A Quarter Saved is Peace of Mind Earned

Laserfiche helps Olmsted and Associates save 25% in processing costs while adding long-term risk management and client data security value

When Olmsted & Associates, a CPA firm based in Fountain Valley, CA, went looking for an enterprise content management system in 2006, its needs were simple: “We needed a program that would allow us to scan multiple sizes and types of documents and then facilitate our search for them later. Security and retention periods were a concern as well,” says Tax Administrator Fernando Rocha. “Basically, we needed to have everything in one place so whomever needed to use it, could.”

Laserfiche was a name Olmsted’s partners were aware other accounting firms were using. And, says firm president Bernie Olmsted, with good reason. “There are a million document management systems out there, but nobody has the security ratings Laserfiche has in terms of being DoD 5015.2-certified,” she says.

Allen Adjamian of Laserfiche reseller Adjamian Affiliated was called to demonstrate how Laserfiche could lighten the firm’s paperwork load. Adjamian showed how Laserfiche could be integrated with the firm’s Lacerte tax software and other accounting software programs to create a central storage repository for the entire firm’s paperwork in a way that all but eliminated printing—even scanning.

Rocha says his fellow Olmsted staffers were particularly impressed by how user-friendly Laserfiche was, because it “had the look and feel of Windows and search engines we were used to using.” Another plus, he adds, was the comprehensive single solution Laserfiche offered. “Other programs you had to buy more products to get to that level of functionality. Laserfiche suited our needs right out of the box.”

Olmsted herself notes that even with all its functionality, Laserfiche offered a focus. “We looked at a lot of systems where the document management component was usually one component in this canned system,” she says. “What stood out about Laserfiche was that it was a stand-alone program that focused on a single, separate function that provided a higher level of security.”

The firm purchased enterprise content management with Web Access to serve staff internally and remotely, as well as its clients. Implementation began in late 2006 with a backlog conversion of seven years’ worth of paper files. Adjamian and fellow solutions consultant Kristina Yassi worked with Rocha and Olmsted’s staff to set up templates and document types to establish the file structure that, with some enhancements, the firm still uses today. “Allen and Kristina helped us a design a folder and subfolder structure that allowed us get started scanning our documents right away,” Rocha recalls. “We’ve been able to improve on it since then, which is actually something we’ve come to appreciate about Laserfiche: It’s flexible enough to grow with us, without making a big project out of it.”

The impact of using ECM was immediate. “A lot of the time when we complete a project, we have to make associated information almost immediately available to meet deadlines and client demands. Once things are in Laserfiche, we can make that data readily available through e-mail or Web Access,” Rocha says.

A big time- and resource-saver, he says, is the ability to print directly to Laserfiche from the firm’s Lacerte tax software. “Printing to Laserfiche from Lacerte takes about 10 to 15 seconds for about 40 pages. There is no need to print, prep and scan paper copies for review, whether it’s for managers or staff. They go directly to Laserfiche to review it,” Rocha explains. “This allows us to move tax returns through the office for input and review without printing out any pages, which also saves time and money.”

This saves time making changes to tax returns and statements, Rocha says. “Whereas before we would have to recycle the old version and reprint the new one and file it, now we just delete it in Laserfiche and re-print/download to Laserfiche. It’s also very convenient that we don’t need to go track down the client’s file to review data, because it’s already in Laserfiche.”

Rocha also says that Laserfiche’s interoperability with other programs and file types has brought efficiency and convenience to other business processes. “We transfer all our disparate types of data and document types into Laserfiche—QuickBooks, PDF documents, and Excel,” he says. “We can print directly to Laserfiche, save-to, or just drag-and-drop it. It’s that easy.”

For her part, Olmsted says the Laserfiche system inspired rapid adoption for its ease of use, but again, its focus of use. “Laserfiche feels like an independent program in that it’s this standalone entity that’s open to all of the types of files we work with. Our staff and customers have adopted it really well.”

The ultimate customer service, she says, is Laserfiche’s DoD 5015.2-certified security. “It can take some time to get people used to not working with paper, but for us it’s the only way to secure information moving forward by making sure you don’t have sensitive information laying around the office. Our clients look to us as their accounting firm to secure their information at the highest level,” she says.

At the same time, Olmsted sees Laserfiche making her business more agile and responsive to staff and clients alike. “Laserfiche provides us a lot of mobility. Auditors going out in the field can scan in documents and access company files. We have everybody reviewing tax returns online as well.”

Now, four years since implementing ECM, the firm is seeing its return on investment (ROI) from regained staff time and cutting overhead costs. “I can say we save about 25% across the board, as far what it takes us to process paperwork now,” Rocha says.

And Rocha says that Olmsted & Associates has found a new way to work. “With Laserfiche we’ve found a document management system that offers us control in terms of securing and centralizing information, but also the flexibility to handle all kinds of content and make it readily available to our staff and clients securely and conveniently.”

That, Olmsted says, has given her firm a competitive edge. “The only way to move forward is to get your efficiency up and your costs down. For us, Laserfiche has been a big part of that.”

Eighteen Laserfiche ECM Clients Named Most Advanced Digital Counties in America

Charles County, MD, Hanover County, VA, and Chesterfield County, VA, take top honors

LONG BEACH, CA - August 10, 2010— Enterprise content management company Laserfiche is proud to congratulate 18 of its customers for being named among the most advanced digital counties in 2010 by the Center for Digital Government and Digital Communities magazine. Charles County, MD, Hanover County, VA, and Chesterfield County, VA, took top honors in three of the four population categories.

In years past, entrants were required only to submit an inventory of the cutting-edge technologies they used; in 2010, applicants were asked to explain how their technologies support employees and citizens alike. Collaboration, transparency and efficiency were three benefits that particularly impressed this year’s judges.

“Across the United States, county governments are using enterprise content management (ECM) solutions to improve their ability to cost-effectively deliver valuable services to citizens,” said Nien-Ling Wacker, Laserfiche president and CEO. “We are very proud that nearly half of this year’s top digital counties use ECM to help them achieve their goals.”

Ten top-ranking cities in the four following population categories were selected: 250,000+, 125,000-249,999, 75,000-124,999, and 30,000-74,999. The ECM customers that made the list include:

Charles County, MD (category winner)

Hanover County, VA (category winner)

Chesterfield County, VA (category winner)

Nevada County, CA

Skagit County, WA

Albemarle County, VA

Napa County, CA

Cumberland County, PA

Gaston County, NC

Roanoke County, VA

Mohave County, AZ

Loudoun County, VA

Dutchess County, NY

Placer County, CA

Guilford County, NC

King County, WA

Fairfax County, VA

Orange County, CA

The cities were chosen from the results of the eighth annual Digital Counties Survey, which examines how America’s counties use technology to improve service delivery.

Laserfiche creates simple and elegant enterprise content management (ECM) solutions that help organizations run smarter. Since 1987, more than 28,000 organizations worldwide—including federal, state and local government agencies and Fortune 1000 companies—have used Laserfiche software to streamline document, records and business process management.

The Laserfiche ECM system is designed to give IT managers central control over their information infrastructure, including standards, security and auditing, while still offering business units the flexibility to respond quickly to changing conditions. The Laserfiche product suite is built upon Microsoft® technologies to simplify system administration, supports Microsoft SQL and Oracle® platforms and features a seamless integration with Microsoft Office® applications and a two-way integration with SharePoint®.

Laserfiche distributes its software through a worldwide network of value-added resellers (VARs), who tailor solutions to clients’ individual needs. The Laserfiche VAR program has received the Five-Star Rating fromComputer Reseller News/VARBusiness magazine.

It’s 2 AM – Do You Know Where Your Compliance Is?

Gitterman & Associates Wealth Management, LLC, looks to Laserfiche for user-friendly, compliance-savvy Enterprise Content Management

Since it was founded in 1990, Gitterman & Associates Wealth Management, LLC has grown from a five-person Financial Firm to a dually-registered firm with 25 employees handling $225M AUM on its RIA side and over $400M AUM on its broker-dealer side. With this growth came the need to manage more client information and business records—and, now as a dually registered RIA/B-D, to meet separate compliance standards for both FINRA and the SEC.

Since implementing a Laserfiche Avante Enterprise Content Management system earlier this year, Gitterman & Associates is not only saving the staff and storage costs of working with paper, the firm is using Laserfiche to proactively manage its information to make compliance simpler, easier and more efficient. “Laserfiche is as user-friendly as it says it is, but it has the flexibility to separate our information to meet our compliance needs as both an RIA and a broker-dealer,” says Jeffrey Gitterman, founder and CEO. “No other company or solution we looked at did that.”

Declaring Independence from Its B-D – and its ECM

Laserfiche was not the firm’s first ECM solution—but it was its first successful one. “Two years ago, our broker-dealer at the time came to us as one of their two branch offices in the whole country they were going to let beta test their document management system. I jumped on it, thinking this has got to be better than having a file clerk in a room all day,” recalls Marcy Gitterman, director of IT & HR.

Trouble was, with no folder hierarchy and searching limited only to template fields, the legacy system was creating as many problems as it was meant to solve. “It was just a really cumbersome program to use,” she says. As the firm prepared to switch broker-dealers to Fidelity, only one of 19 staff had actually scanned their paperwork into the system. Gitterman was frustrated, but optimistic. “I knew there had to be something else out there that would work,” she says.

The firm’s principals, meanwhile, just wanted something people would actually use. “At one point, we were just talking about scanning everything to PDF ourselves and storing it on a hard drive, but I was really against that,” Gitterman says. “We needed something a lot more robust—the fact that PDFs can be altered wouldn’t help with security or compliance.”

Laserfiche, turns out, was one of the ECM providers on Fidelity’s short list of recommended solutions. Jeffrey Gitterman was aware of Laserfiche from local FPA chapter meetings, as well as from hearing about it from colleagues who used it. “It’s just a name we kept hearing a lot,” he says. When Zaheer Master, president of Laserfiche reseller Accelerated Information Systems, presented a Laserfiche solution tailored to the firm’s dual registry, Gitterman knew he was working with the right company—and that he’d actually use the software.

“I avoid technology like the plague, so ease of use was for me the number one priority. How easily can our new employees use it? How easy is it for me to use it?” Gitterman says. “Laserfiche could take our paper filing system—the one we’ve been using successfully since 1996—and transpose it to a Windows-type environment we were comfortable with.

“But what really impressed us about Laserfiche was the way our reseller presented it. The other solutions we looked at were totally reactionary—they just said ‘this is how you get rid of paper.’ Our reseller presented Laserfiche in a way that said, ‘Okay, now that your information’s automated, here’s how you’ll need to set this up to get the most out of it and here’s how you do it,’” he adds.

Implementation took place over two months. Says Master, “We showed them how they needed to separate the RIA side of their business from the B-D side for FINRA and SEC compliance. We also showed them how using metadata, you could set up a template field search with a cut-off date or destruction date to easily enforce a retention policy. I think the important thing to realize with ECM is that just because it’s easy to keep everything, doesn’t mean you necessarily want to.”

The space saving alone, Marcy says, was a relief. “We look at the hundreds of square feet we’d been devoting to our file room—it just gets crazy. And half of those files you’ll never see, but you have to keep for compliance,” she says. “Now we get our space back and now all we have to do is shoot something through the scanner so we don’t have to touch it again. It’s that simple.”

The flexibility to segregate information and customize user access to certain folders was not only effective, she says, it was easy. “In the old system, we would have to hire a support person to do that. Now we can set up permissions to assign access,” Gitterman says. “We use Laserfiche for client files, HR files, benefits, payroll, you name it, so the ability to lock down some files versus other files is really helpful.”

She adds, “Laserfiche doesn’t just say it’s user-friendly, it is.”

Automated Compliance – Even at 2 AM

While having more accessible information is a benefit, Gitterman & Associates have also realized that automated information is more useful information. “We do a lot of our compliance right in Laserfiche,” Marcy says. “Instead of our reps having to make copies of client correspondence, they scan them in and it’s automatically submitted to our Chief Compliance Officer in a folder only they have access to. Then we set up a stamping process so the compliance officer can tell the rep that it’s been approved.”

This automation has paid off in faster service for financial advisors. “One of the nice things is that if our CCO is on the road, it’s not like it has to wait a week if it’s something that needs to be pre-approved. He doesn’t have to look for a fax machine or find time to respond during business hours, he can just log into Laserfiche at 2 AM.”

For his part, Jeffrey agrees. “Laserfiche is a huge help from a compliance side.”

But Gitterman says it’s the little things that make using Laserfiche an effective part of everyday business. “The fact that I can redact a line in a memo, and then send it in a secure e-mail—these are the kinds of things I like. I don’t have to ask someone how to do it, I can just do it.”

He sees the potential for Laserfiche to make audits more hassle-free. “I just went through six months of FINRA audits and I can tell you it was painful. They basically put me out of business for six months. If we had already had Laserfiche, it wouldn’t have been a tenth of the nightmare it was,” he says. “Now that we have Laserfiche, even though an auditor can come and say they want to see incoming correspondence from a certain date range, we can have everything for them in 30 seconds. That’s going to be huge for us.”

Marcy says now that the firm is enjoying its first taste of content management efficiency, she is eager to see what Workflow can do to automate business process management. “Right now our CRM integrates with our e-mail system—I’d like to see it integrated with Laserfiche as well,” she says. “And our internal processing department will be able to automatically route documents to our principals to approve from anywhere, instead of having them wait in a folder on a desk—that’ll be nice.”

As nice, says Jeffrey, is that the Gitterman & Associates Wealth Management has found an ECM system that’s finally living up to its potential—and uncovering new potential in the process(es). “Of all the new software we’ve gotten in the last few months, this is everyone’s favorite,” he says. “Laserfiche did what it promised to do. None of the other software did.”

Laserfiche Supports Launch of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010

Works with SharePoint Server 2010 to enable Transactional Content Management

Laserfiche is pleased to announce that it is supporting the Microsoft® SharePoint® Server 2010 launch wave by sponsoring a number of Microsoft Solution Days in both the U.S. and Hong Kong. As a U.S.-Managed Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Laserfiche will showcase its support for SharePoint Server 2010 at these events.

Laserfiche’s support for SharePoint Server 2010 maximizes the strengths of both systems. SharePoint Server 2010 provides a unified business collaboration platform, while Laserfiche provides document imaging and turnkey transactional enterprise content management for core business processes, including:

• Accounts payable
• Case management
• Contract management
• HR onboarding
• Many more processes

“Adding Laserfiche to SharePoint Server 2010 helps accelerate deployment, simplify workflow design and minimize the need for customization and development,” said Meera Mehta, director of SharePoint Partner Marketing at Microsoft Corp. “It offers customers an easy way to achieve enhanced productivity using SharePoint Server 2010.”

“Using Laserfiche with SharePoint Server 2010 makes organizations more agile,” said Tom Wayman, vice president of product strategy at Laserfiche. “We’re pleased to support the SharePoint Server 2010 launch and provide Microsoft customers with the means to easily manage transactional content within their SharePoint sites.”

ECM creates simple and elegant enterprise content management (ECM) solutions that help organizations run smarter. Since 1987, more than 28,000 organizations worldwide—including federal, state and local government agencies and Fortune 1000 companies—have used Laserfiche software to streamline document, records and business process management.

The ECM system is designed to give IT managers central control over their information infrastructure, including standards, security and auditing, while still offering business units the flexibility to respond quickly to changing conditions. The Laserfiche product suite is built upon Microsoft technologies to simplify system administration, and it supports the Microsoft SQL platform, Microsoft Office applications, and SharePoint Server.

5 Ways to Ensure Healthy Investment Returns With Enterprise Content Management Solutions

If you are thinking of whether to go for ecm or not, here are five benefits that will help you in making the right decision.

Business Assessment:

Enterprise Content Management or ECM should be implemented to help businesses achieve overall targets. Every organization wishes to operate under minimal costs and maximum profit range. There are four key drivers that form as the decision ground for a company in ECM adoption: improvised customer service, reduced cost, ensuring continuity in business and regulatory compliance. For a business, thorough assessment on all these fronts is necessary before deciding on ECM. Success in every vertical can be identified by measuring business benefits.

Assessing the Technological Front:

Businesses should initiate a thorough technology assessment to list out what they have currently and what more is required to meet business goals. The target is to find the existing gap between current practices and future trends and then working towards mending that gap.

Expert Assistance:

Not all the system integrators can give you desired results. It is therefore necessary to look out for the experts in the field. The technical professional that you have selected must exhibit correct knowledge from all the decisions he or she undertakes. Commitment to work as the partner to the lifecycle of the enterprise content management system is necessary.

Choose your vendors carefully

Since vendors work in conjunction with your company’s overall objectives, their selection must be done with great care. A wrong selection can lead company’s ECM ambitions to a dead end. Consider financial liability, usability, cost-benefit analysis and scalability of the situation before hiring the vendor.

Demand Proof of Handling

Before finalising on the system integrator, let the person demonstrate his skills on the recommended software and hardware. Their ease of usability will give you an idea of their knowledge in the subject. Generally, the vendors offer clients a time period to try out their program which will enable you to try the product’s functionality before making the purchase decision.

Enterprise Content Management

As a company, everyone requires to manage some sort of data for timely usage. There are various options through which this data can be stored and compiled into the machines. One way is to take a backup at the end of day and store the information at a secured location. This can become quite tedious and risky if the data is huge and the location of the server is far away. The other more professional and secure way is ECM or enterprise content management. ECM enables organizations to handle any sort of information with ease and speed. It delivers great promise to the companies whose offices are located in different cities and in different continents.

ECM or enterprise content management uses a wide array of technologies and components in order to deliver expert solutions to any organizations’ problems. These components can be stand-alone systems that do the work instead of an enterprise-based system. ECM helps in managing, controlling, utilizing, and sharing of crucial data and hence streamlines the whole business process of an organization. It works like a dedicated network in the background that collects whole lot of information and delivers the same information whenever asked for by the end user.

ECM thus integrates organizations applications in a very professional manner and increases the longevity of the content that gets delivered to the users. Furthermore, it reduces the risks of proliferation and checks duplicity at each step that itself is a high risk area. While you look out to purchase good enterprise content management software for your company, it is always essential to keep a few things in mind such as:

1. Select the ECM according to your organizations budget and design.
2. Enterprise content management requires constant updates, therefore it is essential to spend in parts over a period of time instead at one go.
3. Do not go for the cheaper options, purchase a tried and tested model suited best for your organization.

Accelerating Credentialing

Molina Healthcare decreases turnaround time for credentialing by 44% while doubling number of applications processed per month

Much has been made lately of the benefits that can accrue to healthcare providers through the use of electronic medical records. In fact, one of the major long-term goals of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) is to “initiate a process to computerize health records. In fact, one of the major long-term goals of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) is to “initiate a process to computerize health records to reduce medical errors and save on health care costs.”

But medical records are only one area in which providers can reap the benefits of working with secure, digital files. For organizations such as Molina Healthcare, a managed care organization (MCO) serving low-income individuals who frequently depend on government assistance, implementing a Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM) system to digitize and streamline the healthcare provider credentialing process has proven to be extremely valuable.

The Importance of Credentialing

Credentialing is integral to the success of any healthcare organization, but it is a particularly important process for an MCO like Molina Healthcare. Effective credentialing helps MCOs manage liability risk, attract customers and obtain accreditation from organizations such as The Joint Commission and NCQA. It is also a procedural requirement by federal agencies such as CMS and various state agencies.

Molina Healthcare, a Fortune 1000 company that operates in nine states—California, Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Missouri, New Mexico, Texas, Utah and Washington—handles more than fifteen thousand provider applications a year. Legally, a healthcare practitioner cannot participate in Molina’s network until the credentialing process is completed and a determination has been made to approve that provider for participation.

“Every day a provider remains in the credentialing process,” says Ryan Boe, corporate credentialing manager at Molina Healthcare, “is another day that he or she can’t provide care for our members.”

According to Boe, applications frequently consist of 30-100 pages of material, including a physician’s state license, board certification, criminal history report, stated work history, educational background, malpractice history and more. “Dealing with paper,” he says, “is much slower than working with electronic records.”

Paper Process

In the past, Molina’s credentialing department produced a single paper copy of each application and routed it to different people during the credentialing process. According to Michael Eisenman, healthcare analyst for the credentialing department, coordinating the logistics and timing for moving applications through various steps of the process was difficult.

“When you’re reviewing hundreds of applications a month, it’s not practical to physically transfer them one-by-one,” he says. “But transporting hardcopy files in batches leads to processing bottlenecks, which slows everything down.”

From a cost standpoint, printing paper applications consumed reams and reams of paper, and the special couriers who shipped credentialing files between offices were an additional expense. Additionally, the physical space needed to store and retain the documentation (including a great number of wall racks) led to extra cost.

Working with paper also brings up liability issues for MCOs like Molina: “HIPAA mandates that we keep medical information secure, but it’s hard to do that with paper files,” Eisenman explains. “Paper isn’t password-protected, and it doesn’t produce an audit trail.”

Implementing Enterprise Content Management

Tasked with finding the best way to digitize credentialing applications and automate key pieces of the credentialing process, an IT committee chose a Laserfiche Rio ECM system due to its rich scanning, workflow, security and auditing features.

Despite a few initial difficulties around business process engineering, solution design, training and adoption, the department soon ironed out the kinks, staggering the implementation state-by-state over a period of six months.

According to Sampath Nalam, technical lead in Molina’s IT department, the system’s ease of use accelerated its adoption. Initial product training and consistent technical support from the Laserfiche technical team also helped Molina to understand the Laserfiche product architecture, resolve implementation issues and accelerate the project deliveries.

The IT department trained the credentialing managers, who then trained their staff. “Most users picked it up pretty easily within a couple of days,” says Nalam. “It’s not too complex for users to understand and navigate through the Laserfiche application.”

Eisenman echoes this sentiment: “Laserfiche is very intuitive for users. It’s pretty close to point and click.”

ECM in Action

In order to put Laserfiche into action, one of the first steps for Molina was to restructure its credentialing process to take advantage of the system’s capabilities. “Today,” says Eisenman, “all roads for credentialing lead to Laserfiche.”

When a practitioner is being credentialed with Molina for the first time, departments outside of Credentialing obtain the application data—either from a physical application or from CAQH, one of the largest credentialing data sources in the country. The application data soon ends up in the credentialing department, which is where 85% of the work associated with the credentialing process takes place.

“We get a hodgepodge of data sets,” explains Eisenman. “XML data, text files, PDFs, spreadsheets, paper… the list goes on and on. We pre-process the data to make sure it meets our standards and organize it into an intelligent list, at which point it all goes into Laserfiche.”

In Laserfiche, the data is automatically filed—usually in large batches—in the Laserfiche folder structure. Once the information is in the system, the ‘Laserfiche workflow’ kicks in, alerting people to the various tasks they must perform on each application. For example, credentialing specialists populate template fields with metadata to indicate file completion or file discontinuance, which moves the file forward to a credentialing lead, who quality checks each file.

“We now have about 100 people using enterprise content management to some degree, and about 50 of those people use Laserfiche on a continuous and daily basis,” says Boe. “After a bit of trial and error, we’ve figure out our ideal process for implementing a centralized and paperless credentialing system.”

Measurable Results

Molina’s corporate credentialing department has realized a number of benefits resulting from its Laserfiche implementation, including:

• Decreased turnaround time (TAT) for processing applications by 44%.
• Twice as many applications processed per month.
• Greater visibility of information enterprise-wide.
• Faster provider network development.
• Decreased credentialing costs.
• Standardization of procedures and workflows.
• Improved security of protected information.

“The Laserfiche SDK has enabled us to automate an incredible amount of our data processing,” Eisenman says. “It has made the credentialing process much faster and much more consistent.”

“When we first started working with Laserfiche, there was a brief period when the TAT went up and our volume went down as we adjusted to the new process and the new technology,” Boe explains. “Once we’d conquered that initial learning curve and overcome the initial technical hurdles, however, the speed at which we can process applications skyrocketed. We’re currently completing approximately 1,500 applications a month, which is up from just under 800 a month a year back.”

“We’re very happy with ECM,” Boe concludes. “It has accelerated the credentialing process and added a lot of value to our organization.”

Tags: ECM, enterprise content management.