For years, Madera County’s Request for Assistance (RFA) process, an internal workflow that routes department requests through County Counsel review, Admin and HR review, and department final review, ran on a legacy CRM platform that had simply outlived its usefulness. What started as a functional system had become a daily operational drag, and County staff knew it was time for a change.
Daily Detour: A Legacy System Holding the County Back
The old CRM was end of life, with limited vendor support and no clear path forward. It could not scale, could not integrate with modern tools, and required a disproportionate amount of staff time just to keep running. Beneath the surface, the bigger issue was process, not just platform.
Requests moved through manual, inconsistent approval workflows that leaned heavily on email and paper. Department staff had limited visibility into where a request stood at any given moment, and County Counsel lacked an efficient way to communicate status back to the departments that needed answers. The result was a process defined by processing delays, duplicated effort, and a persistent lack of transparency, exactly the kind of friction that slows down county government when residents and departments need answers fast.
About our Client
CLIENT NAME:
CHAMPION:
Kong Lee
IT Analyst II
SOLUTIONS:
The Game Changer: A Centralized, Automated Platform Built on Laserfiche
Rather than patch a failing system, Madera County partnered with MCCi to reimagine the RFA process from the ground up, built on the Laserfiche platform. The team worked across County Counsel and County departments to design a solution that matched how the County actually operates.
Laserfiche replaced scattered email chains and paper approvals with electronic forms and automated workflow routing. A centralized document repository gave every request a single source of truth, while improved security, tracking, and reporting brought long-overdue visibility to a process that previously ran on guesswork.
The rollout followed a disciplined path: solution design, workflow development, and thorough testing and training to make sure the new tools actually worked for the people using them every day.
The Results: Measurable Gains Across the Board
The transformation delivered results that are easy to see and easy to feel for the staff who touch this process every day.
- Legacy CRM retired, closing the door on an unsupported platform for good
- 100% digital submission process, eliminating paper-based approvals entirely
- Centralized document repository, replacing fragmented, hard-to-track files
- Automated workflow routing, replacing manual email routing with real-time tracking and visibility
- Faster turnaround times, cutting the processing delays that used to slow requests down
- Stronger collaboration between County departments and County Counsel, backed by improved auditability and transparency
What used to require manual routing, limited visibility, and long processing delays now moves through a structured, automated path: form submission, County Counsel review, Admin and HR review, department final review, and final storage to the repository. Every step is tracked, every request is visible, and nothing gets lost in an inbox.
The Vision: A Foundation for County-Wide Transformation
Madera County is not treating this as a finish line. The RFA process established a repeatable framework that other departments can build on, from digital form and workflow submissions to document approval routing, centralized document access, and broader business process automation.
Looking ahead, the County is focused on expanding automation further, exploring AI capabilities, increasing user adoption, and enhancing analytics and reporting to keep improving how it serves departments and residents alike. The team also identified clear lessons for the road ahead, including the importance of change management across departments, ongoing training and support, and continued process standardization as automation expands.
A Model for What's Possible
Madera County’s journey shows what happens when a legacy system that is holding an organization back gets replaced with a platform designed for how work actually happens. What began as a project to fix one broken workflow became the blueprint for how the County approaches digital transformation going forward.
Ready to modernize a process that is still running on paper and guesswork? MCCi can help you build the same kind of foundation Madera County did, one workflow at a time.