3 essential components of ECM to eliminate the waste: part 2

In part one of this series, we explored how banishing the waste is critical for the future of today’s financial institutions. Until banks and credit unions commit to drastically changing their processes across the enterprise, service levels will float in a state of costly inefficiency and future growth initiatives will become unrealistic.

Most credit unions own at least one enterprise content management (ECM) system. However, most implementations are not only underutilized, but they’re also incorrectly utilized. There are three essential components of ECM that enable financial institutions to get back to basics and banish the waste. Many times, these are the components missing in an ECM strategy that prevent our organizations from really changing the way we work.

Here are the three most commonly overlooked components when leveraging an ECM solution.

1.     Information Architecture

According to Cornerstone’s Senior Director Michael Croal, “Shared drives are unmanaged because there is no enforceable consistency between users naming folders and files.”

In ECM solutions, this classification schema is the common and enforced language that makes document imaging useful from a search and usability perspective. Financial institutions need to agree on a naming convention that covers all of the documents the process encounters and assign keywords to the documents that support searching.

Addressing your information architecture puts an end to “I can’t find this” complaints, as well as the need to save multiple copies of the same document.

2.     Capture

Capture is fundamental to changing the way we work. Too many banks and credit unions have built processes that restrict document imaging to the tail end of the process. To achieve maximum process performance, workers need to capture records as soon as they are created or received.

Regardless of where information or documents are located or what format they come in, ECM captures them right at the source and organizes them into a single system, with minimal human interaction. Think about the systems where manual data entry occurs in your institution. Where does the information originate? Email? Paper documents or forms? Shared drives?

An effective ECM solution should capture all of these and then some. By capturing important information up front you eliminate time wasted searching in multiple locations.

3.     Workflow

Workflow is an electronic routing system that enables organizations to process work faster and more efficiently. It provides a rich set of point-and-click configurable rules and actions, allowing business processes to quickly automate processes with no need for custom programming. Workflow enables banks and credit unions to significantly decrease document processing time, increase staff productivity and improve input, storage, and retrieval accuracy through a simple and flexible user interface.

My friends at Cornerstone Advisors have written extensively on the benefits of workflow. For a sampling, check out Workflow: Real Life ROI.

Don’t forget to come back next month for the conclusion of this three-part series to fully explore how workflow can take your ECM solution a step further to eliminate the waste and improve the way you work.

 

Michelle Harbinak Shapiro

Michelle Harbinak Shapiro

Michelle Shapiro has more than a 15 years of experience in the banking industry to her role as Financial Services Industry Expert at Hyland Software. Her mission is to share ... Web: www.onbase.com Details