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.)

Logical Structuring of Information Dramatically Improves Customer Servicemand Efficiency

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.)

Instant Document Capture Starts the Savings at the Point of Presentment

Imaging the documents you receive, transforming paper to electronic files, is where the savings start. It’s where many banks and credit unions have chosen as a starting point in streamlining their document management systems, and for good reason. Industry statistics show the majority of any paper document’s usefulness occurs during the first 24-48 hours after you receive it. Reduce costs during that interval and you affect your overall costs of doing business.

Moving away from centralized scanning operations to instant image capture makes documents and check images immediately available to any authorized employee, enterprise-wide. You no longer need duplicate copies at branch locations, because there is no lapse between receiving the original and having access to it both locally and centrally. And decentralized remote deposit capture is not limited to branches, but can be extended to ATMs, merchant locations or directly to consumers over secure Internet connections, which results in dramatically reduced float and branch traffic.

To the benefits of lower cost and faster access, add the elimination of physical document loss, a non- trivial ongoing headache that results in both poor customer service and wasted time for employees.

(This is the third strategy in a six-part series. Click here to see all past strategies. Check back each Friday for a new strategy to boost cost-efficiency in Financial Institutions.)

Comprehensive EDM Reduces More Than Paper

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.)

It’s Right for Operations, and Right for the Environment

“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.)