Hillsdale BPU Eliminates Reliance on Paper Files and Improves Customer Service Using FileNexus®

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Municipally-owned Hillsdale Board of Public Utilities (“Hillsdale BPU”) provides electricity to approximately 6300 residents. They also provide water and wastewater services to nearly 4000 homes and businesses in the City of Hillsdale, MI and its outlying areas.

Hillsdale BPU was completely reliant on paper files to run its operations. This included verifications, billings, invoices, and payables—all filed alphabetically and by vendor. Documents like cash receipts or billing journals could run to hundreds of pages, making them a challenge to review. Some customer inquiries took 2 or 3 days to answer if staff needed to sift through boxes of paperwork.

Hillsdale BPU knew they needed to eliminate errors and speed up their customer service process. The utility also had serious concerns over business continuity and disaster recovery. A building full of documents would be difficult to protect in the event of a catastrophe.

Hillsdale BPU selected FileNexus® as their document management solution. FileNexus® gives organizations the ability to capture virtually any type of document from any source (i.e. paper records, electronic files such as host generated reports, client statement streams, IVR recordings, GIS maps, etc.), index and compress them for secure archival and future recall – providing a single cohesive repository for all document management, workflow and retention needs.

FileNexus® was implemented quickly, with a direct integration into Hillsdale BPU’s existing financial and billing systems completed in less than two weeks. They saw immediate cost and productivity savings. All reports are now archived automatically in electronic format—with a corresponding 100% reduction in printing.  Search, retrieval and handling of records is virtually instant. There have been many benefits.

“FileNexus® virtually eliminated our need to print and store paper files, reduced our costs and made us more efficient. As our solution provider, Loris understood our needs and worked with us to quickly streamline our operations.”
Annette Kinney, Chief Financial Manager / Assistant Director
Hillsdale BPU

Audits are now extremely straightforward. Auditors can log into the FileNexus® system, and easily review any information they require. FileNexus® has also made historical documents, like board minutes, resolutions, and easements available through a single click. Searches can also recall other relevant documents, so staff have all the pertinent information at their fingertips through one single search.

Learn more about how other utilities use FileNexus®:

For more information on how FileNexus® can improve your business efficiency, please visit www.filenexus.com, or write to sales@loristech.com.

About Hillsdale BPU
For more information on Hillsdale BPU, please visit their website www.hillsdalebpu.com.

Published December 12, 2011.