevaluate their resources. When the pandemic first hit, more than 30 team members at Dakotaland were deployed to work remotely within a week — enabling the firm to fully rely on its digital repository of data and its automated workflows. The seamless transition enforced business continuity at Dakotaland, allowing for uninterrupted services to its members, even in an unpredictable environment.
One of the biggest hurdles to adopting a new system can be identifying areas that need improvement and processes that can be streamlined. The management at Dakotaland takes pride in driving a thorough observation across the firm to determine loopholes and encourage innovation that can help avoid system failures and boost operational competency. With support from the executive team, the firm leverages its Laserfiche champions, who lead the technology shift across different teams and help them adopt new solutions. These champions play a critical role in training employees about the new processes and identifying unique ways in which Laserfiche can be customized to further enhance productivity and maximize the firm’s investment in Laserfiche technology.
“There are always new challenges and concerns that the credit union industry has to address,” Hansen said. “However, our confidence in Laserfiche’s capacity has encouraged us to identify and resolve any technology challenges upfront and continue to enhance our competitive edge in the industry. I am excited to see what innovation is in store for our collaboration and how we can collectively revolutionize the credit union space.”
• New account opening process depended on paper forms and direct mail
• Legacy new account opening process could take from three to seven days
• Difficulty tracking activities taken on documents resulted in challenges with audit preparation
SOLUTION
• Accelerated new account opening process from one week down to 30 minutes
• Simplified audit preparation
• 40,000 hours of annual time savings
An independent investment advisory firm that provides financial consulting services to more than 4,000 households with approximately $2 billion in assets under management needed a way to expedite client services.
The firm sought out document management technology to automate its new account opening process. The legacy process was paper-based, requiring the firm to prepare stacks of paper forms and individually mail them between advisors, a client service representative, the firm’s cashiering department, the client and the custodian. This typically took three to seven days and often delayed important client transactions.
“New account documents are extremely time sensitive. At times, we would have to interrupt advisors during meetings to get a signature,” said the firm’s IT director. “We were looking for a paperless system with efficient workflow, SEC and FINRA compliance and a strong integration capability.”
Accelerating New Account Opening from a Week to 30 Minutes
After a demonstration of Laserfiche software, the firm’s IT team felt that Laserfiche’s configurable workflow tools could easily address their operational needs.
To automate account opening, the firm integrated Laserfiche with DocuSign, its Tamarac customer relationship management (CRM) system and Laser App. By integrating these systems, client paperwork can be reviewed, signed and finalized in under half an hour:
Laserfiche pulls the new client contact record from Tamarac CRM and routes it to Laser App.
Laser App automatically populates an electronic form with the client’s account information.
The system automatically identifies who should receive the form next and routes it to the client service representative for review.
The applicable advisors electronically sign the form using DocuSign.
The custodian and client each receive a copy of the form for final sign-off.
Compared to the legacy system, this new process has generated a week in time savings. The process is not only quick, but enhances personnel accountability from start to finish.”
“If a document that requires review sits for more than 24 hours, the system emails a reminder to the responsible person,” said the IT director. “If the same document sits for more than 72 hours, the system emails that person’s boss.”
Creating Comprehensive SEC and FINRA Compliance
Improving operations was only part of the firm’s information management overhaul. The firm also needed comprehensive compliance functionality to meet the strict standards of its industry.
“The SEC and FINRA require that firms use a certain type of document management technology, such as unalterable database software,” said the IT director. “Our research showed that Laserfiche’s technology is not only the most flexible, but also offers the option to use numerous add-on features.”
One feature that simplifies audit preparation is Laserfiche’s event log capability, which tracks the creation, deletion and modification of documents.”
“Our system logs every possible interaction with a document,” said the IT director. “Even if a document is deleted, it is still available in the Laserfiche repository and we can see who modified it.”
The firm’s DocuSign integration also verifies the identity of a document’s signer. Detailed security questions, social security verification and access code protection maintain the integrity of client transactions and prevent fraud.
“It’s pretty astounding when you consider the time savings,” said the IT director. “We estimate that Laserfiche saves us up to one hour per document. “Given the firm’s estimated average of 165 documents processed per day, Laserfiche produces an annual time savings of roughly 41,415 hours.”
A short drive from the Rocky Mountains and some of Canada’s most postcard-worthy national parks sits Chinook’s Edge School Division. The largest rural school division in the province of Alberta, Chinook’s Edge has an established reputation for staff and student wellness, and is on a mission to engage every student in meaningful learning. Although temporarily put on hold during the COVID-19 pandemic, field trips to the mountains and beyond — with opportunities for world-class hiking, outdoor adventures and skiing — are an integral part of achieving that mission.
With 11,000 students and 43 schools in its division, Chinook’s Edge uses Laserfiche to streamline its field trip management processes, maintaining the integrity of its records as well as supporting its risk management for field trips.
School Division Goes Digital to Improve Risk Management
Parents and guardians voiced their frustrations with the overwhelming amount of paperwork required to provide consent every time a student participated in a field trip, which could be more than 10 times a year per child. The forms included a guardian consent form, medical consent form and health consent form — each of which required duplicate information, such as student name, address and guardian name.
For teachers, the internal request forms to create and plan a field trip were long and detailed. All field trip planning was performed manually, generated mountains of paperwork and required school staff to spend hours of time to coordinate a single trip.
Principals and members of the Chinook’s Edge School Division Board of Education were also concerned about legal liabilities due the rugged nature of numerous field trips and potential natural disasters, as well as a lack of conformity in parent sign-off processes. For example, if a form was forgotten, a guardian might write their consent on a napkin and hand it over to the school. Risk management became an increasing concern, exacerbated by skyrocketing insurance costs.
Chinook’s Edge looked to Laserfiche to automate field trip management, streamline approval processes and enhance the integrity of its records. Jeremy Regehr and his team at Inspiris, a Laserfiche solution provider, developed an end-to-end digital solution that would reduce the work required for parents, teachers and administrators while enabling improved transparency and accountability. All guardian and medical consent forms were consolidated into one user-friendly electronic form, which could be pre-filled for subsequent field trips for the same student. The solution was configured to integrate with Rycor, an online payments software, to simplify payment collection and processing, and PowerSchool, a student information system, to ensure student data is automatically updated.
Digital Transformation Expands Staff Capacity and Student Horizons
In the three-month initial rollout of the new field trip management process, more than 150 field trips had been completed — with over 11,000 students and 18,000 parents or guardians. By the end of the first year of implementation, a total of 758 field trips were processed. The digitized solution with Laserfiche produced 10,697 emails, saving 57,000 pieces of paper. With 70 cases of paper saved, Chinook’s Edge reduced 1,750 kilograms of carbon emissions in one school year.
With much of the workload now completed through an automated process, the division can monitor all trips with just three staff members, who are easily able to do so while fulfilling their other daily responsibilities.
“The new Laserfiche field trip program has been a huge asset to us in the school,” said Leanne Stickland, administrative support in finance for Innisfail Middle School. “It’s quick and easy for both the school and parents. And even better, we don’t have boxes of paper to store at the end of the year.”
“It’s just that easy,” added Susan Roy, FOIP coordinator and treasurer.
The time parents and teachers spend preparing for field trips has been reduced dramatically. What was once eight to 10 pages of paper per trip, per student is now completed via an automatically generated email link. The four hours teachers took to prep for each field trip now takes an average of 30 minutes, and what originally took 30 minutes for parents was reduced to just one minute. All in all, teachers across the division saved an estimated 3,250 total hours, equating to at least $100,000 in cost savings.
Centralizing all field trip information helped teachers identify opportunities to diversify outdoor learning experiences, as well as inspire ideas for new field trips. Laserfiche helps provide oversight for members of the Board of Education, and makes it easy for them to see approvals. On top of that, administrators and teachers use Laserfiche to verify whether all legal and logistical requirements are met and that consent forms are collected before students board the buses. If a natural emergency, such as a wildfire, were to occur, all field trip participant information would be available at a moment’s notice, so that all participants could be easily accounted for and safely evacuated.
Inspiris owner, Regehr, reiterates, “The ROI on the process was as close to instantaneous as you can get. The improvements to efficiency for all teachers and administrative staff was apparent the moment we helped roll out the process— and feedback confirmed that. When I heard the principals exclaim they could sleep at night because they understood the reduced liability, it was obvious to me that the process had already paid for itself.”
Making Honor Roll for Saving Time and Money
Even before Chinook’s Edge set out on the adventure to automate its field trip management process, the organization aimed to streamline processes across the division.
“The finance department had a process to collect eight different documents, twice a year from each of our 41 schools. It was a time-consuming task and often required a staff member to search through emails, open attachments, rename and save files,” says Paul Matsune, core services manager for Chinook’s Edge School Division Technology Services department. Now the forms are easily accessible online for staff division-wide.
The provincial government requires that student report cards are uploaded as individual files, with each student’s unique number. With over 11,000 students, this was a time-intensive undertaking to do several times a year. Laserfiche Forms and Quick Fields — a high-volume capture tool that automates document import, classification and indexing — helped save over 1,000 hours a year for administrative support staff on this task alone.
Other daunting administrative tasks for the Chinook’s Edge People Services team of two have nearly been eliminated thanks to Laserfiche, with automated processes created for personal leave, maternity leave and ID card requests, among others. A dashboard was created for payroll and HR to be notified of employee changes. If a coworker is sick, it’s easy for another staff member to see what tasks need to be done.
The centralization of administrative work hasn’t just saved time across the division, it has also made it easier to reallocate funding and minimize overtime worked. Like any organization on a digital transformation journey, Chinook’s Edge School Division is still seeking new ways to nurture efficiency. For instance, its accounts payable department aims to soon begin using Laserfiche to automate processes such as credit card reconciliation and expense claims.
Laserfiche has touched nearly every stakeholder at Chinook’s Edge, including teachers, staff members, students and families, principals and other division leaders. The optimized processes, improved access to information, reduced liability and increased satisfaction of parents all add up to support the school’s vision to help students achieve success as compassionate and innovative global citizens.
In the past year, Jones College began an initiative aimed at improving the student experience by bringing five previously separate departments (financial aid, admissions, records, recruiting and the student success center) under one umbrella. Using Laserfiche Cloud, the college centralized the five teams’ documents and processes, giving staff and students access to forms and information online, and streamlining key student services.
These digital transformation initiatives have enabled Jones College to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic and various government mandates, even as the college saw a 15% jump in enrollment during the summer of 2020 over summer 2019
Moving Enrollment Management to the Cloud
Jones College is a public community college in Ellisville, Mississippi, that was established in 1911.
“As a community college, the impact we have in our society is big — we offer high-quality education at a lower price,” said Paul Spell, vice president of enrollment management. “We’ve been here 100 years, and there have been a lot of changes through the years. We have to continue to show value to students and to our community, and to do that we have to think outside the box.”
As part of the organization’s commitment to providing the best possible experience to students, Jones College President Dr. Jesse Smith looked for opportunities for modernization and new efficiencies. In 2018, the college embarked on a mission to bring together five disparate teams — financial aid, admissions, records, recruiting and the student success center — under one department called enrollment management.
“The goal was to have students go to one admissions counselor who can get their paperwork processed and guide students through the enrollment process in a centralized way,” said Spell. Previously, staff and students had to physically walk paperwork across campus to get it to the right people, which was not only inconvenient and time-consuming, but also introduced the risk of information loss. “To centralize the experience, these five departments had to work together as a team, and Laserfiche really enabled that.”
The college turned to Information Consultants, a Laserfiche solution provider, to implement Laserfiche Cloud and help to map out the newly formed enrollment management department’s processes. Information Consultants was able to implement Laserfiche within a week, as a result of the cloud deployment.
“We chose to use Laserfiche Cloud because we wanted less of a hassle managing servers and software here on campus,” Spell explained. “We don’t have a lot of IT people, and we are always looking to be as efficient as possible. On top of that, we want our staff to be able to access documents from the office or home — or anywhere — easily.”
“The enrollment management department really took Laserfiche and ran with it,” added Pierre Smith, workflow specialist at Information Consultants (ICONS). “Jones College and its embrace of digital transformation using Laserfiche Cloud is proof that a 100-year-old institution can continue to innovate, and deliver a modern experience for staff and students.”
New Opportunities for Efficiency
Initially, the enrollment management department implemented Laserfiche as a digital filing cabinet, and began scanning paperwork into the Laserfiche repository. Staff quickly saw, however, that capturing information digitally from the beginning of the process would eliminate the need for paper and open up greater opportunity for transparency, efficiency and ongoing optimization through business process automation. The COVID-19 pandemic and stay-at-home orders further highlighted the need to transition to a more digital workplace.
“Everything was put on hold when COVID-19 hit,” Spell said. “When we were able to come back, we realized that paper processes were just inefficient. We decided to have a ‘digital day,’ essentially a deadline for us to go digital with everything. This was all during the pandemic, and we were able to go digital in about a week.”
Spell introduced Laserfiche Forms to the financial aid team. The team’s responsibilities, including managing processes related to grants, fee waivers, scholarships and other financial assistance programs, made it an ideal candidate for transitioning to Laserfiche electronic forms and automated workflows. Within two weeks, the financial aid team had created more than 30 online forms to replace their paper counterparts, including the form to validate students’ tax status, income verification and others needed to qualify for financial aid like FAFSA.
“For financial aid programs, we need to collect and verify a lot of information, which previously was done manually on paper and could take days to weeks,” said Jones College Director of Financial Aid Kari Dedwylder. “Now, students don’t have to come to the office in person. They can access the form they need and get it filled out in less than 10 minutes. We can also leverage electronic signatures which is helpful since a lot of people don’t have a printer, and verifying information electronically is so easy to get done while also meeting the needs of the college, the financial aid organizations and the federal department.”
The college is also working to digitize the graduation application, a long document which students previously had to fill out and physically take around campus for advisors to sign it. Another opportunity for automation is the process of accepting transcripts, which have traditionally come through the mail or brought in by hand. With a new, automated workflow in Laserfiche, the college can automatically email students to tell them whether they have been accepted.
“Communication with our students is huge, and something we’re always looking to enhance,” Spell said. “Through Laserfiche, we can effectively build communication into our processes without having to manually email each student.”
With Laserfiche helping to centralize information and standardize and automate processes, the enrollment management department now offers a more streamlined experience for students. Meanwhile, Laserfiche has improved accountability and trust among the five teams that were merged to form the department.
“Laserfiche not only helped with digitizing our paperwork and processes, but it’s also helped with our teamwork,” Spell said. “Now, we have processes we can see; we have better accountability.”
Spell estimates that the Jones College’s Laserfiche initiative has saved the institution about $30,000 to $40,000 in staff hours, or about three to four months of work for the department. Over the summer, enrollment was up 15% over the summer of the previous year and — during a pandemic and without adding additional staff — the enrollment management department was able to manage the larger workload due to their efforts to streamline processes using Laserfiche.
“When the pandemic hit, we were planning for lower enrollment,” Spell said. “We had transitioned learning to online, and administrative processes were online thanks to Laserfiche. Over the summer, though, enrollment was up while other community colleges have taken double-digit drops. People don’t know what’s going to happen, but the digital processes and automations have taken the burden off of our staff as we navigate these changes.”
Building on a Digital-First Approach for Student Success
The Jones College team continues to look for new opportunities to leverage Laserfiche for business process automation and improved efficiency.
“This is only our first year using Laserfiche, and all I can think about is how much more streamlined we’re going to make these processes,” Dedwylder added. “Right now, we still have some students who are used to the old processes but, being a two-year college, we’ll have new students who will be introduced to the digital forms right away. Our students are going to expect this digital experience.”
Spell already has plans to enhance existing forms with auto-fill functionality so that there is even less manual data entry for students, and to integrate Laserfiche with the college’s other applications including the student information system (SIS). Some future projects that are not student-facing include a Laserfiche form that keeps a log of all of the activities required for student admission, so that admissions counselors can quickly see what a student has completed and what paperwork has been submitted.
“As a community college, the services we offer are incredibly valuable,” Spell said. “Many students are from rural or underserved communities. The main part of our job is people — the technology solutions that can make us more efficient and improve our processes help to keep us focused on that.”
• Paperwork after courtroom or police station visits took time away from client service • Manual processes caused delays in billing and case completion • Compliance and governance practices added time and burden of manual tasks on employees
RESULTS
• Less time spent on manual routing of information and data entry • Faster, more responsive client service • Increased accountability and transparency across the firm • Reduction in administrative costs
A general practice law firm located in the United Kingdom offers a broad range of services across many types of U.K. law — such as crime, personal injury, property, and commercial — and needed a way to create clear accountability and support compliance for each litigator’s daily activities.
Helping Firm-wide Compliance
Prior to using Laserfiche, lawyers would fill out a 40-page form after courtroom or police station visits, creating a cumbersome and time-consuming process for both the lawyers and clients, as well as delays in billing and case completion.
“The compliance wasn’t there and the money wasn’t there,” said the firm’s operations manager. “The starting point for us was to deal with that particular issue of ensuring that when someone went to the police station, the paperwork actually got to us and got to us on time, instead of two weeks later.”
Laserfiche’s advanced electronic forms capabilities were an attractive solution for improving processing times and creating compliance controls. The company selected Laserfiche to bring information accessibility and accountability to the firm’s client and administrative processes.
Taking the Leg Work Out of Legal Work
The firm began by implementing mobile forms within its Crime and Litigation Department. With Laserfiche Forms, litigators can now use iPads to immediately capture and update client information at police stations or courtrooms, then instantly send the information to the firm’s administrative department for end-to-end processing. Forms-based workflow and analytics automatically track litigators’ court attendances and time reporting, simplifying accountability and providing more accurate data for billing.
“Laserfiche gave us a fantastic vehicle for that,” said the operations manager. “The Laserfiche system could capture information from the client, which is more and more important from a data protection point of view now. There was accountability. Things weren’t just going to disappear.”
Benefits include:
Solicitors can instantly and accurately capture client information on mobile devices.
Client paperwork is automatically sent from lawyers to administrative teams for processing.
Offline access to documents helps solicitors address client needs on the fly.
Police station visits, court attendances and litigator timecards are automatically tracked, creating more accurate and transparent reporting.
Administrative costs in the company’s Crime department were reduced.
“Laserfiche looks after all the typical elements of what a lawyer does,” added the operations manager. “That’s been the biggest breakthrough for us as a practice, and the most spectacular application of it for the firm as a whole.”
Contributed By: Ronnie Alderete, General Manager and Yesenia Marquez, Human Resources Coordinator, Premium Packing
Premium Packing is headquartered in Salinas, California and has offices in Stockton and the Coachella Valley. The company provides contracted labor and all related human resources administration work for companies, primarily within the agricultural and construction industries.
Most of the labor force contracted by Premium Packing is seasonal. The organization processes an average of 900-950 full time returning employees annually. Along with two sister companies, Premium Packing generates 9,000 W2s every year. The company had to deal with a lot of paper in order to onboard these employees at the beginning of the season and then to offboard them afterwards.
The first project that the organization tackled after implementing Laserfiche was automating this onboarding process. Premium Packing worked with their Laserfiche Solution Provider Appleby to automate this process with Laserfiche Forms and Workflow, resulting in processing time being cut in half.
“We should have automated this process sooner. Laserfiche Forms is so friendly to the person who is actually filling out the form. It is a product that both the employee and supervisor understand,” says Yesenia Marquez, Human Resources Coordinator.
The Previous Onboarding Packet Contained 14 Pages
Before automating the process with Laserfiche, any new employees hired by Premium Packing had to fill out a 14 page onboarding packet. This packet contained forms such as the I9, W4, DE4, as well as an employee handbook and various company policies and agreements. The employee had to sign and initial each page. This hiring would often take place in the field. The supervisor would bring the completed paperwork to the office where it would be reviewed for completion. Afterwards, the office clerk would enter all the information into the Famous ERP system and create a paper employee file. The I9 forms would be filed separately. One person was responsible for inputting information about all employees hired through all three office locations.
Every year, the company goes through internal audits. Every employee file had to be looked through and documents that were ready to be purged had to be shredded. This purging took specially hired staff to perform.
The New Onboarding Process is Completely Digital
Supervisors now carry IPads in the field. Any new employee fills out information in a Laserfiche form. If the employee is a returning employee, then some of the data in the form is prepopulated from the Famous database. This person filling out the form can switch from English to Spanish by clicking one button.
Onboarding is done by employees filling out an electronic form.
Once the form is submitted, it is sent to the human resources coordinator who checks it for completeness. After the review, Laserfiche Workflow populates a PDF template with all of the data submitted through the form.
Workflow populates a PDF document template with all the data submitted through the form.
This PDF packet is then sent to the employee for signatures using OneSpan.
Documents, such as the W4, are signed through OneSpan.
Once the employee signs the document, it is returned to Laserfiche and stored in an employee folder. The I9 is stored in a separate folder to make audits simpler. Access to each folder is customized so that only approved individuals can see the employee information.
All documents are stored in an employee’s folder in Laserfiche.
The information is then compiled in a special format for uploading into Famous.
Automating Onboarding Reduced Processing Time in Half
Automating the onboarding process reduced processing time in half. Since information is submitted through Forms, it is more complete and easy to read. The clerk does not have to re-enter everything into Famous, but can simply upload a file with all of the data included.
Audits have been simplified as documents are now easy to find. Automatic retention schedules have been applied to employee folders so that documents that are ready to be purged can be identified with one search.
While the community banking industry faces competitive pressures from larger institutions, First Choice Bank has found success in remaining true to its mission — to be “First in Speed, Service, and Solutions” for the communities it serves.
First Choice prides itself on its responsiveness, deep understanding of client needs and exceptional customer experience. These priorities have driven digital transformation across the organization, including the implementation of a Laserfiche electronic records management solution. Having used Laserfiche for almost six years, the bank has centralized and standardized records, preserved record integrity, and automated routine tasks such as classifying records so that employees can reclaim time for customer service. As a result, First Choice has seen greater efficiencies, a more modern, responsive customer and employee experience, and a stronger IT infrastructure upon which to build more automated business processes in order to support the bank’s strategic imperatives.
“In this ever-changing world, we’re given the opportunity to really open up people’s minds to the possibilities of leveraging technology — and what you can miss out on and what you lose without it,” said First Choice Bank EVP, Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Commercial Banking Lorraine Lee. “Change and technology are at the forefront of business progress, particularly in the increasingly competitive market in which community banks, like ours, operate — an industry that has not historically embraced technological change. We need to find the right solutions that work for our organization – solutions that will allow us to flexibly pivot as the world changes so that we can continue to effectively service our clients.”
Electronic Records Management: Accelerating Service Delivery and Simplifying Compliance
First Choice Bank, headquartered in Cerritos, California, has served its community since its founding in 2005. With a diverse client base of individuals and commercial clients, First Choice is a leading provider of commercial and industrial loans, loans to small businesses and other financial services that enable customers to grow, maintain strength and reach their financial goals.
As the bank grew, the First Choice team recognized the need for technology that would support staff to easily search and retrieve documents and information, while enabling the organization to set up safeguards and controls to protect client data and show compliance with regulatory requirements. First Choice worked with the Laserfiche team to implement a Laserfiche electronic records management system and build out robust processes that are scalable as needs change.
“Community banking runs on human interactions and communication, which require time and commitment,” Lee said. “We believe that technology can support us in what we need to do to serve our clients efficiently. It allows our talent to focus on more of the important things that require communication with our customers, rather than spending a lot of time performing tasks that technology can take care of.”
In addition to making client information easier to find and use, Laserfiche electronic records management system has enhanced information governance and facilitated seamless audits. In 2018, First Choice acquired another organization adding six branches with expanded geographic footprint and further realized the value of electronic records management in bringing new employees and departments into First Choice’s operations and processes.
“We get a lot of compliments from auditors and examiners about how well our files are organized — which is a huge testament to how the platform adds value to our business proposition. With the help of Laserfiche automated workflows, we are able to protect the integrity of the files — taking out any element of human error or inconsistency, so our staff can stay focused on our clients.”
—First Choice Bank EVP, Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Commercial Banking Lorraine Lee.
Keeping Business Moving
Most recently, First Choice saw the benefits of the Laserfiche initiative during the COVID-19 pandemic, during which about 70% of bank employees shifted to work from home. Using Laserfiche to access loan files and other documents has enabled the bank to continue operating with minimal disruption.
At the same time, the bank saw an influx of Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan applications from business owners looking to keep employees on payroll despite revenue losses due to the pandemic. Having immediate access to client information in their time of need has been an invaluable benefit, according to Lee.
“You see on the news that people call larger banks and they can’t get a response,” Lee said. “At community banks, we gain business by leveraging our strong asset — relationship banking — by striving for a high level of responsiveness and personal attention. When a client asks for information, we can quickly retrieve it from Laserfiche and tell them what this may mean for them, what the terms are, and give them copies of documents they need. All our clients can talk to someone individually at the bank and have their concerns addressed. In a time of uncertainty, that is really important.”
Supporting a People-First Approach with Tech
First Choice is always exploring new ways to digitally transform the organization with the goal of creating the best possible experience for clients and employees. Driven by that commitment, the team attends the annual Laserfiche Empower Conference to learn about Laserfiche’s ever-evolving capabilities and how to best implement new features and solutions.
In the coming years, First Choice plans to expand its use of Laserfiche into areas such as compliance, loan processing and loan servicing — where Laserfiche electronic forms and business process automation will assist the bank in streamlining legacy processes that are currently driven by paper forms and manual tasks.
“We want to leverage technology as much as possible, and be as efficient as possible in service of our community,” Lee said. “As a community bank, we’re very much a people business. Laserfiche is empowering us to stay true to our values while delivering top-notch service to our clients.”
