Integration Improves Information Flow
The Virginia Port Authority hired Angela Ellis as its SharePoint Administrator in 2007, but it wasn’t long before her boss, Deputy Executive Director of Administration and CFO Rodney Oliver, enlisted her to start looking into enterprise content management (ECM) Document Management Solutions.“Rodney recognized that although SharePoint Document Management Software could do many great things for our organization, records management wasn’t one of them,” says Ellis, who today is a senior web analyst for the Port Authority.
“SharePoint,” she explains, “with all of its many features is so much more robust than a network drive. In particular, the Port Authority uses document workspaces heavily, because they make it easy to collaborate on works in progress such as contracts. However, once you go beyond about 10,000 documents, you’ve got a real mess on your hands.”
According to Ellis, the Port Authority didn’t want to lose the collaboration features inherent in SharePoint, nor did it want to take a familiar interface away from the staff, so it needed to make sure that the ECM solution it selected had a seamless Document Management SharePoint integration. “I was the lead on the team that built our RFP,” Ellis says. “In the end, we had more than 400 requirements and 24 vendors vying for our business. The SharePoint integration was our top concern.”
Other important selection criteria included:
Robust records management functionality.
The ability to electronically store a wide range of file types, including AutoCAD drawings.
Open architecture allowing integration with line-of-business applications such as CRM.
Availability of workflow functionality for process improvements—and a reduced paper flow.
“Before we implemented Laserfiche, our records management plan was very inefficient,” Ellis explains. “We’d print out documents, process them by hand and then file them in cabinets. We had a whole warehouse dedicated to file storage, containing all kinds of old documents in Bankers Boxes stacked nearly to the ceiling that we didn’t have time to properly manage.
Laserfiche + SharePoint = Transparency
By integrating Laserfiche with SharePoint, the Port Authority now has the ability to collaborate on documents, retain them electronically, and efficiently manage and dispose of digital records—all while giving users access to content through the SharePoint interface.
But the cost and space savings aren’t the most significant benefits the Port Authority has realized as a result of its Laserfiche implementation. By acting as integrative middleware, Laserfiche Document Management allows users at the organization to access information in the environment with which they’re already familiar: SharePoint.
“The Port Authority’s had SharePoint for close to ten years, so people are pretty familiar with it,” says Ellis. “Most of our users won’t even know they’re using Laserfiche. With the integration, our content is searchable on an enterprise level, and the results are returned to users transparently through SharePoint. It enables us to access all our information from one central location without having to train our users on a new system.”