Enforce compliance, reduce costs and increase productivity with one solution

By Justin Bailey, Vice President, Sales EMEA, eCopy

Organisations in the financial sector are inundated with paper documents, causing a major headache for those who need to find a means of consuming, managing and storing them in the most efficient way. Add to this the issue of the increasing burden of compliance and the need to reduce costs, and the management of this paper documentation becomes a critical threat that needs addressing sooner rather than later.

The need to comply
Hardly a day goes by without stories of lost information, stolen data, ID fraud and breaches of data protection rules hitting the headlines. Each one of these issues must be addressed by all organisations, particularly in the financial sector where a huge amount of sensitive data is received on a daily basis. The growing burden of complying with tougher FSA regulations, the Freedom of Information Act, privacy laws and information security is a significant pressure on organisations focused not only on best practice, but also on maintaining audit trails to prove compliance, quickly and efficiently. Coupled with the damage that loss or theft of customer data can do to the corporate reputation of a financial institution, risk management is at the top of the agenda.

Although financial institutions are well-versed in electronic documentation, much is still paper-based. It doesn’t make sense to have two separate workflows – one electronic and one paper-based – especially where it is so easy for hard copies to go astray. By incorporating paper documents into an electronic workflow (capturing data through document imaging), organisations can transform paper sitting on someone’s desk into actionable, dynamic and traceable information.

To further help prevent lapses and failures in compliance policies, any organisation needs to understand its data by classifying it appropriately. ISO standards provide an excellent model, with the ISO 27001 Information Classification Framework rating data and documentation from ‘top secret’ for highly sensitive information about strategies, plans, designs, mergers and acquisitions to ‘public’ for information that is in the public domain. But the responsibility lies ultimately with the employees themselves. Organisations need to make smart investments in solutions that are easily incorporated into an employee’s day-to-day activities as well as those with a proven return on investment. 
 
Document imaging solutions extend the capabilities of existing multi-function copiers and scanners and enterprise applications (e.g. ECM, Document Management, BPM and Workflow) and have an ease of use that is critical to staff adoption. When using a document imaging solution to introduce paper-based data into an electronic workflow, information is classified at the point of entry, minimising possible failures in the process. In addition, intelligent document routing allows scanned documents to be forwarded via email or collaboration tools such as Microsoft SharePoint. It initiates the business process and automatically generates an audit trail – essential to proving compliance and ensures that no sensitive information gets misplaced or falls through the gaps.

Once scanned, the documents can be routed directly to the right people and easily used in automated processes and business applications.

Getting more for less
In addition to compliance, budgets are being tightened across the industry with many companies being forced to do more with less. IT managers are being asked to show increased ROI and justify outlay for additional solutions, as well as that of existing infrastructure and software.

Implementing a document imaging solution needn’t be expensive or daunting. For IT managers tasked with getting a higher return on current investments, document imaging systems can offer a low cost, easy to administer, easy to use solution that works with an organisation’s existing hardware and software. Through either an add-on or embedded solution, multifunction printers (MFPs) can scan documents and send them to email or collaboration software to quickly and effectively incorporate them into the company’s workflow. Document capture is no longer considered as a technology running in a silo location; rather, it is an integral part of a business process that can be leveraged at any place during a business process and used by many business areas within an organisation.
 
Not only does a document imaging solution help to justify investment in existing infrastructure, it can also increase productivity by improving business processes. Automating the capture and workflow process can cut the average cost of document management, from the point where it enters an organisation to the end of its life cycle by up to 80%. This is achieved by creating automated, ‘easy to use’ experiences, meeting compliance criteria through auditable business processes, minimising manual document handling by knowledge workers, reducing customer response time and providing fast ROI through quick deployment.  

Companies unable to provide audit trails and suffering employee inefficiencies as a result should be asking why they have waited so long to make this type of investment. For organisations that care about compliance or tracking payables and receivables a document scanning solution may be long overdue.

Storing up problems
By implementing a document imaging solution, an organisation can also reduce the need for on-site storage facilities. Valuable office space is being taken up in financial organisations by paper file storage. that can be reduced significantly by introducing the data into an electronic workflow. By integrating the information into a database or document management solution at the point of entry to the business, the original document can either be destroyed, where legally allowed, or transferred to low cost storage off-site to comply with regulatory requirements.

In addition, retrieval of paper documentation, where it is held, can be very time-consuming and labour intensive. In the current economic climate, increasing the productivity of employees is vital. Document imaging software allows all paper documentation to be scanned to PDF and accessed electronically in seconds, from any networked location, be it the office, from home or even from a mobile device.

Also, storing large quantities of paper documentation on-site increases the risk of information being lost or stolen. Research commissioned by CyberArk in 2008 found that a massive 88% of IT administrators said they would steal sensitive company information if they were dismissed. Electronic audit trails are a good deterrent in that it makes it virtually impossible for such theft to go un-noticed and allows rapid remedial action to be taken. Misplaced documents can become a thing of the past. Once the paper version is scanned, it can be securely stored immediately, with only the electronic version distributed, so the threat of losing the original document is removed. Also, with effective optical character recognition (OCR), thousands of documents can be searched within seconds and specific data located effortlessly.    

But introducing data into electronic workflows, on its own, will not eliminate lost or stolen information completely. For this reason, security and access controls must be set at entry point, restricting permissions as to who may view, edit, print or forward the document. Document scanning software can generate and enforce a detailed audit trail, including authentication details to guarantee the security of the information.

Answering boardroom questions
Regulatory compliance, reducing budgets and staff productivity are critical boardroom issues and organisations that fail to address them face an uncertain future. All three can be addressed using document imaging solutions to great effect. Whilst digital data is not absolutely free from problems, there is still a major risk around paper-based information that is not being tackled adequately by the financial sector. Organisations and their board members must take responsibility for this now. Whether we will ever see a truly paperless office is a discussion for another time, but it is certainly true that reducing the amount of data stored on paper can only be a benefit for any organisation.