It’s easy to overlook the countless behind-the-scenes hours that go into something as seemingly simple as an online form. Every word analyzed, every question questioned, every possibility considered and reconsidered.
Doug Wells, director of information technology at Sanitation District No. 1, doesn’t have the luxury of overlooking this important work. Over the past few years, his team has transformed SD1’s customer engagement by developing more than 50 online forms ranging from requests by developers to tap into the public sewer system to customers inquiring about the location of SD1 assets on or around their property.
“We’re constantly looking for ways to improve our processes,” Wells said. “IT works closely with the District’s various business units to find automation and integration opportunities that improve service levels and reduce waste.”
The move toward enhanced online services started about five years ago when SD1 started tracking all its project information in Lucity, an enterprise asset and maintenance management software used by municipal agencies and local governments across the country.
Andy Aman, a plan review manager at SD1, was one of the project’s early champions. “It started with us collecting this information in Lucity, and that was all paper-driven,” Aman said. “People would fill out an application on paper and they would send it to us in the mail. Then we took the next step and they could email it to us, but we still were working with a lot of paper.”
As customers emailed in applications, SD1 staff still had to manually enter the data into Lucity, which slowed down the process and introduced opportunities for errors. But still, having Lucity as a home for all project-related information was a major step toward automation.
“Early on, when we started putting this data into Lucity, we often took square pegs and put them into round holes,” Aman said. “Our IT team would think outside the box and sometimes I would challenge them over and over with the same question three times and by the third time they had thought about it enough to say, ‘Hey, we might be able to configure this or kind of trick it into doing it this way and get that square peg into that round hole over here to get it to do what we need it to do.’ They were amazing thinking through these things and how we could get the software to work for us. And that continued all through the process.”
SD1 then started to explore the capabilities of another software, Laserfiche, the leading provider of intelligent content management and business process automation.
“Over time, as we hired staff who knew how to work with Laserfiche, we realized there were these forms we could use,” Aman said. “And these forms are smart forms – if you click yes on this question, a box drops down and you give more information. If you click no, you don’t have to fill out all this other information.”
Wells said moving to Laserfiche was about much more than the software.
“The first thing we want to do is sit down and meet with the people who have the form to get a better understanding of the goals of the form and what it’s supposed to do,” he said. “This is important because we know what we can automate, and a lot of times automation isn’t even on the form owner’s mind – they’re just thinking about how they can collect the right information.
“Also, we want to try and get everything we need on the first try,” Wells said. “This avoids having to track down information and reduces phone calls and emails from form users.”
Laserfiche provided SD1 a vehicle for streamlining processes and collecting information more efficiently than ever before, but the data still had to get into Lucity somehow.
That integration process is what Aman refers to as SD1 “inventing the wheel.”
“We had two different things – two different silos: Lucity with our data and Laserfiche as our collection platform, but they couldn’t talk to each other,” Aman said. “Our IT staff had the foresight to say, ‘Hey, we can make these things talk.’ So we developed a process where we can collect data through Laserfiche and then push that information directly into Lucity.”
Aman said when the IT team made that behind-the-scenes connection – when they “invented the wheel” – it opened up a tidal wave of service enhancements. Processes became more seamless; data became more reliable; and without the need for data reentry or tracking down missing information, staff members were freed up to focus their attention on more important tasks.
“We have very talented and smart people and a lot of challenges that need to be looked into with sanitary sewer design, stormwater management or projects – things that are complex and require more time to review and approve and solve,” Aman said. “If you’re sitting there doing data entry, that’s just a waste of someone’s talent. They can be using that talent to solve bigger problems.”
The feedback has been positive.
“People love it,” Aman said. “People love the fact that they can go in there and click on something and type in the information. Before, it was a PDF form, so they had to download this PDF form and – assuming they had the right software, they could manipulate it and type it in there. If not, a lot of times people would handwrite these applications – and lots of times you couldn’t read it or they left information out. So the reception with outside stakeholders has been excellent.”
Aman gives the credit to SD1’s IT team. “It goes back to our IT group having the ability, creativity and foresight to realize that we had all of this power at our fingertips that was barely being used. So let’s utilize this stuff.”
As SD1 continues to move customer interactions online, Wells said the next level of customer experience enhancements will be giving them the ability to pay fees while submitting the virtual forms. The District currently partners with a third-party vendor to allow customers to pay their SD1 bills online, but other stakeholders do not currently have access to that service for other kinds of fees, such as for tapping into the public sewer system.
“We’ve learned a lot over the past few years,” Wells said, “and with the implementation of a new billing system, we expect to be able to integrate online fee payment in 2023.”
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