eBook: The Ultimate Guide to HR Automation

Let ECM manage information—so you can manage people.

Inefficient, manual human resources (HR) processes keep professionals focused on short-term, “busywork” tasks rather than long-term recruitment and retention goals.

The Ultimate Guide to HR Automation includes everything you need to know about transforming a paper-burdened HR department into a productive and valuable business unit.

HR automation

In this free HR Automation eBook, you will get:

  • A concise explanation of the essential functions of automation technology.
  • Detailed examples of how HR processes, such as employee onboarding and records management, can be automated.
  • Five essential steps for driving organization-wide adoption of an automated HR department.
  • And much more!

CIRCOR Pibiviesse

CIRCOR Pibiviesse Creates Enterprise-wide Efficiency
Headquartered in Milan, Italy, CIRCOR Pibiviesse designs and manufactures state-of-the-art valves for cryogenic, high temperature and subsea applications.

With three manufacturing facilities, year-long production cycles and more than 400 compliance standards to adhere to, CIRCOR Pibiviesse put a focus on reengineering its operations.

“We needed to give management better visibility into the status of the production cycle,” says Continuous Improvement Manager Ivan Fantin. “Customer requirements are also increasing in our industry, which makes compliance more and more challenging each year.”

Many of Pibiviesse’s transparency and compliance challenges resulted from creating databooks—documentation containing hundreds of pages of materials certifications, product drawings, internal procedures and more. Without a completed databook, Pibiviesse’s valves cannot pass industry inspections and be activated at a plant.

“These documents are compiled throughout the lifespan of a project, which may last from six to more than 18 months,” says Fantin. “You can imagine how many logistical challenges this creates for a company with so many employees and departments.”

Pibiviesse turned to Laserfiche to gain visibility into its operations and comply with stringent manufacturing standards. One of the benchmarks for the software was whether or not it could improve the firm’s on-time delivery rate of databooks.

Enterprise-wide Transparency

The first order of business for Pibiviesse was making sure its employees, departments and facilities were on the same page regarding the status of pending projects and the availability of valve documentation.
With Laserfiche, the firm achieves this goal by:
  • Storing all documents related to valves in a centralized, digital repository
  • Creating order status reports to identify production delays
  • Providing mobile devices to staff in the field, so they can instantly respond to time-sensitive production tasks

For example, Pibiviesse uses Laserfiche to make sure the tools used to measure valves are regularly calibrated. As a tool approaches its expiration date, the system automatically emails a reminder for the specialist to calibrate the tool, which helps avoid manufacturing delays and liability from faulty valves.

“With Laserfiche, we’ve implemented an efficient process that ensures follow up at different levels of the enterprise and stages of the production process,” says Fantin. “The flexibility of the software allows us to monitor and control our business processes while better serving our customers.”

One System Satisfies 400 Standards

Pibiviesse hoped to leverage its newfound transparency to comply with more than 400 industry standards that were notorious for halting the production cycle.

“We decided to analyze how many different types of documents the customer normally requires, and we came up with about 200,” says Fantin. “Those different document types became our basis for building new compliance processes.”

Pibiviesse used its list of required documents to build checklist templates in Laserfiche, so the system can easily identify documents that are required to fulfill a customer order.

For instance, Laserfiche ensures that suppliers provide required certificates every time materials are delivered by:
  • Monitoring the receipt of materials as they enter a facility
  • Cross-referencing incoming materials with a list of existing materials certificates
  • Generating a daily to-do list to gather missing certificates

The improved compliance process ensures that materials certificates are accessible across the enterprise and electronically delivered to the customer before a valve is delivered to a plant.

“We had documentation on-time delivery rates in the range of 30-40% before changing our processes with Laserfiche. Now we are proud to say that we have reached 100%,” says Fantin.

As a result of this improvement, Pibiviesse has dramatically increased customer satisfaction and minimized regulatory penalties incurred from databook delays.

Creating a Culture of Efficiency

Pibiviesse plans to continue using Laserfiche as the foundation for operational efficiency and compliance, which Fantin believes must happen through effective change management.

“Business process reengineering is a top-down process,” Fantin says. “Nothing will change if management simply decides on some new strategies for the future. They have to go to where things happen, show leadership and involvement to the staff and drive people toward the new processes.”

As Pibiviesse continues to help its employees become more efficient with Laserfiche, it has advice for other organizations seeking to do the same.

“Start by focusing on your processes—not the functionality you need to improve them,” Fantin says. “We took a close look at our processes and that’s why we were able to gain the maximum benefit from our Laserfiche implementation.”

The DCD Group

An international engineering company headquartered in South Africa, the DCD Group is comprised of 12 business units in four different divisions: rail, mining and energy, marine and defense, with some companies in the group having been in operation for over 100 years. As a highly respected industry leader, DCD is always looking for innovative ways to provide top engineering services.

Dawie Marais, General Manager Support Services, had a vision to find an enterprise content management (ECM) solution that would eliminate administrative lags, improve the efficiency of business functions and add true value to the company. “It just made sense from a cost, support and maintenance standpoint to choose one ECM system that has flexible business process management tools that could be deployed in all our departments,” explains Marais.

Having one comprehensive solution like Laserfiche meant that we only have one system to oversee. We could cut down on the need for support, eliminate the extra time spent on overlapping systems, increase staff’s productivity and allow information accessibility throughout the enterprise—it was the most cost-effective choice.

Streamlining HR, saving $150,000 per year

The same contract employee may be re-hired up to four times a year at DCD’s Marine Division, depending on the amount of projects and the different skills needed at specific stages of each project. Over a short period of time, DCD’s contract staff can fluctuate between 300 and 2,500 employees, with most contracts lasting 90 days or fewer. Each year, 2,000 to 5,000 contracts are processed.

The huge amount of records associated with hiring and managing this temporary staff created a time-consuming and difficult administrative workload for HR staff. “Before implementing Laserfiche in our HR department, onboarding a new employee took 45 minutes,” Marais says. “Now, it only takes 15! Having Laserfiche has empowered our staff and made their work so much more efficient. They no longer have to search through stacks of employment records just to find something—all the files are now digitized.”

By using Laserfiche Forms and Laserfiche Workflow, the HR department was able to reduce the steps in the onboarding process for both staff and applicants.
  • The need for printing multiple paper documents was eliminated as applicants can use Laserfiche Forms to enter their information on a computer at the HR office.
  • Populated forms are directly routed into the Laserfiche repository by Laserfiche Workflow.
  • For new contracts, new folders are automatically created. For re-hired employees, existing folders are located and automatically updated, reducing the risk of errors and centralising the data.
  • To simplify change management and improve staff adoption, HR staff continued work from their existing human capital management system. Laserfiche is integrated into the back-end to help minimise time-consuming and manual administrative work.
  • Employee records are digitised and scanned into Laserfiche, freeing up physical storage space.
  • Authorised personnel are granted appropriate access to employee records, improving the flow of information.

With Laserfiche, we speed up our employment process, saving at least $150,000 a year and reducing administrative work by 50%,” Marais explains. “HR staff at DCD Group feel empowered by Laserfiche—it lifts a lot of pressure off our staff. There were minimal disruptions during the implementation since we could retain the familiar user interface; there were no additional username and passwords to remember; employee records are all scanned, making searches simple; and all employee details are now secure and in one, easy-to-find location.

Making purchase requisition paperless from start to finish

Before implementing Laserfiche, purchase requisition at DCD Group was a paper-based process, where employees manually searched for expense codes and descriptions before filling out each request by hand. This process was prone to mistakes; hand-written requests were difficult to read, and there were a lot of easily damaged paper documents. The approval process was also time-consuming, as the employees had to physically track down the appropriate manger to get approval.

Using Laserfiche Workflow and Laserfiche Forms, DCD Group succeeded in making the entire purchase requisition process paperless, increasing efficiency and productivity. Thomas Matthee, Manager Systems Development and Implementation, adds, “Laserfiche simplified the purchase requisition process. Staff used to have to run around trying to find the right person for authorisation. Sometimes the managers just weren’t available and there were times where the requests didn’t even get looked at or they got lost. Now, everything is transparent.”

The new, streamlined purchase requisition process works as follows:
  • Requests are now made through Laserfiche Forms, where departments and expense codes can be easily selected through drop-down lists, reducing administrative work and minimising errors.
  • Laserfiche Workflow sends the appropriate manager a notification of the request and directly routes the populated forms for approval.
  • Once approved, the workflow will automatically route the request to completion.

Matthee notes, “I would estimate a minimum of 15 minutes per requisition is saved by using Laserfiche, boosting staff productivity. Employees now spend less time on administrative tasks, and they don’t have to file extra paper work or worry about lost documents. With Laserfiche, automating business processes is so easy.”

Producing efficient and compliant project documentation

For the manufacturing process in the mining and rail sectors, mandatory certifications are done through the submission of data packs, which contain testing information, documents, welding certificates, drawings, and quality assurance information. It was a constant challenge to manage the data packs, which could involve anywhere from five to 50 boxes—all ordered by date and free of duplication.

Before we implemented Laserfiche,” says Marais, “the administrative work involved was a nightmare to handle. It was difficult to keep track of the versions of the documents and also the duplications. And once we’d organised the paper documents, we’d have to send all of the boxes over to our clients. There was too much room for error and damage during the whole process.

He explains that DCD Group needed to find an ECM solution that would meet the company’s stringent quality assurance standard while decreasing the administrative burden placed on employees. “Today, all data packs are submitted electronically, which increases document security while decreasing costs. We also have a check in/check out process where only one copy of the most up-to-date document is stored in the Laserfiche repository and only one person can update it at a time,” says Marais. “By digitising and automating this process, we’ve improved productivity and boosted staff morale.”

Driving efficiency across the organisation

Marais particularly appreciates that Laserfiche is not limited to one department. “Laserfiche’s deployment flexibility made it easy for us to implement it in multiple departments, including Human Resources, Sales and Marketing, Quality Assurance, Scheduling, Project Management, Planning, Buying, Finance and Maintenance,” he says. “At DCD Group, we believe it is important not to chase technology but to find a technology that truly adds value to our company. With Laserfiche, we continue to increase our overall operational efficiency and gain more value from the system.”

University of Ha’il

University of Ha’il (UoH) was established in 2005 and continues to grow rapidly. A distinguished university in northern Saudi Arabia, UoH’s enrolment has grown to approximately 40,000 students across six campuses located in Ha’il city. The university strives to use technology and innovation to achieve change and success.

“In 2012, the university had minimal e-services implemented,” says Dr. Majed Alhaisoni, the Dean of IT and e-learning, University of Ha’il. “Within a year’s time, we had won multiple awards for our university’s e-initiatives and paperless campus. A large part of our success is due to Laserfiche.”

UoH Chooses ECM over DMS

UoH’s IT department had a strong vision of what it wanted to accomplish. It needed more than just a document management system (DMS) that would store digital documents; it needed a full-featured enterprise content management (ECM) solution that would enable complex digitisation via workflow automation.

After extensive research, UoH chose Laserfiche as its ECM solution. “Laserfiche Workflow was what really stood out for us,” explains Dr. Alhaisoni. “Laserfiche Workflow is robust, efficient, scalable and resilient. It allows us to easily customise document-driven workflows to meet the needs of our university.”

Automating Inter-Departmental Communication

Official communications and the dissemination of information between UoH’s multiple campuses and departments must be done through written and signed letters. Automating this paper-intensive letter system was one of the first projects Dr. Alhaisoni and his team tackled. With Laserfiche Workflow, UoH was able to set up a sophisticated workflow system that automated and digitised this process for more than 97 departments on four campuses.

Because letters could be circulated to as many as 20 different departments, Dr. Alhaisoni notes that “there was a high probability of losing documents when everything was paper based. We lacked transparency and efficiency. It was hard to keep track of the status of letters, whether or not they were being reviewed or if they’d been approved.”

Before implementing Laserfiche, Dr. Alhaisoni worried that designing a workflow system to meet all of UoH’s technical needs would be a long and tedious process. However, he soon discovered that Laserfiche Workflow made the process easy. “Building with Laserfiche Workflow is really as simple as drag and drop!” says Dr. Alhaisoni. “We were able to develop our workflows without any issues or technical errors.”

With 700 users and a high circulation rate, scalability is essential for UoH. “Currently, we have found that no matter how many people are working, how many letters are being sent and received, or how big the letters are, it doesn’t slow down, freeze or create any errors in our system. Everyone can efficiently work in real-time,” explains Dr. Alhaisoni.

Managing Change at the University

Changing the perception of the end-user can be a large obstacle when implementing a new technology. As Dr. Ahaisoni says, “Even with the best system in the world, if you are unable to deploy and implement the system properly, get the users involved and trained during deployment and change the perceptions of the management team itself, the system will collapse and people will go back to doing work in the traditional way.”

To ensure successful deployment of Laserfiche, the IT team at UoH spent a lot of time on due diligence and getting the management team’s support for transitioning to a paperless environment. Thus, when Dr. Alhaisoni’s team presented the ECM project to the president of the university, it gained his full support. “The president announced that his own office would be the first to use the new paperless system—that he would stop receiving any paper letters and his office would only be sending letters electronically,” explains Dr. Alhaisoni. “It was the tipping point for getting everyone else on board.”

Dr. Alhaisoni and his IT team were then responsible for carrying out a university-wide training plan. “We taught trainers, leaders and deans how to properly use the system,” he says. “With these preparations, we were able to expand the training very quickly and efficiently throughout the campus.”

Through UoH’s successful approach to change management, physical letters do not have to be hand delivered across departments and campuses, since this process is now automated in real-time. Mail clerks that used to deliver letters all day have been redeployed to perform more efficient and meaningful tasks for the university.

“Our users are excited to use Laserfiche, to turn it on and see if there are new items in their inbox every day. They want to be a part of this,” explains Dr. Alhaisoni.

Going Mobile

With its Laserfiche reseller, Integrated Solutions for Business, UoH built a web interface to enable mobility and flexibility across the university. End-users access the web-based portal as they would access any website—without the knowledge that Laserfiche is integrated as the back-end control centre. This minimises the burden on end-users and simplifies IT’s work in managing users’ needs.

“Work is no longer limited to just the office; we can work from anywhere now. Our interface is compatible on any mobile phone. All the actions I can do on a computer at work, I can do from my phone. It’s become a lot more convenient and a lot more efficient,” says Dr. Alhaisoni.

The Future of a Digital Campus

When asked about the future of UoH, Dr. Alhaisoni says, “We want to continue to optimise mobility with every workflow and form. We are also working with the Ministry of Education to demonstrate our system and hopefully our solution can benefit all universities in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”

Emirates National Oil Company

Since its establishment in 1993, Emirates National Oil Company (ENOC) has provided the energy behind Dubai’s phenomenal growth. With clients ranging from military bases to big-name manufacturing agencies across the United Arab Emirates (UAE), ENOC touches almost every facet of the Emirate’s development and puts its name firmly on the overseas arena. Today, ENOC owns directly and indirectly more than twenty subsidiaries.

ENOC operates through five business segments:
  • Supply, Trading & Processing: Condensate and gas processing and oil trading.
  • Terminals: Storage for various petroleum and chemical products.
  • Marketing: Marketing of aviation fuel, lubes, chemicals and industrials products.
  • Retail: Retailing fuel and non-fuel services at retail stations.
  • Exploration & Production: Development and production of oil and gas.

ENOC first began investigating enterprise content management (ECM) for one of its subsidiaries, Emirates Petroleum Product Company (EPPCO), which was having a hard time managing customer documents. Piles of paperwork were scattered on different employees’ desks, making it hard to locate documents on demand and promptly respond to customer requests.

Although a number of departments within ENOC were already using Microsoft SharePoint, it didn’t meet EPPCO’s needs due to its lack of a scanning solution. After hearing about Laserfiche through Laserfiche reseller Global Technology Services (GTS), ENOC conducted a thorough evaluation of the software to see if it would meet EPPCO’s needs.

According to Ram Mohan Narayanan, Manager of Planning and Performance Management in ENOC’s IT department, “We did an onsite study of the Laserfiche implementation at the Abu Dhabi Water & Electricity Company, where GTS had implemented Laserfiche to archive customer billing documents. It was clear that Laserfiche had provided a great advantage for the utility company, which gave us the confidence to go with Laserfiche.”

The fact that Laserfiche is fully supported in Arabic also played a role in ENOC’s selection process.

Improving Customer Service

To better manage its customer documents, EPPCO was the first part of the organization to implement Laserfiche. EPPCO serves 75 million customers each year through its network of more than 170 ENOC/EPPCO service stations across the UAE.

EPPCO has built its brand on innovation. As such, it launched the first fuel card in the UAE in 1991. To ensure the continued success of the fuel card program, EPPCO’s card marketing department wanted to accelerate customer service. With roughly 300 new documents coming in each day, storing everything in file cabinets was costly and inefficient, and employees were having difficulty finding the right paper documents to process them in a timely manner.

By implementing Laserfiche to store customer request documents and automate the document approval process, Card Marketing is now able to deliver much faster customer service. In addition, it has integrated Laserfiche with a variety of other software applications to improve the customer experience as follows:
  • By integrating with its interactive voice response (IVR) software, EPPCO has enabled its fuel card customers to fax their invoices through the IVR system.
  • These invoices are generated in an Oracle management application and moved into Laserfiche as PDF files.
  • Monthly statements are automatically sent from Laserfiche to customers via an integration with RightFax.

In addition, an IVR-based request from the customer triggers a that automatically sends the PDF invoice to the customer on demand.

“Not only have we improved our customer service, but we’ve reduced our papers expenses,” said Narayanan.

Increasing Efficiency across ENOC

The use of Laserfiche soon spread beyond EPPCO to a number of departments within ENOC. In the past, ENOC had relied on file cabinets to store paper documents. Imaged documents, meanwhile, were stored on a shared “U:\” drive, and electronic content was managed in SharePoint.

This lack of a centralized content management strategy was inefficient, costly and prevented the automation of paper-based business processes. ENOC needed a standard systems architecture and methodology for enterprise-wide content management.

In particular, ENOC’s internal audit department has saved time and money by automating the submission of its Employee Acknowledgement and of Interest forms, which all 1,500 ENOC employees need to sign and submit to the department each year.

Narayanan explains that the Laserfiche SharePoint Integration, a two-way integration that enables paper-based capture and DoD 5015.2-certified records management in a SharePoint environment, allows employees to scan these forms directly into SharePoint, where they are converted into PDFs and automatically filed in the correct HR folders in the Laserfiche repository.

In addition to the benefits Laserfiche has brought to the internal audit department:
  • The HR department uses as a secure, centralized location for all employee documents.
  • The department validates, stores and distributes supplier invoices to their respective PO owners using Laserfiche Workflow
  • Procurement uses to create and store contracts and vendor management documents.
  • The chief executive and general manager office use Laserfiche to track and store all incoming and outgoing correspondence.

Narayanan estimates that ENOC realized a full return on its Laserfiche investment in just eight months. “By using Laserfiche to scan and store paper files, we save at least 6,000 hours of staff time a year, which translates to US $240,000. We’ve also been able to eliminate US $28,800 in paper storage costs per year.”

Sina Khoory, ENOC’s Group IT Manager, adds, “Using Laserfiche Rio, EPPCO and a number of departments in the ENOC group have gained centralized control over our data. Rio’s powerful tools and the Laserfiche SharePoint Integration have simplified information sharing and automated operations between departments.”

Colorado Department of Natural Resources

Colorado’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) manages a wealth of information across eight divisions, including:
  • Colorado Division of Forestry
  • Colorado Division of Parks and Wildlife
  • Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining, and Safety
  • Colorado Division of Water Resources
  • Colorado Geological Survey
  • Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC)
  • Colorado State Land Board
  • Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB)

According to Susan Lesovsky, Application Support Manager for the CWCB, the DNR purchased a Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM) system in 2005 to replace a legacy IBM system that lacked an out-of-the box web interface, optical character recognition (OCR) functionality and the ability to automate business processes. “Our old system was pretty much limited to search and retrieval,” she explains.

She notes that a top priority for implementing Laserfiche was making it easier for citizens to stay informed about government activities. “Ultimately, our customer is the public, and our success is measured on how we provide and process information for them,” Lesovsky says.

To that end, the DNR upgraded to Laserfiche Rio in 2009. According to Lesovsky, “Laserfiche Rio has allowed us to increase the transparency of information to the public, and it’s done it in such a way that we don’t have to worry about connections or cost.”

In particular, she describes the benefits of upgrading to Laserfiche Rio as:

Laserfiche Rio Enables Citizens to Cut through Red Tape

Lesovsky notes that Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper recently called for every department in state government to reduce red tape. Good government, he says, is characterized by “efficiency, effectiveness and elegance.”

“As one of only two recommended content management systems for the state, Laserfiche epitomizes all three E’s,” Lesovsky says.

She explains how easy it is for citizens to access documents such as the CWCB’s meeting documents:
  • The current year’s materials are available on the Board’s website in a table that provides direct links to PDFs stored in Laserfiche.
  • Archived materials are accessible through a custom search box (created using the WebLink Designer) on the lower right side of same page or through this link.
  • The custom search box is limited to three fields (title, date range and document type) to streamline access and reduce user confusion. (Custom search components have been included throughout the CWCB’s website to help direct the public’s search for Board-related documents.)

Colorado’s Decision Support Systems website also includes custom search boxes throughout its Website, such as the one at the top of this page that searches according to document type and a few other parameters, while a set of “Google-like” search results based on document type displays below thanks to an encoded URL string.

“We used the WebLink Designer to create custom searches because we noticed that our users would get overwhelmed when presented with a long list of templates and fields,” says Lesovsky. “Each custom search focuses on a particular program area or topic and uses a limited set of search criteria within the associated template.”

Quick, easy and efficient searches support Hickenlooper’s goal of driving the “three E’s” into government operations. Lesovsky explains, “In the past, people had to come to our offices to request information. Laserfiche WebLink provides a simple and elegant way for the public to get immediate access to the information they need whenever they need it.”

Integrations Make ECM “Mission-Critical”

By integrating Laserfiche WebLink with other software applications, the DNR has been able to make information even more accessible. For example, by integrating Laserfiche with ESRI ArcGIS, staff can click on a stream and retrieve associated court documents, while public users can quickly access information associated with flooding and flood hazards in the state.

To see the public-facing integration in action:
  1. Visit Colorado’s Flood Decision Support System page
  2. Click on the Flood DSS Map Viewer.
  3. Agree to the disclaimer.
  4. Click the Documents tab in the top menu.
  5. Enter your search criteria in the pop-up window. For example, select:
  6. Group: Historical Flooding.
  7. Document: Historical flood photographs.
  8. Type: Photographs.
  9. Hit the search button.
  10. A new window displays the results (produced on-the-fly by an encoded URL string) in a grid format.

It’s the integrations with applications like ESRI ArcGIS that make Laserfiche “mission-critical.” According to Lesovsky, “When you integrate Laserfiche with business-specific systems, you embed it into your existing workflow processes and it becomes integral to how you operate.”

ECM Enables Electronic Forms Processing

Laserfiche Rio has been a particularly effective ECM solution for the DNR because different divisions can configure it to meet their unique needs. For example, the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) uses Laserfiche to enable an eForm application that provides an interface for oil and gas operators to enter and submit permit forms and supporting documents. There are currently six active forms and three in development.

According to Ken Robertson, Application Developer for the COGCC, “Uploaded files are stored in our production web server. Once the operators submit the form to our internal server, we export the attachments to Laserfiche.”

He explains that the public can view the files directly from the production web server or wait until the files are imported to Laserfiche and use Laserfiche WebLink to access them. Furthermore, he outlines how the COGCC has used the Laserfiche SDK to create customized Laserfiche scripts and programs.

Robertson says, “For those attachments still sitting in our production web server, we created a Windows service to check queued files in the Web server every 15 minutes and use the Laserfiche Toolkit [SDK] for .NET to import files to the Laserfiche repository server. In the meantime, we also collect the Laserfiche reference numbers in our attachment table so that system (eForm) can provide a Laserfiche WebLink download page for users to view the attachments.”

He notes that there is a separate application that allows oil and gas operators to upload well logs, which are imported into Laserfiche using Laserfiche Import Agent, a tool that captures and processes electronic documents. Scanning staff members use Laserfiche Quick Fields to index other types of electronic documents.

The biggest benefit of processing permits and well logs with Laserfiche is time. Robertson says, “We used to shuffle files from one person to another until they were approved, and then we scanned everything into the system. Having the operators upload their attachments to their documents saves an average of 15 minutes of scanning and indexing time for our staff, not to mention the time saved on data entry.”

He goes on to explain that having everything available electronically at the beginning of the process allows multiple people to work on the same forms simultaneously, further reducing processing time.

“Not only do we save time,” Robertson says, “but the approval process is now more transparent for the public.”

Lesovsky adds, “Laserfiche is powerful, flexible and easy to work with. Even though all our divisions use the same system, we can all use it a little differently.”

Looking Ahead

Lesovsky is particularly excited to use Laserfiche to harvest data across organizations. She explains that the CWCB has already conducted a feasibility study and has a grant in place to make it happen.

“Colorado State University has an ECM solution other than Laserfiche but a healthy collection of water information. The Colorado Water Resources Development & Power Authority and the Colorado River Water Conservation District currently use Laserfiche, with repositories of useful water documents. By hooking our systems together and using common metadata, we’ll be able to search for information across all four entities and gain a more complete picture of accessible water information in the state.”

She says that the DNR is also working on integrating Laserfiche and SharePoint. “Most of our divisions use SharePoint for their external websites. Right now, people have to conduct separate searches if they want to find content stored in both Laserfiche and SharePoint. What we’re looking to do is enable searches that return results from both systems at the same time.”

All in all, she says, “Laserfiche Rio is a great tool. The bottleneck now is just finding the time to make it do everything we want it to do.”

Chesterfield County

With a history dating back to the 1600s and a growth rate of three percent a year, Chesterfield County, Virginia, has no shortage of records to manage. So with its Laserfiche system working perfectly, why would the county change it? To keep up with the ever-changing demands of managing information, of course. The challenge came in successfully migrating to Laserfiche Records Management Edition™ (RME).

For IT maven and Laserfiche Administrator Michael Wells, the system is always evolving. He recalls the conversion from paper to document imaging. “The original motivation was to get rid of paper and to allow sharing of documents internally.” In 2001, the IT staff installed Laserfiche in five pilot departments. “All of those departments are still happy users,” says Wells.

Laserfiche has certainly simplified life for Kevin Payne, Chesterfield’s Acting Accounts Payable (A/P) Manager.

“It’s made the biggest difference you could imagine. A/P spends a lot of time going back to look at invoices for auditors, our own research or for other departments. It’s made our lives so much easier because we can access the invoices from our PCs—we don’t have to spend hours searching in the file room.”

Laserfiche has made the Chesterfield HR team’s life easier, too. Jeannie Harper, Chief of Administrative Services, loves Laserfiche’s search capability. And it’s not just a matter of time saved.

Harper uses Laserfiche when she looks into a personnel situation. “Our HR system is good, but it’s easier for me to get the information I need from Laserfiche. I can look at the personnel action form to see the signatures and the notes I made. All those supporting documents aren’t in the HR system.”

It’s hard to imagine tampering with such success, especially since the HR department had built into Laserfiche the complex security model it had labored to create on paper. HR staff relied on Laserfiche’s solid template fields and strict auditing to allow appropriate access to users.

But in 2005, the county had to address an important component of records management: the retention cycle. That’s when Wells supervised the installation of Laserfiche RME, integrating the program with the county’s existing records management model.

Changing the way the county managed records was an ambitious project. Creating a new folder structure to serve new records-management needs would change everyday procedures, and meshing a new system with the established security structure seemed like an insurmountable challenge.

Chesterfield County found that combining Laserfiche RME with Laserfiche Workflow created an ideal solution. Staff used Laserfiche RME to manage the records retention schedule, assigning access restrictions and creating shared folders to replicate the existing security structure. Using Laserfiche Workflow, they then copied records to the shared folders.

The first step in migrating to the new system was to recode the application that created a template for empty records. Chesterfield’s IT department then created an application to copy existing records into Laserfiche RME using the new template. Finally, the team planned out a records series in Laserfiche RME.

To implement the process, the scanning staff froze all additions and changes to records. The conversion application created and renamed files and copied the template data from the old system. Wells says that in the future, staff will develop techniques to flag new documents rather than freezing additions and changes.

Huge as the task seemed, after 30 days, staff had successfully migrated most of the records. Department liaisons and HR personnel who had used the old system barely noticed the interface had changed. And Chesterfield’s Scanning Coordinator Nancy Pearse has noticed an improvement in security.

“Nothing can be added or taken away—Laserfiche keeps everything where it’s supposed to be.” She especially appreciates the time saved with the automated retention schedule, because previously, she had to manually delete records.

Routing documents with Laserfiche Workflow has been an added benefit for Pearse. “We always know where documents are in the approval process. The email piece has also been very useful for us—if someone needs a document, I can just email it directly from Laserfiche.”

County employees can donate their leave time to seriously ill coworkers or those with illness in their families. Laserfiche Workflow has put an end to scrambling to meet deadlines for the leave donation program.

“HR scans the donation forms in, and the status field triggers the workflow,” says Jeannie Harper. “When payroll deducts the leave from the proper party and changes the status, Laserfiche sends a notification and moves the document to the appropriate folder, based on the fiscal year. It’s great because we typically get requests right at the deadline—with a paper system, we might not be able to make it.”

Harper expects retention schedules to change again. As will technology, no doubt. But Chesterfield County will be ready. Laserfiche Administrator Wells looks forward to more integrations in the future. And he’s off to a good start.

He points to the integration of A/P with the overall accounting system as a particular success. Staff members barcode invoices and input the codes into the mainframe. When the invoices are scanned in, a batch job populates the template fields and moves the invoices to the proper location.

Wells has also integrated Laserfiche with the county planning department’s GIS system. When Planning installed Laserfiche, its GIS system already included hard links for each land parcel to PDF files on a shared network. “Our reseller and our engineering department devised a program that changes all those links to Laserfiche WebLink search links. Now, users click on a parcel to bring up a Laserfiche WebLink window with all the pertinent information.”

In the future, Wells envisions providing citizens with web access to the most frequently requested documents. Currently, the county is adding more storage to prepare for future use of drive space. When asked how he measures the county’s success with Laserfiche, he asks, “You mean, other than the number of departments clamoring to be put on the system?”

Kevin Payne puts it this way: “I would definitely say that this has been the best enhancement to any A/P process that we’ve done—I’ve been here 5 years, but I’ve heard the same thing from people who have been here for 20 years. It’s a great product.”

How Franklin County Deployed Laserfiche Enterprise-Wide

SITUATION

• Needed to make information more accessible to those who needed it
• Safeguarding sensitive data and compliance with recordkeeping requirements is a high priority

RESULTS

• Centralized documents and records
• Strengthened information governance across the organization
• Simplified the audit process

Ed Yonker joined the Franklin County IT department in 2004, after spending many years in the banking industry. “Government is a different world,” he explained. “Because of its size and structure, it’s a lot harder to implement new technology and get everyone on the same page.”

With approximately 150,000 residents, Franklin County comprises 52 different departments, including the Commissioners’ Office, Human Resources, Human Services and Risk Management, to name just a few. Yonker noted that these departments “operate like 52 separate businesses under the same umbrella.”

In this kind of environment, it’s especially important to establish enterprise-wide IT standards to promote consistency and cross-departmental collaboration, Yonker said. However, it’s often difficult to find technology that’s agile enough to meet the needs of many different departments and flexible enough to adapt quickly and cost-effectively to changing conditions.

“It’s hard to convince all the different departments that they can all use the same system,” said Yonker. “Because of that, we didn’t start out thinking Laserfiche was going to be enterprise technology. But after the enterprise content management seed was planted in one department, suddenly all our departments wanted to know more.”

The Beginning: Going Digital in the Commissioners’ Office

Franklin County worked with Laserfiche solution provider ICC Community Development Solutions to implement Laserfiche, with the county’s earliest adopters being in the Commissioners’ Office. “We had some younger commissioners come in, and they were more familiar with technology and the benefits it could have for Franklin County than previous commissioners had been,” explained Jean Byers, deputy chief clerk in the Commissioners’ Office. “They selected Laserfiche for its instant search capabilities, as well as the fact that we could install it directly on the computers already in use.

“We immediately realized tremendous benefits from Laserfiche,” she added. “Documents that used to take days to find became available with the click of a button. It used to take hours to find specific text within meeting minutes that were hundreds of pages long, but with Laserfiche it only took seconds.”

Laserfiche also made it easy to share documents with colleagues, and due to its intuitive interface, Laserfiche quickly became popular with both management and staff.

The Evolution of an Enterprise Standard

As Laserfiche took root in the Commissioners’ Office, other departments began to take notice. With their focus on compliance and prudent financial management, both the Fiscal Office and the Controller’s Office deployed Laserfiche shortly after the success in the Commissioners’ Office.

“Laserfiche is great for accounts payable functions and auditing. For AP, instant document retrieval speeds and simplifies the review and approval of invoices. And with electronically stored documents, employees can quickly and easily pull the files needed to satisfy an auditor’s request, with no need to spend hours digging through file cabinets. That’s a pretty impressive efficiency boost right there.”

Ed Yonker, CIO (retired), Franklin County

Yonker notes that rolling Laserfiche out to additional departments was an easier sell than other system expansions because there was buy-in from the top right from the start.

“Whenever county purchases exceed a certain amount, they need to be approved by the commissioners,” he explains. “Because the commissioners were already very familiar with the value of using Laserfiche, they never hesitated to give the go-ahead when other departments wanted to get on board.”

The next departments to raise their hands and ask for Laserfiche were Human Services, which was particularly excited about Laserfiche from a disaster recovery standpoint, and Human Resources.

Digitizing Human Resources

The first thing the HR department did after implementing Laserfiche was to start scanning personnel files into the system and develop a folder structure that separated employees’ employment records from their confidential medical records and discipline files.

A few of the benefits of this digital transformation include:
  • Reduced paper consumption: The department used to photocopy hundreds of thousands of pages of job applications a year for review by elected officials; today, officials have access to everything they need in Laserfiche.
  • Reclaimed time from searching for information: Laserfiche’s search capabilities makes it easy for staff to find the information necessary to do their jobs, along with fulfilling ad-hoc requests from directors for material from an employee’s personnel file for various purposes.
  • Higher staff productivity: “Doing more with less” is a familiar adage for local governments, and Franklin County is no exception. The county’s Laserfiche system accelerates processes and eliminates manual tasks so that staff can focus on the work that matters.
  • Reduced document storage space and cost: The county was able to remove a large 1,500 file-capacity cabinet in addition to five other standing file cabinets, allowing for more space for staff.
  • Easier audits: Digital files and a standard folder structure streamline audits for the county and enable the HR department to easily show compliance with recordkeeping mandates. The department no longer has to stop work on all other projects in order to organize for the audits.

In addition to managing personnel files in Laserfiche, the HR department has also added recruitment documentation and union and arbitration files to the system, which has led to quicker resolution of grievances.

“Franklin County is a forward-looking organization— which is reflected in their use of Laserfiche,” said Sandy Hess, sales operations manager at ICC Community Development Solutions. “By implementing an enterprise-wide system of record, the county has been able to preserve and protect the information that’s important to the county, while enabling staff to operate in a streamlined, responsive way that today’s employees and citizens appreciate.”

Laserfiche Rolls Across the Enterprise

With some technologies, organizations hit a tipping point for enterprise adoption. For Franklin County, that tipping point for Laserfiche was the implementation in HR.

“After HR deployed Laserfiche, everybody started to ask for it,” Yonker recounts. “People saw how successful the HR implementation was, and they began to talk about what the benefits for their departments could be.”

As Laserfiche was adopted by more and more departments, the types of content stored in the system grew more and more diverse:
  • Emergency Services uses Laserfiche to manage notes from its 911 calls and cases.
  • Franklin County Jail stores inmate records and requests in the Laserfiche repository.
  • Planning, which is tasked with fostering the proper growth of communities within Franklin County, manages new development records with Laserfiche.
  • Open Records, with its goal of making government transparent to County citizens, makes plans, drafts and studies stored in Laserfiche available to the public.
  • Real Estate manages audit reports and past voting results using Laserfiche. It is also able to respond to 13,000 queries a week in a fast and efficient manner thanks to Laserfiche’s ability to email digital documents.

Although the IT Department had not initially planned to implement Laserfiche as the county-wide standard for ECM, it’s now grateful to have that consistency in place. “We got rid of a couple departments’ antiquated imaging systems in order to move them onto Laserfiche, which makes my staff more efficient because it only has to administer the one ECM system. It’s also easier from a user training perspective, since everybody’s using the same thing,” Yonker said.

City of Long Beach Modernizes Citizen Services with Laserfiche

After the recession, the City of Long Beach turned to technology to cut costs — and create innovative ways to improve citizen services. To this end, it produced a three-pronged service delivery plan that would earn it numerous honors as a top ten digital city in the U.S.:
  • Consolidate information and communication technology services.
  • Increase transparency and collaboration across the enterprise.
  • Digitize processes, forms and workflow.

With a shared understanding of the value new technology could bring to Long Beach, the city tasked its technology services department to spearhead a citywide information management overhaul.

IT’s Strategy: Consolidate and Standardize

Long Beach has worked hard to consolidate technology functions while still providing flexibility for departments to run efficiently. For example, in 2009, Long Beach replaced its departmental IBM FileNet system with a Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM) system that could be used citywide.

The city’s ongoing strategy to consolidate services and decrease costs has paid dividends. By implementing Laserfiche, it has cut annual ECM support costs by 50%.

Other cost-saving IT consolidation efforts include:
  • An enterprise-wide online phone system expected to save $165,000 annually.
  • Virtual servers and workstations expected to generate $100,000 in energy and hardware savings over three years.
  • Cluster databases that reduce licensing and hardware fees.

ECM and Open Government

In April 2011, the Long Beach City Council adopted an open government policy identifying transparency as a core function of local government, which has become a top priority for staff and citizens alike.

“Long Beach is dedicated to fostering open, transparent government where everyone in our community can easily participate and engage,” explains City Clerk Larry Herrera. Herrera further notes that the City Clerk’s office uses Laserfiche to help deliver improved, cost-effective service. “Previously, we needed 28 people to answer citizen questions quickly and accurately. Today, with a staff of 17, our customer service is better than ever before.”

As more and more records are added to Laserfiche, information access improves and storage costs decrease. The document types stored in Laserfiche include:
  • City contracts
  • Campaign finance reports
  • Statements of economic interest
  • Council agendas and staff reports
  • Election ballots
  • Sample ballots
  • Voted returns

Long Beach has made all city contracts executed as of 2011 available to the public through Laserfiche WebLink, a read-only public portal. With 24/7 online viewing access, the city simplifies citizen information access and saves time for both requestors and city staff.

Elements of Success

Other departments that have worked to digitize paper processes include:
  • Financial Management
  • Human Resources
  • Development Services

For example, Long Beach began streamlining accounting processes by integrating Laserfiche with its business intelligence (BI) system. This integration streamlines expense research by making images of invoices available to authorized users through the BI interface.

Long Beach citizens, leadership and staff have shown full support for its Laserfiche initiative.

As a result of its collaboration between city leadership, staff and citizens, Long Beach has used technology to position itself as a leader for the future.

Hanover County

Located just outside of Richmond, VA, Hanover County serves a population of more than 100,000 residents. During tax season, keeping up the books for the constituency can be a daunting task for the Commissioner of Revenue’s Office, which manages all of the county’s real estate, personal, property and state income tax information.

The department purchased Laserfiche to eliminate paper processes and decrease the time staff spent finding and filing tax records.

It began using Laserfiche as a digital file cabinet and digitized over 85% of its tax documents in the first year.

When the department’s systems administrator, Amy Johnson, attended a user meeting hosted by the county’s reseller, Unity ECM, she saw how other organizations were leveraging Laserfiche’s advanced functionality. She knew Hanover County could use Laserfiche to do more than document search and retrieval.

To take advantage of Laserfiche’s newest features, the county upgraded to Laserfiche Rio and started revamping entire business processes.

Improving Document Approval with Workflow

Even without a background in IT, Johnson quickly began using Laserfiche Workflow to automate important departmental processes.

For example, every year the office completes statutory assessment worksheets to measure the personal property assets of each local business in the county. Before Laserfiche, compiling and processing these worksheets prior to review led to significant printing costs and time delays.

With Laserfice:
  • An integration between Laserfiche Quick Fields and the department’s AS/400 database has the eliminated cumbersome, upfront manual data entry.
  • Laserfiche Workflow automates the entire records approval process. New worksheets are immediately searchable in Laserfiche from managers’ desktops, allowing staff to quickly review worksheets and better serve customers.
  • With Laserfiche Snapshot, an image capture tool, the office has eliminated redundant printing of records. “Snapshot seems like a minor thing, but it was a huge benefit for us because we don’t have to print paper anymore,” says Johnson, estimating that the system saves the office from printing about 15,000 pages a year.

Automating Records Management

The county also relies on Laserfiche as an automated backbone for records management and retention. With paper, each staff member dedicated at least one day a week to sorting records for filing. Laserfiche has eliminated the need for this rotating position by automatically filing and storing approved documents by type and name for the six-year retention period.

“Everything we do is linked onto a foundation based on Laserfiche Records Management Edition, which allows us to log our records according to state records management standards,” says Johnson.

Getting Buy-in

Johnson says that upfront planning with every employee involved in the process has eased the office’s transition to digital document approval. When she began using Laserfiche Workflow, Johnson invited all the managers responsible for approving documents, along with the division manager, to join her as she drew out the process on a piece of paper. The group discussed every step together and determined how the managers would prefer to approve worksheets in Laserfiche.

“Time spent diagramming upfront will more than pay itself back later. Because we took the time to evaluate our documents, we ended up eliminating a lot of junk in our paper files,” notes Johnson. “It’s also really important to give staff ownership over the process.”

Tapping into the Laserfiche User Community

Beyond her work at the county, Johnson is also a leader of the Laserfiche User Group in Virginia, a consortium of Laserfiche users that holds quarterly meetings to foster the exchange of ECM knowledge. The group has grown to include more than 100 members throughout the state.

“The user group is so beneficial for networking and talking with other users. It’s a great place to hear about the lessons that other users have learned,” says Johnson.

Additionally, Johnson cites the annual Laserfiche Empower conference, reseller support and technical white papers as invaluable resources for improving her skills in using the software.

“Our implementation is so successful because of the community. Laserfiche listens to feedback and uses it to shape its next release. Everyone’s so approachable and helpful, and that makes it easy to like the product,” she says.

Gaining Top Value

Adopting new software functionality as it becomes available has helped Hanover County gain top value out of its ECM system. With these new tools, the county is truly leveraging the power of its constituent data in digital form to help transform the way county business is accomplished.

“Laserfiche is the one tool on your desktop that actually does what it’s supposed to do and what you ask it to do,” notes Johnson. “It’s one of my favorite parts of my job.”