Adjamian Affiliated

Carrion, Ltd., a real estate investment and development company based in Santa Monica, CA, was able to reduce administrative costs by $130,000 annually after converting to Laserfiche-based electronic document management.

The company achieved an additional $50,000 in net annual savings when it simultaneously outsourced its accounts payable operations and converted its accounting systems. The company keeps track of its invoices in the Laserfiche application. The two initiatives have enabled Carrion to reduce full-time staff from 20 to seven and to significantly reduce space requirements at its three office locations. Though the firm keeps some paper documents for legal reasons, employees no longer need to touch paper to get their work done.

"The improvements make us more efficient in a very competitive industry," says Sean Fitzgerald, Carrion's general partner. "Ultimately it means that we can commit to more investments and initiate more development projects. In the long run, we will create more jobs than we eliminated as a product of being a stronger company."

Carrion offered flextime to employees being downsized to free them to seek new employment for the final six months before the transition. "We were prepared to keep them on at reduced hours working from home after the transition but everyone had found something else by them," Fitzgerald says. Founded in the 1950's, Carrion typically has 10-20 real estate investments under management at any given time. To date Carrion's sales and acquisitions total approximately $500 million. Most investments are strip malls that Carrion purchases, renovates and operates for several years before either selling out or putting an investment group together and remaining on as a managing member. Carrion typically has a 40-100% stake in each investment. Most investments exceed their initial profit targets, typically producing 7-18% return on cash investment per year, not including appreciation.