Calaveras County Water District Digitizes 80 Years of Irreplaceable Records with Revver

Located southeast of Sacramento and southwest of Lake Tahoe, Calaveras County was one of California's original 27 counties when it became a state in 1850. The Calaveras County Water District was formed nearly a century later in 1946, and they have successfully managed the county's water resources ever since. Today, they provide water to 13,000 customers and wastewater services to 5,000 customers in communities across 1,000 square miles of diverse, rural terrain. Their goal is to provide safe, reliable service to their customers by being good stewards of the county's water resources.

After 80 years of operations, this public utility had accumulated a large volume of paper records and needed a better way to manage them. There were three main reasons why Calaveras County Water District needed a document management system. First, they were running out of physical space for filing cabinets. Second, it was increasingly difficult to find critical information within decades of inconsistently organized records, especially with a lean staff. Third, a lot of their documents were aging and needed to be preserved in a digital format.

"Our organization has been around since 1946, and a lot of our documents are handwritten," said Dylan Smith, Information Systems Administrator at Calaveras County Water District. "It becomes cumbersome trying to go through those documents, and if we are handling old documents, we're worried about ripping them or damaging them. By preserving those documents in a digital format we have those documents to reference, and we can do it over and over again without the worry of losing physical data on those papers. So it's a combination of streamlining our workflow and preserving old documents."

At first, it was hard to figure out which document management solution to go with because every option seemed to have similar functionality. "My requirements were pretty simple," Smith noted. "Does it have Single Sign-On? Does it have version control? Does it have security? It does? Awesome. That's really all I cared about. And all the platforms had that."

Smith's team evaluated Revver, Laserfiche, and DocuWare for their document management needs. A key differentiator between them was Revver's Smart Extract AI feature, which captures metadata straight from a wide range of documents, including handwritten ones. "With Revver's AI platform, we used our real documents in the demo, and it was impressive," he shared. "It definitely felt better than other platforms we were considering. It felt extremely easier to be able to scan a really rough document and have Smart Extract actually parse through it with a high level of accuracy. It wasn’t perfect, but it was close enough that we avoided a lot of manual cleanup. Other tools we looked at required significantly more effort to get to the same point."

In the end, they selected Revver over the competition partly due to its lower cost, but their decision mostly came down to usability. "We weren't even focused on pricing at first," Smith explained. "We were looking for what product fit our needs the best. Revver came out cheaper, which I'm happy for. But as far as adoption, other document management tools we were evaluating felt overwhelming compared to where Revver's platform felt more welcoming, especially for users that aren't 100 percent tech savvy. It's pretty straightforward, and it seemed a much better fit for our organization."

A subtle feature that adds to Revver's usability is its fusion of old-fashioned terms with the latest technology. This helps ease users of old filing-cabinet systems into the new digital platform. As Smith explains, "For the IT side, I appreciate that your little icons in Revver still look like filing cabinets. It goes from filing cabinet, and then the next one's a drawer, and then the next one's an open folder. It is nice because then I can actually physically tie that to actual filing cabinets that we still have to be able to start this process of organizing data and help people mend that bridge. 'Hey, I've been doing paperwork for the last 30 years. Well, here's this digital format, you know, it almost looks the same, but here's your file that you can just search in two seconds.'"

In addition to wanting usability and searchability, the district needed a way for the public to upload files to their database, such as job applications, RFPs, and engineering plans. Revver's secure links were much simpler to use than what was presented by other vendors. "We can have people upload all these documents right to a nice spot and have it route automatically to the appropriate departments and people," Smith said. "It's definitely something that we're looking into."

Calaveras County Water District is still in the implementation process with Revver, so formal results are not yet available. However, they have a clear view of how Revver will help them. Success will be measured by tracking file searches and access to Revver by departments like Finance, and by the ability to search within document text, which is difficult to do in a basic digital storage system.

"I know Finance would really benefit because there are a lot of documents that don't belong in our financial software, and they stay as physical copies," according to Smith. "The metric is how many files are being searched. How many files are being accessed in Revver after one year because I can even pull statistics up on my servers for file shares and people trying to find them. Another metric that we're going to measure is where people are finding data within the files. 'Oh, I don't remember what the file name is called, but I know it has this phrase in it.' Well, classic file sharers can't search like that. So, people being able to locate files and be able to just search within text on them will be invaluable."

Revver is addressing all three of Calaveras County Water District's document management challenges. First, it's allowing them to create digital versions of paper documents and store them safely in the cloud. This eliminates the need for physical storage facilities. Second, it extracts metadata from each scanned document with its Smart Extract AI tool, which will help them easily search for and find documents no matter where they are stored. Third, Revver's digital storage keeps old records from being lost or destroyed. They are permanently stored in an electronic repository that will be available as long as they are needed – another century or more.

Smith became familiar with Revver while working at a previous employer. He had used it to manage documents, and he was impressed by the level of service he received. "Whenever I needed your support back in my previous job, it was really nice. So, you guys were willing to go the extra mile then, and you still do today."

Smith sums it all up perfectly with his recommendation to other IT departments and organizations looking for a great document management system. "If someone was asking me about Revver, I would say if you value your time to be able to efficiently find information that is within your company, whether it's as simple as an agenda or a memo or something highly specialized like specifications on a water plant or on a particular 2,000-foot pipe run that you want to easily and efficiently find information with, I would say Revver is your best choice. Revver's platform makes it extremely easy for anyone to hop in and start using. It's very intuitive, and you don't necessarily need a specialized person that knows Revver inside and out to be able to use it effectively."