Contributors: Melissa Jenkins, IT Project Manager and Dwayne Campbell, CIO, City of Fayetteville, and Alexis Blue, Enterprise Account Manager, MCCi
The City of Fayetteville, North Carolina, provides a full range of municipal services that are valued by their customers and delivered by a dedicated workforce of constituents.
It didn’t take long for the City of Fayetteville to see the software have significant impacts on their enterprise. “Our previous city manager was looking for something to go as paperless as possible. We purchased Laserfiche in 2008, and we started with the City Clerks Office, Engineering, and our HR Department. Those departments were asking to digitize their paperwork as much as possible,” said Melissa Jenkins. “Now, all 16 departments use Laserfiche in some form or fashion!”
“For me, it’s about business value,” chimed in Dwayne Campbell. “The business value for us and the customer, as well as making sure we leverage all of the technology we have. When departments come to me with problems that they have, the first thing I do is go to our project managers and ask what do we currently have in house that we can leverage? Most often, we come to find out we have been using the Laserfiche platform. It meets the customers where they are. We don’t have to buy a new solution to fit the vendor.”
Gaining Buy-In from the Police Department & Forensics Unit to Adopt a Secure Records Storage Platform
Not everyone initially saw how beneficial Laserfiche could be in their department. “In the beginning, I was going around and ‘selling’ Laserfiche in our city, trying to get everyone to start using it. The Police Department was very reluctant; they didn’t trust it and didn’t think it was secure. But two months after my sales pitch, they had been keeping their cases on thumb drives, and someone lost their thumb drive! In addition to that, they were using access databases to keep their felony folders, and they were crashing. Because I’m their project manager, they called me and were desperately looking for a solution – I said, ’it’s Laserfiche!’,” Jenkins stated enthusiastically.
“I went over and did a demo, and I showed them that it’s very secure and that they could put their felony folders inside of Laserfiche. When I showed them how they could use security tags to make things every more secure, they completely bought into it. Now they are the biggest user in the city of Fayetteville. They’re always bringing ideas to me and asking how they can use it differently.”
After adopting Laserfiche, their Police Department contributed a significant win for The City of Fayetteville. “We have done several projects with them for our citizens. A good instance of this is the house check form. If someone is going on vacation or out of the state, they can actually fill out a form,” said Jenkins. “Once that form comes in, an officer will get assigned to go and monitor the home until they come back off vacation. That was a big win for the police department and the citizens.”
“We also did a request for service form for Forensics, and that was probably the largest form that we’ve done. It has a complex workflow as they took four forms for services and created one form that has worked out fantastically,” added Jenkins.
Implementing Business Process Automation (BPA) Citywide
You’d think with 16 departments using Laserfiche that training would be a hassle, but it’s a breeze. “Melissa does a lot of training, and these departments are self-sufficient – they can perform everyday activities and tasks within the system. Sure, they’ll come to IT for more complicated things, but we aren’t handling all of it. It’s not a complicated system where they have to depend on us to make things happen. They feel empowered to create their own success,” says Campbell.
“Inside of the departments, we have those that do a little bit more training,” Jenkins adds. “Where they’ll train the trainer. If they have a new form that they implement, they do the training themselves. Like with the forensics request form, one of the forensics techs trained all of the detectives on the form. I didn’t have to train anyone. It’s an effortless application to use.”
Streamlining Contract Routing Throughout the City
But the wins didn’t stop there. The City of Fayetteville was able to use Laserfiche to transform their organization completely. They shaved weeks of time that it took to approve contracts. “Melissa, I’m most proud of you for streamlining of contract routing throughout the city. That was enterprise-wide,” comments Campbell. “90% of our contracts are now routed through Laserfiche. That took the heat off me and prevented having contracts sitting in the IT department.”
“The customer knows how to locate the form – it’s intelligent routing! We work with the city manager and his office and have thresholds built in there so that if it’s $90,000 and below, a DCM can sign off on it, and if it’s above, the city manager can sign off on it. It’s been beneficial and [created] a huge gain in [our] efficiency. Before, it was an admin having to walk to 12 different departments to get signatures. Now, it’s entered, routed, and I get an email that lets me know I have contracts to fill out. I review it, sign it, and it goes to the next step, which may be [sent to] legal, budget, and so forth. That saved us tremendously,” says Campbell.
Yes, the process used to take three to four weeks to get a contract signed. We’ve cut that down to one to three days. A contract may take longer if there are legal ramifications to consider.
“Once a contract has gone through the routing process, and everyone has signed off giving their approval, it then goes into the content management area, and it’s archived. It’s available for everyone to see it. We used to have multiple contracts and several paper ones circling different offices, so we wouldn’t know what was signed. Now there’s only one contract, entered into the system, and we can go back and review it at any given time.”
Barcode & Archive Paper Records
What’s next for The City of Fayetteville? “The Deputy City Clerk has asked that we create a process to retrieve archived paper records. A department will fill out a form, then add the box number and content of the archived box, and we’ll create bar codes for these archived records so that all they’ll have to do is match the bar codes when retrieving,” says Jenkins.
MCCi's Consulting Services Eases Resource Constraints
While Fayetteville has had much success, they’ve had a little help along the way. “We chose to use MCCi’s consulting services because we had resource constraints. We were getting more requests than we could handle,” Jenkins admits. “When they called and said, ’hey, we have a solution,’ we jumped on it because we have more work than we can do ourselves. It was a great decision, and it works out perfectly, our users see a familiar face. It is genuinely an extended arm as if they are with us in house.”
“Not to mention that I love your support team, I know them by name,” adds Jenkins. “They’re very professional, accommodating. I’ve NEVER had an issue!” Campbell agrees. “We love the engagement we have with MCCi. It’s just a natural partnership. Success breeds success.”
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