Meet the Client
Kennewick School District serves over 19,000 students across 33 schools in Southwest Washington. The district sits in the heart of the Columbia Basin, where agriculture and energy production meet. Over the past decade, rapid enrollment growth forced KSD to examine how they work. Systems Analysts Holly Veach and Dave Croney knew that outdated paper processes couldn’t scale with the district’s expansion. Their mission? Find a way to serve more students without drowning in paperwork.
Daily Detour: When growth outpaces your systems
Two weeks for a bus request shouldn’t be the norm
Paper dominated everything at Kennewick School District. Field trip requests moved between buildings in physical envelopes. Transportation forms required multiple signatures across different departments. Staff expense reports involved taping receipts to paper, hand-writing calculations, and waiting for approvers to find time between meetings.
“Everyone that went on a field trip would need to fill out all these different forms that had to be approved. We had a tremendous amount of paper that flowed between different buildings and departments, but no way of tracking it,” Dave explained.
The expense reimbursement process was equally painful. Employees filled out paper forms by hand. They calculated their own totals. Building secretaries forwarded paperwork downtown. Accounts Payable staff recalculated everything manually. Staff waited weeks for reimbursement checks because approvals sat on desks. The accounting team spent hours on repetitive data entry instead of analyzing budgets or supporting programs.
Bus trip approvals took two weeks. Employees waited even longer for expense reimbursements. Nobody could track where forms were in the approval chain. Manual calculations introduced errors that required additional time to fix. The district didn’t need more staff to handle the paperwork. They needed a better way to work.
About our Client
CLIENT NAME:
CHAMPION:
Holly Veach
Dave Croney
System Analysts
POPULATION:
33 School sites and est. 19,000 students
SOLUTIONS:
The Solution: Smart Forms, Smarter Workflows
Start small, think big, then scale fast
Dave and Holly chose Laserfiche as their enterprise content management partner. However, they didn’t try to digitize everything at once. Their strategy was intentional. Start with one department that had clear pain points. Prove the concept. Build champions. Then scale across the organization.
Transportation was the first target. Dave planned to replace a single form in the bus trip request process. The superintendent saw bigger potential. “The superintendent says, ‘Well, Dave, that’s nice, but why don’t you start with the travel request form because all the information for this bus trip comes from that form?’ That moment made our superintendent our champion. From that point forward, he was presenting his vision of being able to use these products to streamline our operations, and now you got the backing from the top guy!”
Buy-in from leadership mattered. Yet front-line staff support proved equally critical. Dave worked directly with Transportation Department employees throughout the design process. “As you work with them, let them sign off on the products and make sure that every step of the way you’re doing what they want. They turn into converts quickly, and suddenly they become your champions.”
The Laserfiche platform delivered key capabilities the district needed:
- Electronic forms that auto-populated employee data
- Automated workflows that routed approvals to the right people
- Document management that eliminated filing cabinets
- Secure storage with role-based access controls
- API integrations with HR, payroll, and student information systems
Electronic expense reports became a showcase for efficiency gains. Instead of tape and paper, staff simply entered their information once. The system pulled employee details from existing databases. Workflow automation sent forms to approvers instantly. Accounts Payable received accurate data without manual recalculation. Reimbursements hit bank accounts faster.
The Results: Time, Money, and Momentum
When staff see the difference, they become believers
Field trip approvals dropped from two weeks to one day. That single improvement changed how teachers plan learning experiences. Staff reimbursements accelerated because digital workflows don’t sit on desks waiting for signatures. The accounting team stopped recalculating expense totals manually, freeing them for higher-value work.
“Staff is no longer waiting for their approvers to sign off on a paper form. It’s not sitting around on someone’s desk,” Holly said. “They’re getting money in their bank accounts faster; these are real-life experiences that enable them to see the benefits of having this electronic process.”
Error rates dropped significantly. When forms auto-populate data and calculate totals automatically, human mistakes decrease. “When you implement something like this, it takes away repetitive work that has the potential to introduce a lot of errors,” Dave explained. “You free up that person to do something more interesting, and they’re a lot more productive.”
The efficiency gains were so substantial that when an accounting position became vacant, the district didn’t need to backfill it. Not because of layoffs, but because the remaining team could handle the work efficiently.
Word spread across departments. As each process went digital, more staff requested help digitizing their workflows. Holly and Dave now maintain a project list that grows regularly. “Little by little, as we rolled over forms from paper to digital, people became more comfortable with it,” Holly said. “People saw how the benefits and time savings made a huge difference.”
Growth means time to replace outdated processes
Digitization affects multiple departments, processes, and stakeholders. Dave and Holly knew that they needed a strategic approach to avoid becoming disorganized, overwhelming, or ineffective.
What's Next: Continuous Improvement
Integration is where the real magic happens
The district has identified its next frontier: deeper system integration. “We want more integration with our other systems, such as the student information system, the HR system, and the payroll system,” Dave explained. “Laserfiche is a great tool for us to be able to pull it all together from these various systems and get some good data out of it. We really hate the idea of having them to enter information that we already have about them.”
Future integrations will auto-populate forms with just an employee ID and the last four digits of a Social Security number. The system performs a lookup, fills in all required information, then removes the Social Security digits for security. “Then, the last part of their social will disappear for security reasons. At that point, they’re all set. They enter in a little bit of information, and the form will auto-fill whatever we need it to,” Holly said.
When you get stuck, expert help shouldn’t require jumping through hoops
Kennewick School District credits much of their success to accessible Laserfiche training and responsive support. “Laserfiche is so easy to learn and very user-friendly. It’s an excellent system for someone without a technical background,” Holly said.
Both Holly and Dave leverage multiple learning resources. Online training from their Laserfiche solution provider helps them develop new skills. Annual Laserfiche conferences provide exposure to advanced techniques. Internal collaboration keeps them building on each other’s expertise. “The level of complexity that we’ve gone to from our first form is just phenomenal. That comes from the ease of use within the system, the training that we’re able to get online, as well as at Empower, and the teamwork that we have,” Dave added.
Support quality matters when systems go live and real people depend on them. “I spend a lot of time troubleshooting,” Dave said. “If there’s an issue, I get to contact MCCi support. They’re awesome. Every time you contact them, you don’t have to go through tier one support, and then elevate it to tier two. The person you get on the phone can [typically] answer your questions and resolve the issue for you right there. You often get a solution on your first call.”
Direct access to knowledgeable Laserfiche support technicians eliminated the frustration of escalation processes. Problems get solved quickly. Staff stay productive. Projects keep moving forward.