Enhancing Business Processes with Laserfiche
The Santa Clara County Office of Education (SCCOE) is a regional service agency that provides instructional and business services to the 31 school districts of Santa Clara County. The SCCOE serves students through special education programs, alternative schools, Head Start and State Preschool programs, migrant education, and Opportunity Youth Academy. The Office also provides curriculum support, staff development, and technology support and training directly to teachers and staff in schools countywide.
Prior to 2007, SCCOE was working with paper documents that by law were required to be kept indefinitely. Some of the inherent inefficiencies when working with paper records include: paper records take up space, they deteriorate over time, and if lost are gone for good. Additionally, paper records can only be viewed by one person at a time, they take an inordinate amount of time and space to maintain, and converting paper to microfilm is time-consuming and costly.
The goal for SCCOE was to redesign and streamline their operational process. They wanted to “implement a record system that is quick, easy to use, uses minimal physical space, allows for unlimited yet secure access, and is highly reliable and safe.”
In 2007 SCCOE had the option of improving their current paper-based system or move to a different system, and whether to remain analog or go digital. They ultimately made the decision to “Go Digital” and selected Laserfiche and ECS Imaging for their records management solution.
The initial implementation was developed as a pilot program for the Human Resources Department and Accounting Services. This included licenses for 6 users, Quick Fields for automating data capture with Zone OCR, Real Time Lookup, and Pattern Matching, Starter Audit Trail, and Web Access (Web Client). The objectives for the pilot program included scanning and storing documents based on their records retention schedule, reduce filing cabinets and off-site storage, allow easy retrieval of employee and financial records, and establish a disaster recovery plan. The result of their efforts allowed SCCOE to remove 20-30 filing cabinets between Human Resources and Business Services and empty rooms of archival Personnel files and Student Cum files. They scanned so many documents, which were ultimately shredded, that they overwhelmed their industrial strength shredder. The process prompted the Human Resources staff to coin a new term, “Shredder Anxiety.”
The following year, SCCOE rolled out the full implementation to include the Business Services, Student Services, Educational Services, Administrative Branch, and Office of the Superintendent, as well as external County Office of Education sites, including Headstart, Alternative Education, and Special Education.
10 years later, SCCOE has upgraded their system to Laserfiche Rio with over 370 users, Quick Fields Classify and Quick Fields Core, Weblink Public Portal (with unlimited retrieval users), Import Agent (for use with existing MFPs), SDK (Toolkit), Forms, and Forms Portal. The Purchasing Department has integrated Laserfiche with their ERP system, QSS, eliminating the need to scan paper documents into Laserfiche, with metadata populated automatically. This makes it easier for them to release the digital copy and allows them to add comments and status updates.
With Laserfiche, SCCOE has been able to automate many business process that were once paper-driven including: Purchase Orders, Accounts Payable Warrants, Vendor Invoicing, and Employee Pre-Boarding (consisting of 16 different forms).
Download Flyer: ECS Santa Clara County Office of Education 2018
