City of Kent Optimizes the Accessibility to Documents Across Six Departments

Case Summary
The City of Kent consolidated manual and redundant filing systems and increased departmental operational efficiency while dramatically reducing the physical space required to maintain paper files.

The Challenge
The City of Kent is comprised of several departments. Each department had individual business processes, duplicate information, and a large volume of records that needed to be constantly accessed by large user groups.

The City of Kent was looking for a solution that would consolidate disparate manual and redundant filing systems around a standard enterprise capable technology, increase departmental operational efficiency and dramatically reduce the physical space required to maintain paper files. The city needed to manage the taxonomy and disposition of records to comply with city records management policies. The finance department was standardized on a JD Edwards accounting solution and needed a platform that provided certified integration for seamless image retrieval of accounts payable invoices.

The City of Kent had been using JD Edwards and KIVA permitting solutions, but the information housed was not accessible to outside departments. In addition to the integration challenges, the city felt that the existing imaging software had reached its capacity and that a more capable enterprise solution was needed to support them in the future.

The ImageSource® Solution
For optimal functionality, ImageSource utilized best-in-breed technology components. Oracle|Stellent Imaging and Process Management was put in place for content storage, retrieval and workflow. Kofax Ascent® Capture was implemented for image scanning, OCR and data validation.

The initial project was divided into four distinct phases. Phase I included the design or the Integrated Document Archive and Retrieval software and the implementation of that infrastructure.

Phase II covered the image conversion and migration from the legacy document imaging environment to the Oracle|Stellent IPM solution. 

Phase III implemented an image enabled Permit Tracking System which retrieved and viewed scanned document attachments using the KIVA software application. 

Phase IV implemented an image enabled Enterprise Resource Planning System (JD Edwards). The solution provides a seamless integration between Oracle|Stellent® IPM and JDE to retrieve any related business documents, regardless of type or format.

"The city has been using the solution since 2001, during that time we have worked with ImageSource to effectively enhance and maintain the solution. We have successfully upgraded our software several times and ImageSource has maintained a consistent and steadfast approach to supporting our solution."

– James McKenney Senior System Analyst

Bottom Line
With the implementation of an Integrated Archive and Document Retrieval System the city established a reliable document management repository that can easily be accessed by city staff across multiple platforms. It improved the timeliness and quality of customer service by reducing the reliance on paper for large volumes of business information. The streamlined business process provided easy access to document retrieval and reduced management time. Currently the cities Permit, Clerk, Public Works, Police, Fire, Corrections and Finance departments are all utilizing the platform. 

The system provides easy access to archived documents by allowing concurrent retrieval across the enterprise for all city departments. By standardizing on one common enterprise platform the city reduced its overall costs for records management, retention and disposition policy enforcement. Because of the common platform the city can focus IT resources to support a common system used by all departments. This means one source to focus on for upgrades, disaster recovery, maintenance and support.