Hyland Software's Document Management Blog

In Pursuit of Paperless Servicing

// May 17th, 2013 // No Comments » // Financial Services, Lending // Michelle Harbinak Shapiro

Any lender will tell you the most paper-intensive department within their organization is servicing. This rang loud and clear at the recent National Mortgage News Servicing Conference.

Everyone there agreed that automation advancements on the origination side of the house have made a paper-intensive process somewhat easier. But at the end of the day, 200-plus-page paper loan files have to be delivered to servicing for maintenance and storage. It’s up to the servicing department to ensure the documents aren’t lost and are stored in the correct loan file.

Not an easy task.

At the conference, I spoke about how enterprise content management (ECM) – also called document management – alleviates these pains by converting mountains of paper and files into electronic images stored in an easily searchable and indexed format. This prevents documents from being misplaced and allows them you to share them internally, as well as with investors and other service providers.

Save Some Dough

With document management, you streamline operations by scanning all documents contained in – and associated with – a loan file into a central database. For many servicers, files are typically printed out and stored as a hard copy in an off-site storage facility. Document management systems create the ability to store files in a secure electronic database, allowing your employees to access them immediately. The paperless environment eliminates the need to print and store multiple copies of loan files, which adds up to significant cost savings.

Many servicing organizations who attended the conference have production offices located throughout the country, and the influx of documents and files to their servicing departments is staggering. In addition, servicing departments receive document and file requests from production staff for research and market information. Without ECM, someone visits the storage facility, physically retrieves the needed document, makes a copy and then ships or couriers the copy to the production office.

By storing files electronically, the production staff has access to all closed loan files through the document management database, eliminating much of an institution’s storage and shipping expenditures.

Reduce Risk

If they don’t image loan files, servicers run the risk of information and documents getting lost in the shuffle. To mitigate this risk, institutions can use document management to set up an indexing strategy and automatically attach keywords, or metadata, to all documents and files. Indexing enhances “findability” because it ensures everything is saved correctly using agreed-upon search terms, such as loan number or borrower last name.

Storing business-critical data on paper also leaves firms vulnerable to data theft, natural disasters or misplaced documents. This creates the need for multiple copies of loan files. Not only is this “back-up” system inefficient, it also makes theft much easier. If you have three to four copies of a loan file, will you notice if one goes missing?

Probably not. 

As many attendees shared, the largest pain point for any successful servicing operation is how to manage the volume of documents and files the lending process creates. With document management, servicers of all sizes are able to capture, store and manage documents in a way that suits their individual business needs, ensures greater document security and increases efficiency. That’s a goal everyone at the conference agreed is worth pursuing.

Financial Services Trends From 2012 That Will Affect 2013: Part 2

// December 18th, 2012 // No Comments » // Credit Unions, Document Management, Enterprise content management, Financial Services, IT, Lending, Mobile // Michelle Harbinak Shapiro

As the year draws to a close, it’s the perfect time to take a look at the most important trends we saw in 2012 that will still affect banks, credit unions and lenders in 2013.

This is an exercise we began in our Part 1, where we focused on how adopting enterprise content management (ECM) allows you to embrace information technology by using electronic documents and information instead of paper.

Today we want to take a look at other trends from 2012 that will continue to affect financial organizations in 2013, including:

• Evolving compliance demands
• Utilizing mobile applications
• Continuing growth of new loan originations
• Increasing need for visibility and transparency

Addressing evolving compliance demands

Regulations are here to stay. And with watchdogs like the Consumer Financial Protection Board already making a big splash, the best way to adhere to new regulations is to take a proactive approach.

By leveraging an ECM solution across your organization, you have the tools to ensure consistent record keeping while guaranteeing the right information is available to the right people. It also gives you the ability to automate document retention in a secure system, provide consistent disposition and immediately respond to legal concerns and audit requests. You control document revisions and instantly track changes to records, making traceability a non-issue. And your systems are secure, auditable and flexible enough to quickly adapt to evolving regulations.

Using mobile solutions to keep everyone connected, regardless of location

Mobile is the future. So it’s time to offer your customers or members the services they want, like the ability to access their accounts and make transactions with their phones. While you may have a really nice lobby, unfortunately, many people no longer want to set foot in it. Don’t take it personally, use it as inspiration to make the leap to mobile.

Mobile ECM solutions also help keep business going when employees are out of the office by giving them the ability to:

• Stay connected to documents and information
• Keep processes moving no matter where people are located
• Access transactions to stay current

Managing increasing loan originations

The good news is auto loans are increasing for banks, total loan balances are increasing for credit unions and the home mortgage industry looks poised for a comeback.

The bad news is you have to be able to handle these spikes in business, or people will look for alternatives. With an ECM solution freeing your employees from paper to make faster and more accurate decisions, you can accommodate growth and continue to focus on providing superior customer or member service. And you can take that speed and accuracy to another level by using electronic document workflow to automatically route documents like loan packages through the approval process.

Increasing need for visibility and transparency

Transparency and visibility shouldn’t just be buzz words. Without them, you don’t know how fast things are moving – or not moving. And you can’t provide a clear picture of your situation to external stakeholders.

ECM gives you increased transparency into documents, information and processes. Executives and managers gain improved visibility with a dashboard that presents an overview of critical information in one easy to read screen, so they see how processes are working in real time. Not only does this increase your ability to share information internally and externally, it also helps identify roadblocks and gauges the effectiveness of processes. By measuring key performance indicators and process statistics, management optimizes processes and creates a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Leveraging technology, focusing on customers and members

Technology is great, but it’s a means to an end. And that end is making sure current and prospective customers or members love doing business with you. By using ECM to decrease your reliance on paper, you increase the speed and accuracy of your processes and make information instantly available.

That makes life easier for your employees, better for your customers and members and will set you up for a great 2013!

Trends From 2012 That Will Affect 2013: Part 1

// December 10th, 2012 // No Comments » // Credit Unions, Document Management, Enterprise content management, Financial Services, IT, Lending // Michelle Harbinak Shapiro

As the year draws to a close, it’s the perfect time to take a look at the most important trends we saw in 2012 that will still affect banks, credit unions and lenders in 2013. Call it a look backwards, with a focus on the future.

The following major trends are going to continue, so the time to get acquainted with them is now:

• Adopting information technology
• Evolving compliance demands
• Utilizing mobile applications
• Continuing growth of new loan originations
• Increasing need for visibility and transparency

Reinforcing the importance of these trends, founder and chairman of Movenbank in New York City Brett King discussed them during his keynote address at the recent CUNA Technology Council Conference. King was able to bring experience to his discussion about why banking is quickly going electronic. He explained why checks are rapidly disappearing and cash is next, why mobile phones will soon replace wallets and how financial institutions must reinvent themselves or become irrelevant.

Essentially, King was talking about adapting to the new paperless world. And in the innovative electronic banking environment, behaviors are changing. Employees want immediate access to documents and information with the click of a mouse. Vendors want secure online access to documents and process status, decreasing the time it takes to finish business and resolve any disputes. Most importantly, customers and members no longer want to travel to branches to transact business; they’ve grown accustomed to the ease and convenience of using the Internet or their mobile devices.

Using information technology to take advantage of the latest developments

I believe the best way to adapt to these trends is by embracing the first one: adopting information technology. One of the most effective ways to do so is to use enterprise content management (ECM) – also known as document management – to capture documents and information electronically and reduce your dependency on paper. By freeing your organization from paper, the right ECM solution helps you address compliance issues, connect with information via mobile phones, handle increasing loan originations and gain visibility with real-time information.

Positively affecting the entire organization, using electronic documents and information increases process speed and accuracy while decreasing courier expenses, storage costs and time spent looking for information. But more than just getting paper out of the way, there are three key ways ECM enables you to do more with less:

• Capturing your documents – and information – electronically to securely store, instantly access, automatically route and systematically manage them
• Automating time consuming manual and paper-based processes to increase your speed, accuracy and visibility
• Integrating with the technologies you use every day to increase communication between them, making existing investments more powerful

Keeping up with information technology for the right reasons

Utilizing information technology correctly means your adopting it for a strategic purpose. With ECM providing a fast, secure foundation for you documents and information, your financial organization has the ability to proactively take advantage of trends, instead of reacting to them.

In part 2, we’ll take an in-depth look at how ECM empowers you to take advantage of the rest of the trends.

Achieve Straight-through Processing to Increase Customer and Member Satisfaction with Electronic Signatures

// October 12th, 2012 // No Comments » // Credit Unions, Document Management, Enterprise content management, Financial Services, IT, Lending, Workflow // Michelle Harbinak Shapiro

Consumers are becoming more and more tech-savvy. To win or keep their business, you need to offer the cutting-edge services they expect, like e-signatures. 

When a co-signer for a loan is offsite, e-signatures offer a way to complete the transaction from wherever they are, as long as they have access to a computer. Using e-signatures also ensures that you take care of every initial and signature in one meeting, so customers and members don’t have to do things like make repeat trips to your credit union or bank to complete a single transaction. 

Enable straight-through processing for increased speed and accuracy
Because they ensure authenticity, integrity and accuracy, e-signatures have been legal in the United States since 2000. When compliance requirements mandate a handwritten signature, you can capture and apply signatures electronically to documents and forms with a signature pad. It’s that simple.

While using e-signatures is a giant step in the right direction, to be the most effective, they need to be a seamless part of your processes. For example, with e-signatures and ECM capturing signatures and documents electronically, you practice straight-through processing, so your employees don’t have to manually print and scan copies into your line-of-business systems. In addition, employees won’t have to comb through documents to make sure they’re 100 percent accurate and complete, further improving productivity.

Using e-signature solutions that integrate with an ECM system also gives you the ability to sign documents and then store, access and manage them electronically. Once you’ve obtained a member or customer’s signature, documents don’t have to be printed, mailed or emailed. Instead, they immediately go into an electronic document workflow that automatically forwards them through processes, alerting key stakeholders along the way.

The increased speed and accuracy of your processes gives you a competitive advantage in the marketplace, as your staff is empowered to give answers like loan approvals to prospective customers or members quicker than competitors who rely on paper-based processes.

Use ECM to unleash the power of e-signatures
Although e-signatures are an important piece that helps you deliver exceptional service, to achieve maximum efficiency, you need ECM. Using ECM, you connect primary applications like your core banking system or LOS with your documents. Without ECM, you don’t have classification, structure or retention for your documents – all important elements that help your employees immediately find the information they’re looking for.

Combining the speed of e-signatures with the power of ECM:

• Decreases your reliance on paper to save money, costs and time
• Increases the speed and accuracy of your processes
• Allows you to stop printing contracts just to obtain a physical signature

Using e-signatures and ECM, you also eliminate the risk of fraudulent document alteration and guarantee your signed documents remain protected and unaltered. And you efficiently track electronic acknowledgements of documents. That helps you proactively comply with evolving local, state and federal regulations. It also makes it easy to prepare for audits. With e-signatures and ECM, you shorten the revenue cycle and reduce the cost and risk of paper-driven processes.

Tips for choosing an e-signature vendor
Today, most ECM vendors don’t develop their own e-signature solutions; they partner with companies that specialize in that technology. So it’s key to choose an e-signature vendor and solution that will easily integrate with your current or planned ECM solution.

When choosing an e-signature vendor, it’s important to make sure you choose one that upgrades its product on a regular basis and gives you choices. For example, does the vendor offer both a premises-based solution as well as a cloud offering? Additionally, you want to make sure to find a reputable vendor with a proven track record. Talk to your peers, send out requests for proposals (RFPs) and ask questions until you find a provider that can deliver exactly what you need.

By using e-signatures with ECM, your increased speed and accuracy will make you an easy choice for all those tech-savvy people looking for innovative banking alternatives.

Building a Core of Internal Champions for Your ECM Project

// September 27th, 2012 // No Comments » // Back Office, Credit Unions, Document Management, Enterprise content management, Financial Services, IT, Lending, Uncategorized // Michelle Harbinak Shapiro

Your organization is buried in paper. And if it’s not negatively impacting the service you provide your customers or members, it will be soon. But you’ve come up with a solution: use enterprise content management (ECM) to electronically capture documents and the important information that surrounds them.

Not only will it decrease your reliance on paper and speed up your processes with instant access to information, it also saves money on shipping and storing all that paper. Plus, it gives you the ability to proactively comply with regulations. You can even integrate your ECM platform with the systems you rely on every day so information is accessible from the applications your employees use every day.

With a quick return on investment, it should be an easy sell, right?

Now comes the tricky part: getting other people in your organization on board. Here are my top five best practices to help share your vision with other decision makers.

1. Start with paper-intensive processes that affect customer and member service
The best places to start looking for internal champions are where paper-based processes affect service. For example, many financial institutions store information like IDs and signature cards at the branch where customers or members originally signed up. When they visit a different branch, they’re forced to wait while their information is faxed over. Do you really want to make them wait hours or even days for paperwork?

Providing exceptional customer or member service is a great way to differentiate your organization, so this is a great area to look for champions. People who interact with customers and members will understand how immediate access to information is a huge benefit, both internally and externally.

2. Identify your core of internal champions
The higher up you go in the organization to find evangelists, the greater influence those people will have with the executive team. Show these people how capturing documents and information electronically gives them increased visibility into processes and empowers them with real-time information.

Find experts who can help others understand how inefficient, paper-based processes can be optimized and how the solution can be expanded across the organization to share information to further increase speed and accuracy. Be sure to find out what return on investment these individuals expect. The more questions you can anticipate and answer, the more likely you’ll be able to give the ultimate decision makers the answers they’re looking for.

3. Develop your core of internal champions
Find out what pains your influencers are experiencing and schedule a short session to teach them how an ECM solution can quickly solve their issues. Show your advocates how capturing and storing documents and information electronically lets employees instantly access them, so they take care of customers or members immediately, instead of making them wait.

Demonstrate how ECM takes their cumbersome day to day processes and automates them – minimizing their workload, increasing their efficiency and providing consistency. Once your champions see the positive changes an ECM solution brings, you’ll have a team full of believers.

4. Respect that change is challenging
Manage your project with the knowledge that many people like paper because it’s tangible – they can hold it in their hands and feel connected to the information on it. Gently remind them that paper isn’t secure. It can be lost, accidentally thrown away and it’s always going to be susceptible to disasters like fires or floods.

Focus on the impact on what ECM does for them. The more you help them understand how an ECM solution helps change their daily life for the better, the more likely they’ll be to jump on board.

5. Engage your champions to evangelize to the entire organization
Effective internal communication about an ECM project can build momentum and have a positive effect on morale and culture. Set up training classes for the “new, better way” to do things. Come up with a way to make the proposed changes a positive push, instead of a negative adjustment. The more people talk about making information available with the click of a mouse, the more the idea will seem like a no-brainer.

Unite people to make your project a reality
People will have an easier time joining your cause when you show them how decreasing your dependency on paper increases speed and accuracy, cuts costs and helps provide superior service. Then you can move on to show them how you’ll be able to proactively comply with regulations like Dodd-Frank and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s new Loan Estimate and Closing Disclosure forms.

Going into the process with these tips in mind, you’ll set yourself – and your organization – up for success. The trick is unleashing your most important assets: people. The more people you can get on board and the higher up you reach, the easier it will be to initiate an ECM project that everyone will thank you for. Just not on paper.

Increase Your Transparency, Increase Your Profits with ECM

// September 13th, 2012 // No Comments » // Credit Unions, Document Management, Enterprise content management, Financial Services, IT, Lending, Uncategorized, Workflow // Michelle Harbinak Shapiro

“Transparency and governance go hand in hand,” says Barbara Rehm in American Banker. “A bank has to be able to put its figurative hands on data to have a fighting chance of managing its risks. Too many firms haven’t comprehensively integrated information systems, especially after acquisitions.”

I agree. Transparency shouldn’t be just a buzz word. Without it, you don’t know how fast things are moving – or not moving. And you may not even be aware of upcoming roadblocks. Not only is it difficult to manage business processes, it also makes it challenging to comply with local, state and federal regulations – especially if important systems can’t communicate with each other.

That’s where enterprise content management (ECM) solutions help. ECM gives organizations increased transparency into documents, information and processes. Executives and managers gain improved visibility using a dashboard that presents an overview of critical information in one easy-to-read screen so they see how processes work in real time. Not only does it increase your ability to share information internally and externally, it also helps identify roadblocks and gauges the effectiveness of processes. By measuring key performance indicators and process statistics, management optimizes processes, creating a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

With ECM, you capture and store documents and the important information that surrounds them as digital images that are immediately available for viewing. Electronic document workflow then automatically routes that documentation through processes, notifying key stakeholders along the way. For example, when you route loan packages through the process, you make decisions faster than your competition, making you an easy choice for consumers.

By automating time-consuming manual tasks, you shorten process times and make them more cost effective. With faster and more accurate processes that grant visibility into exactly what’s happening now - including audit trails that document when and why activities occurred – employees spend minimal time looking for what they need and are free to focus on profit-increasing activities like generating new business.

Further affecting the bottom line, by using ECM to automate processes, you reduce your reliance on paper, saving money on storage and shipping costs. And by using an ECM solution to integrate the systems you use every day – like your core banking platform, loan origination system or almost any other software – you increase the value of technology investments by giving them the ability to communicate with each other. You may even be able to replace wasteful legacy IT systems.

Using an ECM solution to manage documents and information provides:

• Increased transparency of documents, information and processes
• Improved availability of accurate information 
• Enhanced communication between systems through integration

Not only does the right ECM solution enable faster access to information, but it also guarantees consistent and timely management and disposition of documents and information. With increased visibility and automated document management, you streamline your compliance efforts, making them a natural extension of business processes. When you proactively comply with regulations, you reduce the risk of incurring fines, work stoppages or bad press.

“Clearly, data that is pulled from a consistent source, has a high degree of integrity, and is readily available, benefits [banks] on a number of fronts,” says Rehm. “There is increased transparency within the firm as to business performance, a higher degree of confidence in decisions made, management and board reports with greater accuracy and over time a greater degree of trust by the investment community in the company’s numbers.”

When you use ECM to securely manage documents and information, you give your bank a central, secure repository – exactly the consistent source with a high degree of integrity that Rehm calls for. You also increase your transparency internally and externally – making you a best-case scenario for regulators and an easy choice for consumers.

Access Information Wherever You Are: How to Use Mobile Solutions to Stay Connected

// August 16th, 2012 // No Comments » // Credit Unions, Document Management, Enterprise content management, Financial Services, IT, Lending, Mobile, Uncategorized, Workflow // Michelle Harbinak Shapiro

If your customers and members can use their cell phones to track the location of their friends, upload embarrassing pictures to Facebook or download and listen to music, why do your employees have to leave information behind when they’re on the road or working from home? Shouldn’t they be able to stay as connected as their average customer or member?

Now they can.

Many key decision makers spend a lot of time on the road or out of the office. They need access to real-time information from their mobile phone, so they can make informed decisions wherever they are. And we’re not just talking about access to emails or the Internet. They need to interact with their work processes, and to do that, they need to view documents and all the pertinent information that surrounds them.

Today’s leading enterprise content management (ECM) applications are capable of extending their solutions to mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, so managers can make important decisions outside of the office with all the information they need at their fingertips. By simply extending your ECM solution, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel, you just take it with you.

Here’s how mobile ECM solutions help keep business going when you’re not there:

1. Staying connected to documents and information
2. Keeping processes moving, quickly and accurately
3. Accessing transactions to stay current

By giving employees access to their daily processes wherever they are, you’re able to keep key processes like loan approvals, account maintenance requests and customer/member inquiries moving forward. As a result, your institution isn’t at risk of losing them to a competitor who answers questions quicker. And with mobile access to transactions, everyone stays in the loop. Processes continue to move forward even when key personnel are out of the office. Business continues to run as efficiently as possible, regardless of where you or your employees are.

Of course, not all mobile ECM solutions are the same. Here are a few things to look for to ensure you get the most value along with the business benefits your employees need to get work done faster and more accurately:

• Applications built specifically for each individual device so users have a good experience – no matter what device they use.
• Seamless integration with mission-critical workflow processes, giving users direct access to their step in processes.
• Convenient search capabilities to access documents from anywhere so employees can quickly and easily find what they need and keep processes moving forward.
• User friendly and easy-to-use applications that let users immediately see the information they need and act upon it quickly so processes keep moving quickly and accurately.

As mobile banking applications continue to play a larger role in the financial services industry, using them makes your employees more productive, resulting in higher levels of customer and member satisfaction. Mobile applications are no longer a “nice to have.” Your customers and members are demanding them. And your employees need them.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a Knockin’, are You Ready to Answer?

// August 8th, 2012 // No Comments » // Credit Unions, Financial Services, IT, Lending, Uncategorized, Workflow // Michelle Harbinak Shapiro

A year ago, I mentioned that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was going to be knocking on everyone’s door to make sure they’re complying with federal consumer finance laws. That year is up.

While the new Loan Estimate and Closing Disclosure forms the CFPB recently introduced help make the mortgage process easier for consumers to understand, the forms are yet another hoop financial organizations have to jump through.

Here are some common questions people are asking:

• How will the new forms affect my processes?
• How can I track the forms and the hundreds of others that make up a loan?
• How do I ensure the forms flow to the right person and that they’re 100 percent complete and accurate?

Not only are the new forms an opportunity to make things simpler for consumers, they’re also a huge opportunity to make things simpler within your institution. That’s where enterprise content management (ECM) – also called document management – helps. By electronically capturing all your documents, you make them instantly available to your employees, whether they’re at headquarters or a remote branch location.

After all, the median length of a checking account disclosure is still 69 pages. That’s a lot of paper. And it’s just one of many portfolios you manage for a single customer. Multiply that by your total customers and what do you get? A lot of paper. With storage fees, shipping costs, penalties for noncompliance with regulations and disaster risks like floods or fires – paper really isn’t the best way to do business any more.

Decrease your paper dependency while increasing the speed and accuracy of your processes
Many financial institutions are turning to ECM to capture documents electronically and then securely store, route and manage them. By capturing paper electronically, you’re able to optimize processes and positively affect the bottom line. For example, automating your loan process increases your speed, accuracy and visibility into real-time information – giving you a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

And you can use an ECM solution to integrate with the technologies you use every day, giving them the ability to communicate with each other and share information.

Further reducing your dependency on paper to make your processes faster and more accurate, electronic document workflow lets you automatically route documents and information to the appropriate employees. That gives you the ability to remove repetitive tasks and track work, utilizing email notifications to inform users of new work or changes in status. When a process is finished, ECM solutions automatically store documents in a secure, central repository and then update lines of business (LOBs) – all without any additional work from employees.

With ECM, instead of shipping and storing paper, your branches scan and index documents into the system, further speeding processes and reducing risks associated with regulation compliance. And if there’s any missing or incomplete documentation, the solution automatically notifies the right people, so you immediately know when you’re missing critical information that proves compliance with local, state and federal regulations. The increased visibility into your documents, information and processes lets you manage your institution with real-time information, giving you the ability to avoid fines or any bad press. With ECM, your documents – and the pertinent information that surrounds them – are secure, auditable, traceable and easily accessible.

Just like that, the CFPB’s challenge has become an opportunity.

Take action: reap rewards now, and later
Using ECM is a great way to get ahead of compliance demands, because there are more regulations to come. So why wait?

“It’s not just about loans – the focus is on mortgages this year, deposit products next year. The time to start is now,” says David Kerstein of the CFPB on BAI Retail’s Banking Strategies Daily.

I couldn’t have put it better myself.