Financial Services Solutions from EMC Captiva
ABN AMRO Banks on Document Capture; Saves $500,000 Annually
ABN AMRO Services Company, a subsidiary of one of the world's largest banking groups, was looking to make mortgage processing quicker and more efficient. Since July 2002, ABN AMRO has been using InputAccel™, document capture software from EMC® Captiva®, to capture and process the 75,000 mortgage files that it receives in North America each month— totaling more than 600,000 pages a day.
Manually pushing paper mortgage document files through an enterprise is slow, cumbersome and prone to occasional missing pages. ABN AMRO needed to make mortgage processing quicker and more efficient. The first system the company established was riddled with inefficiencies; the system would stop scanning whenever it encountered unusual mortgage applications known as "capture exceptions," causing a significant bottleneck in document processing. ABN AMRO replaced its existing system with InputAccel to capture and help process its North American mortgage files. The bank scans mortgage documents as they are received, eliminating the need for paper files and documents. It then converts the incoming data into image file formats that are usable by its back-end system.
By transforming the paperwork and faxes that are the backbone of many companies—especially financial services companies—into manageable electronic formats, those documents can be more easily and accurately processed, stored, transferred between employees and offices and interpreted.
ABN AMRO has tapped into this capability, and was ultimately able to run its mortgage business with increased efficiency. The company has been able to considerably increase its mortgage document capture capacity and meet its growing functionality needs.
Unusual and unexpected mortgage documents are handled without a hiccup. Whereas previously, ABN AMRO's system stopped scanning when it encountered unusual mortgage applications, these exceptions are no longer a bottleneck in the process pipeline. Since installing the solution, ABN AMRO is able to capture 32,000 more pages a day and is saving nearly $500,000 a year in outsourcing costs alone. It is processing mortgages faster and has improved customer service.
Siemens AG Streamlines Electronic Check Processing
Despite the growth of e-business, the paper check is still a frequently used form of payment. But manual remittance processing is slow and prone to errors. Using forms processing software from EMC Captiva, Siemens Financial Services GmbH has developed a check-processing solution that digitizes and processes checks upon receipt. The remittance processing is smoothly integrated into e-business processes, facilitating faster and more accurate processing and lower costs.
Siemens Financial Services GmbH (SFS) is the central processing center for Siemens AG and operates as an in-house bank, conducting the global cash management for over 2,700 bank accounts and 4,000 clearing accounts. The group offers customers in 30 countries an extensive spectrum of financing solutions, including sales and investment financing, treasury and financial services, fund management and insurance services.
Although outgoing payments are conducted electronically, incoming payments from customers are usually received in the form of a check. A remittance slip containing instructions about the payment (such as an invoice or purchase order number) is attached to the check. Whereas the checks are submitted to a bank, the remittance information must be passed to the accounting department quickly, in order to update accounts receivable information and avoid reminder letters and other collection efforts.
Manual check and remittance processing is time-consuming, prone to key errors, bound to geographic locations and difficult to integrate into e-business processes. The ideal approach is to marry these processes in a single workflow, integrated into the existing e-business processes.
SFS developed a customized workflow system that easily integrates into existing e-business processes. The checks and remittance slips are captured with FormWare®, forms processing software from EMC Captiva. The relevant data is extracted, validated and formatted for further processing. By converting the paper documents into electronic content, Siemens staff can access and view the original documents on the company intranet.
Because checks and documents differ in size and structure, SFS integrated an automatic form identification mechanism to ensure proper recognition of the different types. High performance scanners with capture and recognition software ensure that even the unique remittance documents are processed quickly and accurately.
After researching available solutions, SFS selected Captiva's FormWare, which enables Siemens to customize and expand the system as business needs grow over time. The system has enabled Siemens to optimize internal cash-management processes, reduce costs and improve productivity. The system has been so successful, management is considering marketing it to third-party customers outside of Siemens AG.
EMC Captiva is a leading global provider of input management solutions used to transform information from paper, fax and electronic sources into business-ready electronic content suitable for processing by content management, enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management and other information management systems. Captiva's suite of input management solutions meets the needs of organizations large and small and can readily scale from one department to a global enterprise. The comprehensive Captiva input management solution suite includes document capture, forms processing, invoice processing, intelligent document recognition and classification, distributed capture, imaging solutions, applications monitoring and premium services. For more information, visit EMC Captiva (
www.emc.com/captiva).