Document Management in the Wild
Sometimes, TV or movie characters can benefit from document management just as much as the rest of us.
While watching the series finale of “ER” last night, which normally wouldn’t make you think of Laserfiche. But as I watched an intern escort a group of medical students around, and as he stopped at the paper chart holder and explained how their paper-based workflow worked (or didn’t, as the case may be), I couldn’t help but think…wouldn’t this be a lot easier with a document imaging system?
And it isn’t just “ER.” Every time I watch the detectives on “Cold Case” sorting through boxes of documents pulled from cold storage, or Melinda on “Ghost Whisperer” visiting the dusty, jam-packed city archives, it’s hard not to see what a benefit document imaging would be to them.
We’ve already seen how detectives are using document management to work toward solving cold cases. City clerks use document management to provide dust-free access to city records - sometimes even over the Web. There are many emergency rooms that use document imaging to streamline billing - and recapture lost revenue.
Unfortunately, I think that a character sitting at a computer and retrieving the information they need with two or three clicks doesn’t quite have the dramatic value or ambience of a dark, underground document archive filled with boxes - and a few ghosts, too. (Although I’d venture a guess that most of the city archives out there aren’t dark, damp or filled with ghosts. Maybe just filled with boxes of paper.)
Have you seen any scenarios “in the wild” of TV or movies where Laserfiche document imaging would help? Or am I the only one that watches “The Dark Knight,” looks at Harvey Dent’s office, and thinks, “Man, he could really benefit from Laserfiche“?
Little Enterprise on the Prairie
Win-win situations are not good enough for information technology staff in Marshall, part of Minnesota’s Lyon County. They’ve got to have win-win, win-win. That’s because the Marshall school district, its city hall, municipal utility department and the Lyon County government all have built their IT infrastructures around document management with Laserfiche. So when one part of the quartet undertakes improvements to Laserfiche, everybody benefits—and it seems that document images software improvements aren’t stopping any time soon.
“That’s the thing about document management solutions,” says Todd Pickthorn, an IT expert with the Marshall School District. “Once you’ve completed one project with Laserfiche, your eyes open up to the new projects that are possible. That’s been the case with all the agencies we’re working with. When one makes an improvement, everybody reaps the rewards.”
In a world where government bureaucracy is the norm, the Marshall collaboration’s streamlined operations are a remarkable accomplishment which is earning national acclaim—and in an arguably unexpected part of the world.
Marshall, a quiet prairie town, is 40 miles from the nearest interstate and 200 miles from Minneapolis. Yet in the late 1990s, a forward thinking group of residents and elected officials calling themselves “Prairie Net” vowed the information superhighway was going pass a lot closer than Interstate 29 in South Dakota. Monthly meetings were held, resolutions were passed, grants were received and bonds were issued. And with official commitment clear and money in hand, Marshall soon had ISP providers waiting to wire up the community. It took a few years but eventually a brand new fiber optic cable stretched some 75 miles from Sioux Falls, SD, down every street in Marshall.Next step was deciding what to do with that cable. Prairie Net knew it was crucial to provide Web access to serve the whole community, including residents, government and businesses alike. And they knew Laserfiche was going to play a large part in it, they just weren’t sure how to go about it. That’s where planning came in.
“It’s all about planning and having the group meetings where we all talk about our road map for this system and how to plan on using Laserfiche down the road,” Pickthorn says. “We knew that having that new fiber optic cable in place opened a lot of opportunities to us.”
It was in those meetings that the idea surfaced to have a shared document management system connected by the new cable. Prairie Net recognized that different government agencies were responsible for similar tasks in their respective offices—and that duplication of effort would be eliminated by having all their records maintained in a single location.
“In a big city it would be very difficult to get something like this done, simply due to the politics involved,” says Clayton Baer, software designer for Marshall’s Laserfiche reseller Crabtree Companies.
Not to say that there hasn’t been opposition, including intervention by the courts when one judge questioned the legality of the collaboration, says Marshall’s City Director Harry Weilage. However, the system’s success has won over most of the skeptics.
“The last departments in the various agencies that wanted to get into this technology were the financial departments,” Pickthorn says. “Now, it’s staff in those departments who use Laserfiche the most.”
“The initial investment is one-quarter of the price,” says Baer. “That was probably the biggest selling point when it came to getting grants. Why would we build four separate infrastructures when we could just build one? They all serve the same taxpayers.”
Right now, Marshall is in the most ambitious phase of its IT infrastructure project. The Marshall Portal, as it’s being called, is a multi-media interactive website with links to every organization and agency in town. Prairie Net now wants to upload the various Laserfiche repositories onto that portal, so town employees will be able to access their work documents from home and students and taxpayers alike will be able to research public records.
Since, moving forward with Laserfiche, The Marshall Portal has been able to offer a one-stop access to information. The value of moving ahead with this technology has given a quick return on investment, the opportunity to gain experience and level of comfort with document imaging.
For more information of document management software, please visit: www.laserfiche.com
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.
Document Management Company Powers Forward.
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
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.
Paperless Meetings are the Wave of the Future
New Jersey communities are using Laserfiche to eliminate paper and put more information in the hands of decision makers at public government meetings
The versatility of electronic document management software technology has inspired creative applications that have taken the paper out of countless government agencies and operations over the past 20 years. Now it’s reaching outside the office into that bastion of paper rustling, public government meetings.
Armed with laptops, compact discs and/or internet access, elected officials are working from electronic agendas that run the meetings that run local government. The technology eliminates mountains of paper, helps with organizing those meetings and—perhaps most important—puts much more information into the hands of the decisions makers as they make those decisions.
The Ramsey clerk’s office started scanning and storing meeting minutes and other paperwork into a document management database in January. Ramsey Councilman Arthur Nalbandian heard that other New Jersey communities were using document images software to help run their municipal meetings, and suggested it might work in Ramsey.
“Our council is receiving it very well,” Bendian says. “It enables us to link to every document that has to do with whatever agenda item we’re working on. We put it all in there together with the agenda.”
Bendian builds the electronic agenda by scanning all the upcoming meeting business into document management solutions, including agenda items requested by the various department heads and any internal supporting documentation those department heads may have submitted for those items. Public communications to the mayor and council are also scanned in.
While the use of document management for paperless meetings is an extremely useful innovation, the benefits of Laserfiche can go much further, according to Greg Hart, Borough Administrator for nearby Franklin Lakes. Hart is a strong proponent of paperless meeting technology and has given demonstrations on the subject before the Municipal Clerks’ Association of New Jersey.
“There is significant investment but the pay off is so much more than the input,” Hart says. “For us it was very user friendly, and the mayor and council adjusted very quickly. The important thing is that nobody is shuffling papers any more.”
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.
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