Monday, March 31, 2008

Why The Fuss Over Remote Capture?

By Mark Brousseau

Many people believe that the future of electronic payment processing includes a growing trend toward including accounts receivable, check and deposit capture at the point of presentment. So what are the benefits of this strategy? And what about its challenges?

“The strategy of moving image capture to the point of presentment provides numerous advantages,” Wally Vogel (wally_vogel@creditron.com), president of Creditron, Inc., told me. “Obviously, there is the reduction of payment document handling and forwarding, and the associated lag time. This improves cash control and offers faster funds availability.”

“Beyond that, image capture at the point of presentment allows for greater control and audit capabilities,” Vogel added. “As soon as the document is scanned, it is captured and logged, and can be tracked through various processes for depositing, accounts receivable updates, and handling change of address requests and customer service inquiries, among other functions.”

With the proper systems in place, Vogel added, document images can be viewed from any authorized inquiry station on the network for customer purposes, within minutes of receiving the document. This means that data completion from image can be completed in a remote office or in a centralized location, providing greater flexibility while maintaining strict control and a complete audit trail for each transaction, wherever it is processed.

“One of the significant challenges of image capture at the point of presentment is the need to standardize rules, processes and practices across remote offices. Otherwise, users may not get the full advantage of remote capture,” Vogel said. “This may require a thorough business analysis and a willingness to unify business processes.”

What do you think? E-mail me at m_brousseau@msn.com.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Mark - Wally Vogel's comments about the advantages of image capture at the point of presentment (i.e. distributed capture) are right on. And he presents an interesting challenge as well. As is true with document capture across the board, standardizing rules, processes and practices across all employees (regardless of location) is critical. One customer of ours told me recently that they spent two full years of analysis and policy design before implementing the capture solution -- to enormous success.

Once these policies/processes are in place, one of the best ways to put them into practice is to provide users with a standardized capture solution that brings the backend application (accounting applications, ERP, Document Managment, etc.) to the users fingertips at the capture device (MFP or scanner). That way, the backend system enforces the user behavior by prompting them for the correct input when scanning.

So yes, it is important to define the policies and processes, but it as equally as important to provide users of distributed capture technology with an standardized, easy to use solution.