With over 22,000 residents, the City of Acworth, GA is home to a rich culture with its citizens at the center. Like many cities, Acworth faced challenges with digitally transforming their manual processes and documents to better meet the needs of constituents. With the goal of improving citizen services, streamlining processes in the city, protecting against ransomware attacks, and getting future-ready while ensuring proper compliance, the City of Acworth set out to tackle their challenges once and for all.
A City-Wide Solution
Before selecting Laserfiche, the City of Acworth went through a few phases of improving their document management system, but nothing was a complete fit. Acworth first realized they needed to update their document and records management 23 years ago; beginning with moving paper records to floppy discs, they then moved to a centralized server, and finally to USB drives before deciding they needed to bring in an outside platform. They also had issues with storage, with multiple rooms in city hall housing thousands of paper documents, wasting valuable space. After meeting with vendors and finding the right fit in Laserfiche and SP Accelerated Information Systems (AIS), they finally found the right fit to make a measurable change.
“We first started looking at true document management systems about 15 years ago, but never could find the right fit for the right cost. It wasn’t until 2022 that we were able to finally find a solution that provided us with everything we were looking for at a price point that we could justify and that was Laserfiche.”– Keith Wilson, IT Manager
When planning their digital transformation, Acworth understood the challenges of implementing a new system; people are used to completing tasks the way they’ve always done them. Showing team members the benefits of Laserfiche and getting them to understand how it can improve their work was vital to their strategy for success.
Delivering ROI for Citizens and Staff
One win that helped with staff buy-in was automating invoice payment management for their finance department. Previously there were countless issues with getting invoice payments completed with departments submitting invoices via untraceable methods including printed paper and email. To address the issue, Acworth created a Laserfiche form for all the necessary information including the ability to attach invoices to the process. Not only does this help get more processes completed, it also helped standardize the process leaving less guess work.
Building on the invoice process success, Acworth began implementing more automated processes including a team feedback form used during annual reviews. Surveys have replaced previously manual sign-up sheets including one for the city’s annual employee flu shot offering. Instead of signing up on a spreadsheet, the simple yes or no option on the survey made the process much easier for staff and helped raise the response rate to nearly 40% and participation rates from 10% to 15%.
“There’s no way I could have survived the last 8 months had we not went to Laserfiche.”– Angie Luna, Deputy Director, Power & Public Works
Concurrent to Acworth implementing Laserfiche, they also began major renovations at their city hall and power and public works buildings causing employees and their documents to be shuffled and displaced. With processes starting to be automated and documents in Laserfiche, it made it much easier to mitigate disruptions. For example, renovations caused the elimination of 25 desktop printers; without Laserfiche, this would have caused major issues for staff and citizens, but with Laserfiche, staff were able to reduce printing by 14% or 10,000 pages without reducing productivity. This decrease in printer needs also allowed Acworth to renegotiate their multi-function printer (MFP) leases allowing them to get 18 new MFPs for the same cost as their old printer leases.
Looking Ahead
With initial buy-in strong, and numerous successful use cases, the possibilities for Laserfiche at Acworth are endless. They plan to do even more with automation, including using some of the new AI tools bult in to Laserfiche to help make processes and forms even easier to complete. All these improvements are with the goal of continuing to implement change strategically.
“If I had it to do over, I’d make the exact choice I made with both Laserfiche and AIS. I’m 24 years into my time here, and plan on retiring within the next five years. I’m 100% confident that when I retire, Laserfiche will be a part of Acworth, and a decade after I retire, Laserfiche will still be a part of our daily work.”– Keith Wilson, IT Manager
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About Accelerated Information Systems
Accelerated Information Systems (AIS) is an award-winning professional services firm focused on solving business challenges with software solutions. AIS provides expert guidance, utilizing industry expertise and a strong technical skill set to design, implement, and support enterprise solutions.
AIS provides a full suite of professional services including consulting, solution design, implementation, technical support, data conversion, system integration, training, and project management.
Clients of AIS include State and Local Government, Colleges and Universities, Financial Services (Wealth Management, Investment Advisors, Broker-Dealers), Manufacturers, Not-for-Profit Organizations, TV and Media, and Multi-National Non-Governmental Organizations.
Founded in 2005, AIS is headquartered in New York and is also certified in multiple other states as a Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) and a Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE). In addition to their status as a Platinum Certified Laserfiche Solution Provider and the 2019 Laserfiche Cloud Solution Provider of the Year, AIS is a Microsoft Cloud Silver Certified Partner.