Mackenzie District Council is one of New Zealand’s 53 district councils, responsible for providing services and managing issues ranging from local infrastructure and building consents to emergency services and food safety. With this broad range of duties, the district council relies on a core group of systems to enable its staff to deliver services efficiently, while keeping data secure and addressing recordkeeping requirements.

“We’ve got a handful of core systems that sit at the heart of our ecosystem,” said Chris Clarke, general manager of Information, Engagement and Community at Mackenize District Council. “One of those is our ERP and of course there’s Office 365, and I would put Laserfiche right up there with those systems. We deal with a lot of confidential information and we have complex recordkeeping requirements, and now it is becoming our workflow orchestration engine. It’s one of the essential tools that all of us use on a daily basis and could not function without.” 

When Clarke assumed oversight of the district council’s IT department, the organization performed an assessment of its existing tech stack, revealing significant opportunity for improvement. “Internally, at the time, Laserfiche was perceived as an electronic filing cabinet,” Clarke explained. “But we realized that there was untapped potential for process automation and automated workflows.” 

“When we first rolled it out, people were skeptical of whether it actually worked, because it seemed too easy,” Clarke added. “All they had to do was two clicks, and they couldn’t believe that was the case.”

IT has now set its sights on transforming the rest of the organization’s workflows, taking a thoughtful approach to change management and prioritization. 

“What we’re trying to do is change the perception that Laserfiche is another piece of business software that you just need to use because of recordkeeping requirements,” Clarke said. “It’s about winning hearts and minds, and getting things done. People are starting to think about Laserfiche now as a tool that helps with work, as opposed to yet another system to be wrestled with.” 

Clarke and his team have set their sights on systematically transforming the way the district council manages its records, with the goal of leveraging Laserfiche to automate the records management lifecycle, including retention schedules and disposition. 

“We’re doing a taxonomy review to assess our existing recordkeeping, and working through licensing, security, roles, etc.,” said Zane Woodfield, ICT manager at Mackenzie District Council. “One of the things that I like about Laserfiche is that we are creating a technology demarcation point-slash-security boundary from all other stuff that’s in the cloud. Now that we have set up Microsoft Entra SSO authentication and some of the foundational pieces with Laserfiche, we feel secure and safe enough to do more.” 

Laserfiche’s robust security and compliance tools also support the Mackenzie IT team’s mission to innovate while addressing data safeguards and critical recordkeeping needs.

“Having the right local support in place has also been a critical part of our success,” added Clarke. “Laserfiche is a very capable and flexible product, but that can bring with it some complexity to ensure the system is configured to meet our specific business needs. Our local partner, ifTHEN, has taken the time to understand our business and our process requirements, and as a result has been able to assist us to configure Laserfiche in a way that delivers the optimum solution to our needs. Without their experience and insight, we would not have been able to effectively utilise many of the more advanced features which are now adding value to both our staff and customers on a daily basis.” 

Mackenzie District Council’s IT department has laid a strong foundation for transformative change, and team members are excited to realize the potential for Laserfiche across the organization. Along with their Laserfiche solution provider, ifTHEN Limited, the team feels confident that their Laserfiche initiatives will be a gamechanger for all departments and those they serve. 

“We’re just about to embark on a project where we go out to the business and get everyone’s wish list,” Clarke said. “We know that list will be large, but we are hyper focused on the things that really make a difference and give us the biggest bang for our investment, as we’re dealing with public funds.” 

One significant project on the horizon is implementing a public portal to make it easier for the public to interface with the district council. Currently, the council’s website hosts downloadable forms that must be scanned or reuploaded for processing, but the IT team hopes to replace those “dumb forms” with Laserfiche Forms. “We’re working through public iterations of forms that will truly transform the customer experience,” Clarke said. “We’re really excited about that.” 

“We’ve done the foundational work, so we feel we’re at the beginning of our journey in terms of leveraging the benefits,” Clarke said. “Who knows where it will take us? One of the things that I see which is encouraging is that Laserfiche continues to evolve. We don’t know what the future holds, but I’m confident that Laserfiche will be on that journey with us.”