While Keith Macedo has spent his entire career in local government and the last six years in his current position, he says he is not a typical IT director.
Reaching those goals has included the innovative use of Laserfiche technology to improve processes throughout the departments he serves for the City of Fayetteville.
“A lot of people think of Laserfiche as a document management system, but it’s really not. It’s so much more than that. We look at Laserfiche as a gap filler. We’re a university town, and 50% of our homes are rentals, so that means the local government provides many services that we’re starting and stopping. We estimated in our first year after we transitioned to Laserfiche for our utility applications, we saved over 300,000 pages of paper.
I think I’m probably one of the least technical IT directors you’ll meet. I’ve tried to break the mold of IT. I think IT has two goals: to improve the efficiency of employees, and to improve the type of services we provide, whether it’s our residents, our businesses or our community."
The move also prepared them for the unforeseen challenges related to COVID and the need to access information remotely.
“When somebody submitted an online utility application, it went to a queue, and anyone could work on that, whether they were in the office or working remotely. It was really something to watch how we used Laserfiche to tackle the issues and struggles we had to deal with related to the pandemic.”
Keith said that deciding on which technology to choose for improving process efficiency starts with relationships.
“We try to develop a tight relationship with every department, so when technology needs come up, we’re usually already in the conversation. We want them to know we are always available to discuss challenges they are faced with and want to enable technology to help run operations. Our goal is to be a trusted source.”
At least once a week someone comes into my office and says, ‘Hey I saw this, maybe we can use Laserfiche for that!’ The majority of the time the answer is yes. We have a lot of internal knowledge but it often takes support and that is what MCCI provides us. We have a great relationship that makes a real difference.
