Content Management—The Winning Ticket at NY State Lottery
Operating efficiently and delivering high-quality service to both citizens and business are top priorities for any government agency. For the New York Lottery, operational efficiency continues to be as critical as ever for the organization to ensure that a significant portion of the collected funds support education, not administrative functions.
Determined to streamline its operations, the New York Lottery sought an electronic document imaging and management solution. After examining the benefits it brought to the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation, the lottery chose IBM ImagePlus VisualInfo, now known as IBM Content Manager, on Windows NT. IBM Business Partner IKON-Image Systems Solutions helped with the implementation.
The impact on their productivity has been significant. Content Manager is enabling them to route electronic images of documents between headquarters and the regional offices, instead of photocopying and mailing paper files back and forth. This has helped reduce the time for processing sales agent applications from 75 to 60 days—a 20% improvement. And, because multiple users can view documents on their screens instantly, it is now much easier and faster to track vendor applications and answer inquiries, thus improving customer service.
“It used to take us days to respond to inquiries about applications because our regional staff had to search their files for the information and then mail it to us at headquarters,” says Jeffrey Allen, sales manager at the New York Lottery. “Now I just look up the document using Content Manager and provide an immediate—and more detailed—response.”
Cutting the Paper Trail
New York Lottery’s staff of 350 manages roughly 17,000 sales agents across New York, from gas stations to bars to grocery stores. Each week, the organization processes as many as 100 applications from prospective sales agents. These applications each come with at least 20 sheets of paper, from forms accompanying background checks to written evaluations and approvals. In the past, this has meant shuffling reams of paper between the organization’s Schenectady headquarters and six regional offices.
Before implementing Content Manager, employees at headquarters would receive completed applications, enter the information into the existing application tracking program and mail the documents to the appropriate regional office for evaluation and final approval by the regional director. More copies would be made at the regional offices and, once they were finished with the file, they would send photocopies of the documents back to headquarters for review and filing.
Content Manager has eliminated the need to photocopy or mail paper documents between headquarters and regional offices. Instead, all documentation is available online, indexed and filed in electronic folders. After an application has been scanned and indexed, the paper file is discarded 30 days later.
“With all the time spent mailing documents from site to site, it took about 75 days to process an application,” says Allen. “With the workflow capabilities of Content Manager, we can route in-process applications so that I can see how many new applications we’ve received each day and find out instantly how long an application has been in the system.”
A New Way of Working
According to Allen, the 25 New York Lottery employees who handle document scanning and other employees who use the imaging equipment have adapted quickly to their new way of working, thanks in part to the training provided by IKON-ISS. Says Allen, “Our employees, who are now scanning 200 documents a day, have become accustomed to our faster, more efficient business processes very quickly. The training that IKON provided was superb.” Indeed, with its help, the New York Lottery deployed the imaging solution ahead of schedule and without interruption to day-to-day business.
“The day Content Manager was implemented at our largest regional office was the last day that office sent us paper. It was amazing how quickly we progressed from paper to electronic documents,” notes Allen.
The organization continues to use its existing license application and sales tracking programs. Combined with Content Manager, these systems are providing the New York Lottery a detailed picture of its workflow as well as the revenue-generating capabilities of the retailers it manages.
The Ticket to Greater Efficiency
The New York Lottery plans to archive all of its past data on the imaging system within three months. Since it will no longer keep paper files, the organization can also remove more than 150 filing cabinets from its facilities.
The organization has begun evaluating e-business tools and laptop computers in order to allow employees who visit sales agent sites to access the electronic images on the corporate network and communicate remotely with their peers at headquarters. Such capabilities would further enhance information sharing.
“I’m still amazed that I can look up sales applicant information right from my PC,” says Allen. "IKON-ISS has helped us leverage Content Manager into a solution that is assisting us in achieving our longstanding commitment toward efficiency.”
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