Jackson County

Located in the scenic southwest corner of Oregon, Jackson County is home to a growing population of more than 200,000 residents—a growing population that in recent years has produced both a higher demand for services and more public records. Like many local government offices, Jackson County was flush with paper documents and short on storage space.

Additionally, the county must store and organize most of its departments’ records in complex records structures according to state and federal laws for records retention. With paper records, enforcing retention schedules while ensuring staff could still find and retrieve records involved tedious manual steps for staff across the county.

“There was a complicated system of filing with colored labels on the folders,” says Devin Goble, Programmer Analyst for Jackson County’s IT department. “Complying with retention meant staff had to look through each folder on the shelves, a very time-consuming process.”

Even though the county knew its departments needed an enterprise content management (ECM) system, skepticism toward digital content—and new IT projects—was strong among employees.

“It was a hard fight to get ECM implemented in the county. People were thoroughly entrenched in their paper processes,” says Goble.

To offer a valuable solution to staff, Goble led a search for an ECM system that could satisfy many different users’ needs and eliminate manual paper processes.

Laserfiche appealed to the IT department because it offered a well-supported feature set with a solid, built-in records management component. After hearing the positive experiences of other cities and counties using Laserfiche, Goble was assured that his IT department could structure Laserfiche in a way that would win over skeptical departments.

Warranting a Transparent Records Management Solution

Although many departments wanted a solution to their paper problems, the county worked with Laserfiche solution provider CDI to begin its Laserfiche implementation in the Sheriff’s Office in 2011. The diverse types of records handled by law enforcement staff offered the perfect testing ground for an improved records management process. Felony records, for example, must be retained by the department for ten years, while records managers can destroy certain types of warrants after five and others after ten. Keeping track of different retention schedules while making paper documents easily accessible to clerks was difficult for the department.

Laserfiche’s Records Management Edition, a DoD 5015.2-certified records management solution, allowed the IT department to separate what Goble calls the “nuts and bolts of records management” from general document use. Using Laserfiche’s transparent records management approach, the department was able to customize content management based on staff members’ job functions and easily organize the same documents in different ways for records managers and deputies.

For example, the four types of warrants handled by the department all require two separate retention schedules. When a warrant is received and scanned into the department’s digital document repository, Laserfiche automatically puts every warrant in its own record series folder, allowing records managers to view warrants in a batch by type or year and purge them at the appropriate time.

At the same time, Laserfiche establishes a separate folder structure for deputies and clerks that lists individual warrants by warrant type and warrant number. Because deputies are usually searching for more granular information within a specific case or a subpoena, Laserfiche automatically organizes documents so that deputies can easily find the detailed case information within a record.

It’s a best of both worlds solution: records managers can easily find and filter warrants based on disposition schedules while, at the same time, deputies can access individual warrants without knowing anything about records naming conventions. Everyone can work with law enforcement documents in the manner they prefer.

“Laserfiche’s transparent records management tools allow us to create a second view of the data in as many places as we need to. Records managers see it in one way. Clerks see it in another way. In some cases, others in the Sheriff’s hierarchy can see it in a completely different way,” says Goble.

Furthermore, an integration between Laserfiche and Tiburon, the department’s CAD/RMS system, pulls relevant names, place and incident dates from the police records upon scanning. Laserfiche Quick Fields auto-populates this information as metadata within the warrant file. Laserfiche Workflow then routes the warrant through the transparent records management filing process, eliminating the time-consuming, manual data entry and document routing steps for staff.

Streamlining Information Management

Laserfiche has also completely automated the department’s civil jacket process, which once included tedious data entry by records managers.

For civil cases, deputies compile an envelope of documents called a civil jacket that includes court documents and other records related to an incident when a subpoena is served. When these envelopes are scanned into the document repository, Laserfiche automatically fixes the civil jacket number to comply with the state’s records policy and forwards the documents to clerks for quality assurance.

“We take that act of moving data around and complying with retention policies out of users’ hands as much as possible. In some cases, users never have to touch the documents after they scan them. Laserfiche does all the rest,” says Goble.

Eliminating manual steps helps staff focus on getting their jobs done instead of tracking down and organizing paper. Temporary staff can complete scanning tasks without needing to be trained on document retention parameters, and records managers aren’t burdened with data entry. Laserfiche’s automation tools also eliminate the security risk of records being moved out of their records series.

“Not only do users not have to worry about where things go, they can’t change the filing structure even if they want to. This structure is locked in place by policy,” says Goble.

Furthermore, the Sheriff’s Office can directly push documents to the District Attorney’s office using Laserfiche WebLink, an online Web portal that provides read-only access to documents. High-profile cases often require transferring thousands of pages of records to the DA. With WebLink, the Sheriff’s Office can upload select documents to the online portal and give DA staff secure access to the information, eliminating costly printing and shipping expenses and streamlining litigation.

Building Enterprise-Wide Enthusiasm for ECM

The initial implementation was so successful that the skeptical end users have started evangelizing Laserfiche to other departments. Goble says he is fielding questions from other departments about records management and Laserfiche all the time.

“It’s nice to give users something solid. Now that our staff has had a chance to see what the product can do for us, they’re getting excited about it,” says Goble.

In addition to using Laserfiche for other documents like purchasing records and contracts for the Sheriff’s Office, IT has expanded ECM to the County Assessor’s Office. The department uses Laserfiche to scan and store historical deed cards, 100-year old property assessment jackets and current personal property returns for local businesses. The county’s Human Resources department has also started integrating Laserfiche with its Oracle ERP system to manage personnel records.

Using Laserfiche Workflow and Laserfiche Quick Fields to automate as much of the capture and indexing process as possible went a long way in showing the value of the application to multiple departments. Goble says that setting up a system that requires as little user interaction as possible was key to expanding ECM into an enterprise application.

“I’m more proud of our users than anything else. We’re really happy to see the expansion that we’ve been able to do with Laserfiche,” notes Goble.

Florida League of Cities

With the mission of shaping legislation and promoting cooperative action among Florida’s municipal governments, the Florida League of Cities represents over 400 cities, towns and villages throughout the state. The organization, based in Orlando and Tallahassee, serves as the primary provider of critical services for member organizations, including insurance plans, pensions, loans, legal consultation and policy research.

As its membership base grew, the League faced an influx of documents and service needs that its previous document management system, Alchemy, couldn’t handle without instability issues. To build a stable, long-term content management plan for the whole enterprise, which houses 16 departments and 170 employees, the League turned to Laserfiche ECM based on its widespread use among Florida governments.

“We selected Laserfiche because of its reputation as an industry leader,” says Chris Noyes, Business Systems Analyst for the League. “Laserfiche was chosen not only for its reputation and ROI, but for the stability and scalability it would provide our internal operations.”

In fact, purchasing Laserfiche prompted the organization’s IT department and business units to collaborate on new, more efficient ways of structuring business processes.

“For the first time in years, we have directed significant resources into dissecting our existing processes and reengineering them to fit new business conditions using Laserfiche. It has forced us to rethink how we do business—in a positive way,” says Noyes.

Initiating Change in Insurance Units

The League initiated partnerships between IT and business units during its first Laserfiche deployment in the worker’s compensation claims department, which handles more than 180,000 documents from doctors, providers and the state every year.

The IT department started by mapping out the entire claims process into large-format flowcharts and then hosted inter-department meetings where IT staff and business heads worked together to identify antiquated paper processes, identify business goals and create a strategy for improving the flow of claims information.

Within six months, this collaborative effort resulted in a completely reengineered claims processing cycle. Instead of manually passing multiple copies of documents around the office, claims adjustors and clerical staff now use Laserfiche Workflow, a business process management tool, integrated with a backend SQL database to automatically route claims to the right adjustors in both the Orlando and Tallahassee offices.

“We’ve gained efficiencies by creating a centralized intake department. The printers are silent and there isn’t an army of personnel moving documents between cubicles,” explains Noyes.

The claims department saved 3,400 labor hours in just the first year of using Laserfiche and reduced a process that once took up to 24 hours to complete to just a few hours. With files in a central location, the department’s special investigations team no longer needs to rifle through the contents of CDs and DVDs and can work more proactively during insurance fraud investigations.

The League’s Property and Liability Claims Center, comprised of statewide field members who assess losses from natural disasters, also implemented Laserfiche to automatically push property claims received by phone to claims adjustors in the field through a completely paperless process.

An integration between Laserfiche Web Access, an online version of the Laserfiche digital document repository, and the League’s risk management software automatically links claim files, bills and state forms together in an online portal that’s quickly accessible by field members.

“In the event of a regional disaster, Laserfiche Workflow promptly notifies our response team and coordinates claim information between our offices and field staff,” says Noyes. “We know immediately if a member has incurred a loss and can act upon it quickly, greatly improving customer service.”

The Property and Liability Claims department is now routing more than 55,000 claim documents a year and has reduced printing expenses by 80%, saving more than $9,000 in operational costs.

With these time and cost savings, insurance staff in the Worker’s Compensation and Property Claims Centers can redirect their efforts to adjusting claims instead of performing back-office tasks like printing faxes and alphabetizing checks. Claims staff are collaborating more quickly with other departments, like underwriting, finance and risk control—the League’s ultimate goal.

Laserfiche + Great Plains + iPads = Automated Mobile Accounting

When other business units realized what interdepartmental document collaboration and Laserfiche’s ease-of-use had achieved for the insurance groups, suddenly everyone wanted to get in on Laserfiche Workflow, says Noyes.

“Laserfiche Workflow is easy to understand even if you don’t have a lot of technical skills. It’s a tool that helps logically show how information can flow efficiently through the organization. You start seeing light bulbs go off in people’s heads,” he explains.

The League’s Finance department requested a more streamlined solution to its check printing and invoice approval process. Clerks were spending 30 hours a week just matching checks with supporting documents generated from multiple applications.

Using Laserfiche’s integrative abilities, the IT department combined Laserfiche Workflow with Great Plains, the department’s ERP system, the League’s Microsoft CRM system and RightFax faxing software to streamline this process. Laserfiche acts as integrative middleware that updates member information between the databases and pushes customer information through the approval process, from the arrival of fax documents to the printing of a check or invoice.

The IT department also connected Laserfiche with the Apple iPad, giving management the ability to review and approve invoices off-site. Staff can simply access their desktop remotely and open Laserfiche to view files. In the future, the IT department plans to migrate the department onto Laserfiche’s iPad app, an app that allows employees to securely create, upload, view and act upon content from wherever they are.

The department has saved over 500 labor hours using this Great Plains and Laserfiche Workflow integration. Instead of relying on staff to pass information back and forth, Laserfiche now automatically routes 800 invoices a month, significantly improving check turn-around time for vendors and customers.

“Laserfiche Workflow handles our manual processes while also adding value, security and accountability to the process,” says Noyes.

Accounting staff has enthusiastically embraced the solution, which Noyes credits to Laserfiche’s integrative capability. Because Laserfiche works with, not against, applications that users are already familiar with, IT was able to create solutions that didn’t burden staff with learning an entirely new system.

“The more you can integrate Laserfiche with your existing applications, the happier and more productive your users will be. Laserfiche allows for so many different methods of hooking into your existing systems, whether they are off-the-shelf or custom-built,” explains Noyes.

Merging IT Requirements with User Acceptance

In total, over 155 employees across the League use Laserfiche and the organization manages two digital repositories that house over 10 million pages from various departments. With Laserfiche, the League has reclaimed 700 square feet of office space, allowing the organization to add more staff and service more customers as business grows.

“Potential costs savings are everywhere, and the business process analysis combined with the Laserfiche toolset can greatly increase productivity,” says Noyes. “You can translate a single solution that you come up with into an interoperable process across your organization.”

IT approaches every implementation as an opportunity to learn a department’s business needs and to create solutions that employees are comfortable learning and using. The result is a collaborative mindset that empowers staff to discover their own innovative ways of configuring Laserfiche.

For example, Noyes says finance staff brainstormed a new method for indexing and routing their annual renewal packets. Their solution ended up reducing the task from a two-week project into a four-hour activity.

“Through the business process discovery, departments have come together, collaborating like never before. Technology Services is now a partner with the other business units, giving the non-technical folks more ownership of the tools they use every day. We’re not just a service utility anymore.”

Noyes says the League plans to use this collaborative spirit to thoroughly evaluate more business processes and continue to deploy Laserfiche across the enterprise. IT also plans to provide more iPads with the Laserfiche Mobile app to staff to power mobile content management.

“We have just scratched the surface to uncover the potential uses of Laserfiche within our organization,” he concludes.

Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB), based in Austin, helps develop the state’s higher education plans, approves degree programs and provides advice on education activities to the State Legislature and Governor’s Office.

Central to achieving THECB’s mission of promoting access to quality higher education is its Loan Program Operations (LPO), which disburses state financial aid funds to Texas universities and assists with student loan collections and litigation for the State Attorney General’s Office. As the gatekeeper for state-appropriated financial aid, LPO handles more than 1.5 million documents each year—a number that’s grown steadily as cuts to state scholarship funds have driven more loan applications to the department’s College Access Loan and B-On-Time incentive programs. In 2011 alone, the agency disbursed over $143 million worth of funds to students.

“For cases that go on to become loans, it’s a very paper-intensive process,” explains Debbie Whitis, Manager of LPO Operational Support Services. “Every single piece of information related to a student loan, from electronic applications, paper sources and screenshots, must be documented and archived according to state retention guidelines.”

Although LPO had a document management system in place, the legacy system couldn’t handle the high-volume processing needed to handle the growing volume of loan applications. As a result, it needed rebooting at least eight times a day.

On average, the agency was losing 19 cumulative hours of staff time across its departments every day—wasted effort that cost the LPO $76,000 each year and generated customer dissatisfaction.

“If a debtor called to inquire about their loan status and the system was down, we couldn’t give them a real-time answer,” explains Whitis. “Staff still had to manually fill in field classifications, and our process wasn’t very transparent.”

Stretching the IT Investment

LPO began searching for a new enterprise content management (ECM) system that would cut out inefficiencies and save staff time. When reseller MCCi showed the organization Laserfiche Avante’s flexible, customizable administration and workflow tools, the agency was convinced that Laserfiche could easily reduce its bottlenecks, track documents throughout the loan record lifecycle and make information readily accessible to many different users at once.

Whitis was impressed that so many of Laserfiche’s key functionalities aligned with LPO’s checklist of requirements, including Laserfiche’s ability to:
  • Monitor activities occurring within the department in real-time.
  • Support a complicated routing structure for LPO and provide transparency at each step of the loan process lifecycle.
  • Generate performance quotas and productivity statistics.
  • Offer snapshot printing, scanning and conversion of diverse content formats.

Even with this wide range of features, Laserfiche still offered an affordable price point. “Laserfiche was the most cost-effective solution and best value we found,” says Whitis. “When you’re paying with tax dollars, value is important.”

Furthermore, Laserfiche’s ease-of-use ensured a smooth implementation when turnover in LPO’s IT department reduced the project’s technical support. Using Laserfiche’s free user education materials along with her knowledge of ECM system implementation, Whitis was able to teach herself the ins and outs of the entire Laserfiche system.

“I was able to learn the system simply by using the white papers, customer presentations and everything else that is available on the Laserfiche Support Site,” explains Whitis. “The information really is readable and digestible for Laserfiche users.”

Eliminating Redundancies and Building Transparency

Armed with these education materials, Whitis started the implementation by sketching her ideas for improving the loan process out on paper. She then brought those ideas to life using the Laserfiche Workflow Designer, a business process configuration tool, to build complex, automated document routing and archiving procedures and data queries to third-party systems.

In total, Whitis created 29 different workflows that process and route the diverse types of content the department receives, streamlining many steps in daily activities, especially for the agency’s Operational Support Services (OSS) department.

Some of the benefits realized include:
  • Enhance information capture. Using Laserfiche Snapshot, a multi-functional document capture tool, the department can capture and record all loan documents like IVR (interactive voice response) payments, call sheets and loan changes directly from third-party systems, such as the agency’s Loan Management System, in a central repository.
  • Streamlined payment processing. For captured documents like checks, Laserfiche Workflow uses information on the check to query client data like social security numbers from the agency’s other databases and links that information to the check. Workflow then routes the document among the necessary departments at each step of payment review and processing.
  • Transparent records management. To archive a document according to litigation requirements, Workflow extracts information such as the borrower’s last name from the document, and automatically creates the proper retention folders for the document.
  • Centralized control. In the Laserfiche Workflow Administration Console, an advanced performance and reporting interface, Whitis can now monitor all system activity in real-time and research bottlenecks affecting the productivity of the team.

By automating and centralizing information access with Laserfiche, the agency can now process documents within a matter of milliseconds versus hours. Laserfiche Snapshot alone has helped the OSS department reduce its document processing times by up to 24 hours and eliminate 66% of its staffing expenses, a total of $15,000 in savings.

With Laserfiche Workflow, LPO can ultimately ensure that every step of the loan record cycle is transparent and that documents are saved in a searchable format, even as multiple users interact with the document.

“Changes to the document remain consistent no matter where the document goes,” says Whitis. “I love the fact that I can go into the Workflow Designer and find exactly where a document is. We can resolve an issue in a matter of minutes or within a couple of hours. Before, it was just a shot in the dark.”

Gaining Enterprise-Wide Buy-In

LPO managers and directors also love Laserfiche’s time-saving reporting tools. Prior to Laserfiche, managers could spend two full days compiling statistics about their teams’ productivity and quotas for the Assistant Commissioner of Business and Support Services. Using Laserfiche Audit Trail, an enterprise risk management tool that tracks user activity, managers can now generate performance reports on their staff with the click of a button.

To bring managers and staff up to speed on Laserfiche, Whitis committed to several onsite demos and trainings on searching, reporting and data capture.

“People here had been married to our old system for the duration of their careers,” notes Whitis. “But when they saw Laserfiche’s capabilities compared to our old system, they were impressed. They really took ownership of the software in their daily processes when we gave them a voice in how it works.”

This ownership translated into greatly increased staff productivity, especially during peak processing seasons. Even though the number of loan applications has increased by 12% since LPO started using Laserfiche, the agency has decreased its error rate to a mere two percent with the system. In just the first year of using Laserfiche, LPO estimates that it has reduced about 30% of its overall operating expenses.

In the future, the department plans to expand its Laserfiche system to handle the litigation documents it files with the state court. Using Laserfiche Quick Fields, a high-volume indexing tool, LPO will automate the costly, time-consuming manual indexing of legal files.

Whitis says that what makes Laserfiche so attractive to state agencies—and other organizations—is its flexible architecture. From document capture to automated workflows to reporting, Whitis praises how easily Laserfiche has accommodated LPO’s evolving business needs.

Loudoun County

For Loudoun County, VA, keeping up with the demands of a rapidly expanding population is a challenge, even with a healthy economy. In fact, residents of Loudoun County enjoy the nation’s highest median household income at well over $100,000 a year. In addition, Loudoun County ranked in the top 3% of all counties nationwide for per capita income.

The rapid growth of the population—coupled with the high expectations of high-income residents—has led to an increasingly high demand for public services. As a result, the county must constantly look for new and innovative ways to support high priority initiatives.

Turning to Technology

Loudoun County’s IT department is in charge of the efficient implementation of technology to improve county services to its citizens. Comprised of more than 90 IT professionals serving over 3,000 government employees across 32 departments, the IT department determines information system needs and provides equipment, software, maintenance, repair, training and other services for the entire enterprise.

Bill McIntyre, Division Manager of Enterprise IT, leads the team responsible for the software and systems that serve employees across the county, including the internet and intranet, e-mail, Webcasting and customer relationship management (CRM). “We take care of the technology that every user can take advantage of,” McIntyre says. “Our Laserfiche content management system definitely falls into that category.”

However, content management wasn’t always viewed as an enterprise system. Before implementing Laserfiche Enterprise Content Management in 2007, Loudoun County had three departments using different document imaging systems.

Going Enterprise

When the Controller’s Office started looking for a replacement for its old document imaging system, the IT department realized that implementing a true enterprise content management (ECM) system—one that could be used in all county departments—would cut down on the need for support and enable employees across the county to benefit from the ability to digitize their content and automate their business processes.

“In the past, there were a lot of overlapping systems. From a support, maintenance and cost perspective, we knew that standardizing on one ECM system was our best move,” explains McIntyre. “With only one system to oversee, we could develop the deep expertise that would enable the county to make the most out of its investment in ECM.”

After working with Unity Business Systems, a Laserfiche reseller, to implement Laserfiche in the Controller’s Office as well as Building & Development, Loudoun County’s IT department realized that it needed someone in-house to run point on the Laserfiche project. The department hired Gopal Kanneganti, Senior Imaging Systems Analyst, to join McIntyre’s enterprise team.

“It was important to us to ensure that we had someone on our team who would be responsible for Laserfiche. If you tried to add that task to people’s existing responsibilities, it could be easily pushed to the side,” McIntyre says.

Managing Change

McIntyre and Kanneganti then set out to educate their colleagues across different departments about the value of Laserfiche ECM. Although McIntyre claims that he and his team “are just a bunch of geeks and nerds who don’t know anything about marketing,” they took a picture-perfect approach to promoting the value of the new system across Loudoun County.

He explains, “We started by attending leadership meetings and presenting the capabilities of Laserfiche to department leaders. In particular, we targeted departments that were very paper-based and that would see the benefits of digitizing the paper right away.”

Two departments that sprang immediately to mind included Environmental Health and Family Services, both of which had records rooms that were so full of paper the floors were buckling.

“The need for ECM was there,” says McIntyre. “After we attended their staff meetings and they heard about what Laserfiche could do, they knew that this system would give them a way out of their predicament.”

The Enterprise Team’s strategy was to get Laserfiche into these departments quickly, so they’d see immediate value. This approach paid off, and today McIntyre says the team no longer needs to “sell Laserfiche internally. Everyone wants it.”

In fact, Loudoun County is looking to bring on a second Laserfiche administrator to assist Kanneganti and accelerate deployment across the enterprise. “When we looked at a reasonable pace for one person to roll out Laserfiche to the rest of the county, we realized that it would take 24 years!” McIntyre says. “We’re getting funding for the second position starting in fiscal 2013, and the new systems analyst will be coming on board in July.”

McIntyre notes that the IT department will be busy rolling out three new systems over the next year:
  • Enterprise-wide: An Oracle ERP system.
  • Assessor’s Office: iasWorld appraisal software from Tyler Technologies.
  • Tax: A new tax software system from PCI Systems.

“When we were searching for these new systems, we made it a mandatory requirement that they would all be able to integrate with Laserfiche,” says McIntyre. “Laserfiche is our enterprise solution for content management. We’re not going to move forward with any system that is incompatible with it.”

To date, Loudoun County has implemented Laserfiche in ten departments, including:
  • Assessor’s Office
  • Building & Development
  • Management & Financial Services (Controller’s Office)
  • Environmental Health
  • Family Services

“There are 30 departments across Loudoun County, so we’re just getting started,” McIntyre says.

Red River Regional Dispatch Center

Located in Cass County, ND, the Red River Regional Dispatch Center (RRRDC) was the first 911 center in the country to consolidate services across state lines (North Dakota/Minnesota). While there are many multi-jurisdictional dispatch centers throughout the US, only RRRDC works with all of the fire, police and emergency response units in two counties in two different states.

Serving the metropolitan community of Fargo-Moorhead, RRRDC handles more than 121,000 emergency calls a year, dispatching responders from:
  • Two sheriff’s departments.
  • Seven police departments.
  • Three city fire departments.
  • 28 rural fire departments.
  • 15 rural emergency medical service providers.
  • One ambulance service.

According to Renee Lura, Professional IT Services Manager for the City of Fargo and an IT liaison/lead for RRRDC, “In the realm of public safety, sharing resources across agencies allows everyone involved to get more bang for their buck. Multi-jurisdictional agencies allow participants to pool their funding so that they can invest in more sophisticated technology and provide better, faster service to their communities.”

Integration with CAD/RMS/CMS Is Key

Lura notes that in 2009, during the transition from RRRDC’s legacy AS400 CAD/RMS system to the CAD/RMS/CMS from New World Systems, the team looked for an enterprise content management (ECM) system that could integrate with New World to make it easy for staff to access and share reports, photos, warrants and a variety of other scanned or electronic documents.

“Three of the agencies in our consortium were already using Laserfiche independently,” Lura explains, “so the opportunity to benefit from all that internal expertise was a major factor in our purchase decision.” Working with Laserfiche reseller CDI, she notes, was another. “The City of Moorhead and Cass County had worked with CDI for years, and everyone was comfortable with them from the start.”

Ultimately, though, it was CDI’s ability to build a seamless integration with New World that sold RRRDC on Laserfiche. “By integrating Laserfiche with New World, we can share documents across departments and jurisdictions. Anyone with security rights to a certain document can open it by clicking a button in the New World record. It’s easy and intuitive.”

The Laserfiche/New World integration works as follows:
  • When users look under the Documents tab in New World, they find a Laserfiche button that indicates whether or not there is a corresponding Laserfiche folder.
  • By clicking on the button, the Laserfiche client launches to the appropriate folder location and users are taken directly to the file associated with the record.
  • Documents can also be scanned or uploaded into Laserfiche directly from the New World interface.

“Officers, detectives, dispatch and other authorized users all access pertinent information from one integrated interface,” says Lura.

ECM Enhances Security, Mobility and Compliance

Furthermore, because RRRDC uses Laserfiche Records Management Edition, a DoD 5015.2-certified solution that simplifies compliance with records management mandates, new records entering the system are automatically classified and filed into the proper records series.

“We use Laserfiche to manage everything from Wants and Warrants to animal tracking documentation to case notes from officers in the field, and different laws apply to different types of records,” says Lura. “Depending on a document’s metadata, Laserfiche automatically calculates and assigns cutoff and eligibility dates, making it easy for us to manage our records and comply with regulations.”

Lura notes that there are hundreds of users across the 58 agencies the dispatch center serves. “The thin-client solution, Laserfiche Web Access, is great for us because we have so many users spread out over so many different locations,” she says. “In the future, we look to give officers access to Laserfiche from their patrol cars, and Web Access is how other agencies are making this happen.”

Making sure that all the users have the right security permissions to see only the information that pertains to them, Lura says, has been relatively easy. “We’re a Microsoft shop, so it’s great that Laserfiche allows us to use Active Directory-driven security. We came up with a dynamic, matrixed approach that’s easy to administer and update as new staff is hired.”

Workflow Makes Work Easier Across Agencies

The consortium has also benefitted from Laserfiche Workflow, a business process management (BPM) tool that enables agencies to automate document-driven processes. “Different agencies maintain their own workflows, explains Lura. “The system is flexible enough to accommodate the needs of both RRRDC and the various agencies it serves.”

She notes that “automated approval workflows are particularly popular, as are case notification workflows that automatically notify records management staff after an officer has added information into the system.”

For example, the Moorhead Police Department implemented a series of workflow projects to minimize the amount of work involved in finding, completing and approving the paperwork associated with cases.

According to Troy Weber, Information Technology Specialist for the City of Moorhead, “Before we implemented Laserfiche Workflow, our permanent case files resided in a separate set of folders alongside our regular cases. This caused a lot of duplicate searches and errors as users needed to work with two paths because of the different permissions. Workflow now automatically sets permissions when any of the permanent case types are chosen, and the files are stored in the standard folder layout.”

He explains that case files are stored in a series of folders that match up with New World. “Because we needed the layout in Laserfiche to match up with the way New World is structured, our Laserfiche folder arrangement is not as user-friendly as it could be. In the past, our users spent a lot of time browsing to various subfolders when scanning documents,” Weber says. “We resolved this with a simple routing workflow that moves files from the new scans folder to the appropriate case folder based on metadata that was already being entered. This small change has saved a significant amount of staff time.”

In terms of approvals, Weber says, “We wanted an easy, paperless way for supervisors to ‘sign off’ on reports. Since this was only for internal purposes, we did not need an actual signature, but we did want to know which supervisor approved the document and when. Further, we wanted the documents to retain the original owner and created dates. Workflow provided an elegant solution.”

He explains, “We added a couple of fields to our template, but did not give users modify rights to them. One of the new fields is an approved field that only supervisors can modify. When populated, the workflow enters the logged in user’s name into the ‘supervisor’ field, along with the current date and time.” He further notes that this solution has given users the ability to search for documents based on a given supervisor’s approval.

Weber says that the Moorhead Police Department has found the software to be flexible and easy to configure. “Laserfiche Workflow has enabled us to transform useful digital document storage software into a full business automation solution,” he says.

From Lura’s perspective within RRRDC, “With everything it offers, from the New World integration to the business process automation and records management, Laserfiche allows the agencies in our consortium to save money each week on clerical tasks like filing. We find more and more ways to use the software every day.”

Stewart Enterprises: Using ECM Software for Disaster Recovery

Mitigating Documents During Disaster Recovery

“With cemetery records, record-keeping is literally eternal,” says Brian Pellegrin, IS Business Support Manager at Stewart Enterprises, Inc.

In the past, when people passed away, contracts from funeral homes and cemeteries were permanently added to the millions of pages of records in each of the company’s regional storage centers.

Although Stewart Enterprises initially considered implementing an enterprise content management (ECM) solution in 2005, it failed to anticipate that its documents might incur damage. Unfortunately, when Hurricane Katrina struck later that year, the company’s New Orleans Records Management Center was hit and tens of thousands of documents were submerged for over a week.

“The hypothetical doomsday scenario became a reality for our organization,” says Pellegrin. “Unfortunately, we were not as forward-thinking at that time as we are now. Rather than accepting an initial ECM proposal for $175,000, we spent $1.5 million recovering and restoring our documents.”

Setting a Document Standard

Despite the loss, the disaster gave the organization the forward velocity it needed to go digital with Laserfiche ECM. “When implementing a new functional area, as soon as I put the Katrina pictures up, everyone is on board,” says Pellegrin. “When you talk about buy-in, it isn’t a hard sell.”

As a direct result of Hurricane Katrina, the company first digitized the records in its New Orleans Records Management Center. Before implementing ECM enterprise-wide, Pellegrin started discovery by physically walking through various company facilities and taking stock of employee processes, paper piles and organization structure—a preliminary step he recommends for anyone beginning a Laserfiche project.

“The sheer volume of documents involved in digitizing a record center astonished me,” he says. “Walk through a variety of departments and ask yourself, would it would be beneficial to management to see the documents and to have real-time tracking for every step in this process?”

These discoveries allowed Pellegrin to seize the opportunity to standardize records management across the company by upgrading to Laserfiche Rio. He rolled out digital archiving to the company’s other records centers in Miami, Dallas and Orlando, as well as individual facilities and corporate offices in 25 states and Puerto Rico.

Configuring Laserfiche Rio across multiple departments and integrating Laserfiche Quick Fields with the company’s contract number system and reporting systems transformed Stewart Enterprises’ Laserfiche ECM system from a simple disaster recovery plan to a flexible, yet central, point of control.

“We’re not looking at an individual person or process, we’re thinking enterprise-wide,” he says of the company’s IT strategy. “What we have noticed as a result of implementing Laserfiche is not only a more efficient process, but a structured workflow that can be implemented nationwide.”

Centralizing Contracts

Because Stewart Enterprises juggles different regulations on its contracts and facilities for every state in which it operates, Pellegrin sought a standard workflow that could track and store documents in compliance with these regulations while still offering fluid access to documentation when adjusting a client’s file.

Laserfiche Rio allowed the company to greatly restructure the contracts workflow. Using the Laserfiche SDK, Pellegrin configured Laserfiche Quick Fields to draw information between the company’s .NET point-of-sale applications and Laserfiche. This integration, along with standardized scanning methods and better quality control, led to much faster processing:
750 field employees now image documentation as .TIFF files onto a national network drive using Canon scanners.

Laserfiche Import Agent then transfers those documents from the drive into the Laserfiche repository automatically, day and night.

Laserfiche Quick Fields runs a real-time SQL search against the company’s account receivable contract system based on individual contract number. Laserfiche Quick Fields then indexes each document by geographic location, sorts and routes it to separate workflows depending on values identified in the SQL lookup.

Users across the regional centers and corporate headquarters can route, process and update contracts using Laserfiche Workflow and Laserfiche Snapshot.

Prior to Laserfiche, these records centers contained vaults full of filing cabinets and shelves of manila folders that a contract research team mined during contract retrieval requests. With this system in place across all facilities, the company has already scanned more than 30 million pages from its document centers into Laserfiche’s digital repositories, repurposing filing cabinets into valuable real estate and saving thousands in paper costs. Now the company can scan, monitor and check the quality of its financial transactions, such as deposits, to better ensure compliance with each state’s regulations.

Enterprise-Sized Gains

Unlocking critical contract information from paper forms brought an unprecedented level of enterprise visibility to the company, which Pellegrin lauds as Laserfiche’s main asset. When Laserfiche Workflow creates a permanent record for storage, it also makes the contracts available for real-time access to over 1,000 employees nationwide via a Laserfiche WebLink Web portal.

Now, users ranging from executive vice presidents to customer service representatives can research the contracts and their indexes and status information with the click of the Laserfiche icon on their desktop. “Giving real-time, simultaneous access to a variety of functional areas and hierarchies brought immediate value and efficiency to our organization,” explains Pellegrin.

For example, read-only access to contracts for the company’s audit department has eliminated travel costs during audits. The audit group may perform a facility audit without the facility knowing about it, right from their own computers.

“Laserfiche has allowed us to not only standardize our processes, but to easily monitor them as well. We now have access to empirical data about employees indicating efficiency, accuracy and completeness on a real-time basis,” notes Pellegrin.

Stewart Enterprises truly leverages the full scale of Laserfiche Rio, using it for everything from conversion and storage of microfilm records to streamlining and enhancing internal audit processes across the entire company.

“Prior to implementing Laserfiche, I was virtually in the dark with respect to ECM. I didn’t have the slightest idea of the impact this one system could have throughout the organization. We’re changing the culture of our company in a span of three to six months at each record facility.”

5 Convincing Reasons to Automate Accounts Payable

When paper is used to manage invoices, AP might as well stand for “annoying process.” At best, hardcopy invoices cause a brief interruption in your day—at worst, they get lost on someone’s desk and you have to contact the vendor for a new copy.

Below are five telltale signs your AP process needs to be digitized and automated.

1. Lack of Autonomy

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Tracking down an invoice or PO shouldn’t require the involvement of 10 different people.

Tracking down the status of an invoice or purchase order (PO) feels like a days-long game of telephone. An employee inquires about an order, you defer to an employee in accounting, she asks the senior accountant…and eventually an answer arrives.

In a manual AP process, only the person with the document in hand knows its status. However, when an organization uses a document management system, any authorized user can view the status and activity of that document. With the added benefit of automation, employees can receive instant email notifications when an invoice requires attention—no searching required. The ability to independently locate and receive documents saves time and effort for you, your employees and your AP department.

2. Busy Work Blues

A department head’s goal is to manage people, not paper. But when you have to scan, fax or walk every document to the AP department, you have less time to devote to your employees.

By converting all AP paperwork into digital files (or better yet, having them start off in a digital format), organizations avoid the nuisance of shuffling invoices and POs from desk to desk. Additionally, an automated AP system can calculate totals, cross-reference invoices with PO numbers and send notification emails to everyone involved in the process. The busy work is still getting done, but you don’t have to do it.

3. Turnaround Time Terrors

The time you spend routing and signing documents affects your employees’ productivity as well as your own. Anyone who submits a PO knows it could take days before the vendor even receives the order. You want your team to get what it needs to work, but that goal becomes more and more distant with every paper document that lands on your desk.

Instead of impeding projects, an automated AP process expedites the time between ordering and receiving. Not only does it eliminate the need to physically route documents, it also reduces the need for manual data entry, calculations and quality control. A document management system, for example, can extract information from an electronic PO or invoice and store it in a repository. Reduced manual transcription means reduced chance for data entry errors and processing delays.

4. Too Many Idiosyncrasies

Not every PO follows the same path from employee to vendor. POs typically require sign-off from different approvers depending on the dollar value of the order. Remembering who needs to sign what type of PO does not contribute to a quick and effortless process.

Another useful function of document management software is the conditional routing of documents. This type of system can determine, based on the information provided in the PO, whose approval is required. Once these conditions are established in the system, it can run thousands of times without error, giving you one less detail to remember about the AP process.

5.  Finger Pointing Problems

Signing paperwork is quick, but when an important document goes missing it pulls you away from work indefinitely. In the worst-case scenario, the invoice never resurfaces and those involved start to blame each other for its disappearance.

Document management software prevents this scenario in three major ways:

  • It electronically stores documents, eliminating the risks associated with tangible files.
  • It tracks user activity so you can see who has viewed, edited or approved a file.
  • You can establish user-based security rights to prevent unauthorized people from using—or destroying—electronic files.

Through these measures, you’ll always know who has handled an invoice or PO at every stage of the AP process.

Want to learn more about the strategic advantages that can be gained by implementing an AP automation solution? Check out this infographic and see how process automation can help your organization gain a strategic advantage and tackle the challenges of invoice processing.

InvestmentNews Study Shows the Payoff of Advisor Technology for Financial Services

Right now, RIAs are busy formulating their business plans for 2015.  In the area of advisor technology, investment decisions have become increasingly complex: what kind of technology is needed, can current technology simply be upgraded—should new technology be purchased at all? To help advisors answer these questions, InvestmentNews performed a study on the effects of investing in technology for advisory businesses. According to the study, firms that integrated a variety of technologies and displayed an innovative and progressive attitude toward technology had higher revenues, profits, AUM, and number of clients than those who limited their technological investments.

What Types of Advisor Technology Are Used?

In the study, the technology ‘innovators’ were identified as using up to six software solutions on a daily basis. The most commonly used advisor technology applications are:
  • CRM
  • Financial planning
  • Account aggregation
  • Document management
  • Portfolio management
  • Portfolio rebalancing

Each of these technologies provides unique opportunities for efficiency, compliance, data accuracy and better customer service—but trying to manage so many distinct applications with siloed information can be just as inefficient as having no software at all.

The real benefit comes when these technologies can share data and talk to each other. When integrated, these technologies not only provide faster data and better insights to the advisor, they can automate entire processes with workflows—leaving more time for the advisor to focus on clients.

What Daily Processes Are Improved by Technology?

One of the most common processes that financial advisors automate is the opening of new accounts. Without technology, this can be a tedious process. Forms have to be filled out, mailed for signatures and checked for errors repeatedly until the new account can be finalized.

With integrated technologies, this process looks much different. By implementing CRM, document management software, forms filling software, and electronic signatures, the time required to open a new account can take minutes instead of weeks.

Through the use of these software applications, advisors opening new accounts experience the following benefits:
  • Software auto-populates electronic forms, reducing processing time and errors resulting from manual entry.
  • Forms are e-mailed to account holders for e-signatures, eliminating paper and courier costs.
  • Compliance review and approval processes are automated with workflows, allowing advisors to start booking revenue sooner.

This method of processing new accounts not only saves time, but records an audit history of every action taken at every step.

These efficiency and compliance benefits are not limited to the opening of new accounts. Virtually any data or document-driven process can be automated, including the creation of a blotter, storing client communications, social media archiving, AP processing, HR onboarding and document filing.

Why Adopt Advisor Technology Now?

A combination of factors including increased audits, changing recordkeeping requirements, the rise of mobile devices and social media and the vast potential for efficiency gains are driving advisors to shift their attitudes toward technology.

Those who realize these benefits are surging ahead in this competitive industry and allowing technology to take care of the back office. Now they can dedicate valuable time and effort to more important tasks, such as client and talent acquisition, money management, financial planning and client relationships.

To learn more about the benefits of adopting technology in your business, read our new whitepaper, “Technology Strategies of Top-Tier RIAs,” which summarizes the data from the InvestmentNews Research Study and outlines the practices of these top performing RIAs.

How the Canadian Seed Growers Association Automated Seed Crop Certification

Contributed by: Doug Miller, Operations Manager, Canadian Seed Growers Association

The Canadian Seed Growers Association (CSGA) processes between 16,000 to 18,000 fields a year to certify crops of 2,000 different varieties and more than 50 different species. Inspecting these crops at the correct stage of maturity each summer has traditionally involved 200 inspectors from 40 different offices of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency over a three thousand mile territory.

Recent budget cuts by the Government of Canada meant that CSGA had only 18 months to replace federal government inspectors with third-party inspectors from the private sector. To effectively manage this major change, the CSGA automated its 109-year-old postage- and paper-based process with Laserfiche.

Legacy paper-based process

Before Laserfiche, the seed crop certification process in Canada involved the following steps:
  • The CSGA office mailed pre-printed application forms to 3,500 seed growers throughout Canada, ranging from family farms to multi-national biotechnology companies.
  • Seed growers completed these application forms and mailed them back to CSGA.
  • CSGA appraisers then reviewed the crop inspection applications for incorrect or missing information.
  • CSGA summer staff members then entered data from the paper application forms directly into a database and printed out three copies each of the personalized crop inspection report forms.
  • These crop inspection reports were then mailed across Canada to 200 seed crop inspector supervisors.
  • After their inspections, seed crop inspectors would complete the paper inspection report, give a copy to the grower and mail a copy back to the CSGA office.
  • When seed crop inspection reports arrived back at the CSGA, they were manually sorted by:
    • Language (French and English)
    • Crop kind (approximately 50 per year)
    • Pedigreed status
    • Variety (approximately 2,000 per year)
  • After sorting, the crop inspection reports were manually reviewed and appraised by CSGA appraisers for compliance with certification standards.

This slow, postage- and paper-based process had negative impact on seed growers. On average, it would take 10 to 15 days for a completed inspection report to arrive at CSGA. With crops harvested soon after inspection, there was an ongoing risk that growers would not be aware of required corrective actions prior to harvest. This could prevent CSGA from certifying the seed crop and cost the grower thousands of dollars in the reduced value of the harvested non-certified seed.

Current Laserfiche process

In 2013, CSGA transformed this outdated process with Laserfiche and a Laserfiche – LincDoc integration.

Presently, applications for crop certification arrive at CSGA in one of two ways:
  • 30% of all applications are now submitted online through an electronic form created in LincDoc.
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    • Once submitted online, the application form is automatically saved in the Laserfiche repository where it awaits review by a CSGA appraiser.
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    • With the help of the Laserfiche SDK, CSGA created an appraisal module to expedite application review. This module allows appraisers to make annotations and minor corrections, which then get passed directly into Laserfiche and the CSGA database.
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  • The remaining applications are still paper. Those are scanned upon receipt with Laserfiche Quick Fields and are processed through the same appraisal module described above.
    • Once Laserfiche Quick Fields processes the applications, summer staff members use a module created with the Laserfiche SDK—a rapid data entry screen—to do data entry. This module uses zoom fields like in Laserfiche Quick Fields.
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Click image to view larger in new window.

Once the applications have been submitted and reviewed by appraisers for incorrect and missing information, Laserfiche Workflow kicks in.

This workflow is actually a Laserfiche Workflow business process that contains an “Accept or Reject the Application” Business Process Step activity. This activity has a due date of two days, after which the status is changed from “On-time” to “Past-due.” There are also instructions provided for seed crop inspectors on how to accept or reject the applications.
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A Deadline activity is used to enforce the due date specified in the Business Process Step.
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If applications are not reviewed within two days, an email is sent to inspectors notifying them that the application must be reviewed immediately. Instructions are also changed to reflect the urgency of the request.
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Seed crop inspectors use Laserfiche Mobile for iPad or Laserfiche Web Access to view the applications.
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The lead inspectors/coordinators can open applications and accept or reject them by changing the value of the “Inspection Status” field. They must also designate a specific inspector and select the inspection date.
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Once applications are accepted, growers are notified by email. If an application is rejected, the grower is also notified and the application is moved to a “Rejects” folder. If, for some reason, an application is neither accepted nor rejected, it moves through a third branch of the workflow called “Non-Conformance.” If an application passes through this branch, I get notified by email and, as Operations Manager, can address the issue.

Here is a screenshot of the entire Laserfiche Workflow process:
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Click image to view larger in new window.

If applications are accepted, inspectors perform the seed crop inspections. As part of the inspections, inspectors verify isolation distances, previous land use history and parent seed genetic identity tags. They also count difficult-to-separate weeds and other crop kinds, genetic off-types and other varieties that are observed in representative counts throughout the seed field.

Once inspections are finished, inspectors complete the inspection reports on their iPads, using LincDoc Mobile.
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This crop inspection report form is then submitted directly into Laserfiche, triggering another Laserfiche Workflow business process. This business process is very similar to the one described above except that it routes crop inspection reports for review and appraisal to the CSGA employee who is qualified to appraise that specific kind or pedigreed status of crop. Seed growers are issued a pedigreed seed crop certificate or are notified immediately if their field requires corrective actions to meet CSGA certification standards.

As part of this process, inspection reports are linked to the initial application in Laserfiche.
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All of the archived files have retention applied to them automatically with Laserfiche Records Management Edition.

Advantages of Laserfiche

Implementing Laserfiche at CSGA to re-build the seed crop certification process has resulted in the following benefits:
  • Seed crop certification applications are now processed up to ten times faster.
  • Postage costs have been reduced.
  • All seed growers, variety distributors and developers have instant, online access to the required current inspection and certification status information through the Laserfiche Client, Laserfiche Web Access or Laserfiche Mobile. This allows them to obtain the information exactly when they need it.
  • With the present Laserfiche process, lag time between inspection report submission by inspectors and grower notification of inspection results has been reduced from 10 to 15 days to just two.
  • Business processes at CSGA have not only been automated, but streamlined and optimized as well. Just because paper flowed in one way, doesn’t mean that the electronic data must flow in the same way. When we need to change any steps in the present process, the underlying workflow can be changed in just ten minutes.

Business process automation is just one feature of a document management system like Laserfiche. Get help researching the many useful functions of document management with our free guide today!



3 Steps for Optimizing Business Processes

What’s better? Processing a document digitally or with paper? If both methods take the same amount of time and effort—the answer is neither.

Optimizing a business process requires more effort than simply purchasing new software. It requires taking a critical look at an organization’s operations and minimizing the resources required to get things done.

This blog post will outline three steps to optimizing your organization’s business processes.

First, let’s establish what kinds of business processes we’ll be discussing:

Document-based business processes

Every organization, whether it provides education to students or wine to consumers, relies on repetitive tasks to accomplish its “big picture” goals. Contract management, invoicing and hiring are just a few examples of processes that keep businesses moving.  The tasks that fall under each process must be handled attentively and consistently—no matter how menial they may seem.

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Contract management is one example of a repetitive process that keeps an organization’s operations moving.

These document-based processes are imperative to business operations, but in some cases they’re more of an Achilles’ heel than a blueprint for success. Do any of your everyday tasks feel more burdensome than productive? Keep one in mind as we go through the phases of business process optimization.

Phase 1: Identify

Once you determine which business process needs an overhaul, the first step is to list out all the key components of the process. These should be fundamental, unchangeable aspects of the process. To identify key components, ask yourself these questions:

  • What is the goal or desired outcome of this process?
  • When does the process begin and end?
  • What activities move the process forward?
  • What departments and/or employees are involved?
  • What information is being transferred between steps?

For instance, the following questions should be answered in the case of employee hiring:

  • What is the goal or desired outcome of this process? To hire a qualified candidate for the job.
  • When does the process begin and end? It begins when an application is received and ends with the decision to hire or reject.
  • What activities move the process forward? Application reviews, interviews, approvals and rejections.
  • What departments and/or employees are involved? HR and the applicable department managers.
  • What information is being transferred between steps? Applications, resumes, cover letters, interview dates/times and notes from reviewers.

Note that the answers don’t address how the process is done, only what is done.

Phase 2: Rethink

This phase should address your unique methodology and reveal potential areas for improvement. Think about every step that is involved in the business process you’re analyzing, then ask the following questions:

  • How much paper is used in this process?
  • How many copies of the same document are made?
  • How many man hours are required to complete the process?
  • Of those hours, how many are spent doing redundant or extraneous work?
  • Where does the process stall and why?
  • When do errors occur?

Compare these answers against your key components list. You’ll realize tasks that seem essential, like photocopying a document for every department manager, don’t actually align with the process goal. You’ll also realize that correcting an error is only essential if an error is made—eliminate the error, and you eliminate an extra task that does nothing to drive the process forward.

Let’s look at another example. RMS, a medical device manufacturing company, answered the above questions and found that its document management processes were inefficient. Important information for each order was compiled in a large folder and hand-delivered between departments across a 155,000 sq. ft. shop. RMS threw out the book (literally) and starting using business process automation (BPA) tools to digitize orders and automatically route them to the appropriate departments at the appropriate times. This cut order processing time from 8-10 weeks to 72 hours and saved over 200 hours of staff time annually.

The intention of business process optimization is to reduce or eliminate time waste, resource waste, unnecessary costs, bottlenecks and errors while achieving the goal of the process. But until you know how this can be accomplished, you’re stuck in dreamland.

Phase 3: Automate

Repeat unnecessary tasks, and workflow stalls. Repeat successful tactics, and business flourishes. Once you’ve separated the essential from the non-essential in your business process, it’s time to apply a solution. But if this is your first experience overhauling a document-based process, you might feel daunted by the possibilities. You could even worry that you’ll make more mistakes if you alter the process than if you just leave it alone.

As a matter of fact, alleviating this concern over human error is precisely what BPA tools are designed to do. By allowing the software to “automate” tasks, organizations can manage processes faster and with fewer errors. You can read more about automation and see some concrete examples here.

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Business process automation (BPA) tools optimize operations for organizations in a wide range of industries.

Of course, not all automated workflows perform the same. How can you design the fastest, easiest and most cost-efficient business process possible?

Next step: Learn from the best

By repeating the best practices of other organizations or departments, you can demonstrate tangible ROI and avoid a lot of guesswork. Most importantly, you’re better equipped to convince your coworkers that change is not only possible, it’s practical.

For an overview of how process automation can help your organization streamline operations, watch our webinar, ECM 101: An Introduction to Process Automation Capabilities.

To learn more about how process automation software can help you automate routine tasks, such as data entry, routing information between parties, organizing documents and more, check out our process automation buyer’s guide.