City of Maquoketa, IA: What Happens When “The Way We’ve Always Done It” Starts Costing More Than We Realize?
For the City of Maquoketa, Iowa, finding a document could take minutes or even hours.
Before implementing Laserfiche Cloud, the process was surprisingly complicated.
Reports were printed, physical copies were stored in filing cabinets, documents were rescanned onto computers, and files were saved into different folders. When someone needed to find a specific report, they had to search through both paper and digital records.
It worked.
But “it works” isn’t the same thing as “it works well.”
With help from Digital Age Tech Consultants, the city began its digital transformation by implementing Laserfiche Cloud.
Today, reports can be sent directly into Laserfiche using the Snapshot feature, while documents saved on computers are also stored in the cloud. Optical character recognition (OCR) technology makes those documents text searchable, significantly simplifying the process of finding information.
The result?
What Once Took Minutes or Hours Can Now Take Seconds
And the benefits aren't just measured in time.
The City of Maquoketa has now saved hundreds of dollars in printing costs and reduced the amount of employee time spent managing and searching for documents.
That’s what makes digital transformation so valuable.
It isn't about completely reinventing the way an organization works.
Sometimes, it's about looking at the everyday processes that employees have learned to accept, and asking: Why does this have to be this difficult?
Paperwork. Filing cabinets. Repetitive data entry. Searching through folders. Printing something just to scan it back into a computer.
These small inefficiencies become expensive when repeated every day, by every employee, across an entire organization. The City of Maquoketa’s experience is a great reminder that going digital isn't simply about replacing paper with technology.
It's about giving people their time back.
And when employees can spend less time searching for information and more time doing the work that actually matters, everyone benefits.
Digital Transformation Doesn't Have to Happen All at Once
Sometimes, it starts with one process, one department and one simple question: How can we make this easier?
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