Local governments are increasingly looking to a Des Moines company to help them manage documents while integrating various forms of technology.

Ted Kruzan founded IMAGETek Inc. in 1995 to help counties manage land records in a manner that allows them to flow seamlessly through the recorder’s, assessor’s, auditor’s and treasurer’s offices. Records are converted and digitized, and also recorded on microfilm. The technology removes some of the burden associated with managing the paper records and also meets the enhanced security and business continuation needs of today’s tumultuous times, Kruzan, IMAGETeK’s president said.

In addition to 55 Iowa counties, the company’s client list also includes higher-education institutions, trucking distribution companies, and hospitals and other health-care providers. Using high-speed equipment capable of processing 125 pages per minute, documents are scanned at the company’s 7,500-square-foot warehouse at 2931 104th St. in Urbandale.

Kruzan is looking for a new site with at least 18,000 square feet to meet the demands of his growing company. Revenue has doubled every year since its founding. Though the company’s core clients are government agencies, its private client list is growing as well, as businesses look for secure paperless systems, Kruzan said.   IMAGETek is privately held and doesn’t release detailed financial reports, but its annual revenue is in the millions of dollars, he said. Regional offices are scheduled to open in Chicago and the Twin Cities area next year.

The company currently employees 25 people, but Kruzan expects its Des Moines workforce to grow to more than 100 within five years to meet the demand for digital records management and storage. His company is signing on 25 to 30 new clients a year.

Kruzan attributes the success of IMAGETek to its concentration on core competencies in content management, the fastest-growing segment in technology today, he said.

“We didn’t sell copiers last year and just decide to get into this,” he said. “We got in ahead of the curve. There are other companies that do what we do, but there also are a lot that tried it and failed. There are more in the latter category than the first.”

The company’s list of 100 installed clients in 20 U.S. states includes the West Des Moines Police Department, which looked to IMAGETek to reduce the amount of time officers spend managing paperwork, a task that cuts into the time they devote to patrol and investigative work.

Under the old system, clerks manually entered data on incident reports into a specialized law enforcement records management system. Documents were then copied numerous times for investigators and court employees and archived on microfilm, which made retrieval inefficient due to aging hardware.

The city applied for and received a $125,000 federal COPS MORE (Community Oriented Policing Services Making Officer Redeployment Effective) grant. IMAGETek, one of six companies vying for the contract, developed a content management system that not only eliminates redundancy, but also puts more information at officers’ fingertips when they’re responding to emergency calls. Complete case files are available online, increasing officer safety, Kruzan said.

In some cases, he said, an officer might be able to identify a suspect before making an arrest and know immediately if the individual has been previously arrested or has a history of violence. The data available includes visual identification tools such as police mug shots and court disposition records, is easily cross-referenced, and helps law enforcement officers more quickly identify patterns in specific neighborhoods.

For example, Kruzan said, in the course of an investigation of a burglary in a specific neighborhood, an officer might refer to a report of a field interrogation of an individual in the same vicinity who was behaving suspiciously but didn’t appear to be committing a crime. That could place the suspect near the scene of the burglary and provide enough evidence for an arrest warrant.

The company is currently integrating Geographic Information System maps into the system, allowing officers to pinpoint exactly where crimes occur. “We want to link that GIS back to the imaging system so that when an officer queries an incident, he or she gets an incident number and a hyperlink into the records management system,” said Lt. Cam Coppess, who works in the West Des Moines Police Department’s support services division. “At some point, this will move into a CAP (crime analysis program), which will display where suspects live or have been spotted in relation to various crime scenes.”

This fall, other authorized city workers will be able to access the information, and thereby be better able to monitor public safety. For example, if an incident occurs at a certain home, the police might be able to retrieve more information on the property by accessing documents filed with building permit applications and other land records.

In the case of burglaries, officers could be able to consult a floor plan before responding. “They know where the rooms are,” Kruzan said.

Another enhancement in the works will integrate digital photography into the system, allowing officers to pull snapshots from footage taken with a Sony digital video camera. Kruzan said digital mug shots better capture identifying features and characteristics, such as scars, tattoos and mannerisms. The capabilities to be offered through a partnership with Cedar Rapids-based IT/X, developer of a virtual lineup software application, will allow officers to pull together groups of possible suspects based on predetermined criteria.

IMAGETek is under contract with HTE Inc., which created CRIMES, the specialized law enforcement records management system used by the West Des Moines Police Department, to provide integration tools that will expand its use beyond the local jurisdiction. Hyperlinks will provide access to supporting documents from within the CRIMES records.

At the same time, the company is expanding its services to other areas of law enforcement. This summer, an agreement with the Iowa Department of Transportation to use its TraCS (Traffic and Criminal Software) system will facilitate more data sharing about criminal activity through the use of laptop computers. Officers will be able to electronically submit citations to the court system.

Kruzan said that though many of his company’s content information management systems have government and law enforcement applications, a significant amount of its business is commercial.

“We find that those customers’ needs aren’t all that much different from law enforcement or government,” he said.

CUTLINE:  Des Moines-based IMAGETek Inc. has had exponential growth each year since it was founded in 1995. Company President Ted Kruzan expects growth to continue as more private businesses, local governments and law enforcement agencies look for ways to integrate and store their electronic records.