Overview
Administrative Secretary Mary Ann Herrick’s goal is to have all of the City of Circle Pine’s records on Laserfiche before she retired in a year. That’s a tall order, considering the city, located 15 miles north of Minneapolis, MN, has boxes of files stored back to its incorporation in the 50s. “It’s all about document retention,” Herrick said.
Challenge
Space was limited in the offices of the City of Circle Pines. So, there were a limited number of filing cabinets available for storing critical documents. The City was forced to move their paper documents to storage boxes. And not having adequate for the boxes, they ended up not only in the closets but under desks and even stacked in the hallway.
You can imagine how difficult that made finding a document that you needed. Hours were wasted each month, storing, moving, and finding documents. Mary Ann did not want to pass these problems down to her predecessor.
Solution
Mary Ann got approval to purchase an ECM system in 1997 and selected Hemingway Solutions (formerly Solbrekk) and Laserfiche.
By that time, the City Hall had simply run out of space. Why she picked Laserfiche and Hemingway Solutions, Herrick said, that Laserfiche was simple to use and the price was affordable. And Hemingway had very capable IT and Laserfiche support staff. They took the time to listen to me and made suggestions on how to best proceed.
In 1997 Laserfiche was installed and Mary Ann began the huge task of scanning all of their important paper documents such as minutes, agenda, and resolutions. She said, “it went much faster than I thought it was going to take. When I hit the scan button, all the scanned documents were stored in Laserfiche will all the critical data I needed to find them in the future. Laserfiche and our scanner were so fast, it really gave me a workout trying to keep up. I have to say Laserfiche is fun.”
Results
When asked how Laserfiche impacted her environment, she said; “Now, current paper documents are automatically scanned into Laserfiche and electronic files dragged and dropped. That includes all Word documents, council minutes and internal and external correspondence. “It’s good, it’s fast. The ability to transport documents from one location to another is incredible.”
When Mary Ann retired most of the boxes had disappeared from the hallways and office areas. She was able to see her goal achieved before she retired.