Norfolk Department of Human Services Chooses Laserfiche to Replace Clunky Content Management System

Aug. 5, 2010 - PRLog -- The City of Norfolk, VA, Department of Human Services is tasked with meeting the needs of its 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 other Human Services Departments across the Commonwealth of Virginia. Although a definite improvement, 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.”

When searching for a replacement, the Human Services Department did not have to look far. The Laserfiche enterprise content management system has been used by most of the other City of Norfolk departments, like Human Resources, Commissioner of Revenue, Treasurer, Police and Public Works for over 10 years, and they love the system. In fact, in 2009, the city won both the coveted Laserfiche RunSmarter Award and also won first place in the Center for Digital Government “Digital Cities Annual Survey.” As a Top 5 Reseller/Integrator of Laserfiche software for 15 years and a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Unity Business Systems was able to not only work with the city to clearly define their needs, but also to deliver and implement solutions that have been not only cost effective and rapidly deployable, but solutions that actually work.

After sitting through a just a single one-hour Laserfiche training class, the core technology and user transition team from the Human Services Department were “blown-away” by the simplicity, speed and robustness of the Laserfiche system. As the team from Unity Business Systems works to help them identify and define their core business processes, the department’s team is already seeing huge opportunities for increased efficiency and ultimate cost savings. “We are excited about using Laserfiche to implement ‘best-practices’ and to get away from making our practices ‘fit’ within the constrains of the system as we did before” said Mark Formella, Application Development Supervisor with Norfolk. And with the addition of workflow and records management that Laserfiche brings to the table, they will now have a true solution that will not only make the lives of their employees and clients much better, but will finally ensure that the proper governance of their data and records is now transparent and consistently happening.

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