In the 1990’s the Rosebud Sioux Tribal Council created S.W.A. Corporation as the Tribal Designated Housing Entity to develop and support self sustaining, desirable and affordable residential housing and communities on and near the Rosebud Reservation for individuals and families who want or need to live there. Currently, SWA Corporation manages over 1,200 home units. 

As with any program, the need to document all activities is both essential and substantial.

Said Amos Prue, SWA Corporation’s CEO, “I'd have to say over the history of the organization, every file that has been produced as a result of tenancy has been maintain.  We do have a lot of files we do have a lot of paper.”

In an effort to provide better management and productivity of their ever growing document issue, SWA Corporation purchased and installed, FileDirector,  a digital document management system from Active Data Systems in Sioux Falls.  FileDirector has the most flexible and comprehensive document capture features available. Paper and electronic documents, whatever their format or source, are easily captured and organized.  However, having a system and making one work are two different things.  Catching up on hundreds of thousands of documents in the SWA filing cabinets created a hurdle that needed to be overcome.

It turned out they just didn't have the manpower to do that, said Damon Durick, Account Representative for Active Data Systems.  He added, “So instead of abandoning the whole project, we decided to have Active Data Systems’ Service Bureau take care of the scanning to get them caught up and then the SWA employees would take over and do the scanning from there.”

With that process put into place, over 200,000 documents have been scanned and the digitized "document" data  of "occupancy" information has been returned to SWA Corporation.  Says Amos Prue, “Well, I think it's going to benefit us immensely in that  it's going to free up our staff’s time for dealing more directly with tenant’s needs, instead of spending their time chasing all this paper.”

While it's been easy for SWA Corporation to see the productivity benefits of File Director the elimination of space hogging filing cabinets has provided them with an opportunity to put that space to better use.  SWA has been able to convert space that had been formerly used for file cabinet storage to office and tenant consultation areas.

For SWA Corporation, protection of information is vital.  FileDirector's comprehensive security settings ensure that only those with the proper usernames and passwords would have access to tenants information and assures once information is in the system, it's there to stay.

FileDirector is based on a modular system, which allows a company to effectively tailor their own solution as their document management needs grow.  With FileDirector, SWA Corporation is confident they have a document management system that will fully adapt to meet their future requirements.  Said Prue, “We have eight departments, now that we have nearly completed the document imaging for our Occupancy area our plan is that eventually all of our departments would transition into document imaging.”