Service allows clients to scan, store and search large volumes of paperwork electronically

Bulky filing cabinets and towering paper piles, take note: NERIC offers a service that could put an end to your reign.

The Laserfiche Service is gaining traction among school districts — and within our own BOCES — as a convenient way to electronically store large volumes of paperwork into organized, easily accessible databases.

Currently, the service securely maintains more than 451,000 files -- just over 257 gigabytes of data.

"The software saves office storage space by allowing you to eliminate hard copies of paper and store them electronically in a folder-structured database," says Daniel Trager, NERIC's laserfiche administrator. "The documents are scanned and stored as .tif images on a NERIC server. It gives you the ability to organize, share, and retrieve documents safely and securely."

Much like a "Neat Desk," (a popular scanning device whose TV commercials beckon potential customers to live a "paper-free lifestyle") the Laserfiche Service scans paper documents into a secure database accessible by username and password. When a document is entered, the software automatically scans the document using "Optical Character Recognition" technology to make documents searchable within the database. This means users who need a certain type of document, but can't remember where it is, can search for the document with a single word or phrase as if they were Googling information on the Internet.

The Laserfiche Service is used not just at NERIC, but within BOCES to store human resources personnel files, purchase orders and other important office documents.

School districts can also purchase the Laserfiche Service through NERIC, complete with server storage, training and full maintenance and troubleshooting support.

"We've received a lot of positive feedback from the school districts and users around NERIC about the efficiency of Laserfiche document image processing," says Edythe Alcombright, data processing manager.