Customer Case Study
Company: Eagle River & Water Sanitation
District
Website: http://www.erwds.org/ Country/Region: United States, CO Size: 99 employees
Industry: Government Partner: Knowledge Lake Software and Services:
Microsoft SharePoint 2013
Government entity reduces business risk
through process automation.
”The Business-Critical SharePoint solution transformed the way we think about
records, information and data organization. This brings file sharing and collaboration
well into the 21st century.”
Kyle Collins, Records and Information Management with Eagle River & Water Sanitation District
Business Climate and Needs
Eagle River Water & Sanitation District (the District) is a local government entity responsible for the public water systems and wastewater treatment system serving communities in the eastern half of Eagle County, Colorado. The District’s service area encompasses approximately 54,000 acres in Eagle County.
In the Eagle River Lab Department, the testing laboratory of the District, manual data entry, hand-written forms, and traditional phone and email communication dominated previous business processes. They utilized standalone hardware instruments to provide sample test results. Original electronic bench sheets were printed each day for each test. The analyst manually entered the data on the printed bench sheet, entered the data on the electronic calculation sheet, printed the sheet, entered or parsed the data into their Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS), and then filed all paperwork in a binder. These binders were stored in the lab offices for three years. Then they were packed and moved to a standalone storage structure located 15 miles from the lab facility for seven more years, as required by the State of Colorado Special Districts Records Retention Schedule.
When lab personnel needed to retrieve data stored here, a portion of their paid time
Employees had to unpile boxes and search through stacks of paper to find what was needed.
Solution: Microsoft SharePoint
2013
The District selected ECS Team, a Microsoft partner to implement a Business-Critical SharePoint solution. The goals were to surface Line-of-Business (LOB) data through SharePoint 2013, create a standardized, organization-wide record management system, improve search and automate business processes. SharePoint was directly integrated with LIMS via Microsoft Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) call. Other connections were made via KnowledgeLake, a scanning solution. An Enterprise Search Center was also deployed along with KnowledgeLake Search.
Eagle River Water and Sanitation District had purchased SharePoint prior to implementing this solution, but employees were only familiar with its functionality through research and demonstrations. The critical lab LOB system, LIMS, was integrated with SharePoint to incorporate key lab information as metadata in SharePoint. This lab metadata would then be used for information management and retrieval, thus improving business-critical processes.
the larger effort ECS Team completed around the creation of 1) an on-site SharePoint architectural foundation; and 2) an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solution.
First, to automate the lab’s business processes, the existing manual processes had to be analyzed (see Figure 1). Notebooks, Excel spreadsheets and handwritten notes were reviewed. All interfaces, application components, hardware components and software services were identified. Through the use of functional decomposition (see Figure 2), ECS Team identified multiple interfaces and data points needing to be integrated with SharePoint to develop an end-to-end automated process. The service decomposition was used to develop the foundational architecture, which was developed in SharePoint 2013 and integrated with KnowledgeLake.
The Business-Critical SharePoint solution integrated each external interface with SharePoint, allowing users to store, search and manage related data in one central solution. The new business process removed the need to perform the following steps (see Figure 3):
• Duplicate entry for data residing in the LIMS database
• Relating chain of custody to samples and test without the need to attach, store and search data binders in the lab or in a separate warehouse
• Using hand written forms instead of electronic bench sheets that are stored and searched on demand
• Attachment of electronic results from lab testing machines and the storage of all metadata associated with each of those records to search and retrieve related data
• Automated archiving of records, related content and metadata to the ECM system that is searchable on demand
• Automated integration with external labs, allowing users to search for records that initiated externally and associate them to internal requests
Benefits
Through the Business-Critical SharePoint solution, the District not only created a new procedure that removed the need to manually collect, store and search for raw data but also improved productivity and decision-making. According to Kyle Collins of Eagle River Water and Sanitation District’s Records and Information Management, “The Internet dominates the way everything works, so this brings file sharing and collaboration well into the 21st century, and has certainly brought us up to speed since we had no unification and were disorganized. The whole process has given us a cutting edge skill set, not only from software tools, but in how we think about records, information and data organization.”
More Educated Decision-Making
Business owners now have visibility into the complexity of the lab department’s day-to-day activities. In turn, they understand how automation changed the way they performed their daily duties. They can make better business decisions with more accurate and up-to-date data.
Significant Savings
Shipping, storage, document retrieval and searching costs are significantly reduced. Future records management, storage and searching will be done electronically within SharePoint 2013. Employees no longer waste time driving to the storage facility to look through piles of paper for certain files.
Integrated Silos of Data
Nine separate interfaces were identified and integrated into the solution as part of this effort. Business owners are now more knowledgeable about their business, which further helps decision-making.
Automated Workflows
Multiple workflows were also created to manage the records and documents imported into SharePoint. Functionality included transformation of records, as well as notifications, approvals and on-demand archiving. This cut down on manual data entry, duplication of effort and errors. “Automation changed the way we perform our day-to-day duties, spending more time on productive work instead of paperwork,” says Collins.
Improved Productivity
Now with the solution provided to the District, the bench sheet and the calculation sheet merged into one electronic document. The analysts use a tablet to enter data directly into the new electronic sheet. This document can be directly uploaded into LIMS and directly into SharePoint for document storage. This change has reduced redundancy of multiple documents with the same information and multiple data entry steps.
Clear Audit Trail
Audit readiness will be significantly improved because of the use of technology to manage, store and search for records and their related content. Retention requirements will be proven and related content to samples will be available on demand for 10 years.
Decreased Business Risk
Risk management is significantly improved by providing a far more secure and disaster proof solution for vital lab data. All paper documents containing vital data for regulatory compliance purposes were vulnerable as no backup copies existed. Any damage or destruction of these documents would result in total loss of lab data that is required for compliance with state regulations. The new system provides backup and disaster recovery solutions where none existed before.
Figure 1. The manual process the lab followed to complete its day-to-day activities.
