Introduction
We’re thrilled to introduce the I.T. Administrator, Wesley Funderberg, from The City of Aiken, South Carolina, and hear from him on how implementing Laserfiche transformed their business practices.
About The City of Aiken Government
Aiken resides in western South Carolina. With a population of roughly 30,000 people, the municipality works with its citizens to preserve and improve the quality of life in the City of Aiken.
The Problem
Laserfiche transformed the way our organization works.
Before automation, we used several different methods of keeping track of data.
Some of those methods were pad and paper, using a card catalog system as well as spending time leaving and returning to the office if there was an error, to print activity reports, for research, or to photocopy documents. By implementing Laserfiche we were able to save countless hours, paper, and ink.
Staff can now quickly pull up information that was never available to them out in the field. It has already shown itself as invaluable in emergency water situations when crews need to immediately know where the main valves are located.
Additionally, we were able to reduce the in-person/call requests of our Finance Online Water Request System by 75% and improve the customer service for our vendors and constituents.
Which applications are integrated with Laserfiche?
We integrated ESRI ArcGIS which provides rest services to city GIS layers and gives us the ability to perform various attributes and spatial lookups in Laserfiche, such as address information, parcel layers, water districts and more.
In addition, ESRI ArcMap was integrated to allow the Laserfiche desktop user to attach Laserfiche shortcuts, including Laserfiche Documents and Search Queries to GIS Layers.
The Solution
Describe how Laserfiche’s features and functionality play a significant role within your organization.
- The Templates/Field feature of Laserfiche has allowed us to create robust reports, decrease the amount of time researching by improving search results, and gives us the opportunity to create feature-rich applications.
- The .NET/JavaScript feature has enabled us to integrate 3rd party applications, which cuts down on the time it takes to input various data requirements.
- Laserfiche Forms Authorize .Net Payment Module has proven to be highly successful within its first month of use and kickstarted the process for us to begin receiving a return on our investment.
Please share specific business process management improvements that your organization experiences.
There are three main improvements that we’ve seen occur within our organization:
- The processing time allowing citizens to request a water turn on was greatly improved by moving the process online, using Laserfiche Forms. By integrating ArcGIS rest services into the online form, it allowed us to cut down on the amount of out of city requests.
- The ability to attach Laserfiche Documents/Search Queries into ArcMap cut down on the number of calls back into the office and increased rapid decision making and responses out in the field.
- The process of property code activity reporting was improved drastically. This gives the administration and council the knowledge they need to pass better legislation.
Share specific savings organization-wide do you link directly to using Laserfiche? How do you quantify your organization’s return on investment?
We saved so much when it comes to paper and ink cost, employee time and research time. We were able to reduce the in-person/call requests of our Finance Online Water Request System by 75%.
The Future
What plans do you have for Laserfiche within your organization?
We’d like to:
- Automate entirely our city’s Well Reporting process
- Automate and streamline the entire permitting application process
- Incorporate Laserfiche Forms payment module into existing documents
What advice would you give someone just starting out with Laserfiche?
- Keep a strong focus on Laserfiche Templates for documents and folders.
- Understand the power of searching along with using template fields.
