DocFinity®: A Decade of Imaging for the Comptroller’s Office of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

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Located in the heart of downtown Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania and the heart of state government agencies, the Comptroller’s Offices at the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania buzz with activity. The offices, which are located at a variety of remote locations throughout Harrisburg, serve collectively as the state’s vendor payment center. The volume of vendor payments is significant, and as a result each of the offices has the responsibility of vendor payments to its own set of public agencies, including the Department of Health, Department of Welfare, Liquor Control Board, and more.

When former governor Tom Ridge set a goal for state agencies to utilize new technology as one of his aspirations as Governor of Pennsylvania, the state took a major step forward in improving the way they do business. Ridge envisioned a government that was smarter, more efficient and less expensive…a move that would benefit all of the citizens of the Keystone State.

Electronic document and content management figured highly in this vision of a wired state government, and this particular office was immediately designated as a prime area for installation of electronic document management software (EDMS) because of the high volume of information that needed to be stored and processed. The office, which acts as a bill payer for the state, has hundreds of vendors; the responsibilities of reviewing each contract into which the state has entered can be daunting, to say the least.

the challenge: managing millions of documents

Each of the branches within the Comptroller’s Office gathers and generates thousands of documents per day, including invoices, bills and contracts for purchase of services. Contracts, invoices, voucher transmittals, revenue documents, and checks are scanned into the system, and each needs to be indexed and stored. When vendors send invoices to the state, contracts must be retrieved and compared with the invoices before payments can be made.

To complicate matters, each document requires a different action from the state. Prior to the push for EDMS, all the documents were handled manually - a time-consuming task, which lends itself easily to filing mistakes. The files were then stored on microfilm. Prior to automating their records management with DocFinity, seven different offices were involved in the process and each had their own system that was not integrated with the other offices. This drifted away from the governor’s goal of improving inter-office and inter-departmental communication within the state.

Computer Document Management Systems, Inc. (CDMS), a systems integrator specializing in document management solutions, was chosen to design and develop a document management system for the Comptroller’s Office. Known for their leadership in helping organizations transform the way they do business, CDMS helped the offices automate their records management process with DocFinity, and has supported and responded to their growing needs for more than a decade.

A key ingredient in serving the state effectively was understanding their specific and unique needs. “This particular Pennsylvania office exists to make sure every state vendor is paid … and paid on time,” said Terry Gross of Computer Document Management Systems, Inc. “That’s a pretty tall order and we knew we had to create an effective strategy utilizing just the right mix of technology to ensure that the employees of the office can do their job effectively.”

the chosen solution: OIT’s DocFinity

The comptroller’s office was actively seeking an electronic image-based system that would improve the efficiency of their primarily paper-based invoice storage system. After evaluating industry options, the state chose Optical Image Technology, Inc.’s (OIT) DocFinity suite of document management software solutions to help fulfill its electronic document management objectives. Since 1986, the State College-based OIT has been a leading provider of EDMS solutions and has received considerable recognition for its award-winning software suite, which is used by other federal, state, and county government agencies within the United States and in Europe. “OIT software is at the heart of this system,” said Gross “There are a couple of reasons why we chose to use the OIT DocFinity solutions within this system. OIT software integrates well with the other components of the system and in fact, one reason why customers prefer OIT software is its scalability and its non-proprietary status.”

Since 1995, the Commonwealth has utilized DocFinity to scan, retrieve, and process large volumes of documents, topping three million new items which were scanned into the system during the past year, and 1.8 million which were subsequently retrieved and evaluated for payment. Disaster recovery has never been an issue for the Comptroller’s Office: the collective information from these remote offices is well secured.

added security for the state: a mirror site

To ensure that the system was well protected through redundancy, a mirror site was established approximately a block away from the office. At the mirror site, the databases are continually updating and backing up the other device so that if one unit goes down unexpectedly, the other unit can be utilized without delay.

The implementation of EDMS for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s Comptroller’s Office has improved the office in three dramatic ways. “First, with this new system, the time to complete tasks has been decreased dramatically. Second, the cost of running this system is less expensive. And third, the scanned images are of better quality than the microfilmed images,” Gross commented. This leads to better, accurate filing and improved response times for tasks. Officials in the State office comment that the system has allowed them to create unmatched services for the citizens of Pennsylvania and has moved them forward into realizing the governor’s goal of making the commonwealth a pioneer in “e-Government.”

ongoing benefit: maximizing taxpayer dollars

Since 1995, this State office has scanned their documents utilizing OIT’s DocFinity Imaging, an industry-leading document imaging software solution. Although they began with less than 50 users in 1995, their needs have grown, and they now have unlimited users in a handful of offices with access to the system. Meanwhile, the office has been able to re-allocate its labor force, as well as trim its use of temporary laborers. Approximately 6,000 documents are scanned in every day at the office, creating 45,000 images, and DocFinity COLD-ERM (Reports Management) is utilized additionally to store computer-generated files.

Originally, in just the filing office alone, the number of full-time employees was reduced from six to four. The extensive use of temporary workers is no longer necessary. Also, CDMS was able to integrate the formerly disparate office systems. “We laid out a model to centralize the process,” Gross said.

Scott Buchart, Founder, President & CEO of OIT, commented, “The revolution of document management isn’t just relegated to businesses. What the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is doing in agencies such as this Office is really proof of what can be accomplished - efficiency, accuracy, plus happier citizens and taxpayers.”