Community church streamlines back office operations with Office 365, SharePoint and KnowledgeLake

Summary

CenterPointe Church (CPC) is a non-denominational church that has served the community of Collinsville, Illinois for over a decade. The church needed a better way to keep their focus on their mission, rather than their back-office operations. Much of their document management processes were paper based, and gaps in the system became more noticeable as the church grew. Eventually, the church invested in Office 365 for basic document storage and collaboration. To take their investment in Office 365 further, CenterPointe Church contacted KnowledgeLake to get the most out of Office 365 and SharePoint’s document management capabilities.

Challenge

Founded in 2001, CPC has undergone several changes, including a merger with another church and multiple name changes. Throughout their growth, CPC has utilized technology to continue to move their ministry forward, especially to attract new, younger members. However, that passion for technology didn’t always transfer to the back-office operations. This resulted in an outdated paper-based system to manage CPC’s documents. Even after employing a new accounting package and church management software, there was still a significant gap that wasn’t being filled for their document management and accounts payable processing needs. Over time, CPC accumulated stacks of paper files dating back nearly 15 years. Not only was the paper taking up much needed space, it was preventing the staff from finding documents on a moment’s notice. With accounts payable being handled off-site as well, the need for a better system was clear.

Strategy

To fulfill their goal of bringing back-office operations up-to-date, CPC made an investment in Microsoft Office 365, allowing the church to store documents and facilitate collaboration between staff members in SharePoint Online. Although Office 365 covered most of their needs, the church still desired a better solution for their document management and accounts payable workflows.

To fill the gaps in CPC’s document management process, KnowledgeLake implemented their proven solution. KnowledgeLake first introduced the ability to scan and tag all paper documents that come to the church. The next ability was to upload and tag electronic documents, which the church then uses to identify outstanding invoices and documents that need long-term retention applied to them.

Results

By deploying KnowledgeLake content management solutions with their already existing investment in Office 365, CPC has been able to create a reliable document management and accounts payable workflow, improving their back-office operations. “The quality of our document archive is no longer at the mercy of different filing strategies that change every time someone else takes over the filing responsibilities,” Ballard said. “It used to be virtually impossible to find historical documents. With this solution in place, the methodology is not dependent on a specific volunteer. The technology guides the process.” Through the KnowledgeLake ECM solution, documents are captured, tagged, and stored rapidly with ease. This streamlined process is easy to learn, easy to teach, and is a low-pressure task for CPC’s volunteers that scan content. Now that CPC has digital workflows, the church’s bookkeeper does not need to travel to retrieve paper documents. Office staff are able to scan documents weekly, allowing the bookkeeper to identify documents that need to be processed using KnowledgeLake. Not only does this save time for CPC, but it also saves on fuel costs for office staff.

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