LASERFICHERIO

Laserfiche 8.3 Takes Transactional Content Management to New Level

2012-01-10T20:57:00.000-08:00

New software release delivers immediate value to customers’ lines of business

Delivering on its commitment to help customers grow the value of their enterprise content management (ECM) investment, Laserfiche today announced the immediate availability of Laserfiche 8.3. The new release spans various lines of business, helping organizations improve information governance and automate transactional processes such as accounts payable processing, case management, contract management and HR onboarding, among others.

“We are committed to providing product enhancements that improve the way organizations do business. Over the past year, our customers have begun automating more and more complex business processes, and we developed Laserfiche 8.3 to respond to their needs,” said Tom Wayman, Vice President of Product Strategy at Laserfiche.

Laserfiche 8.3 includes the following new and enhanced features:

New Workflow activities that improve productivity. With enterprise content management, organizations quickly automate transactional processes by dragging and dropping pre-built workflow activities onto a graphical canvas.

Database activities automate the process of retrieving and updating information from third-party databases, simplifying integration.

PDF activities add immediate value to the product suite by enabling Laserfiche administrators to automatically import PDF forms into Laserfiche, retrieve information from PDF fields and map them to Laserfiche fields.

More than 60 built-in workflow activities make it easier than ever to customize workflow configuration to the unique needs of each organization and line of business.

Digital signatures that simplify information governance. Digital signatures in Laserfiche 8.3 are validated with signing certificates on the server, so users know that a signature is trustworthy. Digital signatures can also prompt Workflow activities that guide documents through the approval process.

A new Web Administration Console that improves deployment flexibility. Laserfiche 8.3 offers an easy way for administrators to securely access the administrative functions of the repository from anywhere—including remote sites, client computers and even mobile devices—making administration more flexible than ever.

“The advanced business process management capabilities and administration tools in Laserfiche 8.3 enable organizations of all sizes to rapidly implement a wide variety of transactional content management solutions,” said Wayman. “Laserfiche 8.3 is an infrastructure deployment that enables our customers to use Enterprise Content Management as a foundation for delivering shared services across the enterprise.”

Laserfiche Reveals the ROI of Content Management Software at Schwab IMPACT

2011-12-05T21:59:00.000-08:00

RIA firms can save between $48,000 and $362,000 in annual operational costs with ECM

SAN FRANCISCO, CA (Laserfiche)—November 1, 2011—Laserfiche (booth #335) today announced the availability of a white paper that explores the return on investment for RIA firms that leverage enterprise content management (ECM) software. Calculations are based on benchmark data from recent industry studies prepared by Nexus Strategy, Moss Adams, and the 2011 InvestmentNews RIA Technology Study.

“With Laserfiche’s 25-year history and experience with over 30,000 installations worldwide, we were able to conservatively approximate the savings associated with using Enterprise Content Solutions to ‘go paperless’ and automate document-related processes,” said Tim Welsh, CFP, Senior Consultant at Laserfiche. “In total, firms that use ECM can increase profitability by 64.1% to 125.6%.”

Table 1: Summary of Staff and Cost Savings by Firm Size

Firm Size	Emerging ($500,000 in annual revenue)	Established ($1,000,000 in annual revenue)	Enterprise ($4,000,000 in annual revenue)
Technology Investment	1.4% of revenues ($7,000)	2% of revenues ($20,000)	1% of revenues ($40,000)
Staff Savings	1,000 hours (0.4 of a full-time employee)	1,500 hours (0.6 of a full-time employee)	11,000 hours (4.4 full-time employees)
Overhead Savings	9.7% of revenues ($48,000)	9.2% of revenues ($92,000)	9.0% of revenues ($362,000)
Profit Increase	125.6%	74.8%	64.1%
Business Value Increase	$242,000	$644,000	$3,616,000

In particular, firms that embrace ECM realize five major benefits:

· Reduced paper storage costs.

· Automation of back-office processes for increased efficiency.

· Integration with CRM software for increased productivity.

· Simplified compliance.

· Increased business valuation.

“For a relatively small investment in ECM software, RIAs can make a powerful improvement in today’s income as well as tomorrow’s long-term business value,” said Welsh.

The paper, “ROI for RIAs,” is available for free at the Laserfiche booth (#335) and Website.

About Laserfiche

Since 1987, Laserfiche® has used its Run Smarter® philosophy to create simple and elegant enterprise content management (ECM) solutions. More than 30,000 organizations worldwide—including federal, state and local government agencies and Fortune 1000 companies—use Laserfiche software to streamline document, records and business process management.

Tech Tip: Saved Column Profiles in Laserfiche 8.3

2011-11-01T05:08:00.000-07:00

When working in the ECM Laserfiche Client, users can customize the columns displayed for them within a particular folder in the repository in order to display exactly the information they need in that folder.

For example, a user who frequently looks up customer information in the repository might configure a set of columns to display customer-related fields so that they can quickly scan for the correct documents, whereas an administrator who handles page generation, text generation and indexing tasks might want to display information such as the number of pages and whether they have been OCRed and indexed. In enterprise content management, Laserfiche 8, both users can configure the columns exactly as they want them, and both users can also configure different column displays for different folders to allow them to perform different tasks.

Laserfiche 8.3 introduces a new feature to make working with column displays even easier: saved column profiles, which allow users to save their column layout and quickly apply it to a folder later. For example, a user who frequently looks up customer information might create a “Customer Info” column profile, which displays the “Customer Name,” “Company Name” and “Customer ID” fields. They could then quickly select this column profile for each relevant folder, rather than recreating the desired column layout by hand.

This feature also allows users to quickly switch between column profiles. One user might need to both review customer information and administer page and text generation, sometimes in the same folders. That user could create profiles for “Customer Info” and “Page Info,” and then load each one as needed to quickly switch the column information that is displayed for the folder.

Saved column profiles provide a fast, straightforward and flexible way to specify which columns should be displayed, save them for later use, and switch between them when working in the repository.

Note: This tip is a preview of a feature that will be available with Laserfiche 8.3. Please note that feature details may change between now and the release date.

Laserfiche Reveals Technology Secrets of Top Performing RIA Firms at FPA Conference 2011 InvestmentNews RIA Technology Study outlines steps for gettin

2011-09-18T23:13:00.000-07:00

SAN DIEGO, CA September 15, 2011 — ECM Company Laserfiche (booth #807) today announced that it will share key results of the 2011 InvestmentNews RIA Technology Study at FPA Experience 2011. ECM Laserfiche will also be featured in a presentation by Rehmann Financial’s Senior Operations Manager titled, “New Technology Secrets of Top Performers.” The session will take place on Friday, September 16, at 7:30 am.

Sponsored by Enterprise Content Management market leader Laserfiche, the 2011 InvestmentNews RIA Technology Study takes an in-depth look at the secrets that enable top performers to reap significantly higher rewards from their technology spend in terms of professional productivity and profit. Key findings include:

· Investing in new technologies is the number-one strategy for top performers, with automation and integration figuring prominently in decisions about what kind of technology to deploy.

· Investment in technology is driven by productivity gains. Automating routine, rules-based tasks allows staff at top-performing firms to spend more time serving clients.

· Integrating CRM with document/content management is a top priority. Integrations tend to significantly improve a firm’s efficiency and productivity.

“Together with Rehmann Financial, we’re delighted to share the technology secrets of top performing RIA firms, many of which use Laserfiche to open up new avenues for growth and profitability by creating efficient, scalable and robust back-office operations,” said Chris Wacker, Executive Vice President at Laserfiche.

Amy Flourry, Senior Operations Manager at Rehmann Financial, said, “We’ve brought on four new advisors in the last year but we haven’t had to bring on any new administrative staff, so in that respect alone, we’ve realized our ROI on our ECM investment. Our executives may not care how easy the Laserfiche file structure is, but when you tell them your administrative staff can do something in 20 minutes that used to take four hours, they can appreciate that.”

Laserfiche will be on hand at booth #807 to demonstrate its enterprise content management (ECM) software solutions and give out an overview of the 2011 InvestmentNews RIA Technology Study.

Since 1987, Laserfiche has used its Run Smarter® philosophy to create simple and elegant enterprise content management (ECM) solutions. More than 30,000 organizations worldwide—including federal, state and local government agencies and Fortune 1000 companies—use Laserfiche software to streamline document, records and business process management.

The Laserfiche ECM system gives financial advisors the ability to simplify regulatory compliance, improve profitability and limit exposure to civil and criminal liability. It allows advisors to prepare for audits more easily and ensure compliance with multiple state, SEC and FINRA regulations—all while accelerating business processes and making staff more efficient.

Laserfiche Provides Free Mobile Content Management until September 30

2011-08-21T23:59:00.000-07:00

Offers mobile workers a complete end-to-end solution to capture and control content

Laserfiche today announced a new promotion designed to extend free mobile enterprise content management to new and existing users.

Until September 30, Laserfiche is providing free Laserfiche Web Access—which includes Laserfiche Mobile, Laserfiche Web Access Light (designed for Blackberry, Opera and Safari mobile browsers) and the Laserfiche SharePoint integration—for new Laserfiche Avante customers, existing Laserfiche Avante customers who purchase five or more named users and current customers who upgrade to Laserfiche Avante systems.

“More customers are using smartphones and tablets in the office, as well as for remote and mobile work,” said Tom Wayman, Laserfiche Vice President of Product Strategy. “Laserfiche Mobile provides a complete end-to-end solution that captures and controls mobile content—making it even simpler for users to get their jobs done, whether they’re in the office or the field.”

ECM Web Access allows users to securely access, search and manage documents in their Laserfiche repository through a Web browser, from anywhere with Internet access. Laserfiche Mobile extends these remote access capabilities to the Apple iPhone, enabling users to:

· Create and upload new content with the iPhone camera.

· Automatically crop, straighten and enhance captured information, with full text recognition.

· Copy, move, rename, download, e-mail, print or delete content.

· Browse for documents in a folder structure or search the entire repository.

· Participate in workflow automation processes by accessing metadata fields.

Laserfiche Mobile, which includes a built-in demonstration, is available for free download from the Apple App Store. Users interested in the promotion can call a Laserfiche solutions specialist.

AboutLaserfiche
Since 1987, Laserfiche® has used its Run Smarter® philosophy to create simple and elegant enterprise content management (ECM) solutions. More than 30,000 organizations worldwide use Laserfiche software to streamline document, records and business process management.

The Laserfiche Enterprise Content Management system is designed to give IT managers central control over their information infrastructure, including standards, security and auditing, while still offering business units the flexibility to respond quickly to changing conditions. The Laserfiche product suite is built upon Microsoft® technologies to simplify system administration, supports the Microsoft SQL platform and features a seamless integration with Microsoft Office® applications and a two-way integration with SharePoint®.

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Laserfiche Showcases First DoD 5015.2-certified SharePoint Integration at WPC 2011

2011-07-19T23:13:00.000-07:00

Laserfiche delivers better solutions with secure, certified integrations

LOS ANGELES, CA (Laserfiche)—July 12, 2011—Laserfiche (booth 719), a gold sponsor of WPC 2011, will deliver an educational session entitled “Adding Agile ECM: Streamlined Data Governance for SharePoint Portals in the Virginia Port Authority (VPA).” The session will take place today at 2:15PM in the Partner Solutions Theater at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

“Well-planned corporate governance is essential,” said Alex Wilson, Partner Director at Laserfiche. “By integrating fully-certified records management with SharePoint, Laserfiche enables Microsoft partners to deliver solutions that support employee collaboration, ensure executive accountability and drive better business outcomes.”

During the presentation, Wilson and Laserfiche Vice President Brian LaPointe will cover how the VPA integrated enterprise content management with SharePoint to:

· Drive business process automation.

· Capture hundreds of thousands of paper records.

· Improve information governance.

“Our integration with SharePoint 2010 provides Microsoft partners with a proven, agile way to help customers quickly,” Wilson added. “With Laserfiche, documents are immediately accessible and secure, regardless of its source: through SharePoint, scanners, fax servers, ERP systems, online forms, mobile devices or even digital cameras.”

Enterprise content management gives your organization central control over its information infrastructure, while also offering individual business units flexible content and business process management.

ECM is also designed to give your organization central control over its information infrastructure, including standards, security and auditing, while also offering individual departments, offices and business units local flexibility over content and business process management. This unique design creates value by providing a single system that meets the needs of all departments while improving compliance by implementing a central point of control over enterprise information assets.

LaserficheRio provides a solid ECM infrastructure

· Manages your content.

· Integrates with your existing IT portfolio.

· Supports intelligent decision-making enterprise-wide.

· Grants the IT Department central control over standards, security and auditing.

· Gives individual departments flexibility to customize their filing structures, views and workflows.

Quick Fields, Quicker Assessments and the Quickest Path to Governance

2011-06-21T21:45:00.000-07:00

Fresno County’s Assessor’s Office builds its ECM foundation on operational improvement

Located in the middle of California’s San Joaquin Valley, Fresno County comprises over a million citizens and about six million square miles of incorporated cities and smaller communities. The Fresno County Assessor-Recorder’s (ASR) Office is responsible for the appraisal and valuation of all secured and unsecured property within the county, resulting in business processes that have generated over 4.5 million paper documents on file in the Real Property division, and an additional 1.2 million paper documents in Business Property.

Related Webinars

To learn more about Laserfiche Quick Fields and how get it for FREE, watch the Quick Fields Webinar.
To learn more about how state and local governments can benefit from an Enterprise Content Management solution, watch the Document Management for SLG Webinar.

By 2004, handling all that paper manually had become so inefficient that the ASR Office’s Property Transfers Division was five months behind in processing documents, illustrating just how antiquated, inflexible and relatively unresponsive policies and procedures had become.

This led to the implementation of a Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM) system in 2006. Utilizing Quick Fields to intelligently capture and process years of tax documents previously stored on microfilm, the impact was sweeping and immediate. Using Web Access, staff could now find and complete the review process without being tethered to their desks. Property transfers that took five months to process now only took 15 days. Reviewers could also stamp documents using electronic annotations. “On average, search and retrieval time per employee used to be two hours a week. Now, it’s less than 25 minutes a week,” says Vito Filippi, Systems and Procedures Analyst.

Quick Fields finds vroom for improvements

In fact, Filippi says, applying ECM to the ASR Office’s operational framework exposed just how much more room there was for improvement. “We realized our people were supporting the processes instead of the processes supporting the needs of the department,” he explains. Between budget cuts, consolidation and attrition––from over 200 staff in 2008 to what would become its present 149 employees––the loss of institutional knowledge underscored the siloed, disconnected nature of how business was done, especially as the demand for services increased.

A Laserfiche upgrade in 2009 introduced the expanded capture functionality of Quick Fields––and a closer look at the status quo. “When we moved from Laserfiche 7 to 8.1 [in 2009], the enhancements to the Search function and Quick Fields capabilities––because that’s what we use the most––really were the catalysts that got us asking ‘How can we improve our processes?’” says Filippi. “The templates and ability to run batch sessions overnight had such an impact on how we were indexing that we began to analyze what we were doing in the first place. We were able to drill down our processes to where the bottlenecks were and apply Quick Fields to assist us in finding efficiencies.”

Laserfiche Highlights Framework for Information Governance at IIMC Conference

2011-05-24T22:50:00.000-07:00

Premier sponsor shows how GRC initiatives help municipal clerks ensure higher service levels, even during tough economic times with ECM

Laserfiche will today discuss how enterprise content management supports governance, risk and compliance (GRC) initiatives to enable higher service levels at the 65th Annual Conference of the International Institute of Municipal Clerks (IIMC) at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center in Nashville, TN (booths 101 and 103). At 3:00 pm, Kimberly Samuelson, director of government strategy at Laserfiche, will present the seminar “GRC: A Framework for Sustainable Citizen Services.”

“More and more municipalities are facing increased service demands and lower budgets,” said Samuelson. “A successful information governance strategy accelerates decision-making, increases transparency and eliminates unnecessary compliance risks. It’s a necessity for municipal clerks concerned with compliance.”

In her presentation, Samuelson will discuss:

· Ways municipal clerks, IT and legal work together to drive governance.

· The four steps to building an information governance framework.

· How a governance framework ensures higher service levels, even when times are tough.

Attendees will learn how to assemble a template of the GRC framework for their municipalities; apply change management methodologies to their staff, policies and procedures; and measure the progress of their efforts using a governance maturity model.

“As a technology leader, Laserfiche is committed to bridging the gap between the clerk’s office and the IT department,” said Samuelson. “For over ten years, Laserfiche has been an ardent supporter of IIMC and the municipal clerk community. I’m delighted to present this latest piece of Laserfiche thought leadership to help keep IIMC delegates up to date on current technology trends.”

Laserfiche will be on hand at booth #101–103 throughout the event to demonstrate its agile enterprise content management solutions and distribute copies of its new white paper “GRC: A Framework for Organizational Sustainability.”

Laserfiche Rio gives your organization central control over its information infrastructure, while also offering individual business units flexible content and business process management.

With its agile ECM framework and philosophy, Laserfiche Rio is designed to give your organization central control over its information infrastructure, including standards, security and auditing, while also offering individual departments, offices and business units local flexibility over content and business process management. This unique design creates value by providing a single system that meets the needs of all departments while improving compliance by implementing a central point of control over enterprise information assets.

Laserfiche and LincWare Announce Official Support for Laserfiche 8.2

2011-04-19T23:04:00.000-07:00

Integrated offering provides mobile support for e-forms, including native iPad application

LONG BEACH, CA and EAST ROCHESTER, NY (Laserfiche and LincWare)—April 12, 2011—Laserfiche and LincWare today announced the availability of a connector that integrates LincWareLincDoc with Laserfiche 8.2.

The integration takes advantage of a variety of Laserfiche 8.2’s new features, including:

· Enhanced PDF support, including native page and text generation.

· Dynamic fields and metadata.

It also adds support for the Laserfiche enterprise content management , Web Access thin client and Laserfiche WebLink public portal.

The integration was developed under the Laserfiche (ECM) Professional Developer Partnership™ (PDP) program, which provides customers access to a variety of third-party integrations, configurations, plug-ins and Web tools. LincWare has been a member of the program since 2008.

“LincDoc delivers tremendous value for Laserfiche customers that are looking at enhancing their systems through document automation and electronic forms,” said Alex Wilson, director of the Laserfiche PDP program. “We appreciate having partners like LincWare who give Laserfiche customers excellent options for extending and expanding their Laserfiche systems.”

With LincDoc, users can automate common documents and forms and connect them instantly to enterprise content management. Documents can then be routed using Laserfiche Workflow business process management and managed using Laserfiche’s fully integrated Department of Defense 5015.2-certified records management functionality. LincDoc also has a native iPad application that allows users to capture forms and data, which are transmitted automatically to Laserfiche.

“LincWare is proud to offer a premiere solution that combines our flexible eForm and document automation tools with Laserfiche’s industry-leading enterprise content management capabilities,” said Darren Mathes, CEO of LincWare. “Since both Laserfiche and LincWare are dedicated to improving enterprise efficiency, our partnership is a natural fit.”

AboutLaserfiche:
Since 1987, Laserfiche has used its Run Smarter® philosophy to create simple and elegant enterprise content management (ECM) solutions. More than 30,000 organizations worldwide use Laserfiche software to streamline document, records and business process management.

Laserfiche launched the Professional Developer Partnership (PDP) program in 2007 to democratize content management by allowing customers to benefit from the customizations, configurations and integrations designed by more than 75 PDP partners. Leveraging the experience and creativity of PDP partners helps customers create ECM solutions that are best suited to their unique needs.

ECM : Integration Improves Information Flowt

2011-03-22T23:18:00.000-07:00

The Virginia Port Authority hired Angela Ellis as its SharePoint Administrator in 2007, but it wasn’t long before her boss, Deputy Executive Director of Administration and CFO Rodney Oliver, enlisted her to start looking into enterprise content management (ECM) solutions.

“Rodney recognized that although SharePoint could do many great things for our organization, records management wasn’t one of them,” says Ellis, who today is a senior web analyst for the Port Authority.

“SharePoint,” she explains, “with all of its many features is so much more robust than a network drive. In particular, the Port Authority uses document workspaces heavily, because they make it easy to collaborate on works in progress such as contracts. However, once you go beyond about 10,000 documents, you’ve got a real mess on your hands.”

According to Ellis, the Port Authority didn’t want to lose the collaboration features inherent in SharePoint, nor did it want to take a familiar interface away from the staff, so it needed to make sure that the Enterprise Content Management solution it selected had a seamless SharePoint integration. “I was the lead on the team that built our RFP,” Ellis says. “In the end, we had more than 400 requirements and 24 vendors vying for our business. The SharePoint integration was our top concern.”

Other important selection criteria included:

Robust records management functionality.
The ability to electronically store a wide range of file types, including AutoCAD drawings.
Open architecture allowing integration with line-of-business applications such as CRM.
Availability of workflow functionality for process improvements—and a reduced paper flow.

“Before we implemented Laserfiche, our records management plan was very inefficient,” Ellis explains. “We’d print out documents, process them by hand and then file them in cabinets. We had a whole warehouse dedicated to file storage, containing all kinds of old documents in Bankers Boxes stacked nearly to the ceiling that we didn’t have time to properly manage.”

Laserfiche + SharePoint = Transparency

By integrating Laserfiche with SharePoint, the Port Authority now has the ability to collaborate on documents, retain them electronically, and efficiently manage and dispose of digital records—all while giving users access to content through the SharePoint interface.

“Laserfiche has dramatically reduced the flow of paper throughout the organization,” says Ellis. “It’s opened up space for new offices and enabled us to tear down an entire warehouse for profitable use!”

But the cost and space savings aren’t the most significant benefits the Port Authority has realized as a result of its Laserfiche implementation. By acting as integrative middleware, enterprise content solutions allows users at the organization to access information in the environment with which they’re already familiar: SharePoint.

“The Port Authority’s had SharePoint for close to ten years, so people are pretty familiar with it,” says Ellis. “Most of our users won’t even know they’re using Laserfiche. With the integration, our content is searchable on an enterprise level, and the results are returned to users transparently through SharePoint. It enables us to access all our information from one central location without having to train our users on a new system.”

Laserfiche + SharePoint = Operational Efficiency

With Laserfiche in place, the Port Authority has started using it to streamline business processes. First on the list? The RFP and vendor selection process.

The Port Authority was established in 1952 as a political subdivision of the Commonwealth of Virginia for the purpose of stimulating commerce in the ports of the Commonwealth, promoting the shipment of goods and cargoes through the ports, improving the navigable tidal waters within the Commonwealth, and in general to perform any act or function which may be useful in developing, improving or increasing the commerce of the ports of the Commonwealth. As such, it contracts with dozens of vendors each year.

In the past, the RFP and vendor selection process was manual and paper-based:

Proposals were submitted in hard copy and photocopies for each member of the selection committee.
After a contract had been finalized, paper copies were made for the Contracts and Finance Departments, and also distributed to the contract administrators.
Because copies of the contracts documents weren’t centralized, it was difficult to locate the most current version of any given contract or amendment.

With the help of Unity ECM, the Port Authority’s Laserfiche reseller, the organization has transformed the entire process as follows:

Proposals are submitted electronically and automatically routed into SharePoint.
Proposals are posted to a workspace in SharePoint for contract evaluation, scoring, changes and selection.
Once the collaboration phase is finished and the contract is finalized, it is automatically pulled into Laserfiche, where it is retained according to contract retention schedules.
From SharePoint, users can access the contract by clicking on a URL that takes them directly to the document stored in Laserfiche. The URL placeholder in SharePoint ensures that the data is synchronized between the two systems, simplifying version control.
When searching for a contract, users run a search in SharePoint that seamlessly provides results from both the Laserfiche and SharePoint repositories.

“Even employees who aren’t technologically inclined appreciate the efficiency of our new process,” says Ellis. “In general, having real-time information available in a central location has been one of the most important process improvements our organization has received as a benefit of this project.”

Tech Tip: Using Tokens in List Fields

2011-02-02T21:06:00.000-08:00

ECM: Make fields faster to set and ensure values are valid

With enterprise content management, List fields provide users with a drop-down list of items to choose from when assigning an entry metadata. Because the items are pre-defined, the user doesn’t have to type any text, which makes the field faster to set and ensures the value is valid. For example, in the screenshot below, the user can quickly choose which department a document applies to.

When administrators define the items that will appear in the drop-down list, they can use tokens. This offers a significant amount of flexibility, as it prevents administrators from having to hardcode items into the field and instead provides a way to generate the items dynamically. This is especially helpful when the drop-down items regularly need to be changed and/or when the number of items is large.

For example, the Brown Company scans forms into the repository, which ECM Laserfiche Workflow routes to supervisors for approval. To approve a form, a supervisor must populate the Review field with their name and final decision (e.g., Approved by JDoe or Denied by BSmith). In this scenario, the administrator can choose between the following options when designing the field:

1. Do not use a list field and require the supervisor to manually type the correct text.

2. Use a list field and hardcode the drop-down items. For example, if there 30 potential approvers, hardcode each supervisor’s name into the list field twice (once for approved and once for denied).

3. Use a list field with a combination of regular text and tokens to define only two drop-down items. For example, regardless of how many potential approvers there are, the administrator could add two drop-down items that each contain the %(Username) token: Approved by %(Username) and Denied by %(Username). When a supervisor chooses one of these items from the drop-down list, the token will be automatically replaced with their name.
Note: The % (Username) token represents the name of the user that performed an action, such as setting a field value.

In this scenario, the third option is recommended, as it doesn’t require the administrator to manually manage the drop-down list (which may regularly change), it prevents users from wasting time typing or entering typos, and it ensures uniformity. As seen in the screenshot below, the user selects the appropriate item from the drop-down list, part of which will be automatically replaced by the user’s name.

Tip: The administrator could add on %(Datetime) to the end of each drop-down item, which would also record the review date/time (e.g., Approved by JDoe on 01/21/11 2:14:06PM). Note that the administrator may need to increase the field’s width to allow this amount of text.

Tip: The administrator could add a third list item that contains a value of Pending, as this would enable users to determine that the entry has yet to be reviewed by a supervisor.

Tip: Enterprise content management Laserfiche Workflow could refer to this field value later to determine who approved the item, and then make a routing decision based on this information.

Healthier Permitting Process for Idaho’s Central District Health Department

2011-01-10T23:33:00.000-08:00

Four-county health department enlists ECM to improve information accessibility and save hundreds of hours in staff time

Managing past and current septic permit applications for areas totaling just over 425,000 residents without an enterprise content management (ECM) solution meant a lot of paper trails and time-consuming manual processes for Idaho’s Central District Health Department (CDHD). “As each year passed, it became increasingly more difficult to locate documents without spending large amounts of research time to do so,” says Margaret Ross, IT Manager of the Boise-based CDHD.

Serving Ada County, Boise County, Elmore County and Valley County, CDHD manages the Board of Health and the Community Health, Communicable Disease, Immunization, Reproductive Health and WIC Departments in addition to the Environmental Health Department. The planning and zoning authority of each county requires the Environmental Health Department to review every subdivision’s application for sewage permits, which can include:

Test hole inspections for sewage installation.
Plot plans.
Building permits.
Zoning certificates.

“Paper copies of the records were located in each county’s office, which made them difficult for us to access without a lot of copying and faxing,” Ross explains. Efficient storage, organization and access to the documents crucial to the permit process was compromised until CDHD decided to implement ECM.

Powering Permitting

After the previous director of CDHD saw Laserfiche featured at an environmental health conference in 2004 and was impressed with its agility, the department decided to implement the software later that same year. The initial objective was to find a program that could scan in past and present septic permits and applications, while providing central access to the records across all the offices in the health district.

ECM-A Natural Step toward EMR

2010-12-01T01:52:00.000-08:00

Internal Medicine Center, LLC (IMC), a multi-specialty practice with 20 providers, is the largest independent clinic in Mobile, AL. Established in 1946, it’s also the oldest, compiling over 60 years of patient records.

With so many specialties—and specialists—IMC’s Board of Directors wanted to use electronic medical records (EMR) software to improve operational processes, encouraged by the promise of ARRA stimulus money to help fund it. But IMC’s Practice Administrator, Christine L. Holliman, CMPE, took a more pragmatic view of the situation.

“All vendors talk about the efficiencies of an EMR and the increase in the levels of coding that can be achieved from full implementation,” she says. “As my physicians are many different ages, the idea of transitioning to a full-blown EMR was daunting, to say the least.”

And expensive, especially in light of what Holliman perceived as a fundamental lack of functionality. “The document management portions of the leading EMR systems we looked at, including Greenway, Centricity and Allscripts, didn’t utilize OCR [optical character recognition] technology or any other shortcuts for actually scanning and filing documents,” Hillman notes. “Most EMR systems require manually sorting and dragging and dropping individual documents either back to an order or back to a patient record—very cost prohibitive in my opinion.”

Holliman focused on finding an enterprise content management system (ECM) to establish electronic patient charts (e-charts) first. “Looking for a way to handle the paper felt like the most logical step in streamlining our practice in preparation for an EMR,” she says.

“As most of our physicians are still primary care, the sheer amount of paperwork we receive is just incredible,” Holliman adds. “We’d receive 2 ½ feet of paper a day in faxes, print-outs and mail—and that’s just from one of the two hospitals we work with.” At the same time, she notes, “as a multi-specialty practice with 20 providers, having a system that could allow access to patient records by multiple departments and personnel was critical.”

The 2 ½ Feet of Paper Stops Here

Holliman was introduced to ECM, Laserfiche by Jim Bergeron of reseller JPI Data Resource at the 2009 MGMA conference in Denver. She then met Bergeron again at a local HIMSS meeting. Encouraged by Laseriche’s enterprise content management ease of use and its flexible business process management (BPM) automation tools, IMC purchased a 44-user Laserfiche Avante system with Workflow business process management and Quick Fields capture tools to establish electronic patient charts.

“As anyone who has implemented new systems knows, the end users are the biggest variable. If they’re on board, the implementation will be a success,” Holliman says. “With 140 employees with varying computer experience, it was very nice to implement a product that anyone could be taught to use in just a few minutes.”

Key to establishing IMC’s e-charting was automating the way the clinic received patient information from the two hospitals it works with. Using enterprise content management in conjunction with the MD Network, an electronic patient information distribution platform, incoming documentation from hospital visits is processed by Quick Fields’ high-volume capture and processing tools, then automatically filed in Laserfiche according to patient name and date of birth, where it becomes part of patients’ e-charts.

A significant amount of this data is test results, which need to be reviewed by physicians; this review often prompts follow-up instructions and further review. “One of the worries of both physicians and practice managers is if test results have been reviewed and relayed back to the physicians,” says Holliman.

Flexible Control: Reviewing Test Results as a Condition of Filing Them

To automate the test review process, IMC created separate “inbox” folders in the Laserfiche repository for each physician. Quick Fields recognizes “test results” as a document type and the physician’s name associated with it, which Workflow then uses to route the results to the appropriate doctor and nurse’s folder. Workflow then alerts them they have items in Laserfiche for review. If a review deadline is not met, Holliman herself is notified.

“One of the things we really liked about ECM was that all of our doctors can set their own parameters as far as what they need to see in their inboxes to review,” she says. A GI specialist who ordered a patient test, for instance, wouldn’t need to see an incoming discharge summary, but the patient’s primary care doctor would. The GI specialist would, however, need to review the results of a test he ordered, so only after he has reviewed it do the test and follow-up notes go to the primary care doctor’s inbox for review, and eventually to the patient’s file.

“Just using their inbox, each doctor can ask his or her nurse to follow up on their instructions. Whether it’s an abnormal lab or an abnormal chest X-ray, they can adjust medications or order further testing,” Holliman adds. The whole process is prompted, routed and tracked using Workflow.

The benefit, besides the economy of effort, is peace of mind, she says. “Our doctors can access the same, single inbox and know when they leave at the end of the day that they’ve seen every test result that needed to be dealt with on that day.”

Nurses who used to have to keep a manual log of all tests reviewed and what follow-up was ordered appreciate it as well, because logs can be generated automatically using simple search parameters. Plus, Holliman adds, “Being able to precisely track patient follow-up is a tremendous tool for mitigating medical legal liability costs, as we have an exact record of the doctor’s orders.”

A Natural Bridge to EMR—That Also Leads to Back Office Efficiency

Now that Laserfiche has made its impact on how doctors receive and act on incoming patient information, the clinic is rolling out Laserfiche for use in its business office, where Workflow will automate A/P processing and HR files updates.

“One thing that’s nice about Laserfiche is that it gives us a set of tools that can be applied to business management as well as practice management, so we’re really able to maximize our investment,” Holliman says.

At the same time, she adds, IMC is an important step closer to EMR adoption. “Laserfiche has definitely acted as an important bridge between where we were and where we want to be, and it’s done so in a way that’s been very natural.”

ECM-Laserfiche CEO Honored with Smart Leaders Award

2010-11-17T00:19:00.000-08:00

Nien-Ling Wacker recognized for innovation and business growth during tough economic times

Chase Bank and Smart Business Journal today presented Laserfiche Enterprise Content Management President and CEO Nien-Ling Wacker with a Smart Leaders 2010 Award in recognition of her innovative leadership during tough economic times.

“To be an innovative leader at a technology company, you have to have your feet on the ground and your eyes on a vision that’s inspired by technology trends,” said Wacker. “Creating a company based on this vision is what has enabled Laserfiche to stay on the leading edge, gaining millions of users at 28,000 customer organizations around the world.”

Founded in 1987, Laserfiche is a leading provider of enterprise content management (ECM) software. The company has been praised by industry analyst firms such as IDC for helping organizations “address the majority of their document and records management issues effectively and within a shorter time frame than other large enterprise content management providers.”

Wacker added, “I’m deeply honored to receive this Smart Leaders Award, and I’d like to give credit to our staff, channel partners and customers for their dedication to their vision of providing simple and elegant ECM solutions that enhance organizational efficiency.”

Robert LaGace, President of Chase Middle Market Banking, presents Nien-Ling Wacker with her 2010 Smart Leaders Award

Since 1987, Laserfiche has used its Run Smarter® philosophy to create simple and elegant enterprise content management (ECM) solutions. More than 28,000 organizations worldwide—including federal, state and local government agencies and Fortune 1000 companies—use Laserfiche software to streamline document, records and business process management.

The ECM system is designed to give IT managers central control over their information infrastructure, including standards, security and auditing, while still offering business units the flexibility to respond quickly to changing conditions.

Laserfiche distributes its software through a worldwide network of value-added resellers (VARs), who tailor solutions to clients’ individual needs. The Laserfiche VAR program has received the Five-Star Rating from Computer Reseller News/VARBusiness magazine.

ECM-Laserfiche Reveals Secrets of Effective Information Governance at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo

2010-10-18T22:12:00.001-07:00

Information governance accelerates decision-making, increases transparency and eliminates unnecessary compliance risks

Enterprise content management company, Laserfiche is a key sponsor of the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, will deliver a special educational session titled “Unlocking Organizational Agility with Effective Information Governance.” The session will take place on Wednesday, October 20, from 12:30-1:30 pm at the Walt Disney World Dolphin Hotel – Oceanic 7.

“Too many organizations equate ‘information governance’ with ‘information lock-down,’” said Andy Wang, director of ECM Strategy at Laserfiche. “But a successful information governance strategy accelerates decision-making, increases transparency and eliminates unnecessary compliance risks. It’s a way to foster organizational agility, and it’s most effective when there’s a nimble technology backbone in place.”

Enterprise content management (ECM) serves as a foundational component of information governance, using automation to ensure the standardization and reliability of information assets. Agile ECM systems from Laserfiche give the IT department central control over the information infrastructure, while at the same time granting business units control over the way they access and store their own information. This flexibility ensures swift system acceptance and the ability to react quickly to changing business conditions.

During his presentation, Wang will discuss the crucial role of automation and standardization in information governance. “Best practices for process-based manufacturing have been in place for decades,” he said. “Imagine how much more efficient your organization would be if it were able to apply the same principles to the way it manages and processes information.”

Other factors that play an important role in shaping an effective information governance strategy include people, policies and risk management.

Laserfiche will be on hand at booth #305 throughout the event to demonstrate its agile ECM solutions.

creates simple and elegant enterprise content management (ECM) solutions that help organizations run smarter. Since 1987, more than 28,000 organizations worldwide—including federal, state and local government agencies and Fortune 1000 companies—have used Laserfiche software to streamline document, records and business process management.

The Laserfiche ECM system is designed to give IT managers central control over their information infrastructure, including standards, security and auditing, while still offering business units the flexibility to respond quickly to changing conditions. The Laserfiche product suite is built upon Microsoft® technologies to simplify system administration, supports Microsoft SQL and Oracle® platforms and features a seamless integration with Microsoft Office® applications and a two-way integration with SharePoint®.

Tags: ECM, Enterprise content management

A Quarter Saved is Peace of Mind Earned

2010-09-14T21:39:00.000-07:00

Laserfiche helps Olmsted and Associates save 25% in processing costs while adding long-term risk management and client data security value

When Olmsted & Associates, a CPA firm based in Fountain Valley, CA, went looking for an enterprise content management system in 2006, its needs were simple: “We needed a program that would allow us to scan multiple sizes and types of documents and then facilitate our search for them later. Security and retention periods were a concern as well,” says Tax Administrator Fernando Rocha. “Basically, we needed to have everything in one place so whomever needed to use it, could.”

Laserfiche was a name Olmsted’s partners were aware other accounting firms were using. And, says firm president Bernie Olmsted, with good reason. “There are a million document management systems out there, but nobody has the security ratings Laserfiche has in terms of being DoD 5015.2-certified,” she says.

Allen Adjamian of Laserfiche reseller Adjamian Affiliated was called to demonstrate how Laserfiche could lighten the firm’s paperwork load. Adjamian showed how Laserfiche could be integrated with the firm’s Lacerte tax software and other accounting software programs to create a central storage repository for the entire firm’s paperwork in a way that all but eliminated printing—even scanning.

Rocha says his fellow Olmsted staffers were particularly impressed by how user-friendly Laserfiche was, because it “had the look and feel of Windows and search engines we were used to using.” Another plus, he adds, was the comprehensive single solution Laserfiche offered. “Other programs you had to buy more products to get to that level of functionality. Laserfiche suited our needs right out of the box.”

Olmsted herself notes that even with all its functionality, Laserfiche offered a focus. “We looked at a lot of systems where the document management component was usually one component in this canned system,” she says. “What stood out about Laserfiche was that it was a stand-alone program that focused on a single, separate function that provided a higher level of security.”

The firm purchased enterprise content management with Web Access to serve staff internally and remotely, as well as its clients. Implementation began in late 2006 with a backlog conversion of seven years’ worth of paper files. Adjamian and fellow solutions consultant Kristina Yassi worked with Rocha and Olmsted’s staff to set up templates and document types to establish the file structure that, with some enhancements, the firm still uses today. “Allen and Kristina helped us a design a folder and subfolder structure that allowed us get started scanning our documents right away,” Rocha recalls. “We’ve been able to improve on it since then, which is actually something we’ve come to appreciate about Laserfiche: It’s flexible enough to grow with us, without making a big project out of it.”

The impact of using ECM was immediate. “A lot of the time when we complete a project, we have to make associated information almost immediately available to meet deadlines and client demands. Once things are in Laserfiche, we can make that data readily available through e-mail or Web Access,” Rocha says.

A big time- and resource-saver, he says, is the ability to print directly to Laserfiche from the firm’s Lacerte tax software. “Printing to Laserfiche from Lacerte takes about 10 to 15 seconds for about 40 pages. There is no need to print, prep and scan paper copies for review, whether it’s for managers or staff. They go directly to Laserfiche to review it,” Rocha explains. “This allows us to move tax returns through the office for input and review without printing out any pages, which also saves time and money.”

This saves time making changes to tax returns and statements, Rocha says. “Whereas before we would have to recycle the old version and reprint the new one and file it, now we just delete it in Laserfiche and re-print/download to Laserfiche. It’s also very convenient that we don’t need to go track down the client’s file to review data, because it’s already in Laserfiche.”

Rocha also says that Laserfiche’s interoperability with other programs and file types has brought efficiency and convenience to other business processes. “We transfer all our disparate types of data and document types into Laserfiche—QuickBooks, PDF documents, and Excel,” he says. “We can print directly to Laserfiche, save-to, or just drag-and-drop it. It’s that easy.”

For her part, Olmsted says the Laserfiche system inspired rapid adoption for its ease of use, but again, its focus of use. “Laserfiche feels like an independent program in that it’s this standalone entity that’s open to all of the types of files we work with. Our staff and customers have adopted it really well.”

The ultimate customer service, she says, is Laserfiche’s DoD 5015.2-certified security. “It can take some time to get people used to not working with paper, but for us it’s the only way to secure information moving forward by making sure you don’t have sensitive information laying around the office. Our clients look to us as their accounting firm to secure their information at the highest level,” she says.

At the same time, Olmsted sees Laserfiche making her business more agile and responsive to staff and clients alike. “Laserfiche provides us a lot of mobility. Auditors going out in the field can scan in documents and access company files. We have everybody reviewing tax returns online as well.”

Now, four years since implementing ECM, the firm is seeing its return on investment (ROI) from regained staff time and cutting overhead costs. “I can say we save about 25% across the board, as far what it takes us to process paperwork now,” Rocha says.

And Rocha says that Olmsted & Associates has found a new way to work. “With Laserfiche we’ve found a document management system that offers us control in terms of securing and centralizing information, but also the flexibility to handle all kinds of content and make it readily available to our staff and clients securely and conveniently.”

That, Olmsted says, has given her firm a competitive edge. “The only way to move forward is to get your efficiency up and your costs down. For us, Laserfiche has been a big part of that.”

Eighteen Laserfiche ECM Clients Named Most Advanced Digital Counties in America

2010-08-12T22:52:00.000-07:00

Charles County, MD, Hanover County, VA, and Chesterfield County, VA, take top honors

LONG BEACH, CA - August 10, 2010— Enterprise content management company Laserfiche is proud to congratulate 18 of its customers for being named among the most advanced digital counties in 2010 by the Center for Digital Government and Digital Communities magazine. Charles County, MD, Hanover County, VA, and Chesterfield County, VA, took top honors in three of the four population categories.

In years past, entrants were required only to submit an inventory of the cutting-edge technologies they used; in 2010, applicants were asked to explain how their technologies support employees and citizens alike. Collaboration, transparency and efficiency were three benefits that particularly impressed this year’s judges.

“Across the United States, county governments are using enterprise content management (ECM) solutions to improve their ability to cost-effectively deliver valuable services to citizens,” said Nien-Ling Wacker, Laserfiche president and CEO. “We are very proud that nearly half of this year’s top digital counties use ECM to help them achieve their goals.”

Ten top-ranking cities in the four following population categories were selected: 250,000+, 125,000-249,999, 75,000-124,999, and 30,000-74,999. The ECM customers that made the list include:

Charles County, MD (category winner)

Hanover County, VA (category winner)

Chesterfield County, VA (category winner)

Nevada County, CA

Skagit County, WA

Albemarle County, VA

Napa County, CA

Cumberland County, PA

Gaston County, NC

Roanoke County, VA

Mohave County, AZ

Loudoun County, VA

Dutchess County, NY

Placer County, CA

Guilford County, NC

King County, WA

Fairfax County, VA

Orange County, CA

The cities were chosen from the results of the eighth annual Digital Counties Survey, which examines how America’s counties use technology to improve service delivery.

Laserfiche creates simple and elegant enterprise content management (ECM) solutions that help organizations run smarter. Since 1987, more than 28,000 organizations worldwide—including federal, state and local government agencies and Fortune 1000 companies—have used Laserfiche software to streamline document, records and business process management.

It’s 2 AM – Do You Know Where Your Compliance Is?

2010-07-12T21:39:00.000-07:00

Gitterman & Associates Wealth Management, LLC, looks to Laserfiche for user-friendly, compliance-savvy Enterprise Content Management

Since it was founded in 1990, Gitterman & Associates Wealth Management, LLC has grown from a five-person Financial Firm to a dually-registered firm with 25 employees handling $225M AUM on its RIA side and over $400M AUM on its broker-dealer side. With this growth came the need to manage more client information and business records—and, now as a dually registered RIA/B-D, to meet separate compliance standards for both FINRA and the SEC.

Since implementing a Laserfiche Avante Enterprise Content Management system earlier this year, Gitterman & Associates is not only saving the staff and storage costs of working with paper, the firm is using Laserfiche to proactively manage its information to make compliance simpler, easier and more efficient. “Laserfiche is as user-friendly as it says it is, but it has the flexibility to separate our information to meet our compliance needs as both an RIA and a broker-dealer,” says Jeffrey Gitterman, founder and CEO. “No other company or solution we looked at did that.”

Declaring Independence from Its B-D – and its ECM

Laserfiche was not the firm’s first ECM solution—but it was its first successful one. “Two years ago, our broker-dealer at the time came to us as one of their two branch offices in the whole country they were going to let beta test their document management system. I jumped on it, thinking this has got to be better than having a file clerk in a room all day,” recalls Marcy Gitterman, director of IT & HR.

Trouble was, with no folder hierarchy and searching limited only to template fields, the legacy system was creating as many problems as it was meant to solve. “It was just a really cumbersome program to use,” she says. As the firm prepared to switch broker-dealers to Fidelity, only one of 19 staff had actually scanned their paperwork into the system. Gitterman was frustrated, but optimistic. “I knew there had to be something else out there that would work,” she says.

The firm’s principals, meanwhile, just wanted something people would actually use. “At one point, we were just talking about scanning everything to PDF ourselves and storing it on a hard drive, but I was really against that,” Gitterman says. “We needed something a lot more robust—the fact that PDFs can be altered wouldn’t help with security or compliance.”

Laserfiche, turns out, was one of the ECM providers on Fidelity’s short list of recommended solutions. Jeffrey Gitterman was aware of Laserfiche from local FPA chapter meetings, as well as from hearing about it from colleagues who used it. “It’s just a name we kept hearing a lot,” he says. When Zaheer Master, president of Laserfiche reseller Accelerated Information Systems, presented a Laserfiche solution tailored to the firm’s dual registry, Gitterman knew he was working with the right company—and that he’d actually use the software.

“I avoid technology like the plague, so ease of use was for me the number one priority. How easily can our new employees use it? How easy is it for me to use it?” Gitterman says. “Laserfiche could take our paper filing system—the one we’ve been using successfully since 1996—and transpose it to a Windows-type environment we were comfortable with.

“But what really impressed us about Laserfiche was the way our reseller presented it. The other solutions we looked at were totally reactionary—they just said ‘this is how you get rid of paper.’ Our reseller presented Laserfiche in a way that said, ‘Okay, now that your information’s automated, here’s how you’ll need to set this up to get the most out of it and here’s how you do it,’” he adds.

Implementation took place over two months. Says Master, “We showed them how they needed to separate the RIA side of their business from the B-D side for FINRA and SEC compliance. We also showed them how using metadata, you could set up a template field search with a cut-off date or destruction date to easily enforce a retention policy. I think the important thing to realize with ECM is that just because it’s easy to keep everything, doesn’t mean you necessarily want to.”

The space saving alone, Marcy says, was a relief. “We look at the hundreds of square feet we’d been devoting to our file room—it just gets crazy. And half of those files you’ll never see, but you have to keep for compliance,” she says. “Now we get our space back and now all we have to do is shoot something through the scanner so we don’t have to touch it again. It’s that simple.”

The flexibility to segregate information and customize user access to certain folders was not only effective, she says, it was easy. “In the old system, we would have to hire a support person to do that. Now we can set up permissions to assign access,” Gitterman says. “We use Laserfiche for client files, HR files, benefits, payroll, you name it, so the ability to lock down some files versus other files is really helpful.”

She adds, “Laserfiche doesn’t just say it’s user-friendly, it is.”

Automated Compliance – Even at 2 AM

While having more accessible information is a benefit, Gitterman & Associates have also realized that automated information is more useful information. “We do a lot of our compliance right in Laserfiche,” Marcy says. “Instead of our reps having to make copies of client correspondence, they scan them in and it’s automatically submitted to our Chief Compliance Officer in a folder only they have access to. Then we set up a stamping process so the compliance officer can tell the rep that it’s been approved.”

This automation has paid off in faster service for financial advisors. “One of the nice things is that if our CCO is on the road, it’s not like it has to wait a week if it’s something that needs to be pre-approved. He doesn’t have to look for a fax machine or find time to respond during business hours, he can just log into Laserfiche at 2 AM.”

For his part, Jeffrey agrees. “Laserfiche is a huge help from a compliance side.”

But Gitterman says it’s the little things that make using Laserfiche an effective part of everyday business. “The fact that I can redact a line in a memo, and then send it in a secure e-mail—these are the kinds of things I like. I don’t have to ask someone how to do it, I can just do it.”

He sees the potential for Laserfiche to make audits more hassle-free. “I just went through six months of FINRA audits and I can tell you it was painful. They basically put me out of business for six months. If we had already had Laserfiche, it wouldn’t have been a tenth of the nightmare it was,” he says. “Now that we have Laserfiche, even though an auditor can come and say they want to see incoming correspondence from a certain date range, we can have everything for them in 30 seconds. That’s going to be huge for us.”

Marcy says now that the firm is enjoying its first taste of content management efficiency, she is eager to see what Workflow can do to automate business process management. “Right now our CRM integrates with our e-mail system—I’d like to see it integrated with Laserfiche as well,” she says. “And our internal processing department will be able to automatically route documents to our principals to approve from anywhere, instead of having them wait in a folder on a desk—that’ll be nice.”

As nice, says Jeffrey, is that the Gitterman & Associates Wealth Management has found an ECM system that’s finally living up to its potential—and uncovering new potential in the process(es). “Of all the new software we’ve gotten in the last few months, this is everyone’s favorite,” he says. “Laserfiche did what it promised to do. None of the other software did.”

Laserfiche Supports Launch of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010

2010-07-07T00:07:00.000-07:00

Works with SharePoint Server 2010 to enable Transactional Content Management

Laserfiche is pleased to announce that it is supporting the Microsoft® SharePoint® Server 2010 launch wave by sponsoring a number of Microsoft Solution Days in both the U.S. and Hong Kong. As a U.S.-Managed Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Laserfiche will showcase its support for SharePoint Server 2010 at these events.

Laserfiche’s support for SharePoint Server 2010 maximizes the strengths of both systems. SharePoint Server 2010 provides a unified business collaboration platform, while Laserfiche provides document imaging and turnkey transactional enterprise content management for core business processes, including:

Accounts payable
Case management
Contract management
HR onboarding
Many more processes

“Adding Laserfiche to SharePoint Server 2010 helps accelerate deployment, simplify workflow design and minimize the need for customization and development,” said Meera Mehta, director of SharePoint Partner Marketing at Microsoft Corp. “It offers customers an easy way to achieve enhanced productivity using SharePoint Server 2010.”

“Using Laserfiche with SharePoint Server 2010 makes organizations more agile,” said Tom Wayman, vice president of product strategy at Laserfiche. “We’re pleased to support the SharePoint Server 2010 launch and provide Microsoft customers with the means to easily manage transactional content within their SharePoint sites.”

ECM creates simple and elegant enterprise content management (ECM) solutions that help organizations run smarter. Since 1987, more than 28,000 organizations worldwide—including federal, state and local government agencies and Fortune 1000 companies—have used Laserfiche software to streamline document, records and business process management.

The ECM system is designed to give IT managers central control over their information infrastructure, including standards, security and auditing, while still offering business units the flexibility to respond quickly to changing conditions. The Laserfiche product suite is built upon Microsoft technologies to simplify system administration, and it supports the Microsoft SQL platform, Microsoft Office applications, and SharePoint Server.

5 Ways to Ensure Healthy Investment Returns With Enterprise Content Management Solutions

2010-06-03T00:34:00.000-07:00

If you are thinking of whether to go for ecm or not, here are five benefits that will help you in making the right decision.

Business Assessment:

Enterprise Content Management or ECM should be implemented to help businesses achieve overall targets. Every organization wishes to operate under minimal costs and maximum profit range. There are four key drivers that form as the decision ground for a company in ECM adoption: improvised customer service, reduced cost, ensuring continuity in business and regulatory compliance. For a business, thorough assessment on all these fronts is necessary before deciding on ECM. Success in every vertical can be identified by measuring business benefits.

Assessing the Technological Front:

Businesses should initiate a thorough technology assessment to list out what they have currently and what more is required to meet business goals. The target is to find the existing gap between current practices and future trends and then working towards mending that gap.

Expert Assistance:

Not all the system integrators can give you desired results. It is therefore necessary to look out for the experts in the field. The technical professional that you have selected must exhibit correct knowledge from all the decisions he or she undertakes. Commitment to work as the partner to the lifecycle of the enterprise content management system is necessary.

Choose your vendors carefully

Since vendors work in conjunction with your company’s overall objectives, their selection must be done with great care. A wrong selection can lead company’s ECM ambitions to a dead end. Consider financial liability, usability, cost-benefit analysis and scalability of the situation before hiring the vendor.

Demand Proof of Handling

Before finalising on the system integrator, let the person demonstrate his skills on the recommended software and hardware. Their ease of usability will give you an idea of their knowledge in the subject. Generally, the vendors offer clients a time period to try out their program which will enable you to try the product’s functionality before making the purchase decision.

Enterprise Content Management

2010-05-21T23:51:00.000-07:00

As a company, everyone requires to manage some sort of data for timely usage. There are various options through which this data can be stored and compiled into the machines. One way is to take a backup at the end of day and store the information at a secured location. This can become quite tedious and risky if the data is huge and the location of the server is far away. The other more professional and secure way is ECM or enterprise content management. ECM enables organizations to handle any sort of information with ease and speed. It delivers great promise to the companies whose offices are located in different cities and in different continents.

ECM or enterprise content management uses a wide array of technologies and components in order to deliver expert solutions to any organizations’ problems. These components can be stand-alone systems that do the work instead of an enterprise-based system. ECM helps in managing, controlling, utilizing, and sharing of crucial data and hence streamlines the whole business process of an organization. It works like a dedicated network in the background that collects whole lot of information and delivers the same information whenever asked for by the end user.

ECM thus integrates organizations applications in a very professional manner and increases the longevity of the content that gets delivered to the users. Furthermore, it reduces the risks of proliferation and checks duplicity at each step that itself is a high risk area. While you look out to purchase good enterprise content management software for your company, it is always essential to keep a few things in mind such as:

Select the ECM according to your organizations budget and design.
Enterprise content management requires constant updates, therefore it is essential to spend in parts over a period of time instead at one go.
Do not go for the cheaper options, purchase a tried and tested model suited best for your organization.

Accelerating Credentialing

2010-05-06T23:03:00.000-07:00

Molina Healthcare decreases turnaround time for credentialing by 44% while doubling number of applications processed per month

Much has been made lately of the benefits that can accrue to healthcare providers through the use of electronic medical records. In fact, one of the major long-term goals of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) is to “initiate a process to computerize health records. In fact, one of the major long-term goals of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) is to “initiate a process to computerize health records to reduce medical errors and save on health care costs.”

But medical records are only one area in which providers can reap the benefits of working with secure, digital files. For organizations such as Molina Healthcare, a managed care organization (MCO) serving low-income individuals who frequently depend on government assistance, implementing a Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM) system to digitize and streamline the healthcare provider credentialing process has proven to be extremely valuable.

The Importance of Credentialing

Credentialing is integral to the success of any healthcare organization, but it is a particularly important process for an MCO like Molina Healthcare. Effective credentialing helps MCOs manage liability risk, attract customers and obtain accreditation from organizations such as The Joint Commission and NCQA. It is also a procedural requirement by federal agencies such as CMS and various state agencies.

Molina Healthcare, a Fortune 1000 company that operates in nine states—California, Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Missouri, New Mexico, Texas, Utah and Washington—handles more than fifteen thousand provider applications a year. Legally, a healthcare practitioner cannot participate in Molina’s network until the credentialing process is completed and a determination has been made to approve that provider for participation.

“Every day a provider remains in the credentialing process,” says Ryan Boe, corporate credentialing manager at Molina Healthcare, “is another day that he or she can’t provide care for our members.”

According to Boe, applications frequently consist of 30-100 pages of material, including a physician’s state license, board certification, criminal history report, stated work history, educational background, malpractice history and more. “Dealing with paper,” he says, “is much slower than working with electronic records.”

Paper Process

In the past, Molina’s credentialing department produced a single paper copy of each application and routed it to different people during the credentialing process. According to Michael Eisenman, healthcare analyst for the credentialing department, coordinating the logistics and timing for moving applications through various steps of the process was difficult.

“When you’re reviewing hundreds of applications a month, it’s not practical to physically transfer them one-by-one,” he says. “But transporting hardcopy files in batches leads to processing bottlenecks, which slows everything down.”

From a cost standpoint, printing paper applications consumed reams and reams of paper, and the special couriers who shipped credentialing files between offices were an additional expense. Additionally, the physical space needed to store and retain the documentation (including a great number of wall racks) led to extra cost.

Working with paper also brings up liability issues for MCOs like Molina: “HIPAA mandates that we keep medical information secure, but it’s hard to do that with paper files,” Eisenman explains. “Paper isn’t password-protected, and it doesn’t produce an audit trail.”

Implementing Enterprise Content Management

Tasked with finding the best way to digitize credentialing applications and automate key pieces of the credentialing process, an IT committee chose a Laserfiche Rio ECM system due to its rich scanning, workflow, security and auditing features.

Despite a few initial difficulties around business process engineering, solution design, training and adoption, the department soon ironed out the kinks, staggering the implementation state-by-state over a period of six months.

According to Sampath Nalam, technical lead in Molina’s IT department, the system’s ease of use accelerated its adoption. Initial product training and consistent technical support from the Laserfiche technical team also helped Molina to understand the Laserfiche product architecture, resolve implementation issues and accelerate the project deliveries.

The IT department trained the credentialing managers, who then trained their staff. “Most users picked it up pretty easily within a couple of days,” says Nalam. “It’s not too complex for users to understand and navigate through the Laserfiche application.”

Eisenman echoes this sentiment: “Laserfiche is very intuitive for users. It’s pretty close to point and click.”

ECM in Action

In order to put Laserfiche into action, one of the first steps for Molina was to restructure its credentialing process to take advantage of the system’s capabilities. “Today,” says Eisenman, “all roads for credentialing lead to Laserfiche.”

When a practitioner is being credentialed with Molina for the first time, departments outside of Credentialing obtain the application data—either from a physical application or from CAQH, one of the largest credentialing data sources in the country. The application data soon ends up in the credentialing department, which is where 85% of the work associated with the credentialing process takes place.

“We get a hodgepodge of data sets,” explains Eisenman. “XML data, text files, PDFs, spreadsheets, paper… the list goes on and on. We pre-process the data to make sure it meets our standards and organize it into an intelligent list, at which point it all goes into Laserfiche.”

In Laserfiche, the data is automatically filed—usually in large batches—in the Laserfiche folder structure. Once the information is in the system, the ‘Laserfiche workflow’ kicks in, alerting people to the various tasks they must perform on each application. For example, credentialing specialists populate template fields with metadata to indicate file completion or file discontinuance, which moves the file forward to a credentialing lead, who quality checks each file.

“We now have about 100 people using enterprise content management to some degree, and about 50 of those people use Laserfiche on a continuous and daily basis,” says Boe. “After a bit of trial and error, we’ve figure out our ideal process for implementing a centralized and paperless credentialing system.”

Measurable Results

Molina’s corporate credentialing department has realized a number of benefits resulting from its Laserfiche implementation, including:

Decreased turnaround time (TAT) for processing applications by 44%.
Twice as many applications processed per month.
Greater visibility of information enterprise-wide.
Faster provider network development.
Decreased credentialing costs.
Standardization of procedures and workflows.
Improved security of protected information.

“The Laserfiche SDK has enabled us to automate an incredible amount of our data processing,” Eisenman says. “It has made the credentialing process much faster and much more consistent.”

“When we first started working with Laserfiche, there was a brief period when the TAT went up and our volume went down as we adjusted to the new process and the new technology,” Boe explains. “Once we’d conquered that initial learning curve and overcome the initial technical hurdles, however, the speed at which we can process applications skyrocketed. We’re currently completing approximately 1,500 applications a month, which is up from just under 800 a month a year back.”

“We’re very happy with ECM,” Boe concludes. “It has accelerated the credentialing process and added a lot of value to our organization.”

Tags: ECM, enterprise content management.

2010-04-22T02:08:00.001-07:00

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2010-04-22T02:07:00.001-07:00

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ecm,enterprise content management.

The Road to Rio

2010-04-09T22:13:00.000-07:00

When the County of Hawaii first purchased Laserfiche as its enterprise content management platform in 2007, it had some idea of the kind of improvements to business operations that could come from content management. Various departments had been using their own ECM systems since the late 1990s and the County of Hawaii’s Office of the Corporation Counsel had deployed its own Laserfiche system in 2005, with great success.

“Starting small with the Corporation Counsel Office showed us the software could do more than just scanning,” says former Systems Analyst Fatima Hicks. “It gave us an initial success that other departments could look to and start asking how they could use it.”

In 2007, Hicks’ team had initially focused on expanding Laserfiche to seven County departments: Public Works, Planning, Real Property Tax, County Clerk’s, Motor Vehicle Registration & Licensing, Corporation Counsel and Elections. Treasury was added in 2008 as a part of the Motor Vehicle repository.

When Systems Analyst Sheila Cadaoas became Laserfiche Project Manager in April 2009, she saw the potential – and value – of converting to enterprise content management named-user licensing as well as upgrading to version 8. “I felt strongly that we needed to make every feature of every ECM module equally available to every user,” Cadaoas says, noting that Rio licensing includes not just Snapshot and the E-mail Plug-In, but also Web Access, Workflow and Advanced Audit Trail. Because each Rio named user license is assigned to an individual staff member, they are always able to access their information, and when new users are added to the system, all components – including Workflow – are immediately available for their use.

A windsurfer off the coast of Hawaii.

“We also wanted to expand usage to wring every drop of productivity possible out of Laserfiche. Our mindset is still very focused on the departments and their respective business processes; Rio’s unlimited servers and repositories just make it even more adaptable to the needs of the business units,” she adds.

From an IT perspective, Cadaoas says, Rio made even more sense. “The Rio licensing has lower annual maintenance fees per user, plus it allows unlimited growth in the number of servers and number of repositories,” Cadaoas says. “With our old system, we were running up against issues of size and the speed of search responses. Having unlimited servers allows us to break our repositories up into smaller chunks.” For instance, she says, though the Treasury Division currently uses the Motor Vehicle repository, with added security to separate users, it will have its own repository by summer.

The Rio system has only been live since the end of January, but already the County has created three new repositories: one each for the Office of the Legislative Auditor, the Department of Liquor Control, and one for Data Systems called “Area 51.” Liquor Control has a room full of Licensed Liquor Establishment documents to manage, while the Legislative Auditor will use Laserfiche to organize the research and documentation produced with each audit. “Legislative Auditor and Liquor Control were both created and initial training given to end users in about two hours each,” she says. “These are the users that are going for it. We gave them Laserfiche and said, ‘You don’t have to wait for Data Systems. You can set up your folders, your own security and run with it.’”

County of Hawaii Systems Analyst Sheila Cadaoas

Cadaoas notes that the user-friendliness of Laserfiche is also IT-friendly: “When we can get people set up and using the system this fast, it leverages my time as well.”

The third repository – “Area51″ – is a proving ground for the Data Systems analysts. “We test workflows, Quick Fields sessions, and new ideas in general without having to interfere with our live repositories,” explains Cadaoas.

By the end of June, the county will add the Mayor’s Office, Research & Development and Human Resources to their Laserfiche system. As important as it is to expand Laserfiche to new departments, Cadaoas says, it’s equally important to manage the human side of change. “We’re setting up monthly ‘super user’ group meetings to share ideas and extend training,” she says. “Our first session will be at the end of March and our training topics are folder setup with security and template/metadata creation.”

Finally, Cadaoas says Rio’s multiple repositories will play a big role in simplifying and improving how content is published and accessed on the county’s Website through the expanded WebLink public portal the County purchased with its upgrade. “Currently we only have the County Clerk Legislative documents available via WebLink. With Rio we have the capability to create a WebLink public folder structure in each repository,” she says.

“Our current County Website is very labor intensive for both Data Systems and the other departments. With Rio, documents will now only exist once instead of twice because they’re being accessed right from the repository, and they’ll be public within seconds of the user moving them into the proper folder – we won’t have to convert it to publish it,” Cadaoas explains. “Plus, the public will be able to use the Laserfiche search capabilities. We’re looking forward to Laserfiche adding a ‘federated search’ capability that would allow the public to search multiple repositories – then our WebLink Public Portal will truly be a sight to behold!”

Tag Tags: ECM, enterprise content management

Enterprise Content Management – An Explanation of Content Management

2010-03-22T22:01:00.000-07:00

Used by companies to capture, manage, store, and deliver important documentation, enterprise content management is a tool for organizing pertinent information. With problems in the past concerning management of records and other documentation including losing records, human error, and many more, this management system was designed to address problems and serve as a way to manage information but also to convert it to and from digital materials. Through this auditing, sharing of knowledge, and standardizing of content can be accomplished.

Starting out as simply content management, enterprise content management encompasses everything in a business, not just the things that are shown to people on the outside but things like an intranet make it possible to swap information within a business or company. Therefore this solution for content management is focused on a business to employee model. These solutions provide in-house information that is usually based on internet technologies. Other services included are business to business and business to government. Another form of content management is called digital asset management; this also concentrates on using digital electronic technology to store information.

Paper based businesses were overwhelming. With so many documents and paperwork it seemed impossible to get everything done that needed to be. There was a lot of value in the offer of a program that would store necessary documents and information and would do it without the clutter. People in these companies wanted an office that was clear from the clutter of paper. ECM was of high value for these organizations and offered to save them time, among other benefits. Some other top resulting benefits include the following: less lost documents, less error, less storage needs, better control and accuracy, improved security and better tracking of information.

More companies became users of ECM products and it was extremely useful for them all. Customer service departments found it extremely useful in that they were able to merge everything together and only have to go to that one place to pull up any information a customer might seek. And once internet use exploded and businesses were popping up all over cyberspace, they had the capabilities through these programs to share their information with others. Today, these management systems are all over and they have branched out to include a whole array of systems. Content management has become a booming industry and has expanded capabilities and the ability to function for businesses worldwide.

Tags: enterprise content management, ECM

Enterprise Content Management from Rio

2010-03-22T21:50:00.001-07:00

Laserfiche-Rio is Enterprise Content Management Software (ECM) for Document Management, Collaboration, Knowledge Management and Business Process Management - enterprise class business management software.for more details visit our site: http://www.laserfiche.com/rio

Enterprise Content Management: The Future of Networking

2010-03-16T22:31:00.000-07:00

Document management is arguably one of the most important aspects of an enterprise content management system. The earliest document management systems were developed to manage proprietary file types or a limited number of file formats. Today, document management systems have grown to encompass electronic documents, collaboration tools, security, and auditing capabilities. ECM has been defined as the strategies, methods and tools used to manage, store, preserve and deliver content and documents related to organizational processes. ECM tools and strategies allow the management of an organization’s unstructured information, wherever that information exists. There are several benefits to having a quality document management system as part of a powerful enterprise content management system.

The digital centralized location of the files enables people to obtain files and information without entering a file room or shuffling through a messy filing cabinet.
ECM systems typically use a database to store metadata and administrators can authorize access to authorized personnel.
Document management platforms have different ways of creating documents as well as a simple yet inclusive workflow design. Documents can easily be passed from one person to another. This is very useful when multiple people need to collaborate on a project.

Not only can enterprise content management systems simplify projects and make communication between people much easier, they also reduce paperwork. With the development of these platforms, companies are approaching a paperless office. Proponents of enterprise content management have argued that paperless services are faster, cheaper, more efficient, and more environment-friendly. Society has almost reached the point where computer files are out of date. Endless folders on one’s desktop contain thousands of files which one has to sort through to find needed information. Sharing files on a web workspace will eventually replace storing them on the computer’s hard drive. In addition, a large, powerful database in another location stores files for a company for any authorized user to access without having to hunt down the actual file and the computer which contains the file. The future is unfolding before our eyes. More and more companies are adapting ECM as a way to connect and network among their employees.

Tags: Document management, enterprise content management, ECM

How Enterprise Content Management Can Improve Your Business

2010-03-16T21:51:00.000-07:00

In a business, information within the company is a powerful tool. If someone has a piece of information but cannot transfer it to others in the company, the information is not as useful as it could be if it was widespread and easy to access. For example, if you have a document with sales information but have to spend half the day getting this information to the right people in the sales department, the company would not be operating very efficiently. The way companies have remedied this is by taking full advantage of the internet and using Enterprise Content Management systems. Using these systems, an administrator can make certain information available to everyone, or just specific people, with the click of a button and a simple file upload. ECM has also enabled businesses to chat in real time about current projects. Instead of waiting for an e-mail to come through, the information can be instantaneously transferred without saying a word or sending an e-mail. It is almost as though the company is in a big meeting all day; everyone sits at a long table and discusses their project while each person does his or her work on the computer. ECM can provide all the communication without being in the same room as hundreds of other employees at the same time.

Enterprise Content Management systems should have two main qualities: functionality and simplicity. Not everyone in an office will be as technically proficient as others, yet a business still wants many features as part of their Enterprise Content Management. One main feature that businesses look for in their ECM is Workflow management. This software can help you save time by automating routines and subroutines that you would otherwise spend a lot of time on, such as data entry and e-mail filtering. In addition, workflow software can be configured to process data entry so it runs in the background. The term workflow is used in general to describe the tasks, procedural steps, organizations or people involved, required input and output information, and tools needed for each step in a business process. These steps are clearly outlined so the program can tell you when you are done with a project and what you have left to do.

So next time you are shuffling through a multitude of files, it may be a good idea to look into Enterprise Content Management. Your employee morale along with project efficiency can greatly increase!

Empower Your User Group!

2010-02-28T21:10:00.000-08:00

Empower your User Group to share what they know, learn what they want, and provide access to information to meet their needs.

em•pow•er
Pronunciation: \im-ˈpau̇(-ə)r\
Function: transitive verb
1 : to give official authority or legal power to
2 : ENABLE 1a
3 : to promote the self-actualization or influence of

The purpose of our group is to provide and promote best practices to Hampton Roads Laserfiche Users so that we can more efficiently and effectively meet the needs of our customers.

User Groups have become the rage with ECM, and thank goodness! What an invaluable resource for learning more about this information technology specialty, keeping up with your network (‘cause there’s never enough time!) and maybe even offering some of your time and talent to provide leadership for your group.

Public and private agencies are hungry for easy to implement initiatives with enterprise content management, easy fixes to everyday problems and practical knowledge and experience about the different ECM applications. You can find these ideas and more in your User Group.

Empower your User Group to share what they know, learn what they want, and provide enterprise content management access information and resources to meet their needs.

Some of the ways in which the Hampton Roads User Group is empowered include:

All presentations are provided based on member input and requests. We (the group leaders and our VAR) develop and deliver what the members ask for.
Members can keep their contact information current, and post or join in the newly established Discussion Board.
Current leadership welcomes members who are interested in expanding their role to become a group leader. All User Groups require some degree of coordination, communication and overall support.

This approach – empowering the users – has made this group’s experience meaningful and fun for the members, the group leadership and the VAR.

Remember – It’s YOUR User Group!!

Tags: ECM, enterprise content management.

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Run Smarter Winners Collin County, TX, RMS and LaPorte County, IN, Featured in ebizQ Podcasts

2010-02-07T21:35:00.000-08:00

While they were at the 2010 Laserfiche Institute Conference, 2009 Run Smarter Winners Collin County TX, RMS and LaPorte County, IN, were all interviewed for ebizQ podcasts. You won’t want to miss what our award winners have to say about how Laserfiche Enterprise Content Managementhas helped them succeed!

Collin County, TX, CIO Caren Skipworth and Records Manager Margaret Anderson discuss the issues facing CIOs today, how they implemented Laserfiche and how it helped them, and more on how they trained County employees using AKDAR, a change management model Skipworth mentioned in her keynote, “The Three Laws of Agile ECM.”

Interested in learning more about Collin County and their Enterprise content solutions? Download the enterprise government case study explaining their installation and learn about how Collin County uses Laserfiche to transparently manage records and improve IT governance for the entire county.

RMS, our Run Smarter Winner for the Commercial Category, explains how employing Laserfiche on the machine shop floor has improved their business processes. Using Laserfiche Enterprise content software, RMS cut order processing time from 8-10 weeks down to just 72 hours. Michael Eklund, IS Coordinator for RMS, shares how Laserfiche BPM has saved the company critical time and costs.

LaPorte County, IN, our Justice Systems-Courts Winner for the 2009 Run Smarter Awards, was also interviewed for a podcast. Stephen T. Eyrick, Chief Probation Officer for the county, discussed how Laserfiche has helped the county’s court system cut down on costs in this tough economy.

How Will ECM Benefit Your Business?

2010-01-31T21:12:00.000-08:00

ECM delivers virtually all the functionality of the standard, installed Laserfiche interface, Web Access allows for consolidated management of resources and data, as well as remote or portable access.

Centralize Resource and Data Management

IT staff manages software and hardware centrally, without the need to deploy and support software on each individual point of access. Administrators and business owners manage documents and unstructured information through a full enterprise content management system, while maintaining the ability to collaborate across sites, business units, and platforms. Information and knowledge workers access the information they need through an Internet browser, even on a mobile device.

Part of a Broader ECM Solution

Other modules are or can be combined with Web Access to provide complete enterprise content management solutions, including document imaging (Web Scanning), business process management (Laserfiche Workflow, Quick Fields, and Agenda Manager), regulatory compliance and tracking (Laserfiche Audit Trail), and records retention (Laserfiche Records Management Edition). In addition, Web Access integrates with Microsoft SharePoint to provide a robust document management component to an organization’s SharePoint platform.

Tags: ECM, enterprise content management

Web-Based Enterprise Content Management

2010-01-01T21:26:00.000-08:00

ENTERPRISE STRATEGY MEETS DEPARTMENTAL FLEXIBILITY

Enterprise content management (ECM): ECM products and systems, capture, process, store, archive and supply information in a systemized and controlled manner. Enterprise content management accelerates organizations to better manage their information and standardize business processes.

CENTRALIZED RESOURCES AND DATA MANAGEMENT

IT staff manages software and hardware centrally, without the need to deploy and support software on each individual point of access. Administrators and business owners manage documents and unstructured information through a full ECM system, while maintaining the ability to collaborate across sites, business units, and platforms. Information and knowledge workers access the information they need through an Internet browser, even on a mobile device.

PART OF A BROADER ECM SOLUTION

Other modules are or can be combined with Web Access to provide complete enterprise information management solutions, including document imaging (Web Scanning), business process management, regulatory compliance and tracking. In addition, Web Access integrates with Microsoft SharePoint to provide a robust document management component to an organization’s SharePoint platform.

ENTERPRISE CONTENT MANAGEMENT

2009-12-07T20:40:00.000-08:00

Enterprise Content Management comprises strategies to manage and correlate documents pertaining to work within an organization.

In today’s information age, the success and failure of an enterprise is dictated primarily by two factors – the rate of influx of data into an enterprise database and the continuous task of interpreting and evaluating this data into blocks or sets of logical information. This information serves as input for strategic planning objectives.

In a hierarchical setup within the organization, information is collected at the lowest managerial levels and collated in data warehouses. As unstructured content is checked in and out of a system, each use can add to the content's profile. Raw data is filtered and analyzed within the warehouse and converted to information. As the ECM system ‘learns’ this method of filtering, it grows more intuitive, which assists in making better decisions, determining the relevance of information and documents.

For example, in order to improve efficiency while still adhering to Federal Laws and guidelines, a university may turn to implement Enterprise Content Management. ECM is used to bring together all information being processed in business transactions. This solution helps in accelerating the exchange and flow of information, without adding to redundancy of data and unnecessary repetitions. Thus, efficiency is improved and staff impact is minimized, leading to improving in productivity and obviously cutting down on costs.

The Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM) defines the process of Enterprise Content Management in 5 important tasks or steps:

Collect: Collect all transaction data.
Manage: Process the data and interpret as per needs.
Store: Transient and in-processing information is stored.
Preserve: Storage of valuable and required information.
Deliver: Provide end users with analyzed data and forecast needs.

It may be difficult to accurately point to a single, major contribution of ECM implementation. But the signs are everywhere to be seen, in little improvements and positive steps. The reason is that most benefits of ECM are not directly quantifiable, although they bring about situations of great quantifiable benefit.

In the modern climate of competition, it is not enough to maintain and hold extensive databases. The content must be managed, analyzed and correlated with other data to predict patterns. These are essential to fulfill most business goals.

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2009-12-07T00:01:00.001-08:00

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ECM Solutions: Copier and Facsimile Systems, Ltd. Joins Laserfiche as Value-Added Reseller

2009-11-30T21:38:00.000-08:00

CFS will provide ECM solutions to customers in the Bristol and South West areas of the United Kingdom.

Laserfiche welcomes Copier and Facsimile Systems, Ltd. (CFS) as the newest authorized Value Added Reseller (VAR) to provide enterprise content management (ECM) solutions to customers in the Bristol and South West areas of the UK.

CFS Director Graham Withers said, “As a leading supplier of business technologies, we have an excellent track record of supplying state-of-the-art solutions that integrate seamlessly with existing organizational IT environments.” He added, “Laserfiche has a suite of award-winning Enterprise content management products that we’re proud to offer our clients, along with ongoing training and support that will help us succeed.”

Laserfiche Senior Vice President of Business Development Chris Wacker said, “As a company that has been committed to providing outstanding document solutions since 1985, CFS has the experience and capability to help numerous organizations in the financial, education and commercial markets succeed with the Laserfiche product suite. We’re pleased to welcome them to our five-star VAR channel.”

Laserfiche Announces Empower 2010 International Conference

2009-11-25T02:17:00.000-08:00

Cstomers, resellers, analysts, consultants and partners from around the world come together for three days of technical training, networking and hands-on experience with ECM

Laserfiche today announced that its Empower 2010 international conference will be held January 11-13 at the Hilton LAX in Los Angeles, CA. The conference, which attracts Laserfiche customers, resellers, partners and ACE members from around the world, will give attendees fresh insight into how to maximize operational efficiency with Agile enterprise content management (ECM).

“Even during times of economic uncertainty, people recognize the importance of increasing productivity and efficiency,” said Nien-Ling Wacker, Laserfiche president and CEO. “Agile ECM plays a pivotal role in improving organizational effectiveness, and we’re very pleased to give our community the chance to share strategies for best leveraging Agile enterprise content management.”

The conference will offer three full days of more than 60 technical training labs and comprehensive classes, including a number of courses offered as part of the new Laserfiche Certified Professional Program. More information about the new certification program will be available soon.

“Every year we try to improve the conference and offer a more personalized experience to attendees. This year we’ve expanded all of the tracks, added more best practices courses and made it easier for attendees to tailor their schedules to meet their needs,” said Laserfiche Institute Director Jereb Cheatham.

Laserfiche Announces Empower 2010 International Conference

2009-11-24T21:16:00.000-08:00

Cstomers, resellers, analysts, consultants and partners from around the world come together for three days of technical training, networking and hands-on experience with ECM

Laserfiche Announces Empower 2010 International Conference

2009-11-10T20:46:00.000-08:00

Cstomers, resellers, analysts, consultants and partners from around the world come together for three days of technical training, networking and hands-on experience with ECM

Your Guide to Enterprise Content Management Systems

2009-10-22T21:54:00.000-07:00

Every company has wide variety of data that it needs to manage. While for some it is easy to take care of the information stored in their machines by taking a backup every night, others need more expert solutions, especially the organizations spread over different cities, countries and continents.

ECM or enterprise content management combines a wide variety of components and technologies to deliver robust solutions. Some of these components are used as stand-alone systems and are not required to be incorporated into an enterprise-wide system.

ECM helps content management systems of organizations manage, control, utilize and share important information and optimises the business processes. A good enterprise content management system integrates with the organization’s applications and enhances the durability of content delivered to users, whether internal or external. It also ensures that the risks are minimized and also eliminates the redundancy very effectively.

What to keep in mind when building the ECM for your company?

Since the cost of installing an ECM system can be too much, it is very essential that organizations select the enterprise content management system which fits their needs and budget in the most suitable way. Spending too much on ECM initially can be a grave mistake as it requires a constant update and if a hefty amount is spent in the beginning only then the upgrades will require more financial resources. The best way to keep away from overspending is to create a list of requirements before installing the system.

What are the Requirements of a Good ECM?

Content creators are the vital users of the enterprise content management system. Therefore all the areas within the system must be analyzed carefully to see and notice the effects they will have on the work done by the content creators. These content creators have to have the complete access of the system and some have to be given advanced users rights as well, depending on the seniority of the person.

What Can Enterprise Content Management Do For Your Company?

2009-10-10T00:24:00.001-07:00

ECM refers to the strategies, technologies, methods and tools used to capture manage, store, preserve and deliver content. Enterprise content management tools allow management to be at an enterprise level of organization.

ECM has moved away from the old ways of finding-and-filing to a technology that not only manages information, but processes it as well. Enterprise content management can manage information without regard to its source or use.

Many organizations hesitate to implement enterprise content management solutions because of the problems of implementing best practices and standardizing operations enterprise-wide. Each department, each regional office and each workgroup has its own ways of doing business, and they often fear it will force them to change the way they work. Information ends up in multiple locations, with no way for the central office to sort it all out. And the system ends up compounding the problems it was supposed to solve.

The Laserfiche Rio ECM system is different and fits with existing business processes into an enterprise framework. It gives organizations control and flexibility.

Where are the Little Efficiencies?

2009-09-17T21:49:00.000-07:00

ECM: The budget crunch is upon all of us, and, as a result, we’re all looking at where the little efficiencies are to stretch our existing dollars as far as possible. With Laserfiche ECM there are many aspects to consider when making decisions.

Repositories and licenses cost money. So does scanning. How can we best use our existing resources?

Change your repository settings!

Changing your repository options, specifically the ‘logout automatically’ option, will prevent your users from becoming license hogs. That person who logs in and then leaves for lunch will be logged off automatically, freeing up a license for another user.

In Hampton, we’ve adopted a 1:5 user license ratio for both FX and RX licenses. Due to the fact that licenses are concurrent, we believe that it’s reasonable to expect that any user, particularly retrieve or read-only users, will access enterprise content management, find what they need and then exit the system.

What kind of scanning devices do you have available?

While scanners are “the” option when it comes to high quantity document capture, almost all types of copy machines have scanning capability and can easily scan to e-mail. Ask your IT Department or manufacturer representative to set the image to either tiff or pdf and add all users to the email setting.

Even if all of your office staff are not enterprise content management users, being able to copy/scan to e-mail prevents the proliferation of paper, which could be another significant cost savings for you.

Do all of your users know, enterprise content management and understand how to use Laserfiche’s e-mail utility?

This again will decrease the proliferation of paper in your office and to your clients or the public.

Are you fully utilizing your LSAP?

Your time is valuable to your employer and we all pay for software support. When you have questions, contact your reseller and employ their assistance with answers and best practices. You don’t have to figure it out on your own.

What’s in ECM?

If Laserfiche has become the new dumping ground (in addition to your network, pc’s, and ancillary devices…) then your data – and your server – could use some basic management.

Purge your data; set up your Records Management Edition if you have it – practice good records management!
Check your folder structure.
Manage your volumes.
Use your Column Display wisely.

BOOST YOUR BUSINESS WITH ENTERPRISE CONTENT MANAGEMENT

2009-09-11T00:59:00.000-07:00

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) consists of the strategies and methods used to manage and interpret documents related to work in an organization.

In today’s information age, the success and failure of an enterprise is dictated primarily by two factors – the rate of influx of data into an enterprise database and the constant interpreting and evaluation of this data into logical information as input for strategic planning.

As unstructured content is checked in and out of a system, each use can potentially add to the content's profile. With time, the ECM system might gradually adopt new filtering, which assists in making better decisions, determining the relevance of information and documents.

For example, in order to improve efficiency while still adhering to Federal Laws and guidelines, an eminent South Western US University turned to implement Enterprise Content Management. The university used ECM to bring business processes together and accelerate information exchange. This solution not only helped the university to ensure efficient administration, it also minimized the impact on staff—improving productivity and reducing costs.

According to the Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM), Enterprise Content Management can be broken down into five major components:

Capture: Obtain and organize information.
Manage: Process and employ information as per requirement.
Store: Temporary back up of transient information.
Preserve: More permanent storage of unchanging data.
Deliver: Provide clients and end users with requested data and analyses.

While identifying a direct return on investment can be difficult, it is possible to see the impacts of the improved process efficiency. With the enforced usage of these tools within the organization, they become part of the work culture. What's the ROI on a fax-machine? Virtually negligible, per se. However, who can imagine running an organization without one?

It's not enough to simply maintain and hold extensive database information. Content must be managed so that it can be used to achieve business goals, which is the goal behind implementation of Enterprise Content Management.

News from the Central VA Laserfiche User Group

2009-09-01T21:31:00.000-07:00

In Central Virginia, ECM is moving right along! In fact, the Central Virginia Regional Enterprise content management system company Laserfiche User Group, is meeting at the Albemarle County Office Building. This meeting will feature speakers from the Library of Virginia, who will give a presentation and field questions about ECM records for local governments and state agencies.

Training will cover electronic records, both scanned documents as well as other enterprise content management stored records (such as databases, Word files, Excel, etc). Retention and destruction requirements and using the retention schedules will all be included as well.

One of our members, Corey Smith, from the Library of Virginia, has provided some information that provides excellent background and will help everyone attending come prepared with specific, pertinent questions.

Corey says:

“As your primary interest is with electronic records that are scanned and in a database, I would like to mention that records follow the same retention period regardless of format. Caveats come into play as retention periods differ and some records may not be the best candidate for a particular format. For example, a record with a 50 yr retention would not be recommended to kept on a CD. The life expectancy of a CD is only 20 yrs. Because of this, anything with a permanent retention or with a long retention would not be recommended for a CD format.

“On the LVA Website, you can access our updated Electronic Records Guidelines that can hopefully provide some additional information for your benefit.

“To give you an idea of what’s considered personal identifying information, under section “C” of 18.2-186.3 in the Code of Virginia, it defines certain types of personal identifying information.”

If you’re in the Central Virginia area, we hope to see you at our User Group meeting!

Our Agenda:

Welcome/introductions
Group business & info
Lightning Talks (Mini-Success Stories) – each person has up to 3 minutes to talk about something cool they learned or did with Laserfiche recently
Library of Virginia presentation, followed by questions from attendees

Flexible Enterprise Content Management Solutions for Your Industry

2009-08-04T22:19:00.000-07:00

Many organizations hesitate to implement ECM solutions because of the problems of implementing best practices and standardizing operations enterprise-wide. Each department, each regional office and each workgroup has its own ways of doing business, and they often fear it will force them to change the way they work. Information ends up in multiple locations, with no way for the central office to sort it all out. And the system ends up compounding the problems it was supposed to solve.

The Rio ECM system is different because it fits existing business processes into an enterprise framework. It gives people the control they need and the flexibility they want. Enterprise content management organically expands throughout organizations, regardless of the industry:

· State and Local Government

· Federal Government:

· Financial Services

· Health Care:

Enterprise content management offers organizations the strength of a proven information management system and the technology of a highly sophisticated business process management engine.

Enterprise Content Management System

2009-07-21T03:15:00.000-07:00

According to AIIM (Association for Information and Image Management) International, Enterprise Content Management or ECM is the collection of methods, strategies, and tools that are used to manage, capture, preserve or store, and deliver content matter and documents related to organizational processes. In other words,

content management suite is a computer application that lets you create, edit, publish or manipulate the content of a website.

It is generally used for the purpose of storing and retrieval of user manuals, news articles, brochures, guides and other technical data. The content can be in any form: audio, video, visual, text, spreadsheet, excel, word documents etc. The basic types of Content Management Suites include: Web, Enterprise and Component systems.

So if you are looking to introduce your business to the audience on World Wide Web, or perhaps have an existing website and feel that there is a need to update its looks, a content management suite can help you in achieving your target.

Prerequisites of a good Enterprise Content Management :

Content creators are the most important users of an enterprise management system. Everything within the system has to be analyzed cautiously to see different kind of effects they have on the work done by the content creators. These content creators require full access to all features of the ECM and ensure that it is setup appropriately and working all the time, whenever any user needs.

Enterprise content management systems ensure that all applications used in an organization deliver their content to a repository, which provides the information to various applications. An ideal ECM allows multiple users, technical and non-technical authorizations, capturing of meta data and has powerful linking capabilities. It also ensures non-stop flow of content. Enterprise content management software has become a necessity in the ever changing and highly competitive world of business. There are many firms that offer customized products and services to help you establish your business processes.

Flexible Enterprise Content Management Solutions for Your Industry

2009-07-11T00:09:00.000-07:00

The

Rio ECM system is different. Rio fits with existing business processes into an enterprise content management framework, it gives you the control you need and the flexibility you want. Enterprise content management organically expands throughout your organization, regardless of your industry.

Taming the Paper Monster

2009-06-30T22:27:00.000-07:00

Their decision to go paperless with ECM was driven not by cost or budget issues, but by the desire to grow their business, tame a paper monster that was consuming every available square foot of office space, improve customer service, and keep up with a rapidly-changing financial planning industry.

In their view, they had no choice as to whether to go paperless with ECM. They must go paperless if you want to survive and thrive in the financial planning industry. They were slowly becoming buried in paper, running out of space and spending valuable time looking for missing files. And as their investment business grew, their paper mushroomed, due to trade confirmations and quarterly investment statements. When their broker-dealer conducted our annual audit in 2004, it took a long time to find required forms. That’s when they knew they had to make changes.

At Texas Christian University’s annual student job fair, Blake Woodard was manning a booth when he ran into a local Laserfiche reseller.

“I had looked at several systems,” Woodard says, “but Laserfiche offered us the greatest flexibility to work like we always had, only using enterprise content management files instead of paper. Laserfiche used TIFF files instead of proprietary file formats and used SQL as its underlying database, which gave us the ability to move our data to a different system later if we needed to. Also, the SQL platform is scalable as our electronic storage needs grow.”

Woodard Insurance purchased enterprise content management software and installed it immediately. Transition to the new system was relatively quick, given that there was an existing document management system in place, just not a digital one. Client securities files had been moved from paper file folders to three-ring binders with topical dividers and, when it came time to implement a digital solution, this interim step made the process much easier.

Where the old paper files were in strict chronological order, the topical divisions in the client binders made organizing Laserfiche’s filing structure much simpler. “We immediately began writing scanning procedures that covered the naming, indexing and location of each document in a binder,” says Woodard. These flexible procedures are updated and refined as employees encounter new situations or better ideas.

ECM: Worth the Investment?

2009-06-03T05:36:00.000-07:00

Financial advisors are facing increased regulation and, in some instances, overlapping regulations that will constrain business and also increase their workload, add to their storage needs and require them to do additional staff training. Never has there been a greater need for electronic document management (sometimes called ECM or enterprise content management ).

Most firms look at document management as filing, whether they use paper or electronic files, and it’s often likely that they’ve set up informal procedures for handling them. A properly designed ECM system integrates work-flow procedures and controls, which usually means it is tied into a database (client relationship management software, for instance). Other firms that aren’t using enterprise content management have set up a stand-alone indexing system—a folder tree like the one you find on a computer’s operating system. But without specific, strict controls, informal systems pose problems. One is that documents can be misfiled, or worse, that employees unfamiliar with the folder trees can simply create new folders for items that should have been placed elsewhere. This makes document retrieval difficult and frustrating, to say the least.

A common mistake made by some firms is to use a system that saves documents in a PDF instead of a more secure format such as a TIFF. This means documents can be altered after the fact, and the firm risks potentially violating federal regulations. While some scanner manufacturers have addressed this issue with post-imprint symbols and other coding mechanisms to ensure authenticity, there are still lingering doubts about the security of the original documents.

It may be tough to justify additional expenses nowadays, but the simple truth is that those advisors boasting an efficient document management system can bring their costs down over time—way down. These lower costs can soften the blow of any up-front expenses and fully justify the time commitmentnecessary to implement the systems.

If you’re associated with a broker-dealer, chances are it is already offering some level of document management (form capture, forms you can fill out, outsourced electronic storage, etc.). If not, there are a host of available systems that can transform your financial practice into a highly efficient operation by helping you go paperless.

The SEC and FINRA have both ruled on the acceptability of paperless storage, retrieval and recovery. They have even ruled on the acceptability of electronic signatures (with specific guidelines). Among other things, a planner’s document management process must comply with SEC and FINRA rules, Sarbanes-Oxley and the USA Patriot Act. There should also be a way for him to provide an audit trail.

So what is stopping you? It’s likely two things: the cost and the knowledge you need to get the job done right. A typical system such as Laserfiche Avante for example, can cost about $4,000 for the initial outlay to serve an office of four staffers (and the Avante system was designed to be affordable).

While it sounds like a lot of money, though, consider what such a system could do in shaving off staff time and increasing productivity and profitability. With such a system, there would be a much faster document storage and retrieval process. The office can also go paperless, allowing a planner to save a great deal of office space and reduce staff time enough to equal the salary of another employee. So you may wish to ask yourself, would I be willing to spend $4,000 to save up to $40,000? Also consider that the annual renewal costs are much less, even though the savings continue.

Most financial advisors are only aware of Laserfiche as a provider of document management solutions for the financial advisory profession. But clients such as the Mexican Immigration Service, the country of Uganda and the U.S. Congress also use the technology. The product allows users to build a more robust enterprise-level system later, if their firms grow.

Broker-dealers often provide their own documents, many times fillable PDF versions that advisors must transmit through secure, proprietary systems the B-D owns itself. If the B-D does not supply the advisor with forms, she may need to locate a reliable source, and there are at least two: LaserApps and QuikForms. Firms like these typically offer thousands of forms for download, though advisors use only a few. It would be wise to ensure that the forms you need are actually located in these databases before signing up for them. These services might also add a form for you, if they don’t already have it in their inventory.

You may also create your own forms if they aren’t available elsewhere. For this, you need Adobe Acrobat, either in its standard or professional versions. There is a much-overlooked feature in this program that permits you to take a PDF document and create empty form fields. You may only need to do this to a few forms, so it could save hours of staff labor.

However you choose to create documents, if you use a comprehensive document management system with automated work-flow features, you can significantly increase the efficiency and profitability of your practice.

Enterprise Content Management from Rio | ECM | Enterprise Document Management Software

2009-05-29T23:20:00.000-07:00

Enterprise Content Management Solutions for Your Industry

2009-05-28T21:45:00.000-07:00

Enterprise Content Management Solutions for Your Industry

Many organizations hesitate to implement ECM solutions because of the problems of implementing best practices and standardizing operations enterprise-wide. Each department, each regional office and each workgroup has its own ways of doing business, and they often fear it will force them to change the way they work. Information ends up in multiple locations, with no way for the central office to sort it all out. And the system ends up compounding the problems it was supposed to solve.

Rio Enterprise Content Management : Balancing Flexibility with Control

The Rio ECM system is different. Because Laserfiche Rio fits your existing business processes into an enterprise framework, it gives you the control you need and the flexibility you want. Rio organically expands throughout your organization, regardless of your industry:

State and Local Government: Highly scalable enterprise solutions for cities and counties of all sizes.

Federal Government: Proven technology to meet the business process management and information security needs of federal agencies and departments.

Financial Services: Straight-through processing platforms to fit the needs of field representatives, OSJ offices and home offices, as well as enterprise solutions for RIAs, banks and trust companies.

Healthcare: Automated solutions to simplify billing, patient records management and admissions, designed for ambulatory care centers, hospitals and third-party billing organizations.

Rio offers your organization the strength of a proven information management system, the technology of a highly sophisticated business process management engine and the support of the Laserfiche community—with the flexibility to meet the needs of multiple departments and users.

Enterprise Content Management Can Help Drive Business in a Tough Economy

2009-05-12T22:25:00.001-07:00

In order to stay competitive during the economic downturn, executives involved in ECM say their company plans to reduce operating expenses and improve cash flow. Effectively managing enterprise content management processes can help meet these objectives, particularly with reducing expenses.

ECM accelerates the flow of information throughout an enterprise which simplifies administration, installation and support IT. Enterprise content management systems help organizations better manage their information, but systems is intended to standardize business processes that often end up confined to just one or two departments, because they simply aren’t flexible enough to meet the diverse needs of individual departments and offices.

Companies have realized that the potential for enterprise content management is one the best practices to yield benefits such as lower operating expenses, which can help them to survive and thrive in the days ahead.

Disclaimer: This blog or article is for information purpose only, and should not be treated a professional advise or price protection guarantee. This blog is mainly used for search engine optimization and other commercial purposes and it is advised that readers seek professional consultation in the field of interest for more information.

Technology as a Recruiting Advantage

2009-05-01T09:20:00.000-07:00

Technorati ProfileSpire Investment Partners uses ECM to recruit new advisors

“If financial advisors aren’t talking to people, they’re not making money,” says Paul Murphy, National Sales Director at Spire Investment Partners, LLC. Murphy’s problem was that his top earners were spending too much time staying on top of the paperwork that comes with handling over $1 billion in client assets, which he expects to at least double this year. “It’s the regulators. It’s the auditors. The paper starts to pile up from the first client meeting and all the way through the process,” he says.

For Murphy, his previous experience integrating two large broker-dealers had shown how the right technology ultimately leads to success. “If you want to succeed in this business, you’ve got to get great technology,” he says. “Using technology not only defensively, but offensively, is very near and dear to my heart.”

Murphy and Phillip Fournier, Spire’s Chief Operating Officer, went on the offensive and decided to invest in a enterprise content management system. They chose ECM not just to manage paper, but also as a tool to cut costs and increase services—which would eventually help recruit both clients and advisors.

Murphy says that, at first, just the idea of a new system and way of doing things intimidated the firm’s advisors. “How many people have said ‘paperless’ in front of advisors and had them say, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me’? That’s where we started,” he admits.

But, once apprehensive advisors, and more importantly, their sales and service assistants, began using enterprise content management and saw how easy and efficient it was, implementation and initial roll-out went smoothly.

National Sales Director Paul Murphy

Murphy credits the training his staff received from the firm’s Laserfiche reseller, One Source/ADI, for easing the implementation process. “I can’t say enough good things about the training. The results are great.” In the 18 months since the firm implemented ECM, Spire has scanned documents from approximately 80% of their offices – with nearly all of their advisors and staff using the system regularly.

“The goal,” says Murphy, “is to apply technology to make work easier. Efficient process flow obviously increases efficiency. If everyone is more efficient, they’re happier. If they’re happier, they’re more productive. If they’re more productive, you’re more profitable.”

With document management, Murphy immediately noticed that Service Assistants and back office personnel were able to respond to client inquiries much more efficiently. ECM is the way to make them more productive,” says Murphy. “We’re very happy that our staff is better able to process workflow and therefore better able to support our Consultants.”

Electric content management: Is your office saving trees?

2009-04-17T04:40:00.000-07:00

Walk into Le Chic Dentistry and you’ll notice space free of clutter, unlike most offices.

What’s different at this forward-thinking practice is there’s no paper to be found anywhere because they have incorporated electronic content management software. ECM can be an expensive initial investment but important and also very environmental friendly.

'We wanted our office to resonate with warmth and care for our patients and also demonstrate, in a real way, what people can do every day to make small changes that can have a huge impact,' Dr Hadian says.

‘In the long term, the ECM paperless system is more cost-effective than keeping traditional paper charts,' says Dr Sadri. It also reduces toxicity issues associated with dentistry, an important factor in protecting the health of staff and patients. The environmentally friendly system works like this: A first time patient is directed to a computer workstation to fill out their information. Their file is kept in digital format with electronic content management rather than traditional paper files, including charts, x-rays, camera images, prescriptions and clinical notes.

This system saves mounds of paper each week and is an enormous benefit for patients. Everything can be done online, from requesting an appointment, making a payment or accessing their account.

Electronic document management will soon become the standard for dental care. The benefits are a wiser, healthier and greener choice for all.

Technorati Profile

Seamless Integration

2009-04-07T21:48:00.000-07:00

MAC Financial marries ECM and their CRM system to enhance efficiency while cutting costs and streamlining workflow

The Challenge

The strict oversight of the Isle of Man Government’s Financial Supervision Commission (FSC) means that independent financial advisers require a secure enterprise content management system for tracking and managing both paper and electronic records. Proliferating work process documents, extensive audits and strict records-retention rules leave many financial services firms struggling to maintain productivity in a highly-competitive industry.

For Jon McGowan, managing director of MAC Financial, these challenges multiplied with his business’s increasing success. With three major acquisitions in three years, McGowan and his staff were dealing with more customers, more work and significantly more paper. They needed a solution that would not only organize their records, but would also assist them in following compliance directives. Whatever solution they chose had to have enterprise capabilities, be able to manage a large volume of documents and integrate with their customer relationship management (CRM) system to enable fast, efficient and flexible client service.

It took less than half a day for MAC Financial to implement an enterprise content management solution, enabling instant document retrieval and freeing up an entire floor of office space. Now, MAC Financial runs more efficiently, saving time, money and staff resources while increasing revenue.

The Situation

MAC Financial, a firm of financial advisers based on the Isle of Man, boasts over twenty-five years’ experience providing employee benefits advice to large multi-national and small corporate clients. As a Corporate IFA (Independent Financial Adviser) for investment business, they also provide a full range of bespoke services to private clients.

With over 5,000 individual clients and more than 300 corporate schemes encompassing 4,000 employees, MAC Financial operates in a complex environment. Recent acquisitions made it even more difficult to keep up with business demands. McGowan knew his team needed a solution that would enable efficient document management procedures while also providing the tools for superior customer service and comprehensive compliance procedures.

MAC Financial required a proven and reliable document management platform that could produce benefits in several key areas: customer service, compliance and operations. Integration with their CRM system was also crucial, because their solution had to function not only as a system for storage, search and retrieval, but also as a workflow management system integrated with their existing CRM software.

With a solution using content management suite, MAC Financial has improved productivity, streamlined their workflow and even enabled an employee to telecommute from Australia—not to mention benefited from savings of 25-35% achieved through reduced staff and a more efficient use of time.

The Solution

Before document management, staff needed to walk up three flights of stairs to the attic to retrieve documents. They were spending enormous amounts of time searching for information and filing documents, not to mention impeding profitability due to the overhead costs of paper used to print correspondence and copies for their files. Since implementing document management, MAC Financial has cleared the attic of paper, completely freeing an entire floor of office space. Staff spend less time searching thanks to instant document retrieval and only print out documents for correspondence, cutting down on printer output and storage space. According to Chris Reynolds, senior consultant at Viking Office Systems Ltd., the value-added reseller that implemented MAC Financial’s Laserfiche solution, “They don’t print anymore.” With over 5,000 clients, that’s an incredible amount of paper that has been eliminated.

Since implementing ECM, client service has noticeably improved. Comprehensive search capabilities enable staff to search through client information instantaneously, without leaving their desks to go up to the attic. In addition, staff can access documents simultaneously, something impossible with paper files. “There’s no more shouting ‘Where’s the file?’, as any person can access the records in conjunction with our core CRM system,” McGowan comments.

“It’s been an exciting process getting to this point, and we continue looking for ways to streamline wherever we can,” McGowan adds. “Our philosophy is to continue to innovate in both technology and process, and Laserfiche is a critical component of our plans going forward.

“Essentially, ECM has moved us from the paper century to the electronic century.”

The Real Cold Case Files: ECM Makes a Difference

2009-03-19T22:29:00.000-07:00

Two years ago, the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office in Florida was another local government agency with overflowing file cabinets and the inspiration (and budget) to do something about it. Laserfiche was at first intended to help with enterprise content management in departmental records, but was soon adapted to catalogue domestic violence cases and help create SORT, the county’s public database of sexual predators. “Being able to scan in domestic violence case reports is important because these cases are very time-sensitive as far as victims support services go,” says Commander Doug Waller. “Time is definitely not on our side.”

The importance of time is especially crucial to homicide cases. “We only see about 10-12 homicides a year and we generally stay on top of them,” says Lieutenant Bruce Barnett. “But the longer a case stays open, the more the paperwork piles up.”

Nowhere was this more evident than in the murder case of Charlotte “Amy” Gellert. One Sunday evening in March, 1994, the 21-year-old returned to her parents’ home, only to walk into a botched robbery attempt. The thief, who had tied up her parents, stabbed Gellert to death and fled the scene.

Over the past decade and a half, the case had gone cold, leaving a mountain of paperwork behind. Most homicides accumulate a box or two of paperwork, but the Gellert case had eight owing to its myriad suspects, reports, statements, testimony and evidence, all stored in what officers referred to as “the big room.”

Barnett saw the potential of using ECM for compiling and indexing the Gellert case along with the county’s other 46 cold case homicides. Some dated as far back as 1967. Almost all had long since seen their initial team of investigators transfer, retire or move on, which complicated the already-difficult task of locating information in decades-old paperwork. “In the past we’d had issues with misplaced files,” Barnett says.

Beginning late last year, the Sheriff’s office began a painstaking backlog conversion project beginning with the Gellert case. Staff often worked after hours to scan and organize files with information management software.

In the process, they’d possibly uncover a piece of the puzzle that could hopefully bring a resolution to crimes that have haunted victims’ families for decades. Barnett had realistic hopes for the new technology, pointing out that police departments are not as high-tech as Hollywood makes them out to be. “It’s frustrating when you’re in front of jurors who think we should be able to have a case solved in an hour because they’re so used to seeing Hollywood depict it that way. It’s not something we can do from our desktop yet,” Barnett adds.

But business process management software is a step in the right direction, especially for police departments with limited resources.

A True Document Management Partner

2009-03-03T21:13:00.000-08:00

The economic climate hasn’t been looking so great and it has been estimated that companies will continue to layoff millions of workers until summer. As companies are forced to cut costs by downsizing administration, they look to technological advances in ECM to maintain efficiency.

Usually, the average cost of two or three administrators is around $30,000 - $40,000 each. So companies who have to keep labor costs within their budget, investing in Enterprise Document Management is a smart business decision. Business process management software increases efficiency by eliminating the paper chase and maximizes leverage for accelerated business processes. Many companies who have already integrated information management by Laserfiche can safely say that it is vital for any company that process large amounts of paperwork to invest in a paperless filing system which ensures your company that your documents are safely stored in a secured software.

ECM is also a great way to promote a green environment. It’s the key to achieve success, both now and in the future

Integration Nation: Go Green!

2009-02-10T02:14:00.000-08:00

Bakersfield, CA, uses document management to unite documents with business-critical applications

In Bakersfield, CA, a town known for its agriculture, manufacturing and petroleum extraction and refining is now known for something different: its innovative technology.

As the fastest-growing city in the United States with a population of over 250,000, Bakersfield was experiencing an explosion of records. “We wanted a document management software to store public documents in a secure, easily searchable manner,” says IT Director Bob Trammell.

With staff in 38 offices across the city’s 148 square miles, there’s no reason to limit document management solutions to a single department. Using document management in all departments means results have really achieved.

For example, human resources department puts performance evaluations into document images. Our fire department has a HazMat folder that only department personnel have access to, so the locations of hazardous material won’t become public knowledge. But it’s available in document management to the fire crew 24/7, so they can know any potential danger at a fire site.

According to Trammell, the city was recently asked to cooperate with the California Attorney General’s office, which was conducting a major probe into price fixing. Staff had to collect all purchase records that met certain pre-determined criteria. “This would have required a lot of city resources,” he says. “Instead, we set up the Attorney General’s office with a document management system so they could access and search the necessary records themselves—which saved a great deal of time for us.”

Document Management Company Powers Forward.

2009-01-28T02:19:00.000-08:00

Document management company provides the Petroleum Agency of South Africa with a big return on a comparatively small investment

The theme of the 2009 Laserfiche Institute Conference was devoted to, as CEO Nien-Ling Wacker said, “extending your success from your department to your whole organization.”

The Conference’s 153 labs, demos and presentations empowered the Laserfiche community to do just that. Whether by adding additional functionality, new departments or upgrading to new Laserfiche document management products Rio or Avante, nearly one thousand attendees learned strategies to make 2009 even more successful than ever.

In addition to a line-up of classes that covered everything from project planning to systems integration, the conference featured numerous user presentations, where Laserfiche customers explained how their organization uses Laserfiche to optimize workflow, eliminate redundancy and cut costs. Each of these sessions was followed by a lively Q and A session, as audience members joined the presenter in discussing how other organizations could realize the same success.

Communicating and inspiring solutions to shared problems was central to the success of the Conference, so much so that questions not directly answered in classes could be brought to the Office Hours Room, where Development, Support, User Education, and Presales staff could address specific areas of concern with attendees one-on-one.

For more information, please visit http://www.laserfiche.com/events/conferences/uc2009/recap/2009-recap.html

Document Management Company Powers Forward.

2009-01-26T20:57:00.000-08:00

The theme of the 2009 Laserfiche Institute Conference was devoted to, as CEO Nien-Ling Wacker said, “extending your success from your department to your whole organization.”

For more information, please visit http://www.laserfiche.com/events/conferences/uc2009/recap/2009-recap.html