As a technology innovation expert, we have helped numerous state agencies and other organizations to modernize their content management. When you start to research content services and intelligent automation, you‘ll come across the words “composable“ and “extensible.” We will talk about a lot of techy stuff in this blog, and we want you to understand what these terms mean and why they are significant. Let‘s take a look.
Composability
In many cases, your staff’s pain points are not unique and many agencies’ banes are:
- Tedious and repetitive tasks
- Manual data import/export processes
- Sending email updates
- Managing document permissions
- Approvals
Enterprise content management platforms like Laserfiche provide tools that empower your staff to create, or compose, their business solutions—quickly and easily—by using prewritten building blocks within a user-friendly, visual interface. Composable solutions are for users who don‘t know how to write code but understand all the process bottlenecks and duplicated efforts.
Example: Laserfiche Workflow
The Commissioner of Revenue’s Office in Hanover County, Virginia, chose Laserfiche to eliminate paper processes generated by serving more than 100,000 citizens. Laserfiche Workflow completely automated the records approval process and the filing and storing of specific documents for the state-mandated six-year retention period.
Cloud and APIs: Building Blocks for IT
Laserfiche is also an extensible, cloud-based platform for your IT staff, meaning that it can be rapidly scaled up or down to meet demand. In traditional buying of IT, agencies often overbuy servers and other hardware to meet worst-case scenarios or peak demand situations. The rest of the time? All that equipment uses electricity and requires IT resources for updates, security patches, and more. And all that computing power, data storage, and network throughput is going unused (but still being paid for). Laserfiche’s infrastructure in the cloud allows your IT staff to scale databases, networks, and storage on-demand.
Example: Federal Government API Integration for Veteran’s Affairs
In Cabarrus County, North Carolina, IT staff harnessed the power of Laserfiche to create a Risk Management Portal complete with chatbots, converted paper-based processes to digital, and much more. A big win for the county’s business system analysts was connecting their Veteran’s Affairs office directly to the federal government’s benefits request process through a low-code API. Now, the county’s office responds to the VA within 48 hours, which helps veterans get their benefits much faster.
Extensibility
But what about unique situations where no one has created a building block? Many organizations rely on and invest significantly in solutions, and custom code connects essential but uncommon software or tackles tasks specific to their business. Extensible solutions allow your IT staff to integrate existing custom code and write new APIs using the programming languages they already know. With Laserfiche, integrations with other common apps are easy thanks to pre-built connectors and solutions marketplaces containing a wealth of integrated apps and software vendors.
Example: Laserfiche-Maximo Integration
Our team worked with the Texas Municipal Power Agency (TMPA) to integrate Laserfiche with IBM Maximo, an asset management system. TMPA uses Maximo to manage, monitor, and track motors, transformers, turbines, and other equipment that requires maintenance. Laserfiche stores the manuals for the equipment and allows TMPA engineers to access documentation from within Maximo quickly, upload missing documents, and prevent the addition of duplicate manuals.
