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Mobile Capture - taking the first step

AIIM White Paper

Sponsored by

Mobile C

apture - taking the first step

1© AIIM 2013 www.aiim.org / © Kofax 2013 www.kofax.com

IntroductionFormFeed Finance (FFF) is a (fictional) loan and insurance broker employing 5,000 people. Half are located at the head office, with the rest in branch offices or as field-sales representatives. FFF has been using document imaging and forms processing for many years, although primarily as back-office single-process installations for their key mortgage and insurance claims workflows. Four years ago, FFF implemented a distributed capture system to link a central digital mailroom function with head office MFPs and local scanners in the branch offices. A follow-on project moved some of the digital mailroom load onto an outsource provider who has successfully integrated their operations with FFF’s distributed capture system.

As an intermediary, FFF is very conscious of the need to both reduce costs and improve the value of their services in order to compete with the direct sales operations of the larger mortgage and insurance providers. There are two key aspects to FFF’s offering:

• The first is their “hand-holding” service to ensure that customer loan applications and claims tick all the boxes as regards forms content and completeness of trailing documents.

• The second is their ability to facilitate a much faster result by short-circuiting the pre-processing steps within the providers simply by being closer to the customer.

Following a family weekend, the CEO called her operations staff together. She described how her newly graduated daughter had purchased her first car. Armed with her smartphone, she had toured used-car lots, checking online for valuations, outstanding loans and write-off details as she went. Of course the final purchase was broadcast to all her friends on Facebook within minutes, but once back home, she applied for insurance on her iPad, filling in the forms, scanning her driving license, confirming her signature, and even including a photo of the car to validate the license plate and current condition.

“That’s the kind of service we need to be offering our customers,” said the CEO. The assembled staff could see the benefits of providing branch employees, field representatives and, even better, customers with the ability to capture application forms and supporting documents with a mobile phone or tablet, and immediately have them validated and fed directly into the back office process, but there were strong doubts about capture quality, multi-device support, and above all, security - particularly for the type of sensitive financial data they were dealing with.

The CEO set up two teams, one from the developers in the IT department to specify how they would interconnect between mobile devices and back office systems and how they would tackle the security and device issues as an in-house development, and one from the Operations side to see how other businesses were tackling these issues, and what “off-the-shelf” applications might be available.

The IT In-House SolutionThe IT department was delighted to have the chance to do some app coding for mobile, and to demonstrate their integration skills with the back-end databases. They set about drawing up a requirements specification and planning the project. The obvious starting point was to support the iPhone and iPad and the latest IOS version of the operating system, and then to move on to Android devices as a future enhancement. To pre-load the process, a forms-entry front-end would be written with XML transfer to the database of the back-office, starting with the loans processing system. Users would then scan in forms and any trailing documents, and either scan signatures or sign them on the screen, and dispatch everything to a case folder on the system. One of the developers quickly found a scanning and recognition code-component that could be incorporated into the iPhone and iPad code, with API connections to the main app. Licensing and support would be negotiated once the application was proven using the free starter kit. Security would be taken care of using SSL encryption of the communications stream. If a 3G or WiFi connection is not available, the data would be held on the tablet and the user would initiate a re-transmission as soon as a link is re-connected. The loan process would be initiated automatically once all the data is in, and any errors reported back to the user by email.

The project manager estimated the development effort at 2 man-years and a 9-12-month elapsed time to complete and roll-out the first phase – i.e., loan applications on iPhone and iPad.

Mobile C

apture - taking the first step

2© AIIM 2013 www.aiim.org / © Kofax 2013 www.kofax.com

The Capture Platform SolutionMeanwhile, the Operations Manager remembered a presentation he had seen at the distributed capture system supplier’s user conference. What had intrigued him was that rather than simply demonstrating stand-alone document scanning and forms capture using a smartphone or tablet camera, they were also addressing the whole end-to-end process issues. An initial enquiry to the account manager confirmed that this mobile extension matched into their existing distributed platform, but also that it might cost double that of an in-house development.

However, as instructed by his CEO, he explored more fully the features offered by such a platform, and what other organizations were doing. In order to keep the whole project on track, he also drew up a business case based on the latest AIIM research into mobile capture1.

One immediate benefit of utilizing an extension of the current platform would be that the data interfaces to the core systems are already in place and working, and could be simply ported across. In fact, further than that, the connection into the process itself could be re-used, including the validation algorithms that confirm a successful capture. As with the current agreement, the interfaces to the back-office systems are fully supported and the vendor is responsible for ensuring compatibility with future upgrades. And although a tablet camera is not going to produce the image quality of a scanner, at least the recognition engine would produce the same level of performance as the current server, and the capture vendor was staking its reputation on the success of the mobile scanning. The list of mobile devices support was not huge, but they were prioritized and supported for future upgrades.

The ReckoningThe evaluation meeting with the CEO included the Compliance Officer, a representative from Field Sales, a number of Operations staff and the Financial Controller.

As a starting point, the CEO asked the IT project manager to walk through the process as they proposed it. The first objection was raised by the Field Sales rep. The IT proposal was hardly a one-touch solution, involving more than one login process, and a number of additional steps to capture and transmit the trailer documents. The lack of immediate confirmation of successful receipt and the somewhat hit-and-miss effect if connection was intermittent was also of concern. At this point, the Compliance Officer asked if documents could inadvertently be left on the device and be accessible to others if the device was lost or stolen. She was seeking firm assurance of an end-to-end custody of any sensitive data, and a security level that could be readily audited. Although the proposed link would be encrypted, document files stored on the device, temporarily or otherwise, would not.

Conscious of on-going commitments beyond the original project, the financial controller asked about support for upgrades to the iPad or IOS, and about other tablets that staff may wish to use on a BYOD (bring your own device) basis. He was hoping that a wider adoption of tablets might lead to savings in other staff processes such as expense claims and staff on-boarding. The CEO reminded the meeting that having customers input their own information and documents was the ultimate aim, and so the widest range of up-to-date devices would be needed – as well as the very simplest of process prompts.

As the consensus moved toward the lower risk, more flexible option of firstly buying into a productized mobile platform to ensure industrial-strength security, and secondly adopting a platform that would produce the minimum of disruption to existing process interfaces and the minimum of staff retraining, the CEO sought re-assurance from the Operations Manager that the return on investment would meet the financial goals, and in particular, customer service goals.

Mobile C

apture - taking the first step

3© AIIM 2013 www.aiim.org / © Kofax 2013 www.kofax.com

The AIIM FindingsThe Operations Manager quoted the AIIM survey findings:

• 51% of users of mobile capture report a payback period of 18 months or less, with 71% seeing a return within 2 years.

• The ability of employees to locally capture and interact with back-office processes would improve response to customers by a factor of three times, according to 45% of respondents. The average was 3.2 times.

• 45% of respondents consider that if travelling and remote staff could input directly to back-office processes, productivity would improve by a third. The average suggested improvement is 36%.

• 14% of respondents would consider mobile capture to be “a game changer”. Overall, 32% would find it “very valuable.”

• 50% are already using or implementing a distributed capture system and 11% of those are now moving on to use or implement a mobile capture system.

So as the Operations Manager said, “In summary, these are early days, but the benefits are there for all to see. If we move quickly, we will have a distinct competitive advantage over other finance houses. In particular we would achieve a dramatic improvement in the speed of response to our customers – an area that we pride ourselves on. If we can cover several of our main processes with the same technology platform, roll out for field sales staff will be faster, and if we can support multiple mobile devices from the start, we can move quickly towards customer self-service in the branches or even at home. This will off-load effort from our back office staff and accelerate the ROI from the investment.”

In deciding to adopt the mobile capture platform provided by the distributed capture supplier the CEO pointed out, “The time of our IT staff can be better spent improving the connectivity of all of our information systems, rather than creating apps that would no doubt be impressive, but which could equally likely set back our mobile strategy by two years - and they might never provide the concrete assurances we need for our security and compliance audits.”

Conclusion2 FFF Finance have successfully rolled out a pilot project (in 6 months) and are already seeing the kind of benefits and ROI set out in the AIIM research. The fact that field staff can trigger process starts in minutes rather than days not only impresses customers, but also provides on-the-spot verification of support documentation. In many cases this can result in immediate approval of claims or loans. As field staff do not have to return-to-base to do their paperwork, utilization for calls and visits has increased. In cases that require approvals from senior management, they can interact with the workflow from their mobile devices whilst travelling, and approve the next stage within the process itself whilst maintaining end-to-end compliance. Finally, the amount of paperwork travelling backwards and forwards between branch offices, head office and customers has reduced, cutting postage and courier costs, but also lowering the number of “lost document” cases that are so damaging to customer service ratings.

By moving more quickly than other brokers, and the major banks and insurance houses, FFF has secured its place as an intermediary that improves success rates for loans and claims, but does so faster and closer to the customer than others.

References1. “Distributed and Mobile Capture - moving the process closer to the customer” AIIM White Paper, August

2012, www.aiim.org/research/aiim-white-papers

2. Note: FormFeed Finance is a fictitious company. The benefits described are as suggested by potential users in the AIIM survey cited above.

Mobile C

apture - taking the first step

4© AIIM 2013 www.aiim.org / © Kofax 2013 www.kofax.com

Underwritten in part by

About KOFAXKofax® plc (LSE: KFX) is a leading provider of innovative smart capture and process automation software and solutions for the business critical First Mile of customer interactions. These begin with an organization’s Systems of Engagement, which generate real time, information intensive communications from customers, and provide a fluid bridge to their Systems of Record, which are typically large scale, rigid enterprise applications and repositories not easily adapted to more contemporary technology. Success in the First Mile can dramatically improve an organization’s customer experience and greatly reduce operating costs, thus driving increased competitiveness, growth and profitability.

Kofax software and solutions provide a rapid return on investment to more than 20,000 customers in banking, insurance, government, healthcare, business process outsourcing and other markets. Kofax delivers these through its own sales and service organization, and a global network of more than 800 authorized partners in more than 75 countries throughout the Americas, EMEA and Asia Pacific.

For more information, visit kofax.com

Kofax 15211 Laguna Canyon Road Irvine, CA 92618-3146 Tel: +1 949 783-1000 Website: www.kofax.com

About AIIMAIIM (www.aiim.org) is the global community of information professionals. We provide the education, research and certification that information professionals need to manage and share information assets in an era of mobile, social, cloud and big data

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