Founded in 2016, Wachusett Healthcare is a 96-bed nursing home operator with facilities in Massachusetts and Connecticut. They offer short-term rehabilitation—including physical, occupational, and speech therapy—as well as long-term care services, respite care, and end-of-life services.

Before VRC, Wachusett Healthcare did not have a streamlined accounts payable (AP) process. Instead, the nursing home operated its accounting functions from several sites, with each operating autonomously. There was no alignment, and there was a complete absence of centralized AP processes and support. To tackle this, Wachusett Healthcare sought the help of VRC’s AP workflow automation.

Together, VRC and the healthcare organization mapped all the AP processes used and created a new AP system that centralized invoices across the entire accounting department. VRC also performed digital mailroom services for the nursing home’s mailed invoices—resulting in a streamlined workflow automation process.

For a number of years prior to this project, the Wachusett Healthcare AP team operated out of several sites—making it extremely difficult to manage workflow and perform daily tasks such as scanning invoices and indexing. Additionally, their aging system was inefficient, and the AP team had no formal procedures in place for resolving AP issues.

In 2020, Wachusett Healthcare faced a new challenge. COVID had disrupted their ordinary activities and created a need for rapid change. While the residents of Wachusett Healthcare were healthy, the staff needed to be careful not to spread the disease. Because of this, the accounting staff and management knew they needed to be extra diligent in following the CDC’s recommendations and providing a safe work environment for their team by working remotely and efficiently.

While their existing AP system enabled them to work remotely, it didn’t enable their staff to work efficiently. The team was unsatisfied with the amount of time it took to create reports for third parties such as government authorities and insurance companies. The lack of efficiency and resources made the accounting team feel like they were performing repetitive and duplicated work. This feeling went against their goal of having a streamlined work environment, where all accounting records were organized, accessible, and retrievable.

Joe Lopatosky, Director of Finance at Wachusett Healthcare, knew a change was needed and led the initiative to find a more streamlined solution for his team. Their first consideration was to make staffing adjustments. However, they soon realized that to accomplish what they wanted, they needed to automate their AP processes. As they started their search journey, they also discovered that they required a solution with low implementation time and the ability to integrate seamlessly with their other operations.

“I was surprised and unsurprised at the same time as I struggled to find peers in my industry that had successfully gone this route,” said Joe. “I reached out to our business partners and associations and had minimal luck. I eventually found a couple of companies that seemed like a good fit, and then looked a little deeper.”

Joe met with three different vendors across the United States to help with the project. The available AP automation software options offered similar capabilities with various interfaces and price points. Ultimately, their decision came down to working with a company that they could build a relationship with over time.

The team decided to partner with VRC to scan and convert invoices into indexed documents and implement an enterprise content management software solution that enabled them to access digitized documents from anywhere. VRC’s VitalScan imaging team performed OCR invoice scanning to transfer mailed invoices into a new AP system.

With the help of VRC, the accounting team was able to implement the new system within weeks. Their department was able to keep up with its workload—despite the COVID halt—through proper planning and designing processes for workflow automation and scanning. The new system ensured the nursing home’s AP staff could work remotely as well as from their offices. It also created new automated workflows to meet legal regulations for record retention.

Now, Wachusett Healthcare has invoices at their fingertips, with documented status updates for every invoice. The streamlined process saved time and created accountability for the entire team. The AP invoicing process was not only much faster, but more accurate, organized, and transparent—as the finance team could easily view the status of each invoice.

As a result, the new AP system provided quicker monthly closes. By identifying and turning around invoices quicker, Wachusett Healthcare minimized late fees and finance charges. This enabled the AP team to avoid falling short of cash flow goals and creating cash flow problems.

Edwards, Mooney & Moses, an Installed Building Products Family of Companies affiliate, is a leading $10-12 million insulation contractor in the northwestern U.S. Thousands of commercial and residential builders, contractors, and homeowners depend on their professional insulation services and home products.

Each month, the Edwards team generated over 4,000 pages of paperwork from invoices to work orders to project summaries. Their outdated filing system included manual processes, including scanning and indexing, which hindered productivity and slowed document retrievals.

Edwards recognized the need to modernize their information management system to store, digitize, and retrieve work orders at scale. VRC and its ECM partner, Digitech, provided the solution they needed.

When the Edwards, Mooney, and Moses’ team completed a project, all associated papers were compiled, scanned, and saved to a hard drive. Digital files were indexed according to job number, project phase, customer code, etc. Then, information was stored and accessed on their internal hard drive.

“This left lots of room for human error,” explained Brian Mclaughlin, Time & Materials Manager for Edwards, Mooney, and Moses. “Hopefully, at least one field would be entered correctly so work orders could be located for a review.” However, due to inevitable human errors from manual indexing, work orders on the hard drive were often challenging to find.

Additionally, the high volume of orders and employees accessing them made it challenging to retrieve files. Files were easily lost and misplaced. With project summaries often consisting of several pages of related documentation, imaging became a hassle. Beth Gatewood, Edwards, Mooney, and Moses’ Administrator, could easily spend up to 8 hours each month scanning documents and then hand-keying fields.

“It was a lot of collating,” said Mclaughlin. “The end of each month was frustrating and time-consuming because assembling each work order packet could take an entire eight-hour day.”

Compliance was also becoming an issue. Digital files required storage for 13 years to comply with Housing and Urban Development (HUD) regulations. The team looked for a document storage solution to securely retain large files, organize information, and improve compliance with government regulations.

With the help of VRC, the Edwards, Mooney, and Moses team was able to implement an integrated information management solution with a phased approach to meet their document conversion, digitization, and document storage needs.

During the first phase, VRC completed a backfile conversion to convert large volumes of paperwork into digital files. VRC also conducted comprehensive indexing to classify all existing documentation correctly.

To consolidate information and provide real-time access, VRC recommended the client implement a secure cloud-based document storage system, ImageSilo. This helped unify data across the board while providing fast access to authorized users.

Finally, Edwards, Mooney, and Moses implemented a data capture software, Papervision Capture, to enable auto-classification of documents and day-forward scanning capabilities. This eliminated manual data entry and increased information accuracy.

VRC’s blended approach to digital transformation provided the company with a realistic, cost-effective solution to its previously inefficient document management system.

Time Savings

Edwards, Mooney, and Moses were completely set up and live with their new document management system within 90 days. Currently, documents are scanned and auto-classified using Paper Capture.

This process once consisted of a time-consuming program where Gatewood would scan and hand-key fields for each record. If several projects were coinciding, they could receive thousands of papers within a month. Pulling paper files, scanning, and indexing them could take up to 8 hours a day. Today, the process takes only a few minutes, representing a 94% time savings over the old manual system.

Cost Savings

With no initial software setup fees, Edwards, Mooney, and Moses realized the significant cost advantage of using ImageSilo. “Alternative products were so costly,” said Mclaughlin. “Implementing ImageSilo was a lot easier. The other options would have been complicated to use and too expensive.”

Even though the Edwards team recently launched the system, they expect long-term savings. Employees are no longer required to search endlessly for files. “We could potentially reallocate our staff beyond routine tasks and also save money on storage,” said Mclaughlin.

Improved Accuracy and Compliance

Since implementing Image Silo, the Edwards, Mooney, and Moses team has solved its document management and governance challenges. Now, any employee can scan a document for auto-classification using the ECM software. This not only streamlines their records retrieval process but eliminates inaccuracies from hand-keyed indexing and sorting. “Accuracy is a lot higher—almost 100%,” stated Mclaughlin.

By removing the paper process altogether with ECM technology, the organization can store 10GB of data in one central repository. This enables more seamless and efficient document processing. “We feel secure that this will take care of our paperwork. We’ll be able to find it when needed, and we’ll securely have it over the entire 13 years to comply with HUD,” confirms Mclaughlin.

The Future

After the success realized by Image Silo, Edwards, Mooney, and Moses looks forward to implementing the PaperVision Enterprise Workflow platform used for document routing through any workflow. This will eliminate the need to email by providing employees self-service access to documents – all in a responsive, user-friendly interface accessible on any device.

The Paul Mitchell Schools are dedicated to elevating the perception of careers in the beauty industry. In 1980, Paul Mitchell was founded by John Paul DeJoria and Paul Mitchell with just $700. With over 30 years of experience, the brand currently networks more than 100,000 salons worldwide. Additionally, the cosmetology school division of Paul Mitchell continues to grow, with the Cleveland and Columbus schools named two of the top 100 renowned schools worldwide. Each year their nonprofit program awards over $1 million in scholarships. With their Ohio schools contributing to more than 10,000+ graduates annually, their team required an organized and modern approach to document management.

Traditionally, their digital files were stored and manually managed on hundreds of CDs loaded to an internal server. But, with the ongoing demand to comply with accreditation requirements, the team wanted to simplify this process. They were already scanning the Paul Mitchell Ohio schools’ records, including interview forms, evaluations, assignments, transcripts, and more. This could quickly amount to 75-150 pages per student file. However, they lacked the tools to efficiently organize and access thousands of records.

In 2018, Tammy Marinis, Director of Compliance at the Paul Mitchell School in Cleveland, found VRC and worked with their ECM partner, Digitech, to address these challenges and streamline their student records management system.

Marinis knew their current folder-based approach to organizing vast digital student files—including enrollment records ranging from education to financial aid information—wasn’t working. “Student information was being saved in hundreds of folders on an internal server with no rhyme or reason to indexing,” said Marinis. Every year, for three to five years, files were scanned and delivered on CDs for loading onto an internal server.

In addition, the retrieval process required Marinis to spend countless hours searching and accessing student files up to five times each quarter. This involved locating the correct CD, inserting the disk on her computer, and manually searching for the student information.

Her team needed a faster, more efficient way to reach their digital transformation goals.

Not only was their existing document management time-consuming, but it also lacked security and compliance. As a school system, Paul Mitchell’s cosmetology program is legally responsible for protecting personally identifiable information (PII). It must comply with the U.S. Department of Education’s regulations, which require lifetime student record storage. Additionally, the schools must comply with the National Accrediting Commission of Career Arts & Sciences (NACCAS), the Ohio State Beauty[RE1] , and the Barber Board. Although Paul Mitchell’s Ohio schools maintained compliance, their digital system wasn’t robust enough to meet their growing needs.

Marinis saw that ECM software could help them round out the document management strategy they were trying to implement by giving them the tools they needed to find, access, and share their information in a secure, compliant manner.

Further, VRC’s methodology for going digital immediately struck a chord with Marinis as she felt it could be the start of all Paul Mitchell’s schools’ journeys to digital transformation.

VRC recommended Digitech’s cloud enterprise content management software, ImagoSilo, which streamlined the filing of student information. ImageSilo was implemented in February 2018, creating an instant cloud solution that replaced a once-time-consuming data migration from CD files.

“We were up and running with ImageSilo immediately,” said Marinis. “Training happened so quickly—it only took two hours because it was so simple!” ImageSilo enabled Marinis and her team to quickly adopt a new system storing all files on remote servers, reducing retrieval times from two to three to two to three seconds. At first, there was 15-20GB in backfile storage on ImageSilo, and now there is 25GB of stored documents. Today, content for Paul Mitchell Cosmetology schools in both Cleveland and Columbus is managed on ImageSilo.

Applying ImageSilo helped the Paul Mitchell team improve efficiency and compliance across the Ohio schools. Rather than Marinis searching through stacks of disks, the schools can quickly find the information themselves and send it to requesters. And communication and compliance with government and national accreditation agencies have improved with simple and easy file sharing. “I feel confident that we can meet any requirement,” said Marinis. “If an accreditation agency requests 150 records at once, I can find and send only one file to comply within seconds.”

ImageSilo has also saved Paul Mitchell Ohio schools records management costs. “From the beginning, we started to experience savings in paper and filing costs as everything was printed before. Six months from now, we’ll see office supplies drop 10%.”

Despite the benefits of cost savings and enhanced efficiency, Marinis is most complimentary of the relationship she built with VRC and Digitech Systems. “They are knowledgeable, accommodating, friendly, and never lack in response or fail to provide information on what’s available,” concludes Marinis.

Organizations in the post-secondary private school sector—“whether cosmetology, culinary, transportation, etc.—are all linked to the U.S. Department of Education through funding and enrollment agreement processes. We can all benefit from ImageSilo’s efficiency, accessibility, and profitability.”