Credit union maintains investment in teller capture, receipt manager and enterprise content management platforms; adds consumer capture and disaster recovery
VISTA, Calif.–Summit Credit Union today announced a five-year renewal contract with Bluepoint Solutions. The credit union will continue its use of Bluepoint’s teller capture, receipt manager and enterprise content management products. Also, the credit union added Bluepoint’s disaster recovery services. Bluepoint Solutions is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and leading innovator in remote deposit capture (RDC), image-based item processing and enterprise content management software technology for financial institutions.
Summit Credit Union is based in Greensboro, N.C. with seven branches, approximately $130 million in assets and more than 21,000 members. The credit union has been a Bluepoint customer since 2005 and saved more than $50,000 per year by eliminating a cumbersome research process and increasing workflow efficiencies via the automation. By capturing documents at the point of presentment, the Bluepoint solution immediately reduced keystrokes and human error and significantly reduced the amount of paper used in processing.
The CEO of Summit Credit Union, Sam Whitehurst, said, “The Bluepoint products have been instrumental in helping our credit union continue to grow and offer superior member service. Through the efficiencies we’ve gained, our staff is able to focus on meeting the diverse needs of our members by offering personalized products and services. Expanding our partnership with Bluepoint was an easy decision. We truly feel they’re invested in our success, and they are a solid business partner we can count on now and well on into the future.”
Summit Credit Union uses a sophisticated content management and remote deposit capture strategy leveraging the following Bluepoint products: ImagePoint Teller Capture, Receipt Manager, ImagePoint Consumer Capture, and its member-centric Enterprise Content Management platform. ImagePoint Teller captures checks real-time, at the point of presentment improving operational efficiencies, cost savings, fraud prevention and the overall member experience. Receipt Manager integrates with the existing teller transaction flow, storing the receipt data electronically and making it available to authorized users throughout the entire credit union. Bluepoint’s Enterprise Content Management platform integrates with ImagePoint Teller and Receipt Manager to provide a flexible, member-centric file system to manage all scanned and imported documents electronically, and create valuable reporting tools to analyze and review member data. The credit union has also recently implemented Bluepoint’s consumer capture solution, ImagePoint Remote, providing members with the convenience of depositing checks anytime, from any location.
“We’ve been very pleased with the results and the continued support we receive from the Bluepoint team of professionals,” said Whitehurst. “We are very happy to add the disaster recovery solution. This will allow us to comply with regulatory requirements for reporting and data storage and provide assurance that if a disaster occurs, our members will not be impacted by data loss or operations interruptions. ”
“We are pleased to extend and expand our relationship with Summit and look forward to working with them for years to come,” said founder and CEO of Bluepoint Solutions, Hal Tilbury. “We understand the challenges facing credit unions and the fierce competition in today’s market. As a result, we continue to invest in our technology to ensure our clients are using modern, sophisticated solutions to operate efficiently and effectively. Our renewal rates remain year over year above 98 percent.”
About Summit Credit Union
Summit Credit Union is a not-for-profit financial cooperative wholly owned, operated, and governed by its members. Our operational scope depends solely on the ideas, concerns, and desires of member owners, as the membership’s well being and the credit union’s well being are interdependent. Summit Credit Union’s guiding principles of “people helping people” and “for service, not for profit” is necessitated by our very structure, and is thereby not optional. Media Contact: Sam Whitehurst, direct: 336-662-6250 or swhitehurst@summitcu.org.
About Bluepoint Solutions
Vista, Calif.-based Bluepoint Solutions is a leading innovator in remote deposit capture (RDC), image-based item processing, enterprise content management and receipt management. Adhering to strict best practice standards, Bluepoint delivers proven technology solutions and consulting services designed to achieve the strategic goals of increased employee productivity, reduced operating costs, and improved customer service. Bluepoint’s family of products and services offer a complete, end-to-end, image-based item capture and payment processing solution. For more information, visit www.bluepointsolutions.com.

Originally Appeared in American Banker: Jan. 26, 2010
Hampden Bank has partnered with Open Solutions and Bluepoint Solutions to install the providers’ jointly-developed check imaging system, tMagic Teller Capture, at the teller windows. Hampden Bank’s senior vice president, Sheryl Shinn, spoke with American Banker about how shortening the line of tellers for branch capture scanners, thereby reducing teller overtime at the end of the day, helped persuade the bank to make the switch. She went on to describe additional benefits of savings on outsourcing, increased per-item deposit fee income and improved customer service. Dave Reim, product manager in Open Solutions’ imaging systems unit, added that these efficiencies are available because the tMagic system connects directly to Hampden’s core processing software.  See American Banker for the full story.

Appeared in Credit Union Journal: Jan. 18, 2010

Bluepoint Solutions makes its teller capture and receipt processing product suites available in a rental program, helping financial institutions leverage technology without making large capital expenditures. Click here to view the article in its entirety (requires subscription).

Originally Appeared in Credit Union Times:  Jan. 6, 2010

Mazuma Credit Union partners with Bluepoint Solutions to offer remote deposit capture of checks from an ATM. In addition to added security and member convenience, members gain faster access to funds. The credit union was able to reduce courier trips to the machines, saving approximately $11,000 in the first six months. Click here to view the article in its entirety.

Originally Appeared in Digital Transactions: Jan. 1, 2010

Bluepoint Solutions’ Chief Marketing Officer, Dick Drew comments on cloud computing architecture, stating that cloud computing will enable “many financial companies to get the benefits without making the capital investment.”  Click here to view the article in its entirety.

Originally appeared on Remotedepositcapture.com: Dec. 9, 2009

Bluepoint Solutions, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and leading innovator in remote deposit capture (RDC), image-based item processing and electronic document management software technology for financial institutions, announced the availability of ImagePoint, an end-to-end image-based check clearing solution designed to help financial institutions of all sizes better manage item processing. To view the entire announcement as reported by Remotedepositcapture.com, click here.

– Point-to-Point, Image-Based Item Processing –

VISTA, Calif. Dec. 09, 2009. Bluepoint Solutions, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and leading innovator in remote deposit capture (RDC), image-based item processing and electronic document management software technology for financial institutions, announced the availability of ImagePointâ„¢, an end-to-end image-based check clearing solution designed to help financial institutions of all sizes better manage item processing.

The ImagePoint platform is composed of three integrated product families: ImagePoint Capture for remote capture of items, ImagePoint Hub for aggregation and forward presentment of items and ImagePoint Foundation for central item processing functions and image exchange. ImagePoint products may be used separately or together providing a complete end-to-end solution from the earliest point of presentment, to full “Day Two” processing for inclearings, returns and a full, feature-rich permanent archive for storage and research. The modular nature of the ImagePoint platform allows institutions to install as many or few modules as needed. Additionally, the solution will scale to support the smallest institutions, to large-scale enterprise-wide installations.

Currently in use at more than 1,000 financial institutions nationwide, ImagePoint Capture products enable financial institutions to electronically capture checks, from multiple presentment points including the teller window, centralized branch locations, consumers’ homes, merchant locations and ATMs. The solutions are core agnostic and easily integrate with both mainstream and homegrown core data processing platforms. ImagePoint Teller is verified as Citrix Ready®, making it one of the only RDC solutions in the market that easily integrates into a Citrix environment.

The ImagePoint Hub product family is designed to aggregate the captured images and data in a sophisticated, centralized, intuitive filing structure, regardless of the initial capture point, and present the items to payment processing systems. Optional modules of ImagePoint Hub include central MICR corrections, duplicate MICR detection, fraud alerts and archiving. A key component of the ImagePoint Hub product family is its central administration module that provides sophisticated administration and research of the system.

The ImagePoint Foundation central item processing product family may receive captured items from ImagePoint Hub or other item capture systems. Additional items may be captured centrally using high-speed capture devices and processed using ImagePoint’s sophisticated data perfection and balancing tools. Captured items are routed for processing using sophisticated sort pattern tools, correction modules, returns workflows, posting interfaces to core platforms and archive into its robust archive module. ImagePoint Foundation is also capable of maintaining a direct image exchange network for same day clearings between multiple participating institutions.

“With ImagePoint, Bluepoint presents a contemporary, updated alternative to the current product offerings in the payment processing market,” said Hal Tilbury, president and CEO of Bluepoint Solutions. “Most of the products in the market are written on old technology and rely on cumbersome processes to capture and process images. ImagePoint is one of the only platforms that is based on modern, yet proven, technology from the earliest point of presentment to the final item processing/image exchange stage. Institutions deploying ImagePoint will experience significant cost savings, both in terms of the time saved and the reduction in processing fees.”

ImagePoint can be deployed as an in-house or SaaS data center model, depending on the financial institution’s specific needs and requirements. Built on a Microsoft.NET platform, Bluepoint is able to take advantage of industry standard capabilities and leverage future advances. Additionally, the .NET framework’s supporting architecture allowed Bluepoint Solutions to develop a Shared Application Framework (SAF), providing one source code for all products for common functions such as security, printing controls and single-sign on capability.

Fortune Favors the Brave & Those Who Lead through Offense-Defense Strategies

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.

Reduce Costs at Every Step in the Process

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.

Bypassing Human Error Eliminates a Huge Time-Waster

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.)