Energy / Utilities
CLEAResult conducts home energy assessments (HEA) for over 40,000 residents in Massachusetts and was experiencing significant growth. Though CLEAResult uses proprietary software to model each home, each visit also generates up to 30 documents including diagrams, contracts, receipts, material disclosure forms and handwritten notes.
With over 35,000 documents being generated weekly, CLEAResult turned to Digiscribe New England to find a better way to handle this increasing influx of paper. With Digiscribe New England’s document scanning services and document management expertise, CLEAResult has achieved the following:
As the most trusted leader in residential energy efficiency, CLEAResult was experiencing significant growth and needed a better way to manage the influx of paper from their home energy audits and maintain the high level of customer service they were known for.
Packets with over 30 documents for each of the 40,000 annual HEAs were either mailed in or dropped off at headquarters in Westborough, MA. CLEAResult’s internal staff would break down the packets into folders which were then reviewed, checked against a work schedule and routed manually through each of CLEAResult’s workflow stations. Many times, physical file folders would get lost causing the workflow to come to a standstill until they were found. Once completed and approved, files would be assigned to a team who scanned the paper documents and then emailed them to contractors for review and implementation of work.
HEA kept in-process and completed files from the previous 6 months on-site, documents from the 6 months prior in a nearby warehouse and older files off-site in a document storage facility for at least 7 years after completion of work. Often, customers weren’t ready to move forward right away, so job specs conducted in February may lead to work being done in October. In that case, the folder was stored off-site so it first had to be located and returned from the storage facility, which could take days, and only then could CLEAResult get back to the customer.
“This was not sustainable and became completely unmanageable as we grew,” says Brian Kissane, CLEAResult’s regional operations director. “The existing process was demanding too much manpower and time, slowing down work and resulting in challenges in regards to customer service.”
CLEAResult’s EVP of IS wanted to find a better way to manage their documents and workflow, so he turned to Digiscribe New England, who had a local presence and offered document scanning expertise and mailroom services – all within CLEAResult’s budget.
With the Digiscribe New England’s solution in place, CLEAResult Energy Specialists now mail their document packets daily to Digiscribe New England’s Norwood, MA scanning facility. The mail is opened and documents are prepped, scanned and indexed by site, project, customer and one of 25 different document types. The digitized documents are uploaded within 48 hours to an Amazon S3 site as searchable PDF files and kickoff an automated workflow in CLEAResult’s proprietary software for review and processing by CLEAResult’s staff. As an additional service, Digiscribe removes live checks from document packets stamping them for “deposit only” and send the checks via Federal Express to CLEAResult’s lock box.
Contractors are now automatically alerted from within CLEAResult’s software when documents are available for their review. They can also access CLEAResult’s system to update or upload any forms needed to complete a project.
