Financial Services Cope in a Paper-Intensive World
Companies across the financial services spectrum—banking, insurance, and securities—have recognized the critical role that technology plays in remaining competitive and profitable. However, the reality is that paper still makes up a huge amount of the content they rely on to make sound business decisions.
Whether a company is trying to simplify account setup processes, respond to customer inquiries more quickly, or manage risk better by improving data accuracy, it should ask itself these questions:
- How can we make it easy for employees to have a complete view of our customers when so much of the data is still living in the paper world?
- Is there a way to automate routine tasks to speed up processing but still allow managers to step in when there are exceptional circumstances?
- How can we comply with the constantly evolving checklist of compliance and security regulations without passing the burden on to our customers and partners?
Step 1: Capture
Link paper and digital content to create virtual files—For any solution to be effective, it must be based on a proven platform for capturing, processing and archiving all types of content. For example, scanned documents can no longer be relegated to standalone systems—they need to be indexed so they can be directly linked to related content, which may include audio and video files, enterprise policies and reports and structured data records.
The solution must also support intelligent electronic forms, presented in a familiar and easy-to-use format, that contain built-in business logic such as prepopulated fields, instant data validation and automatic calculations. The goal is to save customers' time and effort and, at the same time, improve the accuracy of the data collected. Companies also have choices when it comes to how they accept data. Those that desire a fully automated solution should be able to accept electronic submissions that instantly integrate the captured data into their back-end systems. But most companies will need to accept at least some paper forms and supporting documentation for some time to come. One approach is to use dynamic 2D barcodes that capture data as it is entered on the form—this way, the same document that is used for electronic submissions can be printed out and physically delivered. When the form is scanned, the data can be easily extracted into a system-compatible format, such as XML, for automatic integration. This method eliminates the need to have people review the data and fix errors that are often introduced by an OCR system.
Step 2: Process
Reduce inefficiencies for faster, better decisions—Next, the solution must deliver full business process management capabilities, including rules-based routing and queue management, to further automate the decision process. For example, a bank may decide that any loan request under $5,000 can be automatically approved if the customer has a minimum balance in his account and a credit rating above a certain threshold, but larger requests may need to be reviewed by a manager. By building its specific business rules into the application, and sending the application to the right queue, the bank can respond more quickly to its customers, turn around more business in a shorter time and focus employee efforts on those requests where personal interaction adds value instead of creating bottlenecks.
Step 3: Archive
Simplify compliance with searchable, secure records—Once the process is complete, companies need to archive the entire content package by defining retention and security requirements, adding relevant records management metadata—for example, disposal criteria—and exporting the content to the most appropriate storage system, depending on factors such as retrieval time and overhead costs. This rigorous approach makes it much easier and more cost-effective for companies to locate and audit the documents they need to comply with regulatory requirements. Today, leading vendors are providing financial services companies with powerful document and image processing solutions that combine the benefits of enterprise content management, volume paper scanning and intelligent forms based on PDF and XML. These integrated solutions can significantly reduce processing times (from 30%-50%), resulting in more satisfied customers, while enhancing the necessary controls for keeping costs in line and meeting compliance requirements.
About Adobe
As a leader in document services for document generation, publication, collaboration and forms-driven process automation, Adobe has a 20-year history of document innovation. Adobe PDF represents the global de facto standard for document exchange and processing within enterprise organizations. With support for standard technologies such as eXtensible Markup Language (XML), Adobe Form Server empowers companies to integrate their forms-based processes with enterprise IT environments.
About EMC Documentum
EMC Documentum provides enterprise content management solutions as part of EMC Corporation's information lifecycle management (ILM) strategy. With a single platform, Documentum enables people to collaboratively create, manage, deliver, and archive the content that drives business operations—from documents and discussions to e-mail, Web pages, records, and rich media. To learn more about intelligent forms processing with Adobe Systems and EMC Documentum, visit us at Adobe Systems and EMC Documentum