Meet the City of Deer Park, Texas
Fayetteville, Arkansas, serves over 90,000 residents and is home to the University of Arkansas. That means constant growth, high rental turnover, and daily demands on City systems. With close to 50% of housing stock in rentals, IT Director Keith Macedo and his team needed document management that could keep pace.
Second only to Little Rock in size, Fayetteville offers large-city resources while maintaining its unique heritage. The challenge? Growth creates operational complexity. Each new resident interaction, each service request, each regulatory requirement adds pressure to already stretched systems.
Most cities respond by adding software. Fayetteville chose differently.
Daily Detour: Technology gaps created citizen friction
The City implemented Laserfiche to fill a strategic gap in 2016. Rather than replacing existing software each time a need arose, they bridged functionality gaps across departments. Today, the platform supports nearly every City department.
Staff couldn’t process online utility applications or deposits. Police officers lost 1,000+ hours annually on redundant reporting. Short-term rental owners had no way to register or pay taxes. Landlord contact information remained scattered and difficult to access.
Keith Macedo saw the pattern. “We had robust software, but it didn’t fill every specific need,” he explained. Each gap tempted the City toward another software purchase, another integration challenge.
In a college town where half the housing turns over regularly, utility connections happen constantly. Before Laserfiche, each application required paper forms and in-person visits. Police systems couldn’t talk to each other. Information got entered multiple times.
The real innovation? Training department staff to recognize opportunities on their own. When enterprise applications fall short, teams know how to fill the void.
About our Client
CLIENT NAME:
CHAMPION:
Keith Macedo
Chief of Staff
POPULATION:
est. 103,135 residents
SOLUTIONS:
The Solution: Strategic implementation fills functionality voids
Working with MCCi consultants and implementation experts, Fayetteville deployed Laserfiche forms and workflows to address specific pain points. The key? Training department staff to recognize where Laserfiche could bridge gaps in their primary applications.
The IT team built a strong business systems group that helps other departments spot opportunities. This approach required investment in people, not just technology. Staff learned to ask “how can our existing platform solve this?” instead of “what software do we need?”
The payoff came quickly. Staff now use Laserfiche to track non-metered water usage. A single form replaced complex police reporting, saving an estimated 1,000 hours annually. The City processes utility applications and deposits online, eliminating foot traffic by 80% and saving close to 900,000 sheets of paper each year.
During the pandemic, Fayetteville used Laserfiche to manage COVID vaccine incentive payments. Staff from accounting, internal audits, and utility billing collaborated to build a solution in days. Laserfiche handled documentation, supported remote processing, and leveraged existing infrastructure. Result: 2,581 applications processed and 1,709 payments issued.
When the City Council required landlord registration, the team developed a Laserfiche form and custom web view for resident searches. Over 900 landlords registered through the new system. Residents now find landlord contacts instantly instead of searching through scattered records.
For short-term rentals, Laserfiche processed 300+ applications while the development services software added native functionality. The platform served as a bridge, keeping the City compliant without rushing into permanent solutions. The platform also managed 42 nonprofit grant applications, providing structured review and single-source tracking for approved funding.
The Results: Practical efficiency gains
The City of Fayetteville earned MCCi’s 2021 Process Improvement Excellence Award for pandemic response using online request forms. Their approach demonstrates how one flexible platform fills multiple gaps without bloating the technology stack.
“Laserfiche a great tool to augment the applications you have, or you can use it as a standalone.” —Keith Macedo
Current integrations include Tyler New World ERP and Central Square EAM (Lucity). Future plans include public safety applications and Microsoft Teams integration. The platform handles everything from internal business processes to public-facing citizen services.
Most software systems offer thousands of features. Organizations typically use a fraction of them. Fayetteville’s strategy: identify gaps, train staff to spot opportunities, and deploy targeted solutions through their existing content services platform.
The approach works because it builds capability rather than creating a dependency. Rather than relying on vendors to solve every problem, Fayetteville developed internal expertise. Staff know their workflows better than any consultant. They see inefficiencies as they happen. Now they have tools and training to fix them.
This matters for budget conversations, too. When departments request new software, IT can ask better questions. Does the existing platform already handle this? Can we train someone to build it? What gaps remain after we maximize current tools?
Sometimes new software makes sense. But Fayetteville now makes those decisions from strength, not desperation. They know what their platform can do. They know what it cannot do. The difference saves money, reduces complexity, and delivers results faster.
Laserfiche Processes
Get more good days done with Laserfiche’s complete toolset for securing documents, automating repetitive tasks, and meeting compliance requirements.
With the help of MCCi consultants, engineers, and implementation experts, the City of Fayetteville replaced most enterprise applications, including ERP, development services, work order/asset management, document imaging, fleet/shop, public safety, and recreation. In some instances, Laserfiche is a gap filler to solve business problems, whether internal business processes or public facing. However, more often today, it is fully integrated with critical business apps such as Tyler New World ERP and Central Square EAM (Lucity). In addition, they have plans to implement it with public safety applications in the future.
According to Keith Macedo, Information Technology Director for the City of Fayetteville, success with Laserfiche starts with understanding the long-term benefits.
“People have asked me, what makes the use of Laserfiche successful? And I think you need to have a commitment to it. It’s not a single person. We have a team of people who support Laserfiche, but then you expand that. We’ve taught other departments how they can expand their knowledge and use of Laserfiche forms. Then, if you have somebody who supports a major application and sees a lack of functionality in that application, they know what Laserfiche can do. They can use Laserfiche to support it.” —Keith Macedo, Information Technology Director for the City of Fayetteville, AR
The IT department has a strong business systems team that works with other departments to implement technology to improve daily operations. For example, they’ve used Laserfiche to implement a form, enabling tracking of the City’s use of non-metered water. They also developed a single form for police officers to submit daily deports, saving an estimated 1,000 hours of work a year.
Before Laserfiche, the City could not process online utility applications or deposits, which is significant in a college town. In addition, due to the presence of the University of Arkansas, 50% of Fayetteville residential real estate is rentals, resulting in a large volume of residents moving in, moving out, and paying deposits. Now, a staff member estimated saving close to 900,000 pieces of paper a year. Additionally, it decreased foot traffic in the department by 80%.
In recent years, the Fayetteville City Council passed an ordinance on utilizing CARES funding, incentivizing residents who live or work in Fayetteville to obtain a COVID vaccine. City IT staff needed a system with multiple levels of approval to process incentive payments that also allowed for a detailed archive in the event of an audit. To accomplish this, IT staff led a team with staff members from accounting, internal audits, and utility billing.
They utilized Laserfiche as a gap filler to achieve this task in three major ways:
- Documentation – to archive all approvals and documents in Laserfiche.
- Support Remote Workforce – to allow City staff to process applications in the office or remotely.
- Minimize Administrative Cost – to leverage existing Laserfiche investment.
As a result, the City streamlined its approval process, processed 2,581 applications, and issued 1,709 incentive payments.
Due to the demand for rental properties, many residents in Fayetteville need an easy way to identify their landlord’s name and contact information. Last year, the Fayetteville City Council passed Ordinance 120.02, which requires landlords owning more than 2 residential rental properties within the City to designate a representative as a point of contact for renters and their neighbors. They must also provide the representative’s contact information online.
The City needed an effective way to organize information and direct residents to the right contact, so they again turned to Laserfiche. The MCCi team helped them develop a form to collect landlord information and a custom web view to search that database. To date, 900+ landlords have registered, making it much easier for residents to access this key information.
Finally, the Fayetteville City Council passed an ordinance requiring short-term rentals to apply, obtain a business license, and pay HMR taxes. City staff leveraged Laserfiche Forms and Workflow to develop an online, public form for short-term rentals, allowing them to request short-term rental business licenses. The City utilized the form for about 12 months until their development services software added the functionality, and they had time to test/configure short-term rentals. As a result of using Laserfiche, they were able to receive and process over 300 applications.