Case Study for Sauk County, WI | EO Johnson

The Challenge

Providing timely and accurate information is a cornerstone of excellent customer service. For the Sauk County Treasurer’s Office, this was becoming increasingly difficult. The office housed more than 1,000 tax roll record books dating back to 1965. Retrieving information meant manually searching through decades of documents stored in the basement - a time-consuming process that tied up staff and delayed responses to citizen inquiries.

“We would take the call, figure out what the person was looking for, and then go to the basement and search through thousands of records,” said Sauk County’s Deputy Treasurer. “We wanted these records to be accessible to the public so there would be no need to contact our office, and our staff could focus on more important tasks.”

Preserving the aging records was another major concern. Many were written in pencil, stained, and visibly deteriorating. “Every time you touch paper, it deteriorates - even in open air,” the Deputy Treasurer noted. In addition to the preservation issues, the physical records took up valuable space that could be put to better use.

While it was clear that transitioning from paper to digital was the right move, the cost of such an undertaking was their biggest concern.
The Solution

Sauk County issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) with responses from multiple vendors from the Midwest. The process began with an in-person meeting to evaluate the Treasurer’s Office needs and goals for the project. The Deputy Treasure stated, “EO Johnson asked questions and presented options the other vendors didn’t even think of. They were very knowledgeable and understood what we were looking for.” To minimize disruption at the busy County office building, books were picked up prior to the building being open to the public. Books were scanned with different levels of quality control with the oldest (lowest quality) documents receiving a higher level of review.

Because cost was the primary concern, EO Johnson provided project updates every few days keeping Sauk County informed of where things stood at all times. Data was output as custom named PDF files that were fully text searchable. Two additional data outputs were also provided that would be compatible for integration into a future document management system. All data was securely downloaded by Sauk County, and a portion of the books were delivered to the Wisconsin State Historical Society for permanent hard copy preservation.

Better Service to the Public

Digitizing records has significantly streamlined public request processing, improving response times and overall service delivery.
Employee Efficiency

Files that are fully text searchable enable staff to find specific pages within documents in a matter of seconds.
Document Preservation

Historical records are digitally preserved to prevent further deterioration and ensure long-term accessibility.
Space Availability

Office space once occupied by these records has now been reallocated to fulfill other needs.

"The end result were beautiful, crisp scans that are now in a searchable PDF format. Without having the documents at our office, we have so much more space and we don’t have to worry about spending time and money researching the document. I would definitely recommend EO Johnson for a document scanning project - the project was completed ahead of schedule, the scans were very clear, and the bid was very competitive!"

Deputy Treasurer
Sauk County