K-12 Education Success Stories

We quickly adopted Smart Invoice Capture and it was night and day. We are innovating ways to be more efficient, using workflow and e-forms.”

Tyrell Bergstrom, Finance Director, Mercer Island School District

Hear from Tyrell here: https://www.freedoc.com/ty-bergstrom-interview/

Background: Located on an island in the middle of Lake Washington, midway between Bellevue and Seattle, this Washington state school district wanted to use innovation to improve turnaround time for its Accounts Payable department. Sometimes invoices were being lost or were filed under stacks of paper. The turnaround time for invoice approval could be weeks. This meant coming to grips with the central issues of the Accounts Payable process – manual effort and the lack of systems.

Goal: “Reduce time spent on invoice approval so we can increase the time we spend providing services to our kids.”

Solution: To automate data entry, invoice routing and payment approval, FreeDoc helped Mercer Island SD implement Laserfiche Smart Invoice Capture with Laserfiche Workflow. This reduced district staff time to turnaround invoices from weeks to less than a day.

“I’ve been impressed with the care taken to transform ‘my’ precious paper, the customer relationship and the professional manner in which business is conducted. All transcripts are now secure and readily available.”

Elizabeth Snodgrass, Executive Assistant to the Superintendent, White River School District

Background: With only 4,100 students, White River School District No. 416 is a highly rated school district in the shadow of Mount Rainier, WA. Prior to the use of Laserfiche, school officials were required to walk two floors and over 500 steps to retrieve a transcript for elementary, middle or high school students.

Goal: Digitize student transcripts into Laserfiche Cloud for ease of access.

Solution: To complete the project, FreeDoc provided the professional services for digital transformation of student transcripts and configuration of the Laserfiche Cloud. Upload and access are simple and secure. The time saved by district staff alone has more than recovered the expense to digitize the records. Most importantly, the student transcripts are secure from any form of disaster, more now today than ever before.

“Electronic forms have reduced the time it takes for a secretary to process a student’s info by 96%.”

Quinn R. Kellis, Ed. D., Superintendent

Background: With almost 12,000 students, Bonneville Joint School District No. 93 is one of the biggest districts in the state of Idaho. Prior to the use of Laserfiche, school secretaries would spend 20-30 minutes PER student PER year entering information from paper forms in their PowerSchool student info system.

Goal: Enter student info into the PowerSchool system as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Solution: Using Laserfiche Forms and Laserfiche Workflow, the school district automated student registration. This reduced the time spend from 30 minutes down to just one minute. Completion of a ‘New Student Registration’ form on the district’s website triggers a Workflow. With the help of Laserfiche Form, information in the PowerSchool system is automatically updated after routing, review and approval by the school Secretary. The new Laserfiche system also increased the accuracy of the district’s student records. The integration with PowerSchool ensured the data in that system is always current.

Using Laserfiche Forms combined with Laserfiche Workflow is now saving district staff almost 4,000 hours of work EVERY YEAR. This time is now available to serve other areas in the district.

The district also saved extensively on paper and postage by eliminating the need to mass mail forms to all of the students.

“The ability for each department to find what they are looking for with a few keystrokes makes Dysart a truly 21st century school district. Our staff members that use Laserfiche in their daily work love it.”

Mary Simmons, District Records Manger, Dysart Unified School District

Background: The Dysart Unified School District had previously automated its effort to process payroll, benefits, AP and AR processes. That effort result in 75% faster processing. During the previous fifteen years, the district tripled the volume of students. The district now owns a large amount of fixed assets including buildings, vehicles and furniture.

Goal: Automate the fixed asset management process to save time and storage space.

Solution: Using Laserfiche Workflow, the school district was able to replace paper-based asset packets. Documents are scanned into the Laserfiche system. After scanning, the software runs intelligence to check if documents contain a ‘fixed asset code’. If found, the Laserfiche system auto-indexes the file using a workflow rule. The workflow process was designed to also pull data from current POs and existing databases. Using data that is already available saves time, and it eliminates data entry errors that would happen during manual data entry.

The new Laserfiche Workflow process has reduced the need for filing cabinets to file the paper-based asset packets. Employees now have instant access to files and the district is operating at a much higher level of efficiency.

“The savings, in terms of the user experience, is invaluable. Online registration using Laserfiche Forms makes parents’ lives easier, simpler and reflects positively on the school.”

David Carpenter, IT Director, Huffman ISD

Background: Before Laserfiche, at the beginning of each year, the parents of each student were required to complete over 30 paper forms. On completion, the were manually keyed into the district’s data systems.

Goal: Collect of a large amount of student information, as quicky and efficiently as possible.

Solution: The district used Laserfiche Forms to automate the student forms process. This improved data accuracy, eliminated the expense to print 100,000 pages and saved 300 hours of staff time for manual data entry, EACH YEAR.

“Laserfiche streamlines the entire onboarding process from beginning to end,”

Duana Kindle, HR Director, Frisco ISD

Background: Located 30 miles north of Dallas, TX, Frisco ISD has experienced 800% growth in just 20 years. With a large number of educators being onboarded year over year, keeping up with the pace was difficult to manage.

Goal: Hire and onboard 1,600 new employees within a four-month period, every year.

Solution: The district was able to use Laserfiche Workflow & Laserfiche Forms to automate 90% the onboarding process. This dramatically reduced the time and labor to perform the task. Instead of taking weeks, it now takes only a few days to fully onboard a new employee, with fewer tasks. Also, the work is able to be completed remotely, with all records stored in a secure, fully-searchable, digital filing system.

Workflow Process: The HR department receives notification to select and hire a candidate. When a hiring decision has been made, an offer email is automatically. The email contains an active link to a Laserfiche Form. The candidate can record their response and close the form. If the candidate accepts the job, they automatically receive an online link to their new-hire forms. Once the ‘packet of forms’ is completed, it is routed for internal approvals. Upon final approval, the new employee receives additional info, such as benefits details. All work is being done directly through Laserfiche Workflow.

“The paperless processes we’ve built in Laserfiche are logical, efficient and cost-effective, which is why the entire school district has embraced them.”

Adam Galvan Jr., Technology Director, Edgewood ISD

Background: Edgewood ISD supports 12,000 students on 20 campuses. The district has hundreds of work processes that create various records to administrate students, faculty and district staff. Coordinating all of the records generated by these work processes requires hundreds of hours to print, process and eventually file forms. Then, the district’s thirty-three departments spend more time to coordinate efforts. What was missing was a central place where the information was readily available on demand.

Goal: Automate the district’s existing processes and reduce the costs and labor to do it.

Solution: Using Laserfiche Forms, the ISD digitized and automated over 200 manual work processes. Laserfiche optimized every part of the district, from construction requests, to timesheets, to HR. Automated approval is completed using Laserfiche Workflow. This ensures proper permission is obtained to process a request. Even tax forms that must still be done by hand are scanned into Laserfiche. These can then be routed into the correct employee folder using Laserfiche Workflow.

Using the Laserfiche workflow dashboard, both submitters and reviewers can track the approval status of any form, anywhere in the process. Forms can be submitted and tracked from anywhere, even by authenticated users over a mobile device.

“There is a lot more we can do in terms of use and integrations that go well beyond document storage. The options are endless.”

Joe Griffin, CTO, Keller ISD

Background: Serving over 35,000 students in Tarrant County, TX, Keller ISD began experiencing issues with accountability when the use of different ECM systems used for different departments created information silos.

Goal: Manage student enrollment documents, test scores, sensitive info, legal documents and special education documents within a single centralized location.

Solution: Moving all student documents to a single Laserfiche repository allows authorized district staff quick access to the most current student information. This simplifies student transfers and allows for better enforcement of the district’s records management policies.

Moving to Laserfiche ECM initially saved the school district more than $100,000. The savings continue with another $70,000 saved every year since. Using Laserfiche also helped meet federal Paperwork Reduction Act requirements. This resulted in a savings of $11,000 by reducing the use of paper. Equally important is the culture of collaboration that the system created within the district.

As show by these case studies, Laserfiche was able to improve how K-12 school districts’ records are managed and maintained. Laserfiche Forms and Laserfiche Workflow may have the potential to do the same for your school district.

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