It’s Day 2 of the Empower conference and there’s no sign of slowing down. We just finished Thursday’s general session with a special Q&A keynote between our very own Andrew Brown, Director of Business Development, and:
· Dr. Samuel Dunn, CIO, Babson College
· Mike Re, CIO, Avis Fleet Services
· John Barragan, COO, Girard Securities, Inc.
Andrew chatted with each of these users on stage and discussed their experiences of implementing Laserfiche into their organizations. Here’s what they had to share with Empower 2014 attendees and you!
Dr. Samuel Dunn, CIO, Babson College
Dr. Samuel Dunn, CIO, Babson College
Babson College’s undergraduate department has been ranked #1 in entrepreneurship for 17 years, while its MBA program was likewise named #1 20 years in a row by US News and World Report. Last year, Babson College selected Laserfiche as its ECM platform with a campus-wide vision and is approaching ECM as an ongoing strategy.
How do you use IT to grow and improve student success?
Nothing reflects more on our brand than having successful students, and that begins with the admissions process. The admissions process is very intense. We literally receive thousands and thousands of applications in a short amount of time. It’s not just one form or one document. It’s a host of information that includes transcripts, recommendations and essays, and they can come in at different times.
One counselor who was meeting prospective students in Chile received a student essay last minute. She was notified that the essay came in, accessed it and read it before interviewing the student. Before, we had a manual, paper-based process that wasn’t very timely. Today, it’s a world of a difference and submitted information and documents are consolidated and go straight into the repository for the counselors.
Can you describe the implementation process?
One approach is to let the departments tell IT what they need to automate. The approach we went with was to take an enterprise strategic approach and be more proactive. We worked with business leaders to build business cases, prioritize and approve them.
What advice do you have for people about how to implement ECM?
There is a lot, but I’d say get the system set up right at the beginning. Consider repository design at the start and don’t rush it.
Mike Re, CIO, Avis Fleet Services
Mike Re, CIO, Avis Fleet Services
Avis Fleet Service has been named the Best Fleet Management Company in South Africa for the past seven consecutive years. A 2011 Run Smarter Winner for automating the processing of over 86,000 invoices per month, Avis Fleet Services now has an established Laserfiche system that serves 205 users spread across 10 departments.
What challenges were you having before Laserfiche?
The fleet management industry is notorious for the amount of paper it consumes. Motor vehicles generate just as much paper as the students Babson serves!
How are you using Laserfiche now?
We use it to manage and centralize all the documents for our vehicles, and implemented it across our critical, customer-facing processes first. Being able to expedite our customer service delivery, customer claims and service approvals has allowed us to turnaround service delivery so much faster than when it was paper based.
What are the results after Laserfiche?
We created a clutter-free workplace. Before, it was a nightmare, so it was an important one for us to clean up our office. We reduced our storage costs and cut our paper usage by five tons a year. We’re also able to service a lot more customers a lot faster without increasing headcount.
What are your future plans?
Where we are now is just the beginning of a journey. For now, we have been able to automate and digitize customer processes, but we still have a few more to complete. We would like to deploy this to our contract management customer process and make it digital. Eventually, we want to take this process online and make it an interactive process. We’re also planning to move our entire operation onto next generation software.
What advice do you have for people about to implement ECM?
I can’t sum it better than Sam. Get the back end set up right. I would also add that getting users involved, understanding how they will interact with the system, makes it very easy to deploy.
John Barragan, COO, Girard Securities, Inc.
John Barragan, COO, Girard Securities, Inc.
Girard Securities, Inc. is a full-service broker-dealer that has been using Laserfiche for seven years. In the face of increasing compliance demands as well as growth opportunities, the firm took advantage of Laserfiche Workflow and Laserfiche Forms to automate, simply and secure processes between its field and home offices. After the Empower 2013 conference, Girard Securities, Inc. upgraded its system to Laserfiche Rio.
You’ve been a user for so many years. What caused the eureka moment to upgrade to Laserfiche Rio?
Our business uses a lot of paper. Account openings usually require 30-40 pages of paper and needed to be touched by multiple hands and departments—frequently in a specific order. Before the upgrade, we were using Laserfiche like a Windows-based storage. During Empower 2013, I saw automation and Laserfiche Workflow for the first time, and that was an eye-opener. We knew there was an opportunity to optimize and automate the account opening process.
What are your future plans?
When we onboard new advisors, we still have a little bit of a manual process. So in the future, we want the new advisors to do everything online and automate the routing of the approval process.
What advice do you have for people about to implement ECM?
Like Sam and Mike stressed, getting the directory structure and back end set up properly is important. Another point is to bring in the professionals at the right time. If you’re struggling with automation, the turning point for us was bringing in Laserfiche to lay out our workflows and help us get buy-in from all our departments. We had Laserfiche come in and conduct an all-hands whiteboard meeting to map out our processes. As a result, we’ve automated our entire operation across the whole U.S.
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