The Problem
As the seventh largest district in their state, Idaho Falls School District 91 serves more than 10,000 students among 18 schools. The District is committed to creating environments that empower and engage technology for its students, faculty, staff, and parents. This includes simplifying their records management practices and business processes. From new hire applications, onboarding processes and employee evaluations to student transcripts, student services, and physician referrals, Laserfiche Forms and Workflow are now the solutions of choice for more than 22 business processes.
It all began with the need to eliminate the filing cabinet system for organizing and storing past student transcripts. The District found the Laserfiche custom folder structure and extensive text search features were just what they were looking for. Now, they utilize Forms and Workflow to process the following business processes:
- IEP Student Services
- Transcript or Immigration Requests
- Student Accident Reports
- Incident Management
- Workers Compensation Reports
- Technology Equipment Check out
- Matching Funds Requests
- Summer Print Job Requests
- Employee Address and Phone Change
- Purchasing Card Request & Modification
- Mileage and Reimbursement Requests
- Personnel Actions for schedule, promotions or salary changes
- Employee Transfer Notifications
- Employee Evaluations (90-day and annual)
- Resignation and Retirement Notices
The Solution
Here are a few examples of how the District expanded its Laserfiche system beyond records management:
IEP STUDENT SERVICES
A student in need of a physician’s referral to receive student services through IEP requires an authorization form to be filled out by the case manager and their physician. Using the internal district snail-mail system, often referred to as ‘The Turtle’, the authorization form would make its rounds through the approval process, often taking up to two weeks to process. Once the form received all approval signatures, the manual filing of the form would complete the process. The information was hand-written and manually entered into the IEP system for archiving. This was a time-consuming process for about 1,900 request forms received each year.
Now, with Laserfiche Forms and Workflow, the student services request is available in an electronic form. An integration with PowerSchool allows the form to auto-populate specific student data. Once the information is captured through the electronic Form, Workflow routes the Form to the case manager for approval and notifies the physician of the referral approval request. With a few simple clicks for the digital signature, the form is approved. The Form is designed to automatically file the data in the student’s folder within the Laserfiche repository. An additional copy of the form is submitted to IEP for archival purposes as well. This business process reduced from several weeks to just a few days.
HUMAN RESOURCES
From the employment application and onboarding process to the personnel actions and resignation, it all starts with human resources. With more than 2,000 employees relying on the HR department, Laserfiche was a simple solution to coordinate details. Each employee is assigned login information to the District’s Intranet. Once logged in, the employee has access to electronic Forms. The Intranet integrates with Skyward, the District’s HR ERP solution, allowing Forms to auto-populate specific fields with the employee’s information to save time by eliminating the need for data search. Now, the District has many business processes automated that previously required printers, ink/toner, time processing and humans validating the accuracy of information.
MILEAGE REIMBURSEMENTS
The District took the calculation out of mileage reimbursement. The employee no longer needs a calculator or a map to submit for reimbursement. A drop-down option allows for the selection of destinations, promoting calculation of the total miles and the current reimbursement rate. With a digital signature signed with a touch screen device or a mouse, the reimbursement Form is on its way to a supervisor and the finance department for final approval.
PURCHASE CARD REQUESTS
The District’s finance department issues p-cards to select employees to ease the accounts payable process. Requesting and issuing these cards can cause a bottleneck of problems in the process. The purchase card request form offers a convenient way to accurately capture the cardholder’s information, provide cardholder policy and procedures and digital signatures.
While capturing the card information is important, the true power of Laserfiche Workflow is put to work after the submission. Once the card is requested at the financial institution, an email is automatically scheduled to deliver to the employee in five days. At any point in this process, they can check the status of their request.
PERSONNEL ACTIONS
For every employee schedule request, salary change, promotion, or new hire, a personnel action form must be completed. Previously, each school would have to go through stacks of paper every week to process these forms. Now, with the personnel action Form available online (via a desktop or mobile device), the District took the paper out of this process and can now notify supervisors and the payroll department with just a few clicks.
“Without Laserfiche Forms and Workflow, the District’s business processes were very time consuming on the employees and consistency was difficult. As part of our implementation plan, we started with three test schools before deploying to all schools. The school principals are encouraged by the new processes to standardize forms, capture accurate information and the advanced features to search for documents.”
The District continues to automate their business processes. The finance, operations, and maintenance departments are working to implement the Laserfiche solution in the next school year as well.
