Community Action Partnership Hennepin County had quite a year last year. In the previous five or six years, the Energy Assistance department processed 12-13,000 energy assistance applications. They typically had between 25 and 30 staff to handle this load.
But, with the closing of another agency their workload increase significantly. Not just a little, a lot! The good news is that they had planned on using Laserfiche Workflow and we had had it already to use. The bad news is that it was new and they did not have time to train their staff before the deluge of applications hit them. To further complicate the situation, they had a new director and case workers. It was like the perfect storm hit them.
This did not deter them, they press forward learning the new system as they were processing applications. As they were working with their Laserfiche workflow, they saw ways to refine their process and the workflow was tweaked to accommodate these changes. As they did this they saw their productivity increase.
They ended up processing over 22,000 applications and reduce their staffing to 20 people.
Using their paper process: 12,000 applications / 25 staff = 480 applications per staff member
Using Laserfiche workflow: 22,000 applications / 20 staff = 1100 applications per staff member