NEW YORK, Dec. 8, 2011 — Inc. magazine today ranked Bluepoint Solutions NO. 2422, on its fifth annual Inc. 500|5000, an exclusive ranking of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies. The list represents the most comprehensive look at the most important segment of the economy—America’s independent entrepreneurs. Online retailer ideeli tops this year’s list. Bluepoint Solutions joins Spirit Airlines, television maker Vizio, Honest Tea, Dunkin Donuts and Metrokane, makers of the Rabbit corkscrew, among other prominent brands featured on this
year’s list. Bluepoint Solutions is a provider of remote deposit capture, item processing and enterprise content management solutions for financial institutions.

“Now, more than ever, we depend on Inc. 500/5000 companies to spur innovation, provide jobs, and drive the economy forward.  Growth companies, not large corporations, are where the action is,” says Inc. magazine Editor Jane Berentson.

In a stagnant economic environment, median growth rate of 2011 Inc. 500|5000 companies remains an impressive 94 percent. The companies on this year’s list report having created 350,000 jobs in the past three years, and aggregate revenue among the honorees reached $366 billion, up 14 percent from last year.

Chairman and CEO of Bluepoint Solutions, Hal Tilbury said, “We are honored to be included among this prestigious list of organizations changing the landscape of today’s business environment. Bluepoint Solutions prides itself on delivering the most relevant solutions to the market and will continue to innovate as the industry evolves.”

Complete results of the Inc. 5000, including company profiles and an interactive database that can be sorted by industry, region, and other criteria, can be found at www.inc.com/5000.

Methodology

The 2011 Inc. 500 is ranked according to percentage revenue growth when comparing 2007 to 2010. To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by March 31, 2007. Additionally, they had to be U.S.-based, privately held, for profit, and independent—not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies—as of December 31, 2010. (Since then, a number of companies on the list have gone public or been acquired.) The minimum revenue required for 2007 is $100,000; the minimum for 2010 is $2 million. As always, Inc. reserves the right to decline applicants for subjective reasons. Companies on the Inc. 500 are featured in Inc.’s September issue. They represent the top tier of the Inc. 5000, which can be found at www.inc.com/500.

About Inc. Magazine

Founded in 1979 and acquired in 2005 by Mansueto Ventures LLC, Inc. (www.inc.com) is the only major business magazine dedicated exclusively to owners and managers of growing private companies that delivers real solutions for today’s innovative company builders. With a total
paid circulation of 710,106, Inc. provides hands-on tools and market-tested strategies for managing people, finances, sales, marketing, and technology. Visit us online at www.inc.com.

About the Inc. 500|5000 Conference

Each year, Inc. and Inc.com celebrate the remarkable achievements of today’s entrepreneurial superstars—the privately held small businesses that drive our economy. The Inc. 500|5000 Conference & Awards Ceremony brings together members of the Inc. community, both a new class of Inc. 500|5000 honorees and the list’s alumni, for three days of powerful networking, inspired learning, and momentous celebration. Please join us September 22–24, 2011, at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, located minutes from downtown Washington, D.C. For more information about the 2011 Inc. 500|5000 Conference & Awards Ceremony and to register, visit www.inc500conference.com or call 866-901-3205.

There is a software delivery method that has the potential to transform the way your financial institution operates.  It can expand your customer base, allow you to offer more services faster and at a lower cost, and differentiate you from your competitors.

What is this revolutionary technology?  SaaS.

SaaS — which stands for :Software-as-a-Service” — is the biggest tech buzz term of 2010 (so far.)  Discussed behind board room doors as much as it is on convention floors, it is the topic of frequent articles in technology magazines, trade journals, and industry publications.  In fact, in a July 2009 Aite Group survey of 80 North American bank CIO’s, 45% of participants stated that increased use of SaaS would be “Somewhat to Very Important” to their institution’s cost reduction strategy over the next 24 months.  SaaS is especially attractive to large banks that have traditionally been slower to embrace this model.

What is the buzz all about?  And, more importantly, how can it benefit your institution?

Applications On Demand
SaaS is a model of software deployment whereby an application is licensed by a customer for use as a service on demand.  The application can be uploaded to the customer’s device but it is often hosted on servers controlled by the software provider.  This latter method is frequently referred to as cloud computing, since the application is hosted offsite and accessed remotely.

The SaaS method of deployment has several advantages, most notably cost savings experienced from not having to buy expensive equipment and software licenses, savings on staffing and maintenance, and real-time data backup in case of natural disaster or equipment failure.  SaaS is a departure from traditional licensing which requires financial institutions to purchase licenses for software that they are subsequently responsible for installing and maintaining.

The popularization of internet-based applications has fueled the popularity of the SaaS model.  Instead of software licenses being purchased, they are now “rented” from a vendor for a fixed period of time.  There are several benefits to a SaaS deployment that  impact financial institutions of all sizes, but due to their economies of scale, they can have a more significant impact on small to medium-sized institutions.

The Need for Speed
Launching new account holder services as fast as possible is vital to stay ahead of your competition.  It is also key to retaining existing customers and attracting new ones.  The necessity of deploying a new service quickly creates a daunting new technical project that falls upon the shoulders of your IT department.  IT departments are often understaffed, overworked, and overburdened.  Financial institutions — especially the smaller to medium sized ones — are not usually equipped with the resources required to quickly install, integrate, test and maintain a new technology.

This is the first area where a SaaS solution can have a major impact on getting a new technology up and running.  Whereas with an in-house solution you are dependent upon your IT department, with a SaaS solution this responsibility falls upon the vendor you have selected to provide the service.  This frees up your IT department to work on other projects and cuts the time required for launching your new service.

Integrating a new technology into an institution’s existing network is typically a labor-intensive and time-consuming process.  With SaaS, the vendor provides all hosting and maintenance giving the institution a working solution that requires little effort from its IT department.  This allows the institution — even one with limited IT resources — to offer more services to its customers faster and at a lower cost.

Pay-as-you-Go
The upfront cost is the single, greatest obstacle to a financial institution deploying a new technology.  With an in-house solution, the entire cost of the software and hardware is paid up front.  Depending on the application, this can represent an expenditure of tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars.  Many financial institutions are currently experiencing a shortage of capital, and such a huge expense makes initiatives for implementing new technologies difficult to financially justify.

With SaaS, the upfront expense is considerably lessened.  Instead of having a single, huge initial payment, payments are based on the amount of usage of the application, so the financial institution only pays as much as it uses the service.  This has a significant impact on the cash-flow requirements of the application, and can ease the burden of acquiring the new technology.

Mitigate Your Risk
There are so many new customer-facing technologies available to financial institutions that it is impossible to know which are worthwhile and which are a waste of time.  Home capture, mobile capture, personal financial management tools, mobile banking applications are just a few of the new technologies available.  Many of them so new that there is considerable uncertainty surrounding the adoption rate among customers.  That represents a significant risk to executives who are trying to steer clear of investing scarce capital and resources in a technology that might never get off the ground.

Herein lies the third major benefit to deploying new technology in a SaaS environment.  Since the cost of a SaaS solution is typically based on the amount of usage and is spread over the life of the technology, if your particular customer does not widely adopt a technology, the loss is relatively small compared to if you had chosen the in-house method.  The financial risk is thus greatly reduced whereas if a license was purchased upfront, the entire cost of that license would have been a waste.

The Takeaway
Freeing up IT resources within your institution, minimizing the upfront cost of deployment and ongoing maintenance, and scaling back the risk of taking a chance on a new technology are the three major benefits of choosing a cloud computing model for your next new technology.  The unique characteristics of the SaaS deployment method will allow your institution to decrease the lead time and cost of offering new services to your customers.  Additionally, a broader service offering can be a key differentiation point with competitors that allows you to attract new customers.  There will always be situations where deploying in-house makes sense, especially if there is a strong desire within your institution to own your technology.  However, if time to market, cost, and risk are important factors in your decision to implement a new technology, you should take a serious look at your SaaS options.

by Hal Tilbury, President & CEO of Bluepoint Solutions

Community based financial institutions are looking for ways to improve and/or maintain margins.  One approach is to grow deposits, but a more promising method is to focus on cost-reduction areas. One area is the institution’s electronic document management system. Thousands of institutions are saddled with first-generation document management systems.  These legacy systems may have initially helped reduce paper, but are now labor intensive with centralized scanning and manual indexing. This older technology can lead to input errors of up to three percent, which are time-consuming, expensive, and lead to poor customer service.

For example, how often does your institution receive an electronic document, print it and then scan it into the document management system?  Second-generation document management systems that follow proven best practices streamline this traditionally cumbersome process.  Such a system reduces costs, improves employee productivity and customer service.  Maintaining digital documents in a digital format, such as receipts, e-mail messages, Word documents, statements and reports significantly increase employee productivity.

Re-engineering business processes from a centralized scanning model to a decentralized model, where documents are captured at the point of presentment, reduces errors, costs and lost data.   Using this method, documents are available in the most active time of a document’s life: the first 24 to 48 hours.  How many secondary file systems live within your institution while documents are sent to the centralized scanning department?

Additionally, best practices dictate checks should be captured as early in the process as possible.  Both consumers and businesses can now use RDC (remote deposit capture) to digitize checks in a convenient self-service manner, reducing branch traffic.  Institutions that capture items at the teller window reduce overtime courier costs and are able to more quickly catch fraudulent items.

Bluepoint’s document management technology is based on best practices. We have developed an industry-leading next generation document management system utilizing Microsoft technology.  SharePoint, SQL, Windows are all critical components of the overall system that will reduce cost and improve margin.  A simple document management assessment will determine if you are a candidate to improve your margin through the use of a second generation document management system.

To continue to receive the benefits of efficiency and cost saving created by these strategies, don’t forget to do everything possible to make the entire system easy for people to learn and use and easy for your IT department to maintain.

Simplify all user interfaces and make them straightforward to use, with hot-keys, mouse functions, clear layouts, and other tools used by GUI designers.

Finally, consider the ease with which your IT department and its contractors can respond to user questions, make minor changes and regular upgrades, and administer remotely.

With increased volumes of document images being performed by employees across an institution, the potential exists for human error in the way documents are indexed. Every such error short-circuits the speed and ease of data retrieval and produces cumulative downstream errors.

Consistency is the basic principle of file indexing. Select a document management system that reads the documents you enter and has the intelligence to index them automatically. Indexes are captured directly from the core processor and applied to entire document, preventing lost documents, facilitating research and enhancing the service levels you offer your clients.

(This is the fifth strategy in a six-part series.  Check back each Friday for a new strategy to boost cost-efficiency in Financial Institutions.)

Does your call center still require your customers or members to wait for 24 hours to gain access to the transaction? Does a teller need to consult records in two, three or more places to process the transaction or to answer a question about it later? When the auditors arrive, how easily can you give them access to the records they need?

A robust document management system puts everything related to an account or an account-holder in one place. Once you have reduced extra paper, captured incoming paper documents electronically, and expanded your electronic document system to handle all types of documents, you are poised to organize this information in a logical structure that facilitates research and retrieval of records.

The way you use records “by account-holder” is the most logical way to store and manage information. With everything related to that customer or member in virtual folders, any document can be located right where it’s supposed to be instead of somewhere in a growing database with longer and longer search times. Record and transaction integrity is complete.

(This is the fourth strategy in a six-part series.  Check back each Friday for a new strategy to boost cost-efficiency in Financial Institutions.)

The more you are able to consolidate document storage and retrieval, the more efficiency gains you will make. Consolidating document storage means putting multiple file types from multiple sources into one database.

It also means keeping everything related to a transaction together. Consider the common practices of separating paper documents related to a simple transaction, perhaps a deposit with cash withdrawal at a teller window. Checks go here, deposit and cash tickets go there, receipts are generated, copied and put somewhere else, IDs, signature cards and even fingerprints are consulted, checks are batched for imaging and courier transport at the end of the day. The integrity of the transaction records is lost immediately. Now consider the downstream processes associated with clearing, retrieving and auditing transactions, and multiply by thousands.

Opportunities in this scenario for reducing costs, reducing errors, and reducing paper are easy to spot. A comprehensive EDM system will place all types of information in one place, including images of paper you receive, documents you generate, audio clips from your call center, and so on.
Staff time and overtime will probably be the biggest type of savings from this strategy. But even costs of clearing items can be reduced, perhaps significantly reduced, by transmitting image files for clearing multiple times per day.

(This is the second strategy in a six-part series.  The first strategy is Create Less Paper.  Check back each Friday for a new strategy to boost cost-efficiency in Financial Institutions.)

by Hal Tilbury, Bluepoint Solutions

Most financial industry veterans would agree that remote deposit capture (RDC) is a game-changing development that lowered the cost of item processing. However, as the industry approaches the six-year anniversary of the passage of the Check 21 legislation, many banks still lack a sophisticated capture strategy. In fact, it was estimated at the 2009 BAI Remote Deposit Capture Summit that only 60 percent of all financial institutions have deployed branch capture technologies, and the number is substantially less for teller capture.

By the end of 2009, the Federal Reserve will have closed all but one of its paper-processing facilities, creating an imperative for banks to focus on branch or teller capture strategy before costs go up dramatically. Best practices in payments, supported by impressive ROI experiences from early-adopter installations, dictate that the most efficient mode of branch capture should be conducted at the earliest point of presentment possible: the teller line.

While most institutions recognize the workflow efficiencies of capturing items at the teller station, they discount this option because they think it is too expensive and slow. The industry has been led to believe, often by first-generation capture technology providers, that a single branch capture solution is the best strategy.

Teller capture systems provide a more efficient check processing transaction, freeing up a substantial amount of time for additional teller activity. Studies have proven that the time for standard teller capture transactions is not significantly greater, as no time is spent during any part of the workday closing out and entering batch information. Tellers no longer have to wait in line for other tellers to finish before they can scan their items. Because the tellers are up to date throughout the day, day-end processing becomes a thing of the past.

An early adopter of the teller capture technology, Grow Financial Federal Credit Union in Tampa, found the process added merely seconds to the transaction, and eliminated the need to do batch scanning at the end of the day. The time needed to balance at the end of the day fell from 15 minutes to five minutes.

Greater return on investment and increased operational efficiency is also achieved with teller capture solutions. The equipment and software cost for a branch is typically no less than the cost of licenses and scanners for about four tellers. In previous payments strategies, tellers had to leave the workstation to scan each batch. If tellers performed their scanning at the end of the day, queuing problems usually resulted. Teller capture solutions require a check scanner for each teller, which means that tellers never find themselves waiting for access to a scanner. Training sessions are also expedient and straightforward. All tellers in a branch can be fully trained in half a day.

An example of an almost immediate return on investment is how Grow Financial invested $857,000 in teller capture software and hardware, which included substitute check printing, 130 computers, the Primary Payment System and system maintenance. Grow Financial was able to eliminate three proofing machines and redeploy two full-time employees.

The system also strengthens fraud detection efforts, since the process involves intensive analysis of red flags. If a check presented at the teller line contains non-negotiable items, such as a missing signature, a discrepancy between the courtesy and legal amounts, or fraudulent information in the routing and transit line, it is addressed at that very moment. Scanning the check at the point-of-presentment also allows bank personnel to compare it to both internal and third party real-time fraud detection databases. This practice guarantees fraud reduction at the first point of capture and allows more items to be passed to the database, reducing the overall occurrences of fraud. Some of the current day fraud detection databases are delivering reductions in fraud of up to 90 percent. These results are only available if the items are scanned at the teller workstation.

The adoption of modern RDC solutions needs to increase if banks are to realize the substantial cost reductions that Check21 can deliver. In making the move to RDC it is critical that banks keep an open mind and seriously consider item capture at the teller workstation. For those banks still in the decision mode, it is not too late to select the superior and proven choice of teller capture. Those that do will almost certainly reduce their operational costs and fraud while improving customer service.

“Paperless” offices have been a dream of automation experts for fifty years now. Today there is a new urgency about using paper wisely, not only to lower operating costs but to protect our precious natural resources.
Current practices for handling a newly-created document typically include printing it, perhaps with multiple copies, and then scanning it for electronic storage. Why not eliminate the printing step altogether and store it immediately? Loan documents, teller receipts, new account forms, COLD documents are just a few examples of documents that can be imported electronically without ever printing them on paper.

The more forms and other types of paper documents your electronic document management (EDM) system handles, the more you can reduce your budgets for supplies, labor, equipment, and storage space. Recent studies are starting to show the real cost of paper-based systems. It is eye-opening to consider not just the cost of the paper itself, but the cost of buying it, storing supplies of it, generating and copying it, employee time handling it through multiple processes, moving it, filing and keeping it, losing and finding it.

When institutions implement or upgrade even part of their processes, case study after case study shows the savings are many times the cost of the technology they deploy.

How does paper reduction affect customer service? Think of the delays that are reduced or eliminated by streamlining the processing of all that paperwork, from shorter teller lines to faster responses to customer service queries. And when a paper document is needed, a good EDM can produce that paper when and where the consumer wants it.

(This is the first strategy in a six-part series.  Check back each Friday for a new strategy to boost cost-efficiency in Financial Institutions.)

Several technical and operational factors must be considered when researching and selecting a data back-up and recovery solution. When these issues are examined in detail, virtualization emerges as the clear choice.

Select the lowest-cost, highest-performance backup medium.

Traditionally, magnetic tape dominated the BCP industry, but as the cost of disk space continues to fall, disk-based solutions have become increasingly popular. They offer superior encryption without requiring the delicate storage and frequent replacements of tape solutions. Most recently, virtualization as a back-up medium has become much more accessible. It offers more storage capacity, on and offsite, with fewer maintenance costs at a lower price point.  It is especially favored by small to medium size institutions with minimal technical staff to handle business continuity tasks.

Encrypt and safeguard backed-up data.

Securing sensitive data is more important today than ever. The Financial Modernization Act of 1999, also known as the “Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA),” requires every financial institution to have a security plan to protect the confidentiality and integrity of consumers’ personal information. This means that the methodology you choose for backing up data is crucial to the success of your BCP. Magnetic tape is typically not encrypted, but disk and virtual back-ups offer the benefits of encryption, ensuring tighter security.
Ensure that backed-up data can be restored to various types of hardware. Hardware systems change frequently over time. Critical data must be stored such that it can be easily restored to a variety of hardware systems, now and in the future. Both tape and disk storage are limited to restoration on the same type of hardware and operating system. Only by capturing all information in a virtual environment, below the operating system level, can you restore your entire server, its applications and data into operation-ready mode in a matter of minutes.

Ensure that data backup continues during active recovery.

A recovery and backup solution that allows your institution to handle data recovery in the background, while continuing normal business operations, is ideal. Account holders should not be inconvenienced when doing business with your institution during a recovery phase. A virtual backup can be operational within minutes of a main-server failure, ensuring minimal downtime.

Maintain technical resource requirements for a 24/7 data backup solution.

Understanding, designing, implementing and maintaining a backup system is a highly skilled practice. Additional staff with the skills and experience to execute a backup and recovery plan might be necessary, especially for small to midsized institutions. Outsourcing can be an attractive alternative, considering the impact on your ROI after calculating the costs of additional staff, equipment, maintenance and storage.

Virtual backup offers myriad benefits over other methods of data archiving. It is highly cost effective and has a lower instance of data loss than magnetic tape. It also provides a more secure archiving method than tape back-up. When taking into account the overall cost of a data backup solution, it is equally important to consider security and longevity. The ability to back up and restore data in nearly real-time provides your institution with a technological edge that your customers will appreciate.  Real-time recovery means that your clients won’t notice a disruption in service and your institution can carry on normal business operations without interruption.

Bluepoint offers the only Virtual Backup and Disaster Recovery solution to financial institutions that provides simple backup and restore, full virtualization and off-site backup storage in a hands off model, all at an affordable price. Click here to visit the product page.

*Cummings, Maeve; Haag, Stephen; and McCubbrey, Donald. 2003. Management information systems for the information age. http://highered.mcgrawhill.com/sites/0072935863/information_center_view0/