How to Allocate Manpower Resources to Your Laserfiche System

By Pierre Smith

As we work with clients on their Laserfiche system one of questions we field the most is regarding staff resource allotment for the implementation. Accordingly, we’ve developed an allocation system that we (and our clients) think works particularly well. Depending on your organization, some of these duties can be outsourced, so I’ll be sure to include that information when it makes sense—so here goes!

Overall, we find it useful to assign Laserfiche implementation duties into four parts:

• IT support– IT is the backbone of all technology efforts. Some organizations outsource their IT services, some use internal resources—either way a Laserfiche implementation will take one person between two and five hours per month of their time. You’ll note that the Laserfiche “burden” for IT is really light for an enterprise-class system. Tech department duties include maintenance of the server and computers, installing updates, antivirus and backing up the system. Also, IT needs to apply Laserfiche patches and perform version upgrades. Simple, right?
• Department set-up– This is the fun part. We suggest each department assign a “guru” who is an expert in policies and procedure to “own” the department’s system. Initially, the Laserfiche set-up will take about twenty to forty hours of the guru’s time. This staff member is responsible for developing the folder structure, building templates and determining document types as well as their security. Additionally, your guru will develop one of the most important Laserfiche functions—the department workflows. Often, the “guru” and IT person collaborate on workflow development. Finally, the guru often takes on training the department—and sometimes the entire organization—on the system.
• Forms set-up– Forms is an extremely powerful tool so we suggest that it have one dedicated owner for the entire organization. We estimate that building your forms will take one staff member ten hours per form and this includes time collecting forms from the entire organization to convert. Sometimes, in smaller organizations, the IT person assists forms building.
• Scanning and conversion– Now that the system is set up and the workflows are determined and built, it’s time to start scanning. Depending on the number of documents that need to be in the system, initially, scanning takes two to four staff members thirty to forty hours per week. Now before you hit the panic button this is the part of implementation that is most often outsourced. We have a partner, Scan-IT-Forward, who can come in with their own scanners, laptops and QuickFields (Laserfiche capture module), and take care of the scanning/conversion process for you. This service includes prepping, scanning and indexing the documents.

We hope this was helpful as you think about your internal Laserfiche implementation plan. If you have any questions please give us a shout at 305-434-7916. Happy Laserfiching!