Contributor: Manager – Enterprise Content Management Systems & DBA Teams, Gopal Kanneganti of Loudoun County, Virginia
Loudoun County chose Laserfiche as their Content Services Platform over 10 years ago and Gopal reflects on their first process improvement. “We we did a project for human resources that was a lot of paper processes and rooms full of shelves with papers. They must keep employee records 25 years after the employees leaves the county, so it was becoming a nightmare. We went in, looked at their processes and scanned in the paperwork to Laserfiche, and built out workflows, implementing records management,” explained Kanneganti. The IT department has 200 employees managing their ECM team.
Electronic Forms with Workflow Improves the CASA Program
“We now build an electronic form for pretty much anything that comes to us. We say to our staff if there is a paper you’re using to collect information, bring it to us and we’ll create a form, and we’ll build business automation behind the form that can take care of your approval process or anything else you need.”
They’re creating electronic forms for everything, including simple ones that are time intensive. “Something as simple as a tuition reimbursement form was an intense paper-based process that had to touch many departments and could take up to 3-4 weeks to get paid after a form was submitted. Replacing it with a Laserfiche Form and Workflow cut down the processing time to a week or two at the most,” said Kanneganti.
The Parks and Recreation Department won the 2019 MCCi Excellence Award for their HR Onboarding Process. “Parks and Rec is one of our prime customers, they came onboard [with us] and embraced Laserfiche, and expanded the use in their department. Initially, they wanted to digitize their paper processes and day to day tasks. Then, we went on to help them with their childrens’ programs. Loudoun is the fastest-growing county in Virginia, they were bombarded with how to handle so many kids in CASA programs, or sports programs and they needed a lot of help.”
“If the kids go to summer programs or camps, the camp instructor would have to carry a box full of paper that had the kids health information, allergies and contact information. We converted that with Laserfiche, and now she carries an iPad with all of that information on the device,” stressed Kanneganti.
Software Integration for HR Onboarding
One of the challenges in their HR onboarding process was hiring several hundreds of employees at a time and bringing them onboard with CASA or any of their other various programs. “Hiring hundreds or more people at one time, delayed the hiring process but the school year won’t stop, a CASA instructor still has to be there the first day of school,” explained Kanneganti.
“We integrated Laserfiche with their current software and database and created a workflow that includes a Laserfiche Form that allowed them to fill out the form when they want to hire someone and then the form goes through the approval process and documents are traveling with that form. Once everything is complete within the department then the information is sent to HR. That automation cut the entire process from weeks to days. It’s a big relief to the department to be hiring the people they need on time, and they are there to help their citizens.”
Gopal shared what he would say to others thinking about implementing Laserfiche. “It’s going to improve your day to day process, make your employees happier, and save you time and money in digitizing your paper process. Every department that uses Laserfiche in our county praises it.”
