ECM Software for Government

The Floyd County Clerk’s Office provides consistent, quality service to the general public and tax payers of Indiana in an efficient and honest manner. It is their focus on impartial teamwork, efficiency, and professionalism that makes Floyd County Clerk’s Office a reliable and trustworthy establishment. As a government entity, Floyd County handles all real estate deductions, transfers of property, tax sales and much more. Responsible for maintaining the public records of the county as required by Indiana State Statutes, Floyd County operates in a document-heavy, paper-intensive environment.

Every quarter, Floyd County receives close to 1,000 sewer line order documents. One staff member makes a copy and stores the original document alphabetically within their archives. Next, they calculate all charges – pulling every property to be affected – and manually enter the amounts to be put on the tax bill. With an outdated document management system that was anything but user-friendly, Floyd County was unable to find the original source files, as data was being entered inaccurately, causing public documents to be misplaced.

Tasks became more time consuming and collaboration was made difficult, leaving the Clerk’s Office struggling to locate the data they needed to provide top-notch customer service. The document management system was meant to help them balance and match these numbers, but manual data entry remained the same, leaving employees with a tedious and inefficient month-long document administration process.

Realizing it was time to make a change, Floyd County found an advanced document management solution called GlobalSearch® from Square 9® Softworks. Designed to automate business processes and eliminate repetitive manual data entry, GlobalSearch comes standard with the features that increase productivity while ensuring regulatory compliance. But what truly sold Floyd County was the built-in advanced functionality that would help to improve daily document processing, which was not possible with their previous solution.

Floyd County not only implemented GlobalSearch to eliminate storage space around the office, but KeyFree Indexing, an OCR-assisted, additional GlobalSearch module, has allowed them to greatly improve the archiving processes by indexing and searching files by name. Regardless of the format or the structure of the documents, with its simple point and click functionality, KeyFree Indexing extracts information based on its location within a document and classifies it, cutting down input errors, streamlining data entry, improving processing and workflow, while allowing staff to file records effortlessly in a matter of seconds.

With GlobalSearch, documents can be found via a quick system search, and are immediately pulled up and printed on the spot, eliminating the risk of misplaced paperwork. Not only has this led to easier collaboration, but automated document audit trails help them to abide by government regulations as well. With visibility into all document actions, including views and modifications, every application, tax, or deduction form, is kept secure and compliant.

As the Real Estate Auditor’s Office and the Clerk’s Office use GlobalSearch daily, everything is now automated. Balancing bills is no longer necessary, deductions and duplicate files can be found by simply searching a name, and one person can complete the administrative work for all 1,000 sewer lines within a couple of days. In addition, tax payer savings have increased, over 25% of office paperwork has been eliminated, and Floyd County was able to hire a part-time employee instead of filling the vacant full time position, saving them around $18,000 annually.

While still in the process of scanning their files, Floyd County is thrilled with their switch to GlobalSearch. They plan to expand the document management system to the financial side of the auditor’s office so they can scan claims and other documents that need to be searched for multiple times a day or throughout the year. With GlobalSearch in place, Floyd County can focus less on replacing lost paperwork, and more on providing the quality service they strive for. To learn more about Floy County Clerk, please visit http://www.floydcountyclerk.org.

Interview: Amanda Pahmeier, First Deputy Auditor, Floyd County Clerk

Q. What business challenges led you to GlobalSearch?

Amanda Pahmeier: Our previous document management software was not user friendly. When we were entering data into the system, we had many manual data entry errors that led to us constantly searching for what went wrong. We had stacks of boxes filled with paper everywhere in the office, making search and retrieval difficult, as well as costly when we had to replace them because we couldn’t find what we were looking for.

Q. How have processes changed since implementing GlobalSearch?

Pahmeier: At first we were just looking for something to alphabetize our data, so that way, every quarter when it comes time to make copies of the thousands of documents we have to add up charges for, they can easily be sorted. But once we saw KeyFree Indexing and its capabilities, we realized the benefit in it. Sitting down and learning a new system is always intimidating, but once the technician took us through training, he was able to tailor the data entry process and customize it to make it work for our office. It has made an incredible addition to our sorting process.

Q. In what ways has Square 9’s product suite improved business performance?

Pahmeier: GlobalSearch has made daily work much easier for us. With this new system, I get the lines from the Recorder’s Office, scan them, KeyFree index them, then export the data to Excel. The data can then be manipulated for a .txt file that I can import into our system. Not only have we eliminated stacks of boxes, but now when we receive the 1,000 lines every quarter, one person can pull and match all the information they need within a couple of days. Plus with importing, there’s no balancing and no human data entry errors to worry about. Looking for missing applications has decreased to almost zero due to the fact that we can pull up scanned copies and just print them on the spot.

Q. Would you recommend GlobalSearch?

Pahmeier: Ever since we started using GlobalSearch we’ve received multiple compliments on the cleanliness of our office. We are ecstatic with the switch and I would absolutely recommend it to others. In fact, I have already told other counties who have had similar scanning issues about GlobalSearch and the huge difference it makes in alphabetizing documents and their data. Not only can we quickly scan, store and retrieve our documents, but it’s helped us to save 3-4 cases of paper a year and clear out the stacked boxes in front of our wall. Now it doesn’t look like we sell boxes for a living!