FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:

Sharon Chai

Public Relations Specialist

Office Phone: (562)988-1688 x211

Cell Phone: (202) 446-8548

Email: sharon.chai@laserfiche.com

Speak with Laserfiche Enterprise Architects Live at Gartner ITxpo

Company hosts live video conference with senior Laserfiche experts at booth #1113

ORLANDO, FL (Laserfiche)—October 17, 2011—Laserfiche (booth #1113) today announced that it will

enable attendees at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2011 to participate in a live HD video conference with 10

senior Laserfiche strategists, product architects, software engineers and IT executives throughout the

event. Attendees will have the opportunity to ask questions about everything from how to deploy

enterprise content management (ECM) as a shared service to developments in the Laserfiche product

roadmap.

“Gartner ITxpo attendees will have unprecedented access to the best and brightest members of our

software development, product strategy and leadership teams, allowing them to rapidly assess the

benefits Laserfiche would bring as part of their overarching IT infrastructure,” said Brian LaPointe, Vice

President of Strategic Solutions at Laserfiche.

In addition to the ongoing video conference at the Laserfiche booth (#1113), Laserfiche will also deliver

an in-person educational session on Monday, October 17, at 3:30 pm in Oceanic 3. Presented by

LaPointe, “Leading from the Front with ECM as a Shared Service” will explore how CIOs who use ECM to

deploy shared services such as case management and A/P processing enable optimal resource efficiency

and service performance—not just in one or two departments, but across the enterprise.

“Many large organizations are now deploying ECM as a shared service because it is a cost-effective way

to meet the content management needs of users with diverse requirements,” said LaPointe. “Thoughtful

standardization with ready-made applications that can be fine-tuned at the departmental level is the key

to mass adoption across the enterprise.”

Visit booth #1113 to engage with senior Laserfiche personnel, pick up a copy of “Agile ECM as a Shared

Service” and see a demo of Laserfiche Mobile™, a new iPhone app that allows organizations to quickly

extend their mobile strategy without sacrificing governance controls.

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.

The Laserfiche ECM system is designed to give IT managers central control over their information

infrastructure while still offering business units the flexibility to react quickly to changing conditions. The

Laserfiche product suite is built on top of 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®.

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.

Laserfiche®, Run Smarter® and Compulink® are registered trademarks of Compulink Management

Center, Inc.

About Gartner Symposium/ITxpo

Gartner Symposium/ITxpo is the IT industry's largest and most strategic conference, providing business

leaders with a look at the future of IT. For more than 10,000 IT professionals from the world's leading

enterprises, Gartner's annual Symposium/ITxpo events are key components of their annual planning

efforts. Attendees rely on Gartner Symposium/ITxpo to gain insight into how their organizations can use

technology to address business challenges and improve operational efficiency. For more information,

please visit http://www.gartner.com/technology/symposium/orlando/index.jsp.

Leading from the Front with ECM as a Shared Service

Monday, October 17, 3:00 pm

Walt Disney World Dolphin - Oceanic 3

Being on the leading edge doesn’t happen by accident. It begins with a strong technology infrastructure,

and with effective service delivery. Offering enterprise content management as a component of shared

services is critical for IT executives who want to “lead from the front.” In this session, Laserfiche’s Vice

President of Strategic Solutions will explain how developing repeatable business processes such as case

management and A/P processing enables optimal resource efficiency and service performance—not just

in one or two departments, but across the enterprise.

Speaker Bio

Brian LaPointe, Vice President of Strategic Solutions

Laserfiche

Brian.lapointe@laserfiche.com

Brian LaPointe is the Vice President of Strategic Solutions for Laserfiche, an enterprise content

management software solutions developer. He currently leads the team responsible for strategic client

engagements. Prior to this national role, LaPointe successfully managed Laserfiche’s Canadian

marketplace focusing on providing local government, education, financial services and healthcare

solutions.

LaPointe is a 15-year computer industry veteran and frequent presenter at industry events. His

professional background combines extensive startup, professional services and custom development

project experience. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from the

University of Massachusetts.

Run Smarter®

About Laserfiche

Laserfiche Founder and CEO Nien-Ling Wacker began her career as a systems analyst and programmer before founding Compulink Management Center in 1974. Recognizing a need to store digital versions of paper documents in a secure and searchable manner, Wacker developed the first version of Laserfiche in 1987, long before the terms “paperless office” and “document management” were invented.

Since 1987, more than 30,000 organizations worldwide—including federal, state, and local government agencies and Fortune 500 companies—have used Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM) software to streamline document, records and business process management (BPM).

Today, IDC notes that “Laserfiche is in an enviable position… It provides a robust ECM offering in a simple yet elegant way… Both its end-user functionality and its administrative capabilities can help 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.”

FACT SHEET

Laserfiche’s agile ECM systems are 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. It supports Microsoft SQL and Oracle® platforms and features a seamless integration with Microsoft Office® applications, as well as a two-way integration with SharePoint®. Laserfiche software is available in Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), English, French, Italian, Portuguese (Brazilian), Spanish, Turkish and Vietnamese versions.

A division of Compulink Management Center, Inc., Laserfiche is a privately owned corporation headquartered in Long Beach, CA, with offices in Washington, DC, and Fort Lauderdale, FL. Its international headquarters are located in Hong Kong, and it has international offices in Shanghai, China; Ottawa, Canada; London, UK; and Panama City, Panama.

Products

Laserfiche offers two flagship products:

Laserfiche Rio®

, which is specifically designed for enterprise deployment. Rio includes:

- Powerful Web-based content management.

- Tiered pricing with significant volume discounts.

- Flexible business process management (workflow).

- Complete auditing and security controls.

- Fully integrated DoD 5015.2-certified records management.

- Intuitive capture and distribution tools.

- Windows and Web-based interfaces.

- Unlimited servers to support back-ups, failover clustering and testing.

Laserfiche Avante®

, which brings together document management and workflow capabilities for small and mid-sized organizations.

For more information, please visit www.laserfiche.com/avante and www.laserfiche.com/rio.

1 Michael Orasin, “Laserfiche: A Company on the Move,” IDC Opinion (March 2010).

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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—use

Laserfiche software to streamline document, records and

business process management.

Your Next Step

Please call (800) 985-8533 or

e-mail info@laserfiche.com for more information.

©2011 Laserfiche. Laserfiche is a registered trademark of Compulink Management Center, Inc. All rights reserved.

Markets

Government. Laserfiche is the industry standard in the municipal government market and is used in thousands of cities, counties and towns worldwide. Federal government agencies also embrace Laserfiche, including the U.S. Treasury, CIA, FBI and all four branches of the military.

Financial services. Community banks, financial advisors and independent broker-dealers choose Laserfiche to help facilitate compliance and improve productivity.

Healthcare. Hospitals, medical billing companies and medical groups accelerate collections, facilitate HIPAA compliance and improve patient care with Laserfiche.

Education. Leading educational institutions of all types and sizes—including schools and school districts, two-and four-year colleges, and public and private universities—choose Laserfiche to improve information access and optimize business processes institution-wide.

Laserfiche Programs

Professional Developer Partnership (PDP) Program. From comprehensive development tools to ongoing sales support, the PDP program provides software developers, resellers and integrators with the resources they need to successfully develop, complete and market integrations with Laserfiche.Visit www.laserfiche.com/pdp for more information.

The Systems Integrator Program helps SIs grow their business by generating better opportunities and winning more bids. Visit www.laserfiche.com/si for more information.

Certified Professional Program is designed to provide highly accessible training to Laserfiche users and resellers seeking to increase their content management expertise. More information is available at www.laserfiche.com/cpp.

ACE Program provides analysts, consultants and experts with the insight they need to educate clients and facilitate recommendations. Please visit www.laserfiche.com/ace for more information.

People

executives, software developers, engineers and support staff.

worldwide network of more than 1,200 value-added resellers (VARs), who tailor solutions to clients’ individual needs. The Laserfiche VAR Program has received a Five-Star Rating from .

Corporate Citizenship

Laserfiche promotes community respect, collaboration and responsibility. The company is an avid supporter of the local community and has sponsored the local symphony, local schools and local youth programs. Laserfiche is especially committed to helping students build a strong foundation in the critical educational disciplines of math, science and technology.

Collin County, Texas

Run Smarter®

Enterprise Government Case Study

Government Focus

Enterprise Government Case Study

Collin County, Texas

About Collin County

ORGANIZATION PROFILE

Collin County, TX, is home to the Dallas/Fort Worth area’s fastest-growing northeast suburbs.

SITUATION: The County saw its population increase nearly 50%—from nearly 500,000 in 2000 to 725,000 by 2007—straining the county’s infrastructure. As Records Manager Margaret Anderson puts it, “The exponential growth rate of our County is refl ected in the increased demand for essential County services.” The governing body of the County, the Commissioners’ Court, then issued a strategic direction to improve effi ciency and customer service. “This caused us to look at an enterprise solution for managing our records with emphasis on migrating to electronic records,” Anderson explains. “We had to reduce our paper and microfi lm records volume.”

SOLUTION: In 2007 a committee drawn from several County offi ces (District Clerk, County Clerk, Auditor, Sheriff, Tax Offi ce, Juvenile Probation, Adult Probation, Purchasing, IT and Records) selected Laserfi che as the standard for document and records management for Collin County. Anderson looked to Laserfi che for three things: its scalability and extensibility; the Laserfi che Toolkit, for integrating Laserfi che with existing and planned software applications; and the Records Management Edition (RME), in order to manage retention for electronic documents. “What I like about Laserfi che is that I can manage electronic documents, paper, microfi lm and audio and video fi les enterprise-wide,” Anderson says.

That enterprise-wide vision especially appealed to IT Director Caren Skipworth, who saw Laserfi che as a standard for information management. “Laserfi che fi ts into our enterprise approach in that every department could use it effectively, it could run in our environment—as opposed to the other way around—and we’d be able to support a single system ourselves with minimal staff,” she says.

BENEFITS: “We’ve defi nitely enjoyed faster response time when a customer or citizen requests a fi le. Even better, multiple users can access the same record from different locations simultaneously,” says Anderson. “The internal audit staff is able to review case fi les and receipts as part of their auditing process—freeing records staff from pulling paper fi les for auditors to review.”

Benefi ts are most pronounced in the Auditor’s Offi ce:

• 300 hours of staff time saved annually in the Auditor’s accounts payable offi ce.

• Reduction in volume of fi le folders and labels formerly used to place each paper copy of a check and the backup into a separate folder on their departmental shelving. • Quicker payments processing, saving 10 days’ worth of interest.

• Elimination of 400 boxes and associated handling and storage costs.

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Benefi ts for the IT Department:

• “We are able to support Laserfi che in our standard enterprise architecture environments, using blade servers with VMware and N Series storage and with existing server administrative staff— we did not have to increase any IT staff to support the environment,” adds Skipworth. “Once we are completely off the legacy imaging system we will reduce our software maintenance cost by $18,000.” • IT staff requirements reduced from four-person legacy imaging system support staff serving just two departments to a three-person staff able to support Laserfi che enterprise-wide.

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GOVERNANCE:

• Auditing

• Business continuity

• Enterprise risk management

• Enterprise search and retrieval

• Information life cycle management

• Transparent records management

INTEGRATIONS:

• CMS

• GIS

PROCESSES:

• Accounts payable

• Accounts receivable

• Property tax processing

AT A GLANCE

27: towns and cities in the County

50%: population growth in just seven years

15,000: reels of microfi lm

18,450: boxes of paper stored in multiple locations

2 million: archived images in the District Clerk’s system

4.3 million: images added by the Sheriff’s Offi ce annually

10: days (per payment) saved by eliminating paper payment processing in the Tax Assessor/Collector’s Offi ce

400: records storage boxes eliminated just in the Tax Assessor’s Offi ce

300: staff hours saved in the Auditor’s Acounts Payable offi ce

8,000: original marriage licenses dating back to the 1870s that have been scanned and will soon be available from the County’s public Website for researchers

Overview

Since implementing Laserfi che in 2007, Collin County, TX, home to the Dallas/Fort Worth area’s fastest-growing northeast suburbs, has enjoyed enterprise-wide success automating and integrat-ing its business processes. But as Records Manager Margaret Anderson points out, it’s been a direct result of enterprise-wide pre-planning working equally with the county’s myriad departments.

Collin County saw its population increase nearly 50%—from approximately 500,000 in 2000 to 725,000 by 2007—straining the County’s infra-structure. As Anderson puts it, “The exponential growth rate of our County is refl ected in the in-creased demand for essential County services.” The governing body of the County, the Commis-sioners’ Court, then issued a strategic direction to improve effi ciency and customer service. “This caused us to look at an enterprise solution for managing our records with emphasis on migrating to electronic records,” she explains. “We had to reduce our paper and microfi lm records volume.”

The County published its RFP in December 2006, and soon after a committee drawn from several county offi ces (District Clerk, County Clerk, Auditor, Sheriff, Tax Offi ce, Juvenile Probation, Adult Probation, Purchasing, IT and Records) determined that Laserfi che was the best fi t for Collin County.

Deployment

Working with Laserfi che reseller MCCi, Collin County mapped out a fi ve-year enterprise deployment plan to implement Laserfi che. MCCi Senior Project Manager Rigoberto Ruiz conducted gap analyses to assess the county’s needs and develop a timeline for implementation. “My job was really to dissect the plan into smaller pieces to keep the project manageable and in-house as far as the County having adequate staffi ng for each part of the project.” An advantage, he notes, was Anderson’s IT-savvy back-ground with databases and indexing. “Margaret was really empowered to grab the bull by the horns as far as moving things along.” Collin County IT Director Caren Skipworth’s IT team began installing Laserfi che in mid-2007, followed by its fi rst production implementation that November, starting with 100 user licenses and 500 WebLink retrieval licenses to accommodate cross-departmental use. Through ongoing deployment and integrations with existing line-of-business applications within departments, the County has since enjoyed contin-ued and expanding enterprise-wide success automating and integrating its business processes with Laserfi che as the county-wide standard for document and records management.

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Collin County by the Numbers

But as Anderson points out, the resulting success of this ambitious initiative has been a direct result of enterprise-wide pre-planning that gave the initiative multi-departmental support from the start. “The success of the project is directly attributable to getting these larger user departments involved in both identifying the requirements for the RFP and making the selection,” she says. Key support has come from Skipworth’s IT Department, which has ensured the value of the County’s Laserfi che investment through a dedicated seven-member “Build Team” of programmers and support personnel to handle ongoing deployment, migrations and integrations. Joe Fierro, Applications Manager, immediately saw the potential reach of Laserfi che to accommodate the complex needs of the County. “I’ve been with the County 19 years and I had a lot of experience with developing our in-house records management system, so I was very aware of the demands of each department. I saw Laserfi che was fl exible enough that we could do a lot with it.”

The result has been a fi ve-year deployment that is already more than half complete—and whose effect is being felt enterprise-wide. As Skipworth puts it, “When you’re talking about establishing a standard that’s being used by 700-800 users, that goes a long way toward establishing effi ciency.”

District Clerk’s Offi ce

The fi rst offi ces to deploy were the District Clerk, County Clerk (which handles vital records, land recording, and county court at law records), District Attorney, Auditor and Records Department. As Skipworth explains, “We concentrated on moving the heavy paper-producing or handling departments to Laserfi che. Our goal is to reduce our square footage for paper storage and move toward electronic records management and manage retention with Laserfi che retention rules capability.” Upon Ruiz’s recommendation, conversion from paper to digital fi les was done gradually. “My advice was to start with two or three document types—your easiest ones plus one of your harder ones—as pilot projects to keep it simple and get staff used to how the system works. That way you allow for a learning curve.”

The County had to migrate records from its two legacy imaging system dating back to the ‘80s—including one that served only two departments but required four support personnel. “Records was actually already scanning for the DA and Auditor, so we switched this department to Laserfi che fi rst,” Anderson explains. In the District Clerk’s offi ce, a massive backlog conversion of documents from 1846-2000 resulted in two million images added to the county’s Laserfi che system. “While we eliminated some paper fi les, we did keep the 1800s paper fi les for their historical value,” Anderson notes.

Tax Offi ce

By September 2008, Laserfi che implementation began in the Tax Offi ce, immediately focusing on integration to optimize business processes. “We added a property tax receipts interface with our RT Lawrence receipt processing system to capture them directly into Laserfi che without an extra step,” explains Anderson. County IT staff were—excuse the pun—taxed with other projects, so they left the development of the custom application to MCCi. The integration takes the receipt information the system exports as an ASCII fi le, uses it to populate Laserfi che fi les and folders and then imports the images associated with the fi les.

4

One small step for receipts processing, one giant leap for process effi ciency: Because the tax assessor/collector relied on paper documents, the 10 days it took to process mail resulted in over $1 million lost each day in interest. “Now we process payments much more quickly—up to 10 days faster,” Anderson says. “In fact, we eliminated almost 400 records storage boxes just with this one Laserfi che implementation.”

The County was able to get the Assessor’s Offi ce up and running by the end of the year to coincide with the heaviest period of property tax receipts.

Anderson adds that another 400-500 records storage boxes will be eliminated in 2010 when the Tax Offi ce Motor Vehicle division begins scanning state receipts into the system. “These receipts are currently available only in paper format and require an average of 30 minutes of staff time to retrieve. According to ROI projections, the County will be able to purchase two large scanners and still break even within eight months.”

Next year Anderson also foresees an integration with new property tax processing software. It’s not a question of if it will integrate since, as Anderson explains, “Everything we get now, we have right in the requirements that it needs to be able to integrate with Laserfi che. That way, we’re managing one system instead of different imaging systems. From an IT perspective, it’s one system. We’re not increasing our overhead burden for any one system, and it’s fl exible and scalable enough to add on pieces over time. Although,” she laughs, “we’re adding to it pretty quickly.”

County Clerk’s Offi ce

The County Clerk’s Offi ce uses Laserfi che RME as the back end for the court’s Odyssey case management system, where it provides records retention for closed and inactive case fi les. Before imple-menting Laserfi che, staff in the County’s courts had diffi culty fi nding information due to disparate fi ling and legacy imaging systems used in the Sheriff’s and other departments. “We also had over 15,000 reels of microfi lm and 18,450 boxes of paper stored throughout the County,” Anderson explains. “Files were everywhere and we couldn’t keep up with the demand. We had to ensure that staff did not unintentionally destroy records that needed to be retained, and we wanted to implement a case management system (CMS). But we also had to manage all the paper. The records management system (RMS) we chose needed to interface with this system and provide records management control for closed and disposed case fi les, as well as support documents.” The Odyssey system had its own scanning interface, which meant it was perfect for getting informa-tion into the system. But owing to everything from server space to risk management, data governance and compliance standards, Anderson knew the CMS needed a robust records management back-end to complete the picture. “RME provides a standard methodology for administering the state mandated retention requirements for all records as well as providing an audit trail for dispositions. And all of this occurs in the background, so it’s transparent to the user,” she says.

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“The Texas Local Government Records Act basically says you either follow state-mandated retention schedules or you hold on to everything. Having Records Management Edition and making sure audit trails are in place allows us to manage risk. My view and Caren’s is that whether a document is paper or electronic, you still have to manage both, and that’s part of the functionality we look to Laserfi che RME for.”

Margaret Anderson

Currently, Fierro and the County’s “Build Team” are in the process of fi nalizing an integration between its Odyssey CMS and Laserfi che RME. The integration is an important one: “67% of the County’s business is the courts and jails,” explains Skipworth. “The biggest percentage of that 67% was handling paper.”

And, thankfully, the integration has also been a relatively easy one. As Fierro notes, “Due to the way the Laserfi che Toolkit sets up the APIs, about all we’ve done is create DLLs [Dynamic Link Libraries] to pass the HTML metadata from Odyssey over to Laserfi che—it just makes the handshake more effi cient. We haven’t actually done that much programming. I have to credit Margaret [Anderson] with being so thorough in setting up the folders and retention information.”

Fierro adds that for his staff, a benefi t of working with Laserfi che is actually not having to work with it. “We have so many other projects going on,” he says, “I don’t have time to spend all day working on integrations. But that’s the thing about the APIs and the Toolkit, it’s so rich, once you do one integration, it’s follow the yellow brick road.”

Anderson realized the value of the County’s Laserfi che system when a fl ood in May 2007 damaged nearly 1,000 boxes of records—many of them with no backup. “It’s clear how important Laserfi che is for business continuity,” she says. “Had those fi les been stored in Laserfi che, we wouldn’t have needed to worry when the fl ood waters started rising. People worry about computers crashing, but in reality, paper documents are much more likely to be destroyed than digital ones.”

After upgrading to Laserfi che 8 this year, Anderson has been particularly satisfi ed with its expanded functionality that allows storage of multiple values in a single template fi eld. “Court cases often in-clude multiple entries for a single fi eld, so we can add multiple names/parties to a court case fi eld. Civil cases, for instance, often have more than one plaintiff and/or more than one defendant,” she explains.

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The Future

Skipworth’s Build Team has also integrated Laserfi che with its existing GIS application using GeoDocs to manage septic system records. “The vision is that most county records will be stored in Laserfi che and will be viewable over the internet—which offers better service and uses less paper,” notes Skipworth.

More departments have been added to the system every year, with projects planned through 2012:

“The way it’s been, once the County departments initially see the product they fi nd an immediate need for their office to automate current manual work processes,” Skipworth explains. “Fortunately, Laserfi che is extremely user-friendly, which allows for a short start up time and requires minimal training for the end user.”

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June 2007 – Laserfi che reseller MCCi awarded bid to install Laserfi che in Collin County.

Sept. 2007 – Laserfi che installed in most paper-heavy departments.

Nov. 2007 – Laserfi che goes live.

Dec. 2007 – District Clerk and County Court at Law implementation.

May 2008 – Justice of the Peace implementation.

Aug. 2008 – Integration with property tax RT Lawrence system. Feb. 2009 – Development Services begins using Laserfi che for septic tank permits.

April 2009 – Laserfi che 8.0 upgrade, implement Workfl ow, add GeoDocs GIS integration.

May 2009 – County Clerk Vitals implementation.

July 2009 – Sheriff’s Offi ce training and policy manuals stored in Laserfi che.

Oct. 2009 – DA staff to begin scanning or importing new documents directly into Laserfi che.

Nov. - Dec. 2009 – Tax Motor Vehicle and Auditor’s offi ce to begin scanning own documents.

Jan. 2010 – Web Access to be installed; Human Resources and Elections planned implementation; County Clerk public access for marriage licenses, foreclosures, and board/commission meeting minutes.

Spring 2010 – Property tax interface integration upgrade.

May 2010 – Engineering bond planning documentation implementation.

2011 – Sheriff’s Offi ce expanded implementation, CSCD (Adult Probation) implementation.

2011 - 2012 – Health Care Services to deploy Laserfi che to meet new EMR Medicare requirements.

Collin County Deployment Timeline

The Value of Planning

With an implementation this extensive, there were understandably some hiccups along the way. “One of the mistakes we made was only purchasing one license each for Quick Fields, Zone OCR and Real-Time Lookup,” Anderson admits. But with the approval of the FY2009 budget, the County is implementing additional licenses as part of upgrading to Laserfi che 8.

The biggest hurdle, however, hasn’t been what functionality to implement. “I’d say one of our biggest initial challenges was helping departments understand their business processes so we could develop a records series plan tied to record management and retention,” Anderson says. “It’s really an educational process.” Anderson and her team of what she calls “Customer Department Advocates” employ business plan questionnaires, user guides and demos of successful intra-county implementations, and even help departments choose the right scanners.

These Advocates identify training needs, review business processes, records series structure and templates, and scan sample boxes of fi les into Laserfi che so departmental staff can see how their records series and template structures will work in the new environment.

It’s a forward-thinking approach, one that Skipworth terms, “planning for the people-side of change.” But with an ambitious deployment and integration schedule carrying Skipworth’s IT Department right through 2012, Collin County is proving, department by department, process by process, empowered user by empowered user, that the results are worth the wait—and the planning time.

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• Get customers involved very early in the decision making process.

• Learn to manage change and project scope creep.

• Distributing roadmaps and project plans is as essential as communication with departmental users. “We use an internal SharePoint site to share information about the project, planning and implementation documents, and training materials,” Anderson says. • Ask business process questions to help departments understand their current processes and how they can take advantage of Laserfi che functionality to enhance them.

• Plan to respond to demand. “You have to learn to say no nicely.”

• Design a plan to manage your electronic records.

• Think about your budget cycle.

• Work with your IT department. “Support from your IT Developer is critical.”

Collin County’s Steps for Success

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The IT Perspective:

Standardization drives operational and business effi ciencies department-wise and enterprise-wide

Collin County IT Director Caren Skipworth was named Texas CIO of the Year in 2009 in recognition of her efforts promoting intergovernmental collaboration and providing innovative leadership to prove the value of IT initiatives both to departmental users and business managers alike. Not least of these has been the decision to implement Laserfi che as the enterprise-standard integrative middleware for document and records management used throughout Collin County.

“One of the visions I have from being here 19 years is that when we invest in something, I don’t want to run the costs of the County up with different vendors selling different products to different departments. I want something that has the ability to apply to every department—whether that be the Sheriff’s or the Auditor’s Department—and be able to implement it in all these areas so that users of all levels of expertise can use it,” Skipworth says. She was drawn to Laserfi che not only for its ease of use for the end user, but also because a standardized system would make support more manageable and cost-effective.

“The benefi t is that I have one standardized, enterprise document management and records management system, not three or four or six vendors all doing the same thing. I have standard, supported processes so my staff doesn’t have to learn six different products. We had a legacy imaging system that was used by just two departments that required four staff members to support it. The Laserfi che system only requires a support staff of two—and that’s serving the whole County.”

She acknowledges that one of the challenges of deploying anything enterprise-wide means satisfy-ing departmental concerns, but notes that Laserfi che deployment hasn’t met much push-back. “We’ve really had a relatively easy time getting buy-in from different departments. We follow a change man-agement methodology that encourages the front-end user to have a level of accountability. Laserfi che really lends itself to that desktop user because it’s easy to use. I think it also helps that as coun-ty employees move around between departments, they’re used to the look and feel of Laserfi che.” As an IT Director, Laserfi che deployment has helped Skipworth provide better service as well as ease of management, owing to its unique way of balancing her need for central control with departments’ needs for—and the effi ciency that comes with—exercising local fl exibility.

“Laserfi che has a really nice way of letting me establish rules centrally that can then be administered locally,” Skipworth says. “Being able to set the rules for records retention allows me to manage hard drive space. And once the rules are set, administration is done by the department heads—they can take control. It keeps my expenses down. The server team has repeatable, standardized processes so they’re more effi cient.”

She sees this fl exibility as most evident in the need to set different retention schedules for the court records that account for two-thirds of Collin County’s day-to-day business. “Instead of different management of different systems according to different departmental needs, Laserfi che can handle automated, repeatable processes in every department. For instance, retention schedules are different for DWI and Divorce records, but Laserfi che can handle that because of its fl exibility.”

It’s this harmony that maximizes County resources across the spectrum—from managing servers and ensuring end-user and departmental buy-in, to evolving processes and procedures in a way that proves once and for all that legacy systems and their legacy attitudes are truly obsolete when a technologically-empowered future looks this bright already. “I believe technology is the catalyst for change,” says Skipworth. “Laserfi che benefi ts the County and our taxpayers by lowering the overall support cost of an enterprise-wide records management system.”

The Laserfi che Institute teaches staff, resellers, and current and prospective clients how to use Laserfiche most effectively. As part of this mission, the Institute conducts more than 500 Webinars each year, covering a variety of topics. The Institute also hosts an annual conference where members of the Laserfi che community attend presentations and network to share ideas and learn best practices. Additionally, the Institute conducts a number of regional training sessions and provides resellers with content for more than 100 user conferences each year.

The Institute also develops and distributes educational material through the Laserfi che Support Site. On this Website, clients can access training videos, participate in online forums and download technical papers and presentations that help them become savvier ECM users.

For more information, contact:

info@laserfi che.com

Laserfi che

3545 Long Beach Blvd.

Long Beach, CA 90807

United States

Phone: 562-988-1688

Toll-free: 800-985-8533 (within the U.S.)

Fax: 562-988-1886

Web: www.laserfi che.com

© 2009 Laserfi che. Laserfi che is a division of Compulink Management Center, Inc. Laserfi che is a registered trademark of Compulink Management Center, Inc. All other trademarks are properties of their respective companies. Due to continuing product development, product specifi cations and capabilities are subject to change without notice. Printed in the USA.

Institute ®

Laserfi che

3545 Long Beach Blvd.Long Beach, CA 90807 USAwww.laserfi che.com

Run Smarter®

Laserfiche provides a standard systems architecture and methodology for

county-wide content management

Ramsey County, the second most populous county in Minnesota, has always worked hard to provide the best service at the lowest possible

cost to its taxpayers. But as the nation reeled from the recession that began in 2008, it became clear to the county that it needed to better leverage technology if it wanted to continue providing high-quality services without exceeding its budget.

According to Rochelle Waldoch, Compliance and Records Manager at Ramsey County, the need for more efficient paper-based business processes drove the county to investigate enterprise content management (ECM). “The Human Services Department had always been a paper-heavy department, but as caseloads grew, we started having difficulty sharing paper files. In addition, client information was siloed, so employees had to collect the same data over and over again. It wasn’t an efficient process, and it needed to change.”

She notes, however, that the county wasn’t interested in deploying a departmental ECM solution. “If the Information Services Department was going to invest the time and resources in implementing ECM, the solution we chose needed to provide a standard systems architecture and methodology for managing all types of documents across the county—not just in one department.”

Needs Analysis and Selection Process

To that end, Waldoch and Toyia Arvin, EDMS Business Analyst, worked with county staff to analyze business processes and document needs in every department. This analysis included:

folder directory structures.

Armed with the results of the needs analysis, Waldoch and Arvin authored the county’s RFP. “Prior to implementing Laserfiche, we were using the DocuWare system to store a variety of document types, but it didn’t have the advanced workflow or capture functionality necessary to streamline business processes enterprise-wide,” explains Waldoch.

In terms of the selection process, Arvin says, “Laserfiche was beyond impressive when we were doing our RFP. Laserfiche Rio offered a familiar, Windows-like interface for our users; included all of the components we needed, including Workflow, Records Management and unlimited servers; and received excellent recommendations when we did our reference checks.”

Global Municipal Exchange September 2011

Ramsey County Revamps Case Management

Central Control, Departmental Flexibility

Ramsey County implemented a 2,000-user Laserfiche Rio system in the summer of 2010. It is supported centrally by a four-person team within the IS Department. To date, the team has transferred more than eight million documents stored in the old DocuWare system to Laserfiche and brought a variety of departments onboard, including:

Boards and Committees. Documents such as agendas, ordinances and proclamations are OCRed and stored in Laserfiche, streamlining search.

Budgeting and Accounting. Using DataNOW Affinity, Laserfiche is integrated with ASPEN (PeopleSoft) accounting software. Users can locate transactions in ASPEN and then automatically index, store and/or retrieve associated documents.

Human Resources. Personnel files are managed in Laserfiche. Laserfiche security restricts file access to authorized users.

Elections. Laserfiche allows the department to save staff time and money on tasks such as making copies, redacting private information and responding to public data requests.

Human Services. Laserfiche streamlines case management for divisions such as Child Care, Financial Assistance Services and Workforce Solutions.

Waldoch and Arvin note that the Elections implementation went particularly smoothly. “Because there was an election recount coming up, Elections employees did their homework before their initial meeting with us. They brought a lot of document samples and mapped out what kind of folder structure they wanted,” says Arvin.

“As a result, we were able to get them up and running in a week,” she adds. “Working with Crabtree, we’d do a build, show it to them that day, and then tweak it based on their feedback. They’d been thorough with their planning, so there weren’t a lot of changes that needed to be made.”

Efficient Case Management Commences

Implementation in Human Services, which started

managers), has taken a little more time. “Human Services is a huge department with hundreds of

users and hundreds of forms—and a heavy need for Workflow,” explains Waldoch.

To determine how to configure the Client repository that Human Services uses, Arvin sat down with key Human Services employees to better understand their processes. “Subject matter experts in each of the three areas of the pilot analyzed their current folder structure by reviewing case files. Together, we analyzed the tabs contained in the paper files and came up with a nine-sided file structure that could meet the needs of all the various Human Services divisions,” she says.

“The goal of implementing Laserfiche within Human Services is to allow case workers to collect information from clients once and share it electronically throughout all program areas,” explains Waldoch. “Electronic client files decrease delays in processing benefits since case workers have, via Workflow, near-immediate knowledge of document receipt.

Also adding to the department’s increased efficiency is an integration using LincWare’s LincDoc to create a Case Creation Form for the Client repository. “LincDoc makes two calls—one to a State system (SMI) and one to a County system (CAFÉ)—to pull the information needed to create a new case in Laserfiche,” Arvin says. “Automating this process saves staff time.”

After a case is created, it goes through the following steps:

status in Laserfiche. When the client arrives for the appointment, CAFÉ alerts the worker to the arrival. An intake worker assigns the case to him- or herself by changing a template field, and Workflow routes the file to that person’s New Cases Queue.

additional information. Once the information has been captured into Laserfiche, Workflow routes the case to Case Assignment, where a clerk assigns the case to the ongoing case worker.

ongoing worker, who “acknowledges” the case by changing a template field. The case is then visible in the worker’s Active Cases queue. The worker then manages the case for ongoing benefits.

“Active” to “Closed,” and the case is routed to the Records Department for long-term retention.

Global Municipal Exchange September 2011

Arvin notes that creating workflows for Human Services wasn’t as simple as she’d first imagined. “The biggest lesson I learned is that you shouldn’t try to replicate paper processes in an electronic workflow. We built a workflow this way only to find out that a chunk of it was unnecessary, so we had to ask the Laserfiche engineers to go back and build it again.”

In terms of additional functionality, the IS team is currently in the process of enabling electronic signatures, electronic forms and barcoding, all of which will simplify working with Human Services clients.

In terms of additional Human Services divisions, the team is working to:

employees from read-only to full-client users, allowing them to expand their use of the system beyond search and retrieval.

MAXIS, the state-based case management system.

Health Center’s electronic health system, so that users can automatically retrieve information from Laserfiche while looking at patient cases in

“Although we have a long way to go before we’d consider Human Services a mature Laserfiche implementation, we’re definitely on the right track,” Waldoch says.

Change Management Methodology

“A lot of counties have to force content management into their departments, but we don’t have that problem here, due in large part to our extensive training program,” Arvin explains.

For the Human Services Department, the Laserfiche team involved all pilot participants in the project from early on. “The more involved people are in designing their own solutions, the more bought-in they’ll be when it comes time to use it,” she says. “We also had some strong advocates who’d previously worked in other counties that use Laserfiche, so that was certainly a stroke in our favor.”

Once the Laserfiche pilot had been implemented, non-pilot employees started receiving information from Laserfiche on disk so that they’d become familiar with the way information was organized and presented. The team also created a lot of training documentation (available online), including videos of how to perform tasks in Laserfiche featuring the cast of The Flintstones. “Just because something is technical doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with it,” Waldoch says. “If people are laughing, they’re paying attention.”

In-person training classes are conducted by unit, so that employees see the information and steps that are relevant to them. When needed, the county’s Laserfiche team conducts individual training sessions as well. The Laserfiche team also plans to create a county-wide Laserfiche User Group to facilitate knowledge sharing between departments.

Future Plans

Although Laserfiche is currently being used by several departments to enhance internal productivity, in the future, Ramsey County wants to use Laserfiche to directly help its citizens as well. It plans to do this by making information available to its constituents via a public portal, increasing transparency, and also by giving constituents the ability to complete and submit forms online. “We’re here to serve the public,” Waldoch explains. “We want them to get as much benefit from Laserfiche as our staff does.”

In conclusion, Waldoch says, “Laserfiche is a powerful enterprise system that’s already having a great impact in a number of departments.”

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—use Laserfiche software

to streamline document, records and business process

management.

Your Next Step

Please call (800) 985-8533 or

e-mail info@laserfiche.com for more information.

©2011 Laserfiche. Laserfiche is a registered trademark of

Compulink Management Center, Inc. All rights reserved.

Laserfi che Education Focus

Texas A&M University (TAMU) is one of the largest universities in the U.S., both in terms of enrollment and physical size. With nine system schools and

two campuses, as well as a main campus with over 100 buildings on over 5,200 acres, TAMU faces a unique challenge in sharing information.

Relying on paper was an ineffi cient use of TAMU’s mon-etary and staff resources. In addition, board requirements frequently limit the amount of offi ce space to conserve space for classroom and labs, so space used for paper stor-age was at a premium. What little space was available could have been better used for professors’ offi ces.

Beginning in 2004, different programs and departments within TAMU began investigating document management solutions, in order to more effi ciently and cost-effectively share information—not to mention save space. Ultimately, they chose a Laserfi che enterprise content management solution to securely store paper, implement business process management and eliminate fi le cabinets.

Currently, nearly 1,200 staff in 10 departments and divisions within TAMU use Laserfi che. The Health Sciences Center (HSC) reaches across Texas to educate health professionals and researchers through its seven compo-nents: the Baylor College of Dentistry in Dallas; the College of Medicine in College Station, Round Rock and Houston; the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences; the Institute of Biosciences and Technology in Houston; the School of Rural Public Health in College Station and McAllen; the Irma Lerma Rangel College of Pharmacy in Kingsville; and the College of Nursing in College Station.

When the HSC was planning to build its 200-acre new central campus, it wasn’t planning on using space that could house students and labs to house fi le cabinets. Add to that a system that spanned the state and often required costly overnight delivery of paperwork to its central offi ce, then a need to duplicate and store copies of that paperwork, and Laserfi che was just the cure Project Manager Kristin Nace was looking for.

The Cure for Paperwork Headaches

Nace, the director for fi scal services, was formerly in the HSC accounts payable division. While working in that department, she scanned documents into a basic system that used a centralized network drive. In 2007, the HSC formed a committee to fi nd an alternative system and a vendor to provide it.

Because of Laserfi che’s successful implementation in the Texas A&M AgriLife program, it was considered for the HSC, and was ultimately chosen due to ease of use. Nace says that Laserfi che’s interface is simple and self-explanatory, and the system’s ability to import and export Microsoft Offi ce documents was critical to its ultimate selection.

As in other departments, the HSC’s implementation committee chose to implement Laserfi che in stages. The implementation began in the Finance Department, which includes accounts payable, payroll, human resources and the contracts and grants division and has 180 users. The Finance Department was chosen for the initial implemen-tation because it is the number one paper consumer in the entire HSC.

The HSC’s Laserfi che ECM system was implemented on February 1, 2008, and was completed by May 31, 2008. During the implementation, staff were trained and the department established scanning requirements for their component offi ces. Nace was surprised at how easily staff embraced Laserfi che, and how easily the implementation went. “Adoption was extremely easy,” she says. “When it comes to Laserfiche, I don’t have to make anyone do anything.” In fact, potential users approach Nace nearly every day and ask when they will get to use Laserfiche. Nace is also impressed by how her colleagues are constantly approaching her with new ways they can use Laserfi che to streamline their workfl ow. In fact, there is even competition between component offi ces over scanners, because every-one wants one.

Laserfi che saves the Texas A&M University

Health Sciences Center time and money

About Laserfi che

Laserfi che creates simple and elegant agile enterprise

content management 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 Laserfi che software to streamline document,

records and business process management.

Your Next Step

For more information on Laserfi che solutions for education, visit laserfi che.com/education.

3545 Long Beach Blvd. Long Beach, CA 90807(800) 985-8533 (562) 988-1886 faxwww.laserfi che.cominfo@laserfi che.com

November 2008 Laserfi che Education Focus

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The HSC implementation took place without IT support; in fact, IT staff only perform standard server maintenance. “Besides fi le structure and security, we’re really using Laserfi che straight out of the box,” Nace comments.

Since implementing Laserfi che, the fi nance offi ce has quit accepting paper documents, and instead requires all internal documents, such as invoices, payroll documents and con-tracts, to be submitted electronically. They have been able to eliminate most of their 69 fi le cabinets, which cost $2,100 annually to maintain. And they have been able to adhere to their records retention schedule much more easily.

Even better, the department has eliminated nearly all their overnight shipments from regional locations. Previously, regional offi ces would overnight documents to the fi nance department on a daily basis. Because 95% of these over-night shipments were internal, they are now handled electronically through Laserfi che—eliminating nearly $55,000 spent in shipping costs.

“We’ve already seen a cost savings by reducing our over-night delivery charges for sending documents, which also translates into a smoother more effi cient business process,” Nace explains. “Utilizing Laserfi che security, we’ve moved to only having one copy of the document and are allowing our departments access to many of those folders – which they love because they no longer have to keep their own copy, which of course means fewer fi les in their offi ces.”

Nace says an intangible benefi t of Laserfi che is its ability to eliminate clutter from offi ces. She believes that employees are happier now because their offi ces are free from fi le cabinets and paper.

In the future, HSC plans to expand Laserfi che into Student Business Services (SBS). After the SBS implementation, stage three will be to implement Laserfi che in the medical records department (MR). MR stores performance review fi les for doctors practicing medicine in the state of Texas, which are reviewed by other doctors to determine if they

have the potential to become a malpractice case. Nace plans to use Laserfi che to redact sensitive information, and also plans to segregate them on a separate Laserfi che repository, to maintain security. She would then be able to give non-departmental users, such as doctors from across the State, access to only the specifi c documents they need to review cases.

Also, HSC has just received a land grant from the neigh-boring city of Bryan, and the state has approved construc-tion for two buildings. One of the stipulations is that these buildings be used mainly for classrooms and research, so offi ces located on the new campus will have to be extremely small. In an effort to maximize available offi ce space, the department head has already made Laserfi che mandatory for document storage.

In addition, the board has also approved the establishment of a campus in Round Rock. Like the Bryan campus, storage and offi ce space will be limited, so a Laserfi che implemen-tation is planned for this campus as well.

Nace has recently created a position to manage the expan-sion of Laserfi che into new HSC departments. Eventually, every department in the HSC will be using Laserfi che.

“Our largest unexpected benefi t came in realizing how popular Laserfi che has become within our organization,” she says. “I’m regularly getting requests from our departments to set up additional folders, processes, or even repositories. I knew people would love the product, I just didn’t expect they would love it this much. “In the planning stages I remember wondering what I was going to do if our departments didn’t buy into Laserfi che,” she adds. “How was I going to get them to use it? I’m so pleased to say they bought in after the fi rst training class. As a matter of fact, I’ve not had to convince anyone to use it, if anything I cannot keep up with all of their requests to bring more documents into the system. We are excited it has taken off as quickly and easily as it has.”

Run Smarter®

Once upon a time, many IT

departments were strictly

maintainers of networks, sentinels

of security and custodians of

technology. We were guardians of the information

order. We kept the lights on, the data locked down

and the systems humming. Some departments

within our organizations used to think of us as

the department of “no.” “No, you can’t put that

on my network.” “No, we can’t get to that project

for six months to a year.” “No, that integration

you want isn’t possible.” Frankly, it was no fun

being the “no” department. We wanted to enable

the business and improve the bottom line.

So we changed our mindset. We became more

strategic and defi ned our value proposition in new

ways. As information technology executives, we

shifted our priorities from providing technology

to leading the business by using technology to

deliver services. We began to enable—even

empower—the business units.

We started schooling ourselves in enterprise

information management. We adopted an

information governance framework. By optimizing

the use of information within our organizations,

we saw that we could support decision making

and day-to-day operational processes. We knew

that we could overcome the traditional barriers to

making information available to the enterprise.

How—you ask? By making enterprise content

management available as component of shared

services.

Agile ECM as a Shared Service

2

ECM and Shared Services 101

Let’s take a moment to look at the history of

enterprise content management (ECM). In its

early days, content management was deployed

to meet departmental needs in certain niches

within the organization. It is now recognized

as an enterprise-wide need: an infrastructure

investment rather than a niche application.

Making information available to the enterprise

empowers the enterprise.

Many organizations have concluded that if ECM

functionality is to be offered to the enterprise,

it makes sense to offer that functionality as a

shared service—a way to cost-effectively meet

the content management needs of large user

bases with diverse requirements for various

components of ECM functionality. Access to

the ECM system is given to newly hired staff

members in the same way they are given a

computer, a phone and a system log-in.

When we consider the capabilities inherent in

ECM in terms of shared service offerings, an

initial deployment might include:

• Content Management. It’s easy for a shared

service to be suffocated in content: emails,

IMs, paper documents and electronic forms

contain information that drive or support

business processes and transactions. Content

spans multiple departments and software

applications, and it needs to be managed and

stored in a manner that makes it accessible to

multiple systems and staff.

• Capture. The concept of information has

changed signifi cantly. Think of it as a launch

pad for process. It’s not just about scanners and

image processing anymore—but about ETL

and workfl ow. In fact, information capture

often launches a workfl ow. Capture also means

handling multiple content sources—and can

be used to sort, classify and authenticate

complex document sets according to pre-

defi ned sets of business rules. In the ECM

world, capture strategies have moved toward

capturing content at the point of creation.

But the actual information processing is

done centrally. This works well if you are

considering delivering shared services via

ECM—fewer hands need to touch the content,

greatly minimizing errors and exceptions.

Capture is often the fi rst component of viewing

ECM as a shared service.

• Storage. Information both drives process

and is produced as a result of process. Once

information has been produced, it must be

properly indexed and securely stored—

typically in an ECM system—for later

processing or retrieval.

3

The Journey: Maturity Models

Like many technology endeavors, setting up

shared services delivery with your ECM system

is evolutionary. It’s critical to know where to

start, where you want to go and how you are

going to get there. Try developing a maturity

model. Like any model, this is an abstraction

of current best practices. Maturity models offer

a pathway of milestones that will allow you to

graph successes achieved by delivering shared

services via ECM. A simple ECM shared service

maturity model might look like this:

Localize your best practices

The fi rst step is almost always the most

diffi cult. You’ve got to analyze the processes

conducted by your business units. Calculate

their lowest common denominator. Figure

out which process is most effi cient—and then

make it repeatable so you can roll it out to

the entire organization. Many organizations

start with processes conducted by multiple

departments like hiring or contracts; many are

also fi nding success with simple variations on

case management.

Thoughtfully standardize across

business units

Although standardization can have a utopian

veneer, it’s best to be ruthlessly practical.

Look at your metadata models. Consider

implementing a master model like the Dublin

Core Set. On the delivery side, develop a

standardized skill set for your staff. This

allows you to bundle competencies and refi ne

your service culture.

Consolidate

A very wise technology deployment expert

once explained that the key to excellence in

information delivery is to standardize the

central system and customize the delivery.

This allows your information access to be

dynamic. Deployment-wise this means

consolidating all of your content into one

ECM system and integrating to allow the users

to access content through any application.

The interfaces through which staff accesses

the ECM system are customized based on their

needs or organizational roles.

Cost benefi ts

This is where the economies of scale kick

in. You’ve developed your service level

agreements and are rolling out a menu of ECM

functions in terms of head-count. It’s as simple

as counting noses. At this stage your focus is

no longer just internal optimization. You are

actually creating value for the organization

through your service offerings.

Continuous review

Now that your processes have been optimized

and your skill set developed, you must

constantly refi ne your menu of offerings.

Auditing is continuous and proactive.

Quality improvements are implemented using

formalized change management processes like

Six Sigma.

ECM and Shared Services for Experts

We’ve discussed information capture and

retrieval as shared services, but that’s just the

beginning. Once you’ve got that in place, it’s

time to start thinking about transactions and

processes. The question is: Which processes

built on your ECM system should be offered as

part of your shared service menu? Consider both

the scope and the purpose of the activity. What

are the common patterns? Does the activity

generate or protect revenue streams? Does it

manage valuable resources? Does it mitigate

risk? Does it involve multiple departments and

information sources? Is the process repeatable?

The most common processes used as part of the

ECM Shared Services model are: HR Onboarding,

Client Onboarding, Case Management, Customer

Management and Contract Management.

4

Does It All End Up in the Cloud?

We all know that the main advantage to cloud

computing is that companies can reduce IT capital

and operating expenses and align their technology

spending more directly with utilization. These

advantages are strikingly similar to those

achieved by implementing shared services.

The disadvantages to the cloud—which aren’t

necessarily common to shared services—include

data ownership, niche integration requirements

and agreeable separation. If moving to the cloud

makes sense for your organization, consider the

ECM Shared Service model as an initial step in the

transition.

SHARED SERVICES

Management Flows Overlay

This collection of real-world solutions provides an

overview of how customers around the world are gaining

value from the Laserfiche SharePoint Integration, which

is designed to enable:

Rapidly deployed transactional content management.

Paper-based capture and enhanced document storage.

DoD 5015.2-certified records management.

Enterprise search and classification.

Collaboration and business process management.

Take a look at how Laserfiche

customers are using the Laserfiche

SharePoint Integration to deploy a

wide variety of initiatives, including:

Medical records management.

RFP/vendor selection.

Employee forms submission.

Student financial aid portal.

Case management.

And more.

Laserfiche SharePoint Integration Solutions Guide

Here at Laserfiche, we believe that our customers are the best

source of information about our enterprise content management

(ECM) solutions. After all, they’re the ones using it to transform

their organizations every day.

Laserfiche has always developed on top of Microsoft technologies

to support close integration with industry-standard platforms,

allowing our customers to build on their existing investments in

Microsoft technology and staff skill sets.

With more than 8,000 patients a year and

upward of 400 employees, Spindletop

Mental Health Mental Retardation (MHMR)

Services was having difficulty responding

promptly to records requests.

Over 80,000 files resided in a hardcopy

storage facility that cost more than $2,000

a month to maintain. And even with six

full-time staff members dedicated to

Spindletop MHMR Services

Medical Records Management

managing hardcopy documents, some

records took as long as three days to locate

and cost $4 each to retrieve and deliver;

others were lost for good.

Realizing that an enterprise content

management (ECM) system would ensure

access to high-quality services in a more

cost-effective way, Spindletop turned to

Laserfiche for help.

We’ve increased productivity,

and morale has jumped in every

department that uses Laserfiche.

We’re very happy with the way

Laserfiche has enabled us to

expand our use of SharePoint.

By implementing the Laserfiche SharePoint

Integration, Spindletop transformed the way it

manages content in the four following ways:

Instant search and retrieval.

From any internet access point, staff can

instantly locate scanned records by using the

“Electronic Imaging” tab on Spindletop’s

SharePoint intranet site. Offsite employees

haveaccess to the Laserfiche digital records

repository through a password-protected

Citrix site.

Sure-fire security.

Because Spindletop’s SharePoint intranet uses

full Laserfiche security enforcement, employees

are granted access to records by department.

Employees can view the records for their own

clients, but restricted patient, employee and

financial information remains confidential.

SOLUTION

Spindletop was already leveraging SharePoint

for the company’s intranet site. “We wanted to

centralize access to patient records without forcing

our employees to go out of their way,” explains Jerry

Carnley, CIO at Spindletop.

Spindletop implemented the Laserfiche SharePoint

Integration, which met its content management

needs in three key ways:

Seamlessly added document imaging

functionality to SharePoint.

Dramatically expanded the amount of content

that can be stored online.

Provided instant search across content stored

in Laserfiche and SharePoint.

Easy and efficient scanning.

Laserfiche templates enable employees to scan

ten times more content than they could before

the custom templates were implemented.

Time-saving automation.

When new content is scanned into the system,

Laserfiche automatically populates template

fields and generates and organizes new

folders and subfolders. Because each client

has between six and eight subfolders with a

total of 25-52 documents to be scanned, this

eliminates redundancy and extra work.

“We’ve increased productivity, and morale has

jumped in every department that uses Laserfiche,”

Carnley says. “We’re very happy with the way

Laserfiche has enabled us to expand our use

of SharePoint.”

RESULTS

Spindletop’s Content Management Infrastructure

The East Texas Behavioral Healthcare Network

(ETBHN) is comprised of eleven mental health and

mental retardation centers that cover 70 counties

in Texas. It was established in 1998 as a response

to the unique challenges these organizations face

in delivering care effectively and efficiently to

consumers living in the region.

ETBHN has been very effective in developing

economies of scale, assisting with quality of

services and delivering training services for its

member centers. As such, ETBHN took note

when Spindletop MHMR Services, one of its

members, selected Laserfiche to complement its

SharePoint implementation and support its

Anasazi EMR system.

According to Spindletop’s CIO Jerry Carnley,

“We chose Laserfiche because it is cost-effective

and aligns its technical architecture with that of

key Microsoft initiatives such as the .NET

EAST TEXAS BEHAVIORAL HEALTHCARE NETWORK

ETBHN wanted a standardized application for each

department that would offer standardized deployment

across locations. Out of multiple competitors,

Laserfiche was the only one with a single point of

contact to access patient records through SharePoint.

framework, Windows Workflow Foundation

and Microsoft Management Console in order

to simplify system administration.”

Charles E. Beard, President of Dynasource,

the Laserfiche reseller in charge of ETBHN’s

implementation of the Laserfiche SharePoint

Integration, notes that Spindletop’s CIO was

instrumental in showing ETBHN the value of

the integrated solution. “He had the enthusiasm

and tenacity to say ‘Here’s what we’ve done,

we need to get this out to everybody,’” Beard

explains, adding that ETBHN decided to

implement Spindletop’s solution across the

board in December 2010.

“ETBHN wanted a standardized application for

each department that would offer standardized

deployment across locations,” Beard adds. “Out

of multiple competitors, Laserfiche was the only

one with a single point of contact to access patient

records through SharePoint.”

Windows Server 2008 R2

Laserfiche Application

Server 8.2

SharePoint 2010

Application Servers

Windows Server 2008 R2 Windows Server 2008 R2

LF Web Access

w/SharePoint

Integration

SharePoint 2010

Web FE Servers

Laserfiche MSSQL

2010 Database

SharePoint MSSQL

2010 DB Cluster

SharePoint 2010

Index Servers

SharePoint 2010

Application Servers

Laserfiche Quick Fields

8.0.2 Server

Laserfiche Workflow

8.2 Server

Windows Server 2008 R2

Virginia Port Authority

RFP/Vendor Selection

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.

“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.”

Because the Port Authority relies so

heavily on the document workspaces

in SharePoint, it wanted to find an ECM

solution with 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.”

Most of our users don’t even know

they’re using Laserfiche. The integration

enables us to access all our information

from SharePoint without having to train

our users on the new Laserfiche system.

With Laserfiche in place, the Port Authority

has started using it to streamline the RFP and

vendor selection process, which used to be

manual and paper-based.

“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 centralv location has

been one of the most important process

improvements our organization has received

as a benefit of this project.”

Today:

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.

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, Laserfiche 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 don’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.”

SOLUTION PROCESS IMPROVEMENTS

When it came to paper records, Dubai’s Emirates

Petroleum Product Company (EPPCO) used to rely

on file cabinets. Imaged documents, meanwhile,

were stored on a shared “U:\” drive, and electronic

content was managed in SharePoint.

This lack of a centralized content management

strategy was inefficient, costly and prevented the

automation of paper-based business processes.

EPPCO needed a standard systems architecture

and methodology for enterprise-wide

content management.

According to Sina Khoory, Group IT Manager for

Emirates National Oil Company (ENOC), EPPCO’s

parent company, “Using Laserfiche, EPPCO has

gained centralized control over its information.

Laserfiche’s powerful workflow tools and the

Laserfiche SharePoint Integration have simplified

information sharing and automated operations

between departments.”

In particular, EPPCO’s internal audit department

has saved time and money by automating the

submission of its Employee Acknowledgement

and Conflict of Interest forms, which all 1,500

EPPCO employees needed to sign and submit to

the department each year.

Ram Mohan, Manager of ENOC’s Planning and

Performance Management Division, explains

that the Laserfiche SharePoint Integration allows

Emirates National Oil Company

Employee Forms Submission

Using Laserfiche, EPPCO

has gained centralized

control over its

information. Laserfiche’s

powerful workflow

tools and the Laserfiche

SharePoint Integration

have simplified

information sharing and

automated operations

between departments.

employees to scan these forms directly into

SharePoint, where they are converted into PDFs

and automatically filed in the correct HR folders in

the Laserfiche repository.

Mohan calculates that EPPCO realized a full

return on its Laserfiche investment in just eight

months. “By using Laserfiche to scan and store

paper files, we save at least 6,000 hours of staff

time a year, which translates to US $240,000.

We’ve also been able to eliminate US $28,800

in paper storage costs per year.”

Oklahoma Christian University

Student Financial Aid Portal

In the past, Oklahoma Christian University’s

financial aid department was forced to store

a mountain of paperwork in a large file room.

Documents were frequently lost, misfiled,

damaged, incomplete or unavailable, which was

frustrating for staff, students and parents alike.

By integrating Laserfiche with its SharePoint-based

Web portal, the university has enabled students

to complete and submit financial aid documents

online, as well as view their financial aid status

and see which documents have been received or

are incomplete.

“Giving students access to financial aid information

via the Laserfiche SharePoint Integration has

improved student satisfaction with the financial

aid process while reducing the number of inquiries

received by the financial aid department and

allowing staff to focus on more complex

Giving students access to financial aid information via the

Laserfiche SharePoint Integration has improved student

satisfaction with the financial aid process while reducing the

number of inquiries received by the financial aid department

and allowing staff to focus on more complex aid issues.

aid issues,” explains John Hermes, Vice President

of Information Technology at Oklahoma

Christian University.

In addition, by integrating Laserfiche with

Datatel, the university’s ERP system, staff can

quickly locate documents associated with the

student without leaving their ERP screen. This has

greatly reduced the amount of time spent on each

request for assistance and allowed for first-call

resolution that was practically non-existent prior

to implementing Laserfiche.

“Implementing Laserfiche and having an entire

office up and running proficiently on the system

within just a few days speaks volumes,” says

Hermes. “IT staff was very impressed with

the ease of administration and how smoothly

the implementation has gone. The ease of

deployment was most helpful in the successful

adoption of the users.”

In 2009, Buffalo’s legal department, which had

already invested in Laserfiche to scan and store

archived case files, implemented a new case

management system: Corporate Legal Standard

(CLS), a Web-based system built on the Microsoft

SharePoint platform.

Daryl Springer, Buffalo’s IT Manager, says,

“Scanning large volumes of closed case files

through SharePoint into Laserfiche maintains

the user experience in SharePoint, which is

crucial for us.”

City of Buffalo, NY

Case Management

CASE MANAGEMENT FLOW

He continues, “We minimized costs by using the

out-of-the-box Laserfiche SharePoint Integration

along with Laserfiche Web Access, a thin-client

solution that provides online content management

capabilities and remote repository access. In effect,

Laserfiche acts as ‘integrative middleware’ to

support the legal department’s need to access—via

SharePoint—closed files that were initially created

in the CLS program.”

Product Overview

How do you achieve rapid deployment of an

ECM solution? By configuring, not customizing.

The Laserfiche SharePoint Integration provides a

configurable horizontal framework that centralizes

control of physical and electronic business records

spread across disparate content repositories,

automates processes for improved efficiency

and ensures that data is consistent, reliable,

risk-managed, useful and available.

Unlike other SharePoint integrations, the

Laserfiche SharePoint Integration offers more

than just a collection of Web parts or standalone

TOGETHER, MICROSOFT AND LASERFICHE FILL SHAREPOINT 2010 ECM WHITESPACE:

SharePoint 2010 content becomes dynamic with

quick integration of line-of-business and legacy

applications into ECM workflows using Windows

Workflow Foundation and the .NET framework,

solving transactional document problems and

achieving a rapid ROI.

Federated search retrieves documents from

SharePoint pages using both the SharePoint

search across repositories and Laserfiche’s

comprehensive metadata search, delivering

superior flexibility and transparency.

Content distribution to a distributed workforce

becomes easy with SharePoint Mobile Access

support, which enables browsing of content

stored in the Laserfiche ECM repository from

mobile Web browsers.

imaging/capture capabilities. It provides a 100%

Microsoft stack-driven, seamless two-way

integration with SharePoint 2010 that immediately

delivers concrete business value.

Laserfiche offers rapidly deployed transactional

content management that, together with

SharePoint 2010, transforms productivity by

speeding collaboration; enabling functional,

repeatable processes that take user preferences

into account; managing documents, multimedia

content and records; and providing insight into

business processes.

Centralized, at-a-glance access to data from

all your primary applications is available with

a new ADO.NET provider that enables access to

the Laserfiche ECM repository with SharePoint

2010 Business Continuity Services and Windows

SharePoint Services.

DoD 5015.2-certified transparent records

management automates business processes

including records classification and filing,

typically the most expensive component of

records management, and simplifies the

management of content created through

SharePoint 2010.

Records management document categorization

is enhanced through the use of SharePoint

2010 Business Connectivity Services,

ultimately reducing the cost of compliance on

an enterprise level.

Event TriggerInitiation of

Case FileResearch

& DiscoveryEvaluation

& Assesment

Disposition ArchivalCompliance

Oversight

Laserfiche

3545 Long Beach Blvd.

Long Beach, CA 90807 USA

www. laserfiche.com

© 2011 Laserfiche

Laserfiche is a division of Compulink Management Center, Inc. Laserfiche®, Run Smarter® and Compulink®

are registered trademarks of Compulink Management Center, Inc. All other trademarks are properties of their

respective companies. Due to conti nuing product development, product specifications and capabilities are

subject to change without notice. Printed in the USA. Item No. 7616.