You Have Laserfiche. What’s Next?

One of the questions I hear all the time from customers is some version of this:

“We’ve done a lot with Laserfiche. What should we be doing next?”

It sounds like a simple question. It usually isn’t.

Some organizations have been using Laserfiche for years and have strong records management practices, but they’re just beginning to look at integrations. Others have automated dozens of processes but still have departments working outside the system. Some are considering Cloud. Some want to know what AI might actually do for them. And some are looking at everything they’ve built over the years and wondering whether it still reflects the way their organization works today.

There isn’t one universal next step.

That’s why we created What’s Next, and why we’re turning it into an upcoming recorded webinar series.

Seven Areas. A Lot of Questions.

We’ve organized What’s Next around seven areas that come up repeatedly in our conversations with customers:

Capture. Find. Work. Connect. Cloud. Control. AI.

I’m deliberately not going to explain all seven here. That’s what the webinars are for.

But I will give you a few hints about where we’re going.

Capture: Are you still thinking primarily about getting documents into Laserfiche, or are you thinking about the quality, structure, and usefulness of the information coming in?

Find: Can people actually find what they need, or have years of growth created repositories that make perfect sense only to the people who built them?

Work: You probably have automated processes. The more interesting question is whether you’re automating the right processes, and whether those processes still work the way you think they do.

Connect: Laserfiche doesn’t operate by itself. Neither does your organization. ERP systems, permitting applications, payment systems, GIS, e-signature platforms and other applications all create and consume information. What should be connected, and what shouldn’t?

Cloud: Moving to the Cloud can solve some very practical infrastructure problems. But the conversation gets more interesting when you start asking what else the move makes possible.

Control: Retention, trustworthy systems, accessibility, security and governance aren’t separate from the rest of your Laserfiche strategy. They help determine whether everything else you’re building can actually hold up over time.

And then there’s AI.

No, we’re not going to tell you that you need an AI strategy because everyone else has one.

We’re going to talk about when an organization is actually ready to use AI, where it can be useful today, and what needs to be in place before adding another layer of technology to an environment that may already be complicated enough.

This Isn’t a Maturity Model

One thing we decided early was that we didn’t want What’s Next to become another scorecard telling organizations they were “behind.”

I’ve worked with customers long enough to know that technology doesn’t develop in a straight line.

You can have an extremely sophisticated records team working with a relatively simple implementation. You can also have an enormous enterprise deployment that is barely being used by half the organization.

Those are two very different situations.

So during the series, we’re going to look at something we think is more useful: the difference between the maturity of the system and the mastery of the people using it.

That distinction changes the conversation considerably.

It also means What’s Next will be different for every organization.

And Then There’s the Stuff That Isn’t on the Diagram

There’s another reason we wanted to make this a webinar series rather than simply publish a framework and call it done.

Some of the most useful advice comes up almost incidentally.

Someone on our team will mention a small change to the way we structure a process, handle metadata, approach retention, organize a repository, manage an integration or plan a project.

And someone will stop us.

“Wait. You can do that?”

Yes. You can.

Sometimes we’re surprised by which piece of advice gets that reaction.

Something that has become second nature to us after years of working with Laserfiche may solve a problem someone else has been dealing with for years.

Those little pieces of advice matter.

They come from years of seeing what works, where organizations tend to get stuck, which decisions have consequences much later, and which seemingly small changes can make everything that comes afterward easier.

Some of those things aren’t big enough to become their own webinar.

We’re going to tell you about them anyway.

Throughout the recorded series, expect practical advice, examples from real implementations, things we wish customers knew earlier, common mistakes that are surprisingly easy to avoid, and probably a few opinions about things you should stop doing altogether.

We don’t know which one will be useful to you.

That’s part of the reason to watch.

The Question Isn’t “What Feature Are We Missing?”

That may be the biggest preview I can give you.

What’s Next isn’t really about creating a checklist of Laserfiche features you haven’t implemented yet.

It’s about looking at where you are now, what has changed around you, where friction still exists and what would make the biggest difference next.

For one organization, that might be an integration.

For another, it might be cleaning up what they already have.

For another, it might be Cloud, better governance, accessibility, a new workflow, AI, or simply extending something that works well in one department to the rest of the organization.

And sometimes the right answer is:

Nothing yet.

That’s a perfectly legitimate answer too.

We’d rather help you figure out the right next step than give you a longer list of things to buy.

Start Thinking About Your Own “What’s Next?”

Because these will be recorded webinars, you won’t need to rearrange your schedule to attend a live session. You’ll be able to watch each installment when it works for you and spend some time thinking about how the questions apply to your own environment.

As you watch, think about the problem you haven’t quite figured out.

The process everybody complains about.

The integration you’ve wondered about.

The repository that has accumulated 15 years of “we’ll clean that up later.”

The thing you suspect Laserfiche should be able to do, but you’re not quite sure what the next step should be.

Maybe one of the seven areas will give you a new way to look at it.

Maybe one of the examples will sound uncomfortably familiar.

Or maybe it will be one of those incidental pieces of advice that makes you stop the recording and think:

“Wait. We can do that?”

We hope so.

We’ll be sharing the recorded webinar series soon.

Until then, take a look at your own Laserfiche environment and ask yourself one question:

If we weren’t starting over, but we were starting from where we are today, what would we do next?

We have some ideas.