Customer Background

It takes nearly 5,000 dedicated people to ensure that the City of Baton Rouge, Louisiana runs smoothly. And at its center, the City’s Department of Finance is one of its most bustling offices, since this is the focal point for all monetary transactions of every department of the city.

More than 95,000 documents arrive annually at Baton Rouge’s Department of Finance in the form of invoices, purchase orders, payments, order confirmations, partial payments, cash receipts, government grants, etc. The department was being overwhelmed by this vast amount of incoming paper documents needed to run all aspects of the city.

Every document that comes into the department has vital information which needs to be captured and dealt with. And once they’re processed, these documents cannot be discarded. They must all be stored on site for reference and future access. Every document received was being filed and kept on-site in one of the massive numbers of filing cabinets. A large portion of the building was being utilized exclusively for document storage. The number of filing cabinets kept growing and valuable office space was diminishing.

Business Issues

While saving money is always an important factor, Baton Rouge’s Department of Finance was looking to save something even more valuable…time. Interns and file clerks were spending their days running from filing cabinet to filing cabinet pulling requested documents, sending them to the appropriate person and then re-filing them when they were eventually returned. And because all the files are public records, each document must be accessible to anyone in the community who requests it. In addition to public requests, documents are also frequently called for by other city departments, and sometimes are even subpoenaed for use in court proceedings. The fear, and sometimes the reality, was that documents were being misfiled, in use by someone else or, worst of all, lost.

It was time for a change. Automation was the buzzword. Baton Rouge’s first pass at automation was a brief fling with microfilm. While it seemed ideal, microfilm’s flaws quickly became apparent. “It was impossible to go back and insert a document back in the middle of microfilm. Because of the sequential nature of microfilm, you have to put them in the correct order the first time, ” says Jeannie Martin, Baton Rouge’s Accounting Section Supervisor. In addition, it was quite time-consuming to track down the exact location of the specific document you wanted to find within the microfilm. It also required an elaborate method to copy a microfilmed document back into a paper one for faxing or mailing. And it didn’t solve their main problem. Microfilm could still be misplaced, inaccessible because someone else was using it, or lost. The search for an answer continued.

The Solution

To solve their problems once and for all, Martin looked for an automated solution where they could retain complete control. The search led her to Tampa, Florida-based AnyDoc Software (formerly known as Microsystems Technology). AnyDoc’s software for automated document and data capture, OCR for AnyDoc® and automated electronic image storage and retrieval, AnyDoc® BROKERit, were exactly what Baton Rouge had been looking for.

Now, every incoming document is immediately scanned and indexed with OCR for AnyDoc software. Automated indexing allows each document to be uniquely identified. Once indexed, every scanned document is stored electronically with BROKERit, eliminating the need for paper filing cabinets. Electronic storage and retrieval with BROKERit allows any document to be accessed and viewed on a PC. Martin says, “Our employees can now instantly pull up any document right from his or her desktop.” There’s no more need to get up and physically pull paper documents from filing cabinets. “Multiple people can even access the identical document at the same time,” says Martin. And users can even print a copy of the document or e-mail it to someone with just a few clicks of the mouse.

Benefits

Baton Rouge’s productivity increased immediately. Now the turnaround time for each document that comes in is audited, input, reconciled, imaged and ready to be electronically viewed in less than 48 hours. “All thanks to the accuracy and reliability of OCR for AnyDoc and BROKERit,” says Martin.

The OCR for AnyDoc and BROKERit system was quickly embraced by the entire department. “We couldn’t get our workers back to filing paper even if we wanted to,” says Martin. “Our BROKERit system is running on every desktop 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

Because BROKERit provides instant access to all the documents, there was no need to keep file clerks on staff just to pull documents. “We were able to realize an annual savings of $58,000 almost immediately. And the majority of our overtime has been eliminated just by removing the need for workers to get up from their desks searching for paper documents,” says Martin. In addition, the Department of Finance regained valuable office space by removing more than 35 filing cabinets that were no longer needed.

Things are running much smoother in Baton Rouge thanks to AnyDoc Software.

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