Hudson County Community College automates and accelerates business processes while enabling access for students and staff to information from anywhere.
Transcript
Hudson County Community College is located in Jersey City, New Jersey, right across the water from New York City. Serves about 8000 students a year with about 600 staff and family members. They have an award winning library and a nationally ranked culinary program with amazing kitchens set up for students and the chefs. The school experience with Laserfiche has been a breath of fresh air.
Currently, Hudson’s using it on a few different areas. The biggest area is financially because students submit a lot of documents for financial aid. So the financial aid office, we really focused on getting up and running right away. And then we branch branched out to COVID vaccination tracking for employees and staff. Hudson wanted to track employees and staff that and received the COVID vaccination and reached out to Trisha for ways to be able to track that and attach it to records to make it easier for everyone, not just submitting it, but having to track it.
And Laserfiche was the first response, one for security purposes and confidentiality for those submitting it, and then ease of use So reached out and we had that up and running in a week and a half and we rolled it out to users, adding the participants emailed them and it went into the repository and got access. And so far it’s been a pretty seamless process with them being able to connect it to people’s records.
Enter the information in colleague and information system and then look up if there are any issues. So it’s been a great resource having that ability for them to submit the vaccination forms and see it in college for human resources. The turnaround on this vaccination form was just incredibly fast from its perspective. I want you to be able to access what you need to from anywhere, and that’s totally possible with Laserfiche
So some of the challenges that Hudson has faced was obviously with the pandemic, the shift to remote workforce and the general use of paper and getting people away from that sort of area and being able to get people to understand how easy it is to use a paperless process so that as everyone returns to campus, we maintain that paperless process and keep moving forward.
Laserfiche is making the school more productive and more efficient, which helps in any departments, so we really appreciate that
The Bank of China uses Laserfiche to automate workflows, meet compliance requirements and take a modern approach to banking operations.
Transcript
The Bank of China as a group was founded in 1912 and is the second oldest bank that is still in existence. The bank is the fifth largest bank by capital in the world as of this year. And we are proud to be the most globally oriented. We have over 500 employees and our assets is over $50 billion. The bank started using Laserfiche over 10 years ago and at first, Laserfiche was used as solely a storage for old bank document files as a sort of a hard drive — it’s been over 10 years.
And when I first joined the bank about four years ago, I started looking more into the other services offered by Laserfiche and stumbled into Laserfiche’s offerings that were a lot more than just a repository for documentation management — more process management, workflow management. So that’s where I submitted the idea of paperless to the bank. We got rid of 90% of paper and also helped improve 30% of the manual work and more importantly, Laserfiche also help us meet a lot of regulatory compliance requirements.
My favorite part of Laserfiche I think is the people. Laserfiche helped the bank catch up about 15 years that we were lagging behind, especially when we are talking about paperless, you know, automating manual work. I’m Frank Chen and I’m using Laserfiche to empower Bank of China.
Located in Alberta, Canada, the County of Newell is known for its central location and dynamic and diverse economy. Recent years have brought growth to the region, including Amazon’s first renewable energy investment in the country — a 80MW solar project expected to produce enough energy to power more than 18,000 Canadian homes for a year. The Newell County government is committed to the area’s progress, continuously improving processes with an eye toward its vision statement: “to encourage and support sustainable growth and quality of life.”
This commitment recently drove a number of transformative efforts at the county, including the digitization and automation of business processes that employees and residents use on a daily basis. The county, a Laserfiche customer since 2004, has been going through processes strategically, optimizing steps using a lean project management methodology.
“We strategically approach everything that we do,” said Roberta Fernell, director of information technology at the County of Newell. “Every process or system we introduce, we want to understand how it fits, and where we may need to adjust to make some improvements. That’s why we did an organization-wide implementation of Laserfiche.”
Reimagining Records Management
Working with Laserfiche solution provider Inspiris, the County of Newell achieved a strategic priority by digitizing and centralizing information in Laserfiche. The Laserfiche platform became the foundation on which departments could build automated processes and integrate with other systems to streamline information flow throughout the organization.
“Digital transformation is a journey, an evolution in how our organization works, operates and moves forward to better serve the public,” said Joanne Wells, records management technician at the county. Departments that now use Laserfiche include:
Administration
Agricultural Services
Corporate Safety
Enforcement
Engineering Services
Finance
Fire Services
Fleet Services
Human Resources
Information Technology
Municipal Services
Planning and Development
The centralization and digitization of records has also supported the county’s commitment to open government, and compliance with Alberta’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FOIP), as well as the federal Access to Information Act and Privacy Act. The county website’s public portal removes the burden from county staff who previously had to manually pull records, which could cause delays.
“I receive a lot of internal requests for information,” said Ariana Nielsen, executive assistant at the county. “And the search capabilities of Laserfiche allow the public to find information on their own without having to wait for a response.”
Plus, Fernell added, the visibility into what documents are being downloaded enable county staff to gage what the public is interested in: “This information gives us insights into the hot topics — we might find, for instance, that we should do an educational campaign on social media because we see high interest on something particular. We’re leveraging our information in a connected way that can inform other areas of the organization.”
Reclaiming Time in Accounts Payable
As the county assessed the potential for further improvements, accounts payable came up as one process that touched multiple departments but heavily relied on manual tasks. The county re-engineered the AP process, capturing invoices digitally in the Laserfiche repository and using a Laserfiche workflow to automate the routing of information to various departments for reviews and approvals.
This transformation increased visibility of invoices across the organization, enabling the county to accelerate payments and more accurately determine cash flow. Laserfiche integrates with the county’s financial management software, Diamond, as well as its CentralSquare asset management system to create a seamless experience for employees who interact with the AP process.
“The AP process in Laserfiche is efficient and great time saver,” said Emerson Pankratz, the county’s accounting clerk. “It is very easy to enter new invoices into the system and get them to the appropriate person for coding and approvals quickly. Also, Laserfiche’s ability to recognize duplicate invoices helps stop duplicate payments and duplication of efforts.”
“We not only reduced our inaccuracy and our opportunity time — or the time that should be reduced to improve process performance — but we increased our value-added time, or the tasks we do that actually add value to the process, by 27%.”
— Roberta Fernell, director of information technology at the County of Newell
Simplifying the COR Audit Process and Enhancing Employee Experience
As the county’s success with digitization and automation projects spread, the county’s IT team began leveraging a lean methodology to prioritize projects that would have the highest impact.
The organization undergoes a Certificate of Recognition (COR) audit each year to maintain its recognition for developing health and safety programs that meet the standards established by the Alberta government. A previously arduous audit process led the county to reassess its health and safety training documentation, a critical process for the county, which requires all employees to be educated on occupational hazards, preventative measures and best practices.
“For the COR audit, we have to be able to deliver on-demand what they need,” Fernell said. “They need to know that people have received the training required to be competent in their roles, and that we as a county government are keeping them safe by providing that training.”
The IT team built a Laserfiche Form and set up document templates that enable employees to get certificates into the Laserfiche records repository with minimal data entry. The transformation resulted in a reduction of information inaccuracy — from a 58% inaccuracy rate down to below 10%. The county also built notifications into the workflow so that HR employees had visibility into the process — and Laserfiche reporting tools enable managers to view the time it takes to complete the progress, opening up further opportunity for optimization.
While the county used to see about 100 documents related to health and safety training recorded in Laserfiche per year, it now sees about 100 per quarter, thanks to the team’s optimization efforts. The end-to-end process time was also reduced from 135 days to 5.2.
“Staff members want to be recognized for the training they’ve taken,” Fernell said. “And managers need to know what training their staff has taken, or what training they need to take — to help support health and safety in the workplace, and to resource plan.”
County-wide Digital Transformation Continues
The County of Newell continues to strategically optimize processes and integrate systems with Laserfiche with the aim of providing the best possible employee and citizen experience. Major business processes that have already been automated include:
Accounts payable approvals
Corporate safety
Training documentation
County of Newell Water Project registration
Pre/post trip process
Performance reviews
IT change requests
Gravel haul cards
Inspections
Fire permits
The IT team also has significant Laserfiche projects on the horizon, including HR onboarding and offboarding, equipment rentals, expense claims and development permits.
“What impresses the County of Newell is the versatility of Laserfiche. Not only does it effectively manage county documents, applying records management, but it also offers efficiencies in the processing of documents, ways to transfer/share data between systems and methods to electronically capture data to be used for reporting and analytics.”
—Roberta Fernell, director of information technology at the County of Newell
“Laserfiche has totally changed how we operate, and how we think about operating,” said Matt Fenske, chief administrative officer at the county.
To learn more about how Laserfiche drives public sector digital transformation, schedule a demo today.
FCA Packaging designs and manufactures highly customized packaging products and solutions for major original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Following two recent acquisitions, the organization sought a solution to rebuild key business processes throughout departments. The company sought to address needs in engineering and human resources, as well as industry-specific requirements such as inventory management. Additionally, the FCA Packaging team wanted to process invoice and customer documentation with more efficiency and transparency to support company growth.
“Not only has Laserfiche helped to improve customer and vendor satisfaction, but our staff have also been able to focus more on higher-value processes,” said Sandra Lund, payroll manager at FCA Packaging. “It’s changed the way we function here and just made us so much more efficient working together as a team.”
Using Laserfiche, FCA Packaging transformed the accounts payable process — from a manual, paper driven activity to a streamlined, digital process that has accelerated response and payment times. FCA has since expanded its use of Laserfiche to manage a wide range of both internal and external processes, increasing productivity and accuracy across departments. In addition to automating business-critical processes, employees have been able to reclaim time and increase capacity, enabling the company to optimize costs while providing a high standard of service and products to an expanding client base of manufacturers around the world. “Implementing Laserfiche aligned with our core values of growth and empowerment,” said Steve Everett Jr., a president with FCA Packaging. “Our team members have been able to develop and deploy a solution that scales with us as we continue to grow organically and through acquisition.”
“Implementing Laserfiche aligned with our core values of growth and empowerment. Our team members have been able to develop and deploy a solution that scales with us as we continue to grow organically and through acquisition.”
— Steve Everett Jr, president at FCA Packaging
Buying Into Accounts Payable Transformation
Working with a long list of vendors and with over 1,000 employees across 35 locations, the FCA Packaging accounts payable team saw an opportunity to improve invoice management, which was previously a manual process using a legacy ECM system that was approaching end-of-life. Looking to improve compliance for audits, the team needed a solution that would support granular control access for accounting and financial documents, balancing both accuracy and ease of use. With the support of Laserfiche solution provider Momentum ECM, FCA found a solution in Laserfiche.
Before implementing Laserfiche, two staff members were assigned to reviewing financial statements and payment documentation manually and submitting completed invoices to stakeholders for approval. The manual process could take up to four days to complete. The updated invoice approval process now takes just five hours:
Vendors upload credit card receipts to Laserfiche for the AP team to review.
Laserfiche uploads the information, organizing it in specific file locations with granular access rights.
The streamlined process also provides an enhanced employee experience with increased accountability, while at the same time accelerating the payment cycle, improving FCA’s reputation among vendors.
“By enabling us to leverage automation and access rights for individuals, we have been able to finalize invoices more efficiently,” said Lund. “Now that we have greater visibility on our AP processes, we can respond to vendor needs more quickly with more accountability.
“In the beginning, some team members were concerned that automation would make certain roles redundant,” added Lund. “But after experiencing how the solution would free up their schedules, many employees were able to accelerate their own personal growth by taking on new projects in other departments. Laserfiche has done more than transform our operations, it has transformed the way we work as a team.”
Additionally, as a result of the Laserfiche initiative, the AP team can now quickly find invoices and other financial documents for review, simplifying the auditing process. The system has been used in a similar capacity for internal audits, as well as streamlining the overall audit process to support industry-specific OSHA documentation and ISO standards. This has further improved industry-specific safety and manufacturing management processes, allowing users to identify additional processes to manage through the digital platform. Laserfiche has provided FCA with more control over financial documents, giving specific members of the company access to the documents needed for internal and external audits to optimize the collection of this high-value data and improve turnaround and compliance.
A Full-Package Solution
After the initial success in the accounts payable department, other departments sought to automate and improve core company processes. Across 35 branches nationwide, Laserfiche has been implemented in almost every department. Laserfiche Forms help to manage processes in HR, accounts receivable, IT, staff safety and beyond. Serving more than 1,000 employees company-wide, the payroll department utilized Laserfiche to manage processes such as vacation requests and salary increases for full-time employees, helping FCA achieve substantial savings in time and resources. For example, compiling and processing sales and tax information for tax returns could take up to three days. Now, the process can be completed in four hours.
In addition to increased efficiency, Laserfiche has helped to increase accountability and for users, enabling staff to take ownership of their respective roles. Employees across all branches can manage invoices and other business-critical content, having access at any time of the day with insights on the progress of each open task. Users can use this information to identify obstacles and bottlenecks at any point of the workflow in order to streamline approval or turnaround a task overall. In an increasingly digital business environment, FCA Packaging has been able to boost efficiency and transparency company wide.
“Laserfiche has helped us to grow within our roles, take on additional projects and have a greater sense of ownership over the work we do,” Lund said. “For departments such as accounts payable, accounts receivable and payroll, our long-term goal will be to use Laserfiche as close to 100% as possible.”
To learn more about how Laserfiche can empower your organization with solutions to help you scale growth and improve the employee and vendor experience, schedule a demo today.
With its easy-to-use, no-code workflows, forms and content management offerings for both cloud and on-premises deployments, Laserfiche makes it easy for all types of teams and individuals to streamline their day-to-day processes.
Since early 2022, customers now have a faster way to innovate on everyday workplace processes with the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace, a hub for Laserfiche community members to explore solution templates from Laserfiche, its industry partners, third-party vendors and even citizen developers.
What is the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace?
The Laserfiche Solution Marketplace is a place for users to download solution templates that include pre-built forms, workflows and other resources for the Laserfiche platform. It’s also a community hub where Laserfiche users can share their owns solutions with each other. (Want to contribute? You can submit your solutions here.)
Watch the video below for a quick overview of the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace, and read on to take a deep dive into how the marketplace can help you deploy solutions faster.
While the ability to create many of these solutions exists for most Laserfiche users, it can be much easier and faster — especially for resource-strapped individuals and organizations — to use or build upon what other platform experts have already created.
What kinds of solutions are available on the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace?
Here are a few examples of the types of resources you can find on the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace:
What are the benefits of using the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace?
While the time-savings are readily apparent in the use of pre-built solutions, there are also additional benefits one can get from using the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace:
Put your ROI in overdrive: A faster start from pre-built solutions means less lead-up time to enjoy the efficiency and productivity benefits of the Laserfiche platform.
Enjoy solutions with built-in expertise: Many pre-built solutions are created by industry leaders and already have best practices baked into them.
Democratize big ideas: Enable employees across departments and disciplines to take the role of citizen developers, combining and building on solutions to foster innovation.
How do I get started with the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace?
Also be sure to check out the below infographic “Laserfiche 4 Steps to Innovation” for a step-by-step guide on how to get started deploying solutions and sharing your innovations with the larger Laserfiche community.
Calling all innovators! Stake your claim as a digital transformation pioneer by being one of the first to have their innovative ideas on the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace. Community members looking to submit their own templates can do so here.
Glasgow Credit Union is one of the largest credit unions in Europe, serving the greater Glasgow area with a service scope focusing on savings and loans. Experiencing steady growth, the organization used Laserfiche to power a number of digital transformation initiatives aimed at reducing reliance on manual processes and ensuring that the organization could scale while maintaining the high-quality customer experience for which the credit union is known.
The organization initially implemented Laserfiche in 2016 as a document management platform, integrating it with Glasgow’s CRM system to improve access to information for customers and employees. Since then, Laserfiche has helped achieve business process automation to digitize and streamline loan processing. With a completely automated lending platform, clients are offered more competitive lending services, enabling customers to complete loan approvals in under an hour.
“Laserfiche is quite central to all we do,” said Paul McFarlane, chief technology officer at Glasgow Credit Union.
Additionally, Glasgow Credit Union’s digital initiatives have supported business continuity during the COVID-19 pandemic, enabling the organization to rapidly pivot to more digitally focused services. This aligns with expansion and scalability needs: Since implementing Laserfiche, membership has expanded to around 55,000 customers, representing nearly GBP 200 million (US$277 million*) in assets.
A Customer-Focused, Streamlined Lending Process
Founded in 1989, Glasgow Credit Union has grown substantially over the past four decades but its aim has remained the same: helping members and ensuring they have access to friendly, professional financial services that meet their needs. As member expectations have evolved, the credit union has prioritized digital transformation to provide the best possible member experience.
“It’s not just us, but in our sector, we didn’t have a lot of scalability in a lot of our processes,” McFarlane said. “So our application journey, specifically to onboard a member and apply for a loan, was quite a cumbersome process because it was paper-heavy and there was a lot of manual tasks. … There was no automation. Initially there were no web services as well.”
Using Laserfiche, the organization created an automated lending platform which digitized and centralized loan applications, increasing accessibility of information for staff; and ultimately accelerated loan processing for clients. With the understanding that an easy and fast new member onboarding is fundamental to a member’s experience, the credit union also digitized and streamlined the member onboarding process by integrating Laserfiche with its existing financial management application, Curtains, along with DocuSign. New members can now join the credit union and apply for funds within 15 minutes — a process that used to take up to three days.
With an eye toward enhancing the full client experience, Glasgow Credit Union also launched an initiative to streamline the borrowing process. This required as fast a turnaround as possible for customer loans to be issued once their loan applications were accepted. Previously handling around 24,000 loan agreements each year, the company manually processed and archived 120,000 sheets of paper. Customers were manually notified by staff at each stage of the loan journey, resulting in 10,000 resource hours each year.
“The feedback from members was phenomenal — the speed, the efficiency, the fact that we didn’t have to wait for the post to deliver the paper, and how easy it was to do business with us after we had improved those processes,” said McFarlane.
The Glasgow Credit Union team re-engineered and automated the loan agreement process so that loans could be completed in under an hour rather than several days. Approximately 80% of applications were completed digitally prior to the pandemic. COVID-19 increased reliance on digital processes, however, and today, nearly all loan applications are now submitted and processed in a digital manner, benefiting both clients and staff in terms of efficiency and turnaround.
“Our work with Laserfiche wasn’t about preparing for something like COVID — I don’t think anybody was preparing for something like COVID,” McFarlane explained. “Our decision to digitalize was all about efficiency; it was about speed and providing a better, slicker service to our members. But if we hadn’t done that, it would have been a different conversation that we’re having today.”
Improving the Customer Journey
Digitization has also benefited Glasgow Credit Union members by providing the ability to initiate joining and borrowing processes even after office business hours. An automated self-serve channel allows the processes to be kicked off without staff supervision. After initiating an application process, Laserfiche integrations with third party applications — DocuSign, Curtains, and a bespoke front-end platform — seamlessly drive the loan application process through a workflow from the initial application stage to final pay out.
Documents are delivered back to customers for signing, bringing them to the next application stage. The automated process saves more than 150 employee hours each week. Employees have reclaimed this time to focus on other parts of the business, expanding operational capacity.
“We’ve got Laserfiche integrated with our core technologies, so users can view documents through our front-end that are pulled from the Laserfiche platform, without having to open up separate applications,” said McFarlane. “Employees find it quite easy that they’re not having to work across multiple platforms.”
Underlying Glasgow Credit Union’s integration and process automation initiatives, the organization has robust records management practices — a critical element to success in the financial services industry. Laserfiche has supported the organization’s information governance, enabling the credit union to manage the full life cycle of documents and supporting compliance with European data protection regulations.
During the first year after deploying Laserfiche, Glasgow Credit Union experienced an income growth exceeding GBP 1 million (US$1.31 million*), as well as a GBP 40 million (US$52.44 million*) increase in loan volumes from 2017 to 2018. Followed by this business growth, the credit union’s team now feels they have an infinite operational capacity for loan processing. After four years, Glasgow Credit Union has achieved ROI equating to their original investment in the Laserfiche platform. Factoring in resource savings and improved customer journey times, the credit union has a scalable model that has resulted in significant growth in business.
As a central, business-critical software solution, Laserfiche has helped Glasgow Credit Union with existing scalability and project prioritization goals, as well as helped to respond to customer needs during the COVID-19 pandemic. Beyond member onboarding and loan applications, the organization is looking to implement Laserfiche in a similar capacity in mortgage applications and other business units.
“I’m amazed at the simplicity of integrating Laserfiche with our existing processes and other pieces of business-critical technology,” said McFarlane. “Our vision is to be the lender of choice within our marketplace in Glasgow – Laserfiche has helped us achieve that.”
“In the modern business landscape, keeping pace with workplace trends and rapidly evolving technology gives organizations a competitive edge,” said Chris Wacker, CEO of Laserfiche. “With its Laserfiche initiative, Hitachi Capital Vehicle Solutions gives its employees the tools and knowledge they need to play larger role in their company’s success.”
As a division of Hitachi Capital (UK) PLC, Hitachi Capital Vehicle Solutions has been funding cars and commercial vehicles in the UK for more than 30 years. The organization used Laserfiche to automate many internal functions, including lease/proposal processing and records management. The cross-departmental initiative improved risk management while eliminating many manual tasks for staff, reducing the time to complete key processes, such as purchasing, from over a week to just minutes.
“Clear goals, strategic vision and the right technology enabled our organization to increase efficiency by an estimated 2,600 percent,” said Eamon O’Brien, Information Systems Configuration Manager at Hitachi Capital (UK) PLC. “We’re honored to be recognized for the initiative that’s had a huge impact on our business’s success and positions us to meet our growth targets.”
In the spring of 2020, in response to COVID-19’s impact on student communities across the country, institutions of higher education were tasked with distributing emergency financial aid grants to students as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (also known as the CARES Act) Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF) and Governor’s Emergency Education Relief (GEER) Fund. As soon as the team at Texas A&M University-Texarkana was notified of the rescue funds, they gathered a committee to develop an awarding process. This process included collecting applications aligned with the fund’s student eligibility criteria and tracked information for compliance requirements.
“We got a lot of applications; there was so much need,” said Kathy Williams, vice president for student enrollment, engagement and success. “We wanted a fast and fair way to collect applications and distribute the funds, and so we built the application in Laserfiche.”
As a result of the university’s efficient process, Texarkana was the first university in the A&M System to award the funding received from the state of Texas’ allocation of CARES GEER State Grant, at a time when students needed it most. “With Laserfiche, even after diligently triple checking the components, it took me only two to three hours to get the process off the ground,” shared Williams.
Providing Rapid Pandemic Relief to Students in Need
Texas A&M University-Texarkana is a public university that is part of the Texas A&M University System. Set in northeast Texas, the four-year college prides itself on its close-knit academic community, and outstanding faculty and staff who provide first-rate education in a nurturing, student-oriented environment. In March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in the state, the university made the decision to finish out the spring semester with online classes to protect the health and safety of students, faculty and administration.
The Texarkana team soon found that the impact of the pandemic would go beyond requiring their community to work, teach and learn remotely. Stay-at-home mandates exacerbated students’ financial instability across the country. When the Texarkana team learned they would receive CARES Act funding to distribute to students, they knew they had to move quickly.
“The A&M System office wanted to know our awarding strategy and plan,” Williams said. “So we put together a committee immediately, came up with a plan, sent it to the system office and they got back to us quickly. We jumped right on it.”
The Emergency Aid Grants Awarding Committee identified various potential areas of need, including for books, rent, transportation and more; they also defined parameters for eligibility, and developed a process for verifying student information against the university’s student information system (SIS), Ellucian Banner. Laserfiche Forms enabled them to customize an electronic form that students could access online. Students used the form to select relevant needs categories and eligibility information — such as whether they qualified for Title IV funds — and provide written context around their financial situation if they wanted to when submitting their information. The university also created formulas that determined how much money each eligible student would receive.
Texas A&M University System leadership approved the awarding process, and the university invited, via email, 1,188 eligible students to apply for CARES Act HEERF through the Laserfiche form.
“Students could submit the form, and provide supplemental information if they needed, and it was all saved in our Laserfiche repository,” Williams said. “Student information was easily verified against our student information system. Everyone who applied and qualified was able to get access to funds.”
In addition to being easy to use, the electronic form provided a transparent and accessible way to communicate categories and eligibility with students.
“We wanted to treat everyone equally,” Williams added. “We wanted to make categorization and how much money people would receive clear.”
The A&M System office initially planned for the university to award 30% of the funds in the spring, 20% in the summer and 50% in the fall, however, Williams explained that they received so many applications that they decided to revise that plan.
“After we received all the applications, we told the system office and they knew that these students needed the money now,” Williams said, noting that the university’s electronic form and efficient processing supported its ability to assess needs quickly. “We awarded 50% of the funds in late April/early May, and then 50% in the late September/early October.”
Supporting Compliance Through Changing Requirements
Beyond being a fast and fair way to determine eligibility and distribute funding, Laserfiche provided the Texarkana team with a way to create a secure and efficient process that standardizes and tracks the applications, adding accountability to all activities. Ultimately, the university awarded over $762,000 — its full HEERF student allocation — to 467 students, which is published on the organization’s website for transparency. The university used Laserfiche Forms’ built-in analytics and reporting capabilities to collect the data used for filling out expenditure reports tied to the funds.
“The system office audits different departments from the campuses,” Williams added. “Last year, our financial aid office and the CARES Act process were audited. We got a clear result.” Soon after the first round of CARES Act funding, additional funding from Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act (CRRSAA), a regents’ grant and the GEER State Grant were made available. Fortunately, the Texarkana team had already built out a Laserfiche form and process for fund distribution.
“We copied the CARES Act application and modified it,” Williams said. “In the fall, we were able to award the money from the A&M System Regents and the state, all through one application.”
With additional funding being made available through the American Rescue Plan, the university will repurpose its Laserfiche form again, while implementing digital transformation initiatives critical to navigating the post-COVID recovery era for higher education.
Texas A&M University-Texarkana was ultimately one of the first schools in the state of Texas to get the GEER State Grant rescue funding out to the students who needed it.
“It was because of our Laserfiche process,” Williams said. “It was really efficient. All the folks on the committee had input into the process, and we were able to help our students without spending, what I envision, probably weeks to create a process.”
