Successes - City of Miramar
Westbrook Fortis Solves Business Problems Throughout City Government

Background
The need for immediate file sharing between departments had always been a challenge for the City of Miramar in southeastern Florida. But even more pressing, the city had to prepare more than 70,000 documents for an audit. With two major dilemmas at hand, a document management system was needed – and fast.

“Our budget department requires constant access to documents and intra-department file sharing needed to be optimized in order to achieve this,” said Raheem Seecharan, Systems Analyst with the City of Miramar. “Combined with an audit on the horizon, we were in desperate need of a document management solution to solve both predicaments.”

The city implemented Westbrook Technologies’ Fortis software with the assistance of Westbrook Partner MTS Software Solutions, Inc. The Fortis Web module of Fortis proved to be a powerful tool that saved city employees considerable time and effort from the start. Using Fortis Web, city departments can easily access the documents saved in Fortis - anywhere, anytime. Instead of driving to hand deliver a file like in the past, documents were now accessed by multiple parties quickly and securely using the Fortis Web application.

Once up and running, Seecharan and his team were not only surprised about how quickly Fortis helped with their document sharing and audit initiatives but how the software solved problems they didn’t know they had.

“When we implemented Fortis, we didn’t realize how many other facets of our business it would impact. The software helped us conform to federal guidelines such as HIPAA, since Fortis can limit access to private files and enable staff members to see who has accessed which information and when,” Seecharan added. “Additionally, we see Fortis helping with disaster recovery planning since we live in a hurricane area where hard copy files are always at risk. These are significant aspects of our business that Fortis has positively affected.”

Because of the scope of impact Fortis has had on the city, plans are underway to expand use even further. The city is working to give residents access to Fortis databases so individuals can retrieve building permits, deeds and other vital information previously obtained only by an in-person visit to the clerk’s office.

“This will be a milestone accomplishment for any city – especially a mid-sized city like Miramar,” said Seecharan. “Putting the power of document management into the hands of residents is empowering for the people and productive for our staff. Virtually every industry is moving towards consumer-driven initiatives and we believe Fortis can make substantial contributions in city and town governments across the country.”

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