Successes - Floyd County
Georgia County Uses Fortis for Disaster Recovery and Improved Service to Citizens

Floyd County, Georgia, retains wills, marriage licenses, and deeds in their files dating back to the 1800s. Among the historically significant documents that they archive is the will of education pioneer Martha Berry, founder of Berry College, which was established in 1902. “There are some very important records that we must preserve for our citizens,” explained La Sonja Holcomb, MIS director for Floyd County. “We needed document management to handle disaster recovery and preservation issues, on top of centralizing access to documents used by multiple government departments.”

Floyd County issued an RFP and considered about ten document management solution organizations before choosing IKON Office Solutions, a Ricoh company, who implemented Fortis as part of the Floyd County solution. “Fortis is easy to use. That was a big plus for us because we planned on rolling it out to so many different departments,” Holcomb said. “The other main reason was Westbrook’s track record with local government solutions and IKON’s expertise in setting up document management systems for local governments.

“Our selection committee visited customer sites where they were using our two top selections. Everyone saw the benefit of choosing Fortis because we could get a faster start. We were able to begin with a proven system design, which included many things we wouldn’t have thought of on our own, and then tweak it for our environment.” Floyd County’s implementation started in their Probate Court, the Tax Assessor’s Office, and the Finance and Purchasing departments.

The Tax Assessor’s Office deals with real estate, and inventory and other business assets. Personal Property and Real Estate tax returns will be archived in Fortis along with related emails and documents. “We’ve set up a document type inside that return where they can attach the email,” Holcomb said. “The electronic file will contain all the information related to that return, including the envelope that shows the date and time they received it. We are able to automate the indexing of tax returns, property record cards and notices by using the OCR function.”

In the Finance Department, Floyd County uses Objectif Lune's PlanetPress software that enables variable data printing output management to automatically archive accounts payable checks and reports from their financial system into Fortis. PlanetPress checks for certain file extensions and file names, and based on this criteria, it identifies the correct document type and printing location. It also creates the indexes for these documents as it saves a copy.

Floyd County is also archiving reports from their line-of-business system. For example, they can import cash journals to save a record of an adjustment that has been made for a general ledger account. They plan to setup Fortis Update Assistant to automatically index the documents. Fortis Update Assistant will also be used by their judicial system to index traffic files based on the person’s name and the ticket number from the line-of-business application.

As Floyd County adds new departments to the document management repository, they like the flexibility Fortis offers in terms of capture options and workflow design.” We can look at each situation and find the most efficient way to automate it,” Holcomb said.

“The administrative side of local government is changing due to the amount of work you have to accomplish with fewer resources. Our plan was to add two or three departments each year, but those plans had to be deferred because of the budget crunch,” she explained. However, with Fortis’ capabilities, Floyd County can begin to archive records before a department is actually using the software.

For example, Floyd County began archiving payroll checks in Fortis in order to create a document history for the department. “The process is automated and the Payroll staff isn’t even involved. Three years from now when they want to locate a check that was sent out, they can look up the recipient’s name and find a copy,” Holcomb said.

Today, if a staff member requests a copy of a check they are only able to get a report containing most of the information on the check, not an actual copy. The Tax Commissioner’s Office is also not fully implemented, but because the tax bills are available electronically, it’s easy to archive them automatically as well.

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