Online Image Archiving
How do you manage an avalanche of data? What if that avalanche arrives on your doorstep in the form of seven CDs per day, 35 per week, 140 per month . . . amounting to more than 1,600 discs per year?
This hugely inefficient data nightmare became a daily reality for Toyota Financial Services. TFS is one of the largest captive finance companies in the U.S., with a retail lockbox network handling 1.5 million payments monthly. Handling vehicle payments from 34 field offices, TFS’s Lockbox Accounting Group is responsible for identifying payments with missing account numbers, correcting mis-coded items and resolving customer errors on checks deposited as lease and loan payments for TFS-financed vehicles.
To operate effectively, associates within the Lockbox Group require timely access to copies of checks associated with those payments. Because of the massive volume of CDs generated by TFS’s two servicing banks, check research was a time-consuming process. A typical query required staff to complete a form requesting information and fax the form to the Accounting group. Field offices might also submit their own requests for copies of checks to verify payments. Average resolution time for these searches was typically more than three hours.
Central Archive Delivers Efficiency
TFS recognized the need for creating a central repository that would put everything in one place, so documents could be quickly and easily accessed and allow searches by multiple index criteria. Rather than deploying an in-house system, TFS turned to JPMorgan Chase’s i-VAULT!SM solution, a high-volume image archive service. i-VAULT! is a secure image warehouse with redundant archive sites in the Northeast and Southwest, offering instant access through a Web interface.
TFS is now able to achieve significant gains in efficiency, improved customer service and increased disaster recovery/business continuity protection. This outsourced solution has allowed the further mitigation of concerns over escalating on-site data storage costs, as well as issues of technology obsolescence.
TFS’s two lockbox providers now send data CDs directly to JPMorgan where the images are loaded into the online archive by noon of the next day. As a result, TFS staff no longer must handle and manage a rapidly expanding library of CDs, which had become unduly cumbersome.
Saving Time, Improving Customer Service
Since TFS’s 34 field offices and three customer service centers are able to access check images online in a matter of seconds, staff members can now perform with far greater efficiency. The average query resolution has been reduced to less than 10 minutes. And the quality of online check images is superior to that of a fax. In addition to faster retrieval times, an overall improvement in work processes has been achieved, with multiple representatives now being able to gain access to the same image at the same time. According to TFS Cash Manager Janet Rydell, “i-VAULT!’s central repository provides all of our locations direct access to images, which has significantly improved our productivity.”
In setting up the system, TFS was able to establish which index fields it considered critical for its searches, resulting in quicker, more accurate access to documents in the archive. This added indexing flexibility allows TFS corporate accounting staff and representatives to search for checks by customer account number, date range and/or location.
Personnel can use the system to verify payments, find “payoff” checks for title release processing, find checks that have been applied to the wrong account, as well as locate customers who have stopped making their payments altogether. Check images can be easily copied into documents such as customer correspondences, or bookmarked for future use, and queries can be saved and reused.
Since implementing i-VAULT!, TFS is averaging 44,000 item retrievals from the archive per month. Rydell indicates that the per-item load fees for storage have been more than offset by employee time savings and improved customer service. “This was definitely a product our customer service centers needed,” states Rydell. “I don’t know how they functioned without it.”
As evidenced by TFS’s successful implementation, an image archiving solution can reduce document retrieval time down to seconds, eliminate wasteful in-house processes, provide critical business continuity and disaster recovery capabilities, while helping to ensure better, faster customer service and operational efficiency. JPMorgan’s solution lets businesses focus on what matters most—their core competency.
Chris Redvers is the i-VAULT! Product Manager for financial institutions at JPMorgan Chase Bank. i-VAULT! is an Internet-based enterprise content management service that provides a centralized repository of data with online retrieval capabilities. For more information regarding i-VAULT!, call 1-866-2-ivault (866-248-2858) or visit JPMorgan