Montgomery County Hospital District Powers COVID-19 Response with Digital Data and Process Automation

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

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

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

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

Rapid Response: Automating Information Gathering with Exposure Reports

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Front-line: Symptom Tracking for Safer Work Environments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Case Investigation: Automating Information Gathering and Reporting

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

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

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

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

The New Normal: Accelerating Digital Transformation

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

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

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

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

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

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

SITUATION

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

RESULTS

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

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

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

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

Springing Into Action: Enabling Work from Home

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

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

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

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

Monitoring and Supporting Citizens with COVID-19

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

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

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

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

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

Outreach to Local Businesses and Planning for Post-Pandemic Life

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

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

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

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

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

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Streamlining Contract Management to Put Clients First

As a stable, independent, family-managed business, Fiducia has supported mid-market firms to navigate change and seize business opportunities in China for over 37 years. Extensive local know-how and network, coupled with technical and international industry expertise has enabled Fiducia to provide a wide variety of advisory and outsourced services, including finance and accounting, trade and technology consultation, strategy advisory, executive search and tax advisory.

Fiducia’s dedication to high-quality, responsive client service recently led the firm to digitally transform key processes, integrating line of business technologies and introducing business process automation. Implementing Laserfiche as a core solution for contract management, Fiducia streamlined the quotation generation and contract approval processes, allowing for more transparency and efficient communication between key company stakeholders and clients. The initiative has also reclaimed time for employees, enabling them to focus more on supporting international clients seeking Fiducia’s business expertise in the region.

“Adopting Laserfiche has helped us streamline our approval process, improving accuracy and efficiency,” says Addison Kwok, Financial Manager at Fiducia. “The process has been centralized in one platform, representing a true digital transformation.”

Seamless Integration with Existing Applications
Service proposals at Fiducia previously required employees to manually input significant amounts of client and project information. Up to 30 different templates were used, and the template depended on the specific scope of the project. Internally-reviewed cost estimates were also completed manually and submitted to finance managers —  a process that required employees to perform their own calculations to determine whether submitted proposals were profitable. Keeping track of these documents also heavily relied on manual tasks performed by service managers, the managing director, finance managers and clients. The time-intensive process hindered productivity and growth, ultimately slowing project turnaround times and creating silos across the organization.

The firm identified a lack of a centralized repository and content management system as one key issue. Projects and documentation were spread across a number of different applications and file locations, resulting in misplaced documents and various copies of the same proposal stored in different staff members’ computer drives or inboxes.

In order to accelerate proposal generation and continue upholding the firm’s high standards of service, the Fiducia team knew they needed to standardize the way information was shared across the organization. A new system would also need the ability to integrate with existing applications that were key in managing client details and creating project proposals.

Fiducia implemented a Laserfiche enterprise content management system to centralize account information, integrating the platform with the firm’s Salesforce CRM to support seamless contract management. Laserfiche also enabled Fiducia to create an automated workflow to eliminate much of the manual tasks and data entry that was previously required to generate proposals and get them approved.

Service managers begin by loading client information from Salesforce via dropdown menus into a Laserfiche form, which automatically allocates Fiducia team members to respective projects. After submitting the necessary client details, Laserfiche generates an initial proposal and financial breakdown, which includes service scope and cost. The Laserfiche workflow then automatically routes the proposal to the managing director and an assigned financial manager for approval with a priority-based deadline within Fiducia’s Laserfiche repository.

Following internal and external approval, the contract signing process can be initiated: Using DocuSign, clients can either sign the proposal or reject it. If signed, the final project proposal is then delivered to both the service manager and managing director. If approved with signatures and initials by both parties, the project proposal and final approved copy are then appropriately labelled, indexed and archived in Laserfiche.

This approval process can be completed by the managing director and Fiducia members whether or not they are in the office, since the Laserfiche mobile app enables them to complete approvals remotely from any device.

Within a few months of implementation, Laserfiche has helped to streamline Fiducia’s initial quotation generation process, facilitating the creation of service contracts and financial forms.  Automating key steps in quotation creation and contract approval processes has also enabled more efficient collaboration between internal and external parties, representing a savings of around 150 hours per year.

Improving Staff and Client Experience
In addition to making key process improvements, Fiducia has used Laserfiche to modernize the way the firm manages documents with access controls that have improved information governance across the organization. Integration between Laserfiche and applications such as Docusign and Salesforce has resulted in an overall better experience for clients and employees, who can now better focus on navigating the business landscape.

Fiducia’s digital transformation has also contributed to business continuity and staff confidence in the wake of COVID-19. The ability to access documents and processes from home, and perform remote approvals has been especially beneficial during work-from-home arrangements resulting from the pandemic.

Following the streamlining of their quotation generation and approval processes, Fiducia has plans to deploy Laserfiche in supplier-focused processes as well — this project will pair Laserfiche and ABBYY, a third-party scanning solution, to capture and subsequently organize important company information and content. This project represents Fiducia’s continued commitment to process automation and digital transformation.

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Shufro Rose Embraces Process Automation to Keep the Focus on Clients

SITUATION

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

RESULTS

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

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

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

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

— Vibhaw Arya, chief operating officer at Shufro Rose

Building Flexible Workflows Driven By Front-End Needs

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

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

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

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

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

Supporting Compliance and Risk Management

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

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

Managing Increasing Complexity

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

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

More Benefits to Unlock

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

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

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

A Quick Shift to Remote Learning

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

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

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

Enabling a Quick Shift to Remote Work and Learning

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Accelerating Transformation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

eBook: Ultimate Guide to Business Continuity

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Continuity planning is crucial in times of uncertainty. Discover the tools and strategies to keep your business moving at all times, in any situation, on any device.

Topics Covered in the eBook

  • Learn how your office can prepare a 360-degree action plan for minor and major disruptions to operations and keep assets safe.
  • 9 must-have policies that every business should build into its business continuity plan.
  • Strategies to maximize efficiency and productivity so your business can thrive, even in uncertain times.
  • See how enterprise content management and cloud technology can keep your business focused on serving those who need you the most.

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eBook: The Process Automation Buyer’s Guide

Learn what process automation is, why organizations need it and how to procure the right software for your workplace.

What’s inside the guide?
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  • Process automation use cases with real-world examples.
  • Factors you should consider when shopping for solutions.
  • A step-by-step guide to the software procurement process.

Click here to get the eBook.

Beachwalk Resort Puts Guests First by Streamlining Processes and Communications

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

Transforming Contract Management

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enhancing Experiences Across the Resort

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

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

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

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

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

Building on Success

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

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

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

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


What is Digital Process Automation?

Digital process automation is a staple of operational success in the modern workplace. Forward-thinking businesses have prioritized automation technology in their digital transformation initiatives for its ability to increase efficiency, transparency and accuracy of information circulated throughout an organization.

Read on to learn what digital process automation is and why it’s an important component of the modern business landscape.

What is digital process automation?

Digital process automation (DPA) is a method of digitizing processes by eliminating manual steps and improving user experience for customers, vendors and staff. Like business process automation, DPA as a methodology is meant to accelerate workflows while decreasing human error. DPA is a core component of enterprise content management (ECM) software in that it supports the routing, modifying and storing of important data traveling in and out of an organization.

What is a digital process automation platform?

A digital process automation platform captures information from electronic forms and other sources to launch digital business processes. These platforms also enable users to customize digital business processes to automatically complete a variety of tasks within the scope of regular business processes, such as public records requests, travel and expense requests and job application reviews.

Most digital process automation solutions enable you to design these processes as a diagram using a WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) interface. More advanced solutions offer extensive business process template libraries that are essentially plug-and-play. One example of this is the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace. Watch the below video to learn more about the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace.

Also be sure to check out the below infographic “Laserfiche 4 Steps to Innovation” to see how Laserfiche users can not only deploy solutions quickly, but get involved with a larger community of innovators.Infographic showing the Laserfiche's four steps to innovation: asking what needs to be automated, seeing how others use Laserfiche, downloading and using solutions and sharing with others.

Why is digital process automation important?

DPA software helps eliminate redundant busywork, freeing up time for staff to focus on strategic business priorities. A few immediate benefits of DPA software include:

Accelerate workflows

Users can revise, approve and complete document revisions faster with automated routing and task notifications. Users can also easily reassign tasks if someone is out of office.

Increase transparency

Custom business process reports enable process managers to measure success and eliminate workflow bottlenecks. Administrators can also get a clear picture of employee workloads with process monitoring dashboards.

Improve accessibility

Advanced DPA software solutions enable users to complete tasks from their phones as well as their desktops to keep processes moving, saving time and helping to reduce duplicate data entry by users in different locations.

What is the difference between DPA and RPA?

While both DPA and robotic process automation (RPA) technologies are designed to automate and streamline processes, they are different in one key way: how they integrate with outside applications. While a DPA will generally use a specialized API or native integration for a particular application, an RPA solution usually interacts with applications like a human would, using a user interface (UI). This makes the possibility for integrations almost endless for an RPA solution. Because RPA solutions can also be integrated into a DPA solution, to provide last-mile integrations with applications that lack traditional integration points, this means that RPA opens up the integration possibilities for DPA solutions as well.

Choosing the right DPA software solution

When selecting a DPA software solution for your business, it’s important to consider:
  • Scalability: Your DPA solution should be able to grow with your business.
  • Ease-of-use: A simple-to-learn system is key to business adoption. Be sure to look for a provider with substantial system support.
  • Integration capabilities: Your DPA solution should be able to complement existing systems within your digital ecosystem.
  • Innovative technology: If your DPA software provider isn’t prioritizing innovation, your business won’t be able to evolve at the rate it should be. Stay competitive with vendors that consistently improves upon its technology.

Further reading

Ready to learn more about DPA technology? Download this free guide to learn how process automation improves workplace efficiency and saves time and resources across the enterprise.

Researching digital process automation platforms? Check out the G2 grid to compare top vendors.
G2 Grid® for Digital Process Automation (DPA) Software