Item: Laserfiche
Rating: 10
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Laserfiche is being used to steadily transform our organization from paper-based with manual processes into a digitized, automated and streamlined insurance company. Laserfiche is being utilized by our entire organization to varying degrees.

In its most basic form, it is an electronic repository with document management, so that all users can access the same documents (policies for example), regardless of which applications they use, or which departments they reside in.

Various workflow automation and processes have been progressively built around the documents. A simple example is a new hire process, which orchestrates responsibilities across HR, Information Technology, and business departments, creating a smooth, seamless process.

Additionally, external applications can be seamlessly integrated with Laserfiche, accessing documents, updating metadata and triggering workflows.

Pros and Cons

Electronic content management- it provides backup, versioning, access controls, retention policies, powerful search, metadata, and routing. It provides several facilities for importing scanning documents including OCR.
Business Process Automation via workflow. Built on Microsoft WWF technology, Laserfiche provides a developer studio (designer) for rapid, visual development. It contains dozens of pre-built objects to accomplish numerous tasks, including document routing, rules, and web API integrations.
Electronic Forms- an easy to use interface for creating input forms which can be routed, saved to the repository, and integrated into a workflow.
Robotic Process Automation- Laserfiche has put an emphasis on developing their RPA solution to be a serious player in this space. Their RPA bots can be easily integrated into business process automation (BPAs).

While Laserfiche has some powerful development tools, it is difficult to manage configurations while promoting code across environments. For example, SQL connections and other environment specific resources have to be manually configured in each environment.
Laserfiche forms are a newer addition to the product family and could use some product maturity. While easy to use for simple forms, once your forms become more complex, you need to accomplish tasks by heavy JavaScript coding.

Return on Investment

The centralized repository of digitized documents allows users from different departments to collaborate and use the same documents, effortlessly and seamlessly. This has been a tremendous value to organizational efficiency and accuracy.
Business Process Automation has increased the capacity of a fixed workforce. By reducing the workload of individuals on repetitive tasks, it allows them to work on higher-value tasks.
Business Process Automation increases accuracy as well by defining a clear process with forms, emails, and document routing on each step. This leads to greater worker productivity.

Other Software Used

Nuance Power PDF Advanced

Performance

Performance, of course, is largely dependent on the underlying environment. Laserfiche does its part with multi-threading, taking advantage of multi-core servers on scanning, workflows, and bots. A SQL-Server back-end is suitable for small to medium-sized company, but may not scale to large, where Oracle would be the better choice. Workflows can be poorly written and perform recursive work slowing down the system. It's better to run batch type workflows at night when possible.

Usability

Laserfiche is a very easy product to use on both a technical and end-user level. This makes it readily incorporated into an organization. It does require planning and experience to avoid pitfalls, but it is the rare product that our end users have adapted to so quickly. In a short few years, our organization has become heavily reliant on Laserfiche and has re-shaped the way we architect our systems and solutions.

Laserfiche has excellent documentation and training for both technical and business users. And finally, they have a very capable professional services arm.

Ease of Integration

Laserfiche offers several features for integration:

Workflows can call Web Service APIs. As long as the API is reasonably simple, it can be set up quickly and managed from workflow designer. More complicated APIs would become more difficult.
Laserfiche Connector which can be easily embedded into an external application providing a smooth interface with the repository.
Has an SDK where you can interact with an API, build your own, or integrate directly using an object model.
Has a web service which can be used to start a workflow sending in parameters.

Likelihood to Recommend

Laserfiche is ideal for digitizing and streamlining the workplace. Business processes can be automated very quickly with the robust tools provided. The limitations will be about understanding the processes enough to automate them properly, which requires a collaboration of information technology with the business.

Laserfiche is an enterprise-class solution requiring a robust infrastructure to support it including a scalable RDBMS back end like SQL-Server or Oracle, so smaller organizations might want to consider a cloud-hosted solution, rather than hosting it in-house. Additionally, best practices need to be put in place quickly or else the repository can easily become a mess. I would recommend professional services to help get started on the right footing.

One item that Laserfiche could do better is providing a corporate portal solution. As the central repository, it is the de facto backend to a portal and would make sense to provide a UI. They do have a product called Discussions which provides a collaboration site, so they are on the right track.

Finally, while they do offer an entry point into RPA, there are products that focus solely on that space and are far more sophisticated for managing bots.

Digitize, Automate, and Streamline with Laserfiche

Software Version

Overall Satisfaction with Laserfiche