Laserfiche Rio

Empower your User Group to share what they know, learn what they want, and provide access to information to meet their needs.

em•pow•er
Pronunciation: \im-ˈpau̇(-ə)r\
Function: transitive verb
1 : to give official authority or legal power to
2 : ENABLE 1a
3 : to promote the self-actualization or influence of

The purpose of our group is to provide and promote best practices to Hampton Roads Laserfiche Users so that we can more efficiently and effectively meet the needs of our customers.

User Groups have become the rage with ECM, and thank goodness! What an invaluable resource for learning more about this information technology specialty, keeping up with your network (‘cause there’s never enough time!) and maybe even offering some of your time and talent to provide leadership for your group.

Public and private agencies are hungry for easy to implement initiatives with enterprise content management, easy fixes to everyday problems and practical knowledge and experience about the different ECM applications. You can find these ideas and more in your User Group.

Empower your User Group to share what they know, learn what they want, and provide enterprise content management access information and resources to meet their needs.

Some of the ways in which the Hampton Roads User Group is empowered include:

• All presentations are provided based on member input and requests. We (the group leaders and our VAR) develop and deliver what the members ask for.
• Members can keep their contact information current, and post or join in the newly established Discussion Board.
• Current leadership welcomes members who are interested in expanding their role to become a group leader. All User Groups require some degree of coordination, communication and overall support.

This approach – empowering the users – has made this group’s experience meaningful and fun for the members, the group leadership and the VAR.

Remember – It’s YOUR User Group!!

While they were at the 2010 Laserfiche Institute Conference, 2009 Run Smarter Winners Collin County TX, RMS and LaPorte County, IN, were all interviewed for ebizQ podcasts. You won’t want to miss what our award winners have to say about how Laserfiche Enterprise Content Managementhas helped them succeed!

Collin County, TX, CIO Caren Skipworth and Records Manager Margaret Anderson discuss the issues facing CIOs today, how they implemented Laserfiche and how it helped them, and more on how they trained County employees using AKDAR, a change management model Skipworth mentioned in her keynote, “The Three Laws of Agile ECM.”

Interested in learning more about Collin County and their Enterprise content solutions? Download the enterprise government case study explaining their installation and learn about how Collin County uses Laserfiche to transparently manage records and improve IT governance for the entire county.

RMS, our Run Smarter Winner for the Commercial Category, explains how employing Laserfiche on the machine shop floor has improved their business processes. Using Laserfiche Enterprise content software, RMS cut order processing time from 8-10 weeks down to just 72 hours. Michael Eklund, IS Coordinator for RMS, shares how Laserfiche BPM has saved the company critical time and costs.

LaPorte County, IN, our Justice Systems-Courts Winner for the 2009 Run Smarter Awards, was also interviewed for a podcast. Stephen T. Eyrick, Chief Probation Officer for the county, discussed how Laserfiche has helped the county’s court system cut down on costs in this tough economy.

ECM delivers virtually all the functionality of the standard, installed Laserfiche interface, Web Access allows for consolidated management of resources and data, as well as remote or portable access.

Centralize Resource and Data Management

IT staff manages software and hardware centrally, without the need to deploy and support software on each individual point of access. Administrators and business owners manage documents and unstructured information through a full enterprise content management system, while maintaining the ability to collaborate across sites, business units, and platforms. Information and knowledge workers access the information they need through an Internet browser, even on a mobile device.

Part of a Broader ECM Solution

Other modules are or can be combined with Web Access to provide complete enterprise content management solutions, including document imaging (Web Scanning), business process management (Laserfiche Workflow, Quick Fields, and Agenda Manager), regulatory compliance and tracking (Laserfiche Audit Trail), and records retention (Laserfiche Records Management Edition). In addition, Web Access integrates with Microsoft SharePoint to provide a robust document management component to an organization’s SharePoint platform.

ENTERPRISE STRATEGY MEETS DEPARTMENTAL FLEXIBILITY

Enterprise content management (ECM): ECM products and systems, capture, process, store, archive and supply information in a systemized and controlled manner. Enterprise content management accelerates organizations to better manage their information and standardize business processes.

CENTRALIZED RESOURCES AND DATA MANAGEMENT

IT staff manages software and hardware centrally, without the need to deploy and support software on each individual point of access. Administrators and business owners manage documents and unstructured information through a full ECM system, while maintaining the ability to collaborate across sites, business units, and platforms. Information and knowledge workers access the information they need through an Internet browser, even on a mobile device.

PART OF A BROADER ECM SOLUTION

Other modules are or can be combined with Web Access to provide complete enterprise information management solutions, including document imaging (Web Scanning), business process management, regulatory compliance and tracking. In addition, Web Access integrates with Microsoft SharePoint to provide a robust document management component to an organization’s SharePoint platform.

ECM refers to the strategies, technologies, methods and tools used to capture manage, store, preserve and deliver content. Enterprise content management tools allow management to be at an enterprise level of organization.

ECM has moved away from the old ways of finding-and-filing to a technology that not only manages information, but processes it as well. Enterprise content management can manage information without regard to its source or use.

Many organizations hesitate to implement enterprise content management solutions because of the problems of implementing best practices and standardizing operations enterprise-wide. Each department, each regional office and each workgroup has its own ways of doing business, and they often fear it will force them to change the way they work. Information ends up in multiple locations, with no way for the central office to sort it all out. And the system ends up compounding the problems it was supposed to solve.The Laserfiche Rio ECM system is different and fits with existing business processes into an enterprise framework. It gives organizations control and flexibility.

ECM: The budget crunch is upon all of us, and, as a result, we’re all looking at where the little efficiencies are to stretch our existing dollars as far as possible. With Laserfiche ECM there are many aspects to consider when making decisions.

Repositories and licenses cost money. So does scanning. How can we best use our existing resources?

Change your repository settings!

Changing your repository options, specifically the ‘logout automatically’ option, will prevent your users from becoming license hogs. That person who logs in and then leaves for lunch will be logged off automatically, freeing up a license for another user.

In Hampton, we’ve adopted a 1:5 user license ratio for both FX and RX licenses. Due to the fact that licenses are concurrent, we believe that it’s reasonable to expect that any user, particularly retrieve or read-only users, will access enterprise content management, find what they need and then exit the system.

What kind of scanning devices do you have available?

While scanners are “the” option when it comes to high quantity document capture, almost all types of copy machines have scanning capability and can easily scan to e-mail. Ask your IT Department or manufacturer representative to set the image to either tiff or pdf and add all users to the email setting.

Even if all of your office staff are not enterprise content management users, being able to copy/scan to e-mail prevents the proliferation of paper, which could be another significant cost savings for you.

Do all of your users know, enterprise content management and understand how to use Laserfiche’s e-mail utility?

This again will decrease the proliferation of paper in your office and to your clients or the public.

Are you fully utilizing your LSAP?

Your time is valuable to your employer and we all pay for software support. When you have questions, contact your reseller and employ their assistance with answers and best practices. You don’t have to figure it out on your own.

What’s in ECM?

If Laserfiche has become the new dumping ground (in addition to your network, pc’s, and ancillary devices…) then your data – and your server – could use some basic management.

1. Purge your data; set up your Records Management Edition if you have it – practice good records management!
2. Check your folder structure.
3. Manage your volumes.
4. Use your Column Display wisely.

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) consists of the strategies and methods used to manage and interpret documents related to work in an organization.

In today’s information age, the success and failure of an enterprise is dictated primarily by two factors – the rate of influx of data into an enterprise database and the constant interpreting and evaluation of this data into logical information as input for strategic planning.

As unstructured content is checked in and out of a system, each use can potentially add to the content’s profile. With time, the ECM system might gradually adopt new filtering, which assists in making better decisions, determining the relevance of information and documents.

For example, in order to improve efficiency while still adhering to Federal Laws and guidelines, an eminent South Western US University turned to implement Enterprise Content Management. The university used ECM to bring business processes together and accelerate information exchange. This solution not only helped the university to ensure efficient administration, it also minimized the impact on staff—improving productivity and reducing costs.

According to the Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM), Enterprise Content Management can be broken down into five major components:

• Capture: Obtain and organize information.
• Manage: Process and employ information as per requirement.
• Store: Temporary back up of transient information.
• Preserve: More permanent storage of unchanging data.
• Deliver: Provide clients and end users with requested data and analyses.

While identifying a direct return on investment can be difficult, it is possible to see the impacts of the improved process efficiency. With the enforced usage of these tools within the organization, they become part of the work culture. What’s the ROI on a fax-machine? Virtually negligible, per se. However, who can imagine running an organization without one?

It’s not enough to simply maintain and hold extensive database information. Content must be managed so that it can be used to achieve business goals, which is the goal behind implementation of Enterprise Content Management.

In Central Virginia, ECM is moving right along! In fact, the Central Virginia Regional Enterprise content management system company Laserfiche User Group, is meeting at the Albemarle County Office Building. This meeting will feature speakers from the Library of Virginia, who will give a presentation and field questions about ECM records for local governments and state agencies.

Training will cover electronic records, both scanned documents as well as other enterprise content management stored records (such as databases, Word files, Excel, etc). Retention and destruction requirements and using the retention schedules will all be included as well.

One of our members, Corey Smith, from the Library of Virginia, has provided some information that provides excellent background and will help everyone attending come prepared with specific, pertinent questions.

Corey says:

“As your primary interest is with electronic records that are scanned and in a database, I would like to mention that records follow the same retention period regardless of format. Caveats come into play as retention periods differ and some records may not be the best candidate for a particular format. For example, a record with a 50 yr retention would not be recommended to kept on a CD. The life expectancy of a CD is only 20 yrs. Because of this, anything with a permanent retention or with a long retention would not be recommended for a CD format.

“On the LVA Website, you can access our updated Electronic Records Guidelines that can hopefully provide some additional information for your benefit.

“To give you an idea of what’s considered personal identifying information, under section “C” of 18.2-186.3 in the Code of Virginia, it defines certain types of personal identifying information.”

If you’re in the Central Virginia area, we hope to see you at our User Group meeting!

Our Agenda:

• Welcome/introductions
• Group business & info
• Lightning Talks (Mini-Success Stories) – each person has up to 3 minutes to talk about something cool they learned or did with Laserfiche recently
• Library of Virginia presentation, followed by questions from attendees

In Central Virginia, ECM is moving right along! In fact, the Central Virginia Regional Enterprise content management system company Laserfiche User Group, is meeting at the Albemarle County Office Building. This meeting will feature speakers from the Library of Virginia, who will give a presentation and field questions about ECM records for local governments and state agencies.

Training will cover electronic records, both scanned documents as well as other enterprise content management stored records (such as databases, Word files, Excel, etc). Retention and destruction requirements and using the retention schedules will all be included as well.

One of our members, Corey Smith, from the Library of Virginia, has provided some information that provides excellent background and will help everyone attending come prepared with specific, pertinent questions.

Corey says:

“As your primary interest is with electronic records that are scanned and in a database, I would like to mention that records follow the same retention period regardless of format. Caveats come into play as retention periods differ and some records may not be the best candidate for a particular format. For example, a record with a 50 yr retention would not be recommended to kept on a CD. The life expectancy of a CD is only 20 yrs. Because of this, anything with a permanent retention or with a long retention would not be recommended for a CD format.

“On the LVA Website, you can access our updated Electronic Records Guidelines that can hopefully provide some additional information for your benefit.

“To give you an idea of what’s considered personal identifying information, under section “C” of 18.2-186.3 in the Code of Virginia, it defines certain types of personal identifying information.”

If you’re in the Central Virginia area, we hope to see you at our User Group meeting!

Our Agenda:

• Welcome/introductions
• Group business & info
• Lightning Talks (Mini-Success Stories) – each person has up to 3 minutes to talk about something cool they learned or did with Laserfiche recently
• Library of Virginia presentation, followed by questions from attendees

Many organizations hesitate to implement ECM solutions because of the problems of implementing best practices and standardizing operations enterprise-wide. Each department, each regional office and each workgroup has its own ways of doing business, and they often fear it will force them to change the way they work. Information ends up in multiple locations, with no way for the central office to sort it all out. And the system ends up compounding the problems it was supposed to solve.

The Rio ECM system is different because it fits existing business processes into an enterprise framework. It gives people the control they need and the flexibility they want. Enterprise content management organically expands throughout organizations, regardless of the industry:

• · State and Local Government
• · Federal Government:
• · Financial Services
• · Health Care:

Enterprise content management offers organizations the strength of a proven information management system and the technology of a highly sophisticated business process management engine.