“SmartDocuments allows us to work time and location independent.”
Improving business operations. That is what Meerinzicht does for three municipalities in Gelderland. A big job that the organization has taken on together with SmartDocuments. After years of innovation and learning from each other, the online environment is now ready for use.
Meerinzicht is a collaboration between the municipalities of Ermelo, Harderwijk and Zeewolde. It bundles the most common tasks of a municipality into a single organization. These are social matters such as care, work & income, apprenticeship matters and youth assistance (social domain), but also in the field of taxation, facility services, finance, building management, HRM, computerization & automation, communication, legal affairs and geo-information (business management domain). This results in a substantial amount of forms, documents and letters, something that SmartDocuments likes to make a bit smarter.
Collaborating with other municipalities and combining your tasks in one organization offers the necessary advantages. Nevertheless, it remains quite a challenge. Tanja Arends-Dirksen knows that like no other. She started working as an application manager for the municipality of Zeewolde in 2011. The decision to work with SmartDocuments had already been made then. All that was missing was an application manager to realize the implementation. That's when Tanja came into the picture. In 2015 her work was transferred to Meerinzicht, where she has been working with her colleague Jeanine Lowie for many years. Tanja: "Together we support our colleagues in the world of document creation.”
Four times SmartDocuments
As an application manager, Tanja is in the midst of the complexity that working with three municipalities brings to their own organization: "You can see how each organization needs its own approach. It would still be too complex to really form one organization. Municipalities are different from each other, they each have their own identity". In order to manage everything from a central organization such as Meerinzicht, a system like SmartDocuments is actually indispensable. Every organization now works with its own version of SmartDocuments, with templates developed specifically for them. "This means you can always be sure that the corporate identity is correct, that the articles or terms stated are correct and that everything is well archived and retrievable afterwards. That gives you peace of mind and certainty".
"In the meantime, a real 'like knows like' feeling has arisen. Service desk staff know us by name and I know that my problem is dealt with immediately. One push of a button and I have my answer."
Tanja Arends-Dirksen (left) and Jeanine Lowie (right)
Flexible working with SmartDocuments Web
Lately, Meerinzicht and SmartDocuments have been mainly focusing on 'efficient and business-oriented working' in the cloud. This can be done using the web application of SmartDocuments. The transition has been on Tanja's wish list for some time now, and not without reason. It offers Meerinzicht flexibility that is desperately needed: "Meerinzicht does not have its own premises. That's why our employees regularly work at different locations, spread across the affiliated municipalities. Regardless of which municipality you're in at the time, or when you're working from home, you have to be able to get on with your work. When we decided to go this way of working, we made a conscious decision to do so with SmartDocuments", remembers Tanja. The main motivations were the good existing cooperation and compatibility with other systems: "SmartDocuments is integrated with business system Liber and document management system Corsa. You get in using a single login. That is so easy for our users. In addition, SmartDocuments Web is clear and user-friendly. It's very nice to have an application with which you can harmonize everyone's work. SmartDocuments does that for us."
"It's like working with Google, but in your documents and templates."
Long live the search function
What Tanja thinks is the most important addition of SmartDocuments Web? "At the moment I am discovering all the options and possibilities, but especially the search function is really a godsend!” she sighs. "It's like working with Google, but in your documents and templates. With a simple search, I arrive at the right document. By the way, the building blocks of those templates are also getting smarter and smarter. I no longer have to look at them one by one to see if it's the one I'm looking for; the search function already makes that clear. That saves a lot of clicks. What's more, it's nice to know that everything can be found digitally. Those large cabinets with hanging files and dusty archives? Fortunately, they are a part of the past now.”
Town hall Ermelo, location of Jeanine / Tanja (I&A team)
Constant innovation layers
"We have been working together for nine years. In that time we have experienced enough things together: the update of Liber, where SmartDocuments had to work for both versions, the transition from Corsa to Corsa NxT, various corporate identity changes..." Tanja mentions a few highlights. "Actually, it was a constant stroke of innovation... and we made a lot of strokes. It must also be a special situation for SmartDocuments. With multiple applications, environments and organizations that all have to be coordinated with each other. It's nice to see how SmartDocuments deals with this; how we work together towards a solution and learn from each other".
"In the meantime, a real 'like knows like' feeling has arisen. Service desk staff Geurt and Robert know us by name and I know that my problem will be dealt with immediately. One push of a button and I have my answer. We can always contact our project manager Linda and consultant Kees-Jan. Even if they don't have an answer for me right away, I know that it will be looked at and worked on. I really feel that I am being heard.”
Keep innovating together
If it's up to Tanja, she and SmartDocuments will continue to innovate. "At the moment, together with SmartDocuments, we're investigating the possibility of going to one environment for all connected municipalities; a four-in-one environment. Theoretically, it's possible, as long as you're able to make the templates and all the applications involved smart enough to recognize which organization you are dealing with. We are now mainly investigating it, but who knows where we will end up together!”
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