Case Study: Tompkins County achieves $5.5M in savings with Laserfiche electronic records management

Tompkins County, NY, Saved $5.5 Million with Electronic Records Management

Tompkins County, NY faced an archival crisis: two centuries of records stored in 9,000 boxes that threatened a $3.5 million records warehouse build. The County Clerk’s Office needed a way to catalog and manage millions of legacy documents while overcoming entrenched paper-based habits across departments.

The county digitized its archives using Laserfiche—scanning records, creating a mirrored digital folder structure, integrating with existing applications, and enabling web/mobile access—at an estimated $400–500K investment. The move reclaimed office space, sped court and field workflows, cut printing and retrieval time, and enabled a shared-services repository (TSSERR) for 20 agencies using a $450K grant, producing roughly $5.5 million in projected savings and much greater transparency and accessibility.

Tompkins County

Loren Cottrell

Deputy IT Director