Robert Frost‘s heart-stirring poem, The Road Less Traveled, expresses the idea that the sometimes seemingly small choices we make in life can truly impact our experience of it. And his tome, in particular, helps us to see that following the path of the “crowds” is not necessarily the best direction to follow. This may be true in life, and definitely is in many instances, but it is a real gamble when you are talking about implementing a department- or enterprise-wide systems change. The risks of failed implementation, or that the system does not live up to its billing, are very real, and they can be very painful.

The City of Norfolk, VA, Department of Human Services faced this decision point with its document management system some years ago. The Human Services Department is tasked with meeting the needs of the city’s thousands of residents with various assistance programs, such as Medicaid, Child Protective Services, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and Workforce Development. As one of the top 2 highest “in-demand” Human Services departments in the Commonwealth of Virginia, they have no shortage of paper and they have stringent program and procedural requirements. Recognizing the need to move to a paperless environment some years ago, they adopted a document management system, EZ Filer, which had been adopted by several other Human Services departments in the Commonwealth. Even though many other Norfolk City departments had very successful implementations of Laserfiche Enterprise Content Management, and the fact that EZ Filer was relatively unknown and unproven, the city selected EZ Filer. Over time, the limitations of the EZ Filer system became apparent to the Norfolk department, and workarounds were created to compensate for some of the key limitations of the system such as: limited storage space, limited search capability, very slow response times and no records management rules. The final decision to move to a more robust enterprise content management system came when the company who developed the EZ Filer document management system filed for bankruptcy. According to Bonnie Spence, Programmer Analyst for the city, “we are no longer able to upgrade or modify the system.”

Norfolk DHS chose UnityECM to partner with to solve their daunting problem. Besides the EZ filer trainwreck, Norfolk identified 9 other key reasons to commission UnityECM to completely overhaul their records management and document management processes and workflows, including: automated scanning and indexing into their system and a records management system that was compliant with the Library of Virginia, and which runs completely in the background with no end-user training curve or intervention. (Get all Top 10 Reasons here)

According to Mark J. Formella, IT Application Development Supervisor for Norfolk, “Successful implementations do not happen by accident or luck. Planning, communication, training, dedication and hard work are all keys to making LaserFiche work for DHS. Everyone who is involved with this project deserves a huge thank you…Change is never easy, but all of our staff who were accustomed to EZ-Filer, made the leap to make LaserFiche work. In the weeks and months to come, we will take advantage of additional LaserFiche tools and implement improvements which will make many tasks easier and faster to accomplish. We will also be bringing other units onboard, so they can too can manage their documentation electronically.”

So thus goes the story. Sometimes, even Robert Frost I’m sure would agree, that the best road is the one that is well-worn for a reason. For more information, contact UnityECM.com today at 888-400-9064.

For over fifteen years, Unity Business Systems has established a reputation for providing quality enterprise content management solutions and support to its thousands of users. Our dedicated and experienced professionals deliver innovative solutions and a firm commitment to superior customer service, one customer at a time. Our clients include a large array of municipalities, federal agencies, international corporations and many private firms.

To continue the mission of providing quality delivery of innovative services that maximize the productivity of our customers, we are excited to announce the formation of a dedicated new division: UnityECM. Our vision has always been to have mutually beneficial and lasting relationships with all of our stakeholders, and this new division will better enable us to accomplish this. As a top Laserfiche Value-Added Reseller for over 10 years, and now  a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner with special emphasis on SharePoint deployment, we believe that UnityECM is uniquely positioned to help our clients tackle their ECM challenges with robust agility well into the future.

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“You can pay me now, or you can pay me later®” was the way the old Fram® oil filter commercial went in 1971. Remember that? Whether it was true or not with Fram® (they still seem to be thriving as a company…), the concept is axiomatic. Like getting regular excercise. Or eating a good, healthy, balanced diet. The “today” price of establishing healthy, disciplined habits is much smaller than the “tomorrow” price of terrible health and the dis-ease that stagnation and bad diet engenders. And so it goes with compliance and e-discovery…

It stands to reason that investing some organizational resources now in prevention is definitely better than spending millions of dollars muddling through a non-compliant audit or e-discovery request gone awry later. Kind of like, if your kid sits in the beanbag everyday playing Xbox® and eating HoHo’s® he is going to be fat and out of shape (and possibly get Type II diabetes – but I digress…) No responsible adult would ever allow that to happen if they care about their child. And along the same lines, we know that in today’s litigious society, the registered letter will arrive. Your organization will face a lawsuit. Do you just “hope” that things will work out well? If there is one thing that I have learned in 23 years of business, it is this: “hope” is NOT a strategy. So what do you do?

You don’t focus on the audit or the e-discovery problem. You build the right foundation today, before the issue attacks. And you do that by focusing on getting the right people involved in drafting and adopting the right policies which are managed and enforced transparently (more or less on autopilot) via the right technology; and all done consistently across your enterprise and business processes. And the natural result is proper preparation. No worries. Your framework is in place. Time for a HoHo!

For more information on how to achieve this Information Governance “Nirvana,” visit us today at UnityECM.com.

The only thing worse than having to pay to convert (scan) your documents from paper to electronic images is when you have to do it twice.  This summer a customer decided to save some money and hire a couple of college students to scan their case files during the summer.  A noble thought and a practical way to put interns to work.  Just plug the machines in, point to the cabinets and let them “have at it”.  Afterall, the cost of a couple scanners and 2-3 hungry college students would be certainly less than paying a firm that specializes in this service, right?

However, a recent query of the files (all with “Scanned” boldly stamped in red on each case file jacket) found that a 7 page document (with 3 pages that were double sided) only had 7 images and not the 10 (7+3) it should have.  Other files were double in size as the “blank page drop out” feature was not activated on the scanner.  Several documents still had staples in them: meaning a second page of the document (possibly) was not scanned and a metal staple was pulled through the machine which leads to damaged parts, paper jams and scratched glass surfaces on the scanner.  Scanning appears to be easy, but without proper knowledge, training, supervision, quality checks and experience it can make a difficult task even more difficult to fix.  Remember the old addage, “Garbage in, Garbage out”?

In today’s economy everyone should be looking for the most economical way to accomplish their goal, but not at the cost of quality, especially when it comes to mission critical, historical, or personal data.  We are now re-scanning the entire project.

Work with a vendor to find the best solution, do business with a creative firm that can think outside the box and create a budget friendly solution (i.e. maybe you don’t need to scan everything right away and a hybrid storage “scan on demand” solution may be able to meet your needs?) Look for a vendor that has more than 3-5 years of hands on experience and can give you specific references (my company has been scanning since 2000 and can provide an active list of at least 10 customers we are currently working with).

Hungry college kids are great (I have two of them) and can perform many tasks very well, but there is more to scanning than dropping documents into a feeder and hitting the start button.  The care of your mission critical, historical and personal records are your responsibility, if you have a ”back file” of information you need scanned make sure you have have the expertise and are able to put into place the quality checks, procedures necessary for a great job… or hire a great company (like mine) that offers you a money back guarantee so you will never have to pay twice!

For more information, contact Unity Scanning Systems today!

So I guess I am calling out here for a return to a higher expectation…let’s start looking “beneath the surface” again. Let’s start looking long-term again. Contact UnityECM to have that discussion today.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could always be running the most recent release of your Laserfiche software? I mean, you have paid your annual maintenance fees, so you do qualify for the latest and greatest with no additional charges…but the rub is, your IT department (who is typically already overworked and understaffed) still has to budget the time and energy to make the upgrade work. At least they did in the past…

Laserfiche in the Cloud

Welcome to the new Laserfiche in the Cloud solution! Not only will you be running the latest and greatest Laserfiche versions as they are released, but there are some other big-time advantages for your organization going forward:

1. No internal server hardware, server software or backups to administer;
2. Installed on Amazon data centers, assuring quality and continuity and compliance with multiple site requirements;
3. Option for no up-front server costs – simply a monthly fee for the service period;
4. No change to your Laserfiche licensing or VAR agreements;
5. Delivered by your trusted Laserfiche VAR, Unity Business Systems
6. Includes backup and multiple site redundant server instances;
7. Includes secure data transfer;
8. Maintains full Laserfiche administration and configuration rights;
9. Can have separate instances for Laserfiche and SQL Server;
10. Transferrable, can always be moved back to an on-premise server, if desired.

Laserfiche clients connect by simply registering their server with its unique name (e.g. mydocs.docsonthecloud.com ) Server instances can be created in minutes. Existing on-premise Laserfiche servers can be migrated easily, or may be extended in a hybrid private cloud as an overflow or backup.

So, a new day has definitely arrived. The most up to date software running on the most current and most powerful server technology available…So maybe now your IT folks will have the time to tackle that ERP project that noone wants! Maximize your productivity now with Agile ECM.

Contact Unity Business Systems today for more information on the Laserfiche in the Cloud solution!