Remote Deposit Capture, Imaging-Forms Processing & Data Capture, Transaction Processing Forum's - Solutions for Improving Your Business Operation

Alabama Power Company: Supervisor of Remittance Processing
Alliance Bank: VP/ Director of Information Technology
Allstate Insurance Company: Associate Consultant
American National Property & Casualty Co.: Sr Premium Payment Specialist
AmeriGas Propane: Director of Revenue Mangement
Ameriprise Financial INC: Director Document & Payment Operations
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama Manager-Cash Management & Investments
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama Operations Manager-Payment Processing
Capital One Auto Finance Payment Processing Sr. Unit Manager
CenterPoint Energy Director of Remittance
Christian Broadcasting Network, Inc. Manager-Remittance Processing
CNH Capital America LLC Mgr, Cash Processing and Processing Svs
County of Orange Cash Manager
Customs & Border Protection Office of Training and Development
Department of Defense Senior Technical Advisor
Department of Homeland Security Chief Knowledge Officer
Duke Power Company Collect Process Design Specialist
Eastern Bank AVP
Father Flanagan's Boys Home Lockbox Manager
Fifth Third Processing Solutions Vice President - Relationship Management
First American Real Estate Tax Svs Director of Operations
Florida Power & Light Company Customer Billing Supervisor
FOOTSTAR AP MANAGER
Illinois National Bank Vice President
Indiana Department of Revenue Administrator of the Returns Processing
JPMorgan Chase & Company Executive Director, Receivables Product Mgt.
Library of Congress Acting Chief
LifeWay Christian Resources Manager of Accounts Payable
M & I Bank Vice President
Maryland Health Care Commission Division Chief - Center for Health IT
Media General, Inc. Remittance Processing Manager
Morgan Stanley Executive Director
Navy Federal Credit Union Manager, Remittance Processing
New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance State Coordinator
New York City Department of Education Technology Instructor
North American Membership Group, Inc. Operations Manager
Northwestern Mutual Director, Shared Services
Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Office of Tax & Revenue Branch Chief Receipt & Archive Branch
Office of the General Counsel Director of Litigation
Orange County Treasurer-Tax Collector Chief Assistant Treasurer-Tax Collector
Palmetto GBA Director
Pediatric Associates of Richmond Information Technology Specialist
Pepco Holdings, Inc. Business Systems Project Manager
PNC Bank Vice President, Sr.Product Manager
Portland General Electric Company Manager - Revenue Collection
PSE&G District Manager - Customer Operations
Richland County Information Technology Business Systems Division Manager
Skechers USA ACCOUNTS PAYABLE MANAGER
SOURCECORP BPS Inc Director of Operations
State Farm Insurance Company Systems Analyst
Sunlife Financial Sr Manager, Imaging Center
T.Rowe Price Services, Inc Assistant Vice President
The Huntington National Bank Product Manager-Senior
Time Warner cable Regional AP Manager
U.S. Cellular, Inc. Mgr, Accounts Payable/Business Support Services
U.S. Department of State Compliance
UMUC Program Director, Telecommunications Management
Union Bank of California Vice President/Manager
United States Treasury Assistant Commissioner Federal Finance
United Water VP of Customer Service
Unity Health Insurance Systems Analyst
US Attorney's Office Information Technology Specialist
Verizon Communications Manager
Wells Fargo Bank Product Manager

Small Businesses Express Big Interest in Remote Deposit Capture and E-Check

An interesting article by Phoenix ESP Payments Research Group

(Salisbury, MD) October 6, 2006 - Banks expecting a gradual migration of check processing to remote deposit capture (RDC) to trickle down to their smaller business customers after adoption at the large corporate level need to think again. Close to 10% of small businesses and SOHOs (small office/home office) in the manufacturing, wholesale and retail sectors are already using RDC or have concrete plans to begin using RDC by the end of 2007. And with awareness of the technology already at 50% among these small companies, the actual adoption rate for these segments in 2007 is likely to be substantially higher.
“This technology promises to be as disruptive to paper check processing over the next 18 months as was the conversion from paper to electronic processing of credit card transactions in the mid-1980s”, says Leon Majors, President of Phoenix ESP Payments Research Group. “Though the percentages of small businesses using or planning to use these services right now may seem small, it is important to keep in mind that they represent hundreds of thousands of companies in only three industries.”
These results from just one of a series of market studies of small businesses recently completed by Phoenix ESP Payments Research Group reveal potential for new electronic payment and payment processing methods that far exceeds original expectations and perhaps the capability of the industry to deliver. “The banking industry has yet to establish standard pricing or availability for the mass marketing of these services but the small business community already expects this new array of electronic receivables services to be available in the normal course of business”, cautions Majors.
Majors also points out that, to date, just 40,000 RDC terminals have been shipped by manufacturers, of which about 30,000 have been installed. “A handful of banks across the country, large and small, have taken the lead in providing RDC services to their customers,” adds Andy Brown, VP Small Business Payment Strategies at Phoenix ESP, “and they will have an edge because this is precisely the type of service that cements a strong relationship between customer and provider.”
Phoenix ESP research measured substantial growth over the past year in the numbers of small firms planning to use ACH and image capture by 2007. In addition to RDC interest and activity, more than half of SOHOs and small businesses in the industry segments surveyed by Phoenix ESP are familiar with e-check services (conversion of paper checks to ACH transactions) and just under 10% of these firms are already using e-check services or planning to begin using them before the end of 2007.
Phoenix ESP conducts three extensive payments research projects annually in the small business market: Small Business Banking Services, Small Business Credit Card Monitor and Small Business Retail Merchant Study. Collectively, these projects encompass almost 3,000 telephone interviews with owners/managers of businesses in six industries with revenues between $100k - $9.9mm. (Companies with revenues between $10mm - $250mm are covered in separate studies.) The data reported here are drawn from the recently completed Small Business Banking Services study.
ESP Payments Research Group, a division of Phoenix Marketing International, offers full-service quantitative and qualitative research and analysis across all types of payments systems products and services. Consulting professionals with unmatched expertise in payment systems and primary research, provide solutions for clients at leading retail and corporate financial services providers and technology vendors serving the financial services industry.
Phoenix Marketing International is one of the fastest growing top-50 marketing research firms in the U.S. and partners with many of the largest companies in the financial services, consumer package goods, automotive and travel, leisure & entertainment industries worldwide. In addition to industry expertise Phoenix has dedicated analytical groups leading the industry in advertising and brand analytics, multi-cultural expertise and direct marketing list optimization.

Process Improvement at it's Finest - A local sub joint saves money

About every other day I buy a sub at a local place in Boston called Al Capones. This place is about as old school as it gets. A small sub is at the very least 12 inches long with deli meat, lettuce, tomato's, hots, you name it piled high into one of the best sub rolls you have ever tasted. Capone subs are as cheap as they come by but to top it off every 5th sub you buy is totally free. I was talking with my check-out lady Diane today about how awesome this deal was and the details of the discount card which you see here to your left. Well apparently I wasn't alone. So many people were into this discounted sub thing that they were going through so many of these cards they could not keep up. They were printing these cards by the box loads and boxes were piling up in their closets and storage area. When you think about it 10 subs is really not that many subs in the grand scheme of things during a year. Well their printing vendor made a suggestion that will probably keep Al Capones a customer for life. It got me to thinking that this is similar to what many TAWPI solution providers do on a daily basis about introducing new technology whether it is auto classification, remote check capture, back office conversion, to name a few. (Quite a transition).

So, want to know what that printing vendor's recommendation was? See the next post:

And the Answer Is......

Double sided cards. They cut there production by more than half. Next steps may be to somehow barcode and scan these cards into a CRM system.

The Value of Automating your Insurance Mailroom- Inbox to Archive

Free Webinar Thursday, December 14, 2006Time: 2:00–3:00pm EST.

Emerging trends in data capture and document classification are successfully automating mail room processes for today’s fast-paced business environment. Organizations worldwide are beginning to realize the benefits of these technologies. This Webinar will explore how a complete end-to-end solution that begins in the mailroom and automatically routes the documents where you want them to go can help you streamline your process and save time and money.
You will learn how to handle some of the main challenges in capture and data entry. One company doubled their capacity in capture and classification with no additional personnel. To double and triple the productivity of your mailroom staff. To eliminate prep by processing mail directly from the envelope. To realize the benefits of classification. An enterprise-wide solution can increase efficiency throughout your organization

The Speakers

Bo Minogue is a product manager for OPEX and has been working in the scanning industry for over 20 years.

Pete Cheuvront is senior account manager and the Insurance Vertical Specialist at KeyMark, Inc. He has been working in the document management field for 12 years.

Who Should Attend
Managers, Directors and C-level executives within IT, Finance and Operations from financial services, government, insurance, telecommunications, utilities, retail, manufacturing and healthcare organizations.

Registrations must be received by December 13 at 5:00pm EST. Confirmation and handout materials will be sent to the contact person at the email address provided.

Register online at:

http://www.keymarkinc.com/webinars.html

Off-Shore Data Capture Outsourcing-Is the pendulum swinging in favor of keeping in-house?

TAWPI and HSA have recently completed our 2006 Forms Processing and Data Capture Study which is a follow up study to our 2000 research. Like all research we uncovered some very interesting industry findings. The study reached out to 15,000 end-users (over 200 respondents in the US) in the forms processing/data capture industry from the financial, healthcare, service bureau, government, and other capture industries.

One finding was alarming that outsourcing data capture off-shore may have reached it's peak. And it could be because of the increased sophistication of automated character recognition tools being deployed.

Here are some details from the study on this particular issue: When asked about off-shore labor, respondents said they were outsourcing off-shore, with over one third of them processing high volumes of documents (over 10,000 per day). A majority had peak volumes that were in excess of 3 times their average daily volumes, but only a small number claimed they are using off-shoring exclusively to handle peak volumes.

Predictably, the ratio of those wanting to reduce costs vs. handling peak volumes was higher when off-shore outsourcing was cited as currently being used, than for respondets claiming on-shore outsourcing was being used. Nearly half (43%) are sending less than 25% of their work off-shore with just 13% sending more than 75% of their work.

So despite claims that off-shore outsourcing is being used to reduce costs, it seems that a major reason is to manage varying peak volumes at different times of the year. 16% of these respondents performed scanning while 59% performed key entry offshore, 24% verification, and 14% outsourcing back-end processes.

The low rate of scanning is logical as scanning requires physically shipping the paper off-shore, which is time consuming and expensive, while key entry is a manual procedure that can operate from images. We were surprised at the low rate of verification, which we would have assumed would be higher to reflect the higher rate of OCR – but it seems that heavy users of OCR are using less off-shore.

As would be expected, nearly 50% of the respondents, who were sending key entry overseas, were Service Bureaus who have the most pressure on costs, with 20% being Banking & Finance companies.

Considering the publicity regarding outsourcing, we were surprised to find that the majority of the respondents do not seem to be outsourcing at this time. But it fits with our previous survey in 2000 where 80% reported that they were not using outsourcing and 74% who said they did not plan on doing so. It is possible that some respondents were hesitant to honestly report outsourcing due to its various stigmas.

Out of those who are outsourcing 56% said that it was in order to reduce costs, which represents a substantial increase over our 2000 study (29% cost). Most currently using off-shore respondents said they would increase the volumes outsourced off-shore, whereas only a small percentage of on-shore outsourcers expect to increase volume.

We believe this shows that most users of off-shore processes have gotten through any teething start-up problems and these operations are satisfactorily delivering on their commitments.

Are these findings suprising to you?

For more information or how to order this study contact jglass@tawpi.org.

Where have all the banks gone? Bank of New York Agrees to Acquire Mellon Financial

News moves quickly. Another bank merger!! If you have not already heard according to Bloomberg "Bank of New York Co. agreed to buy Mellon Financial Corp. for about $16.5 billion, creating the biggest custodian of assets for institutional investors almost a decade after Mellon rejected an unsolicited bid from the bank." The combined company will safeguard $16.6 trillion for institutions, topping JPMorgan Chase & Co. as the world's largest custody bank. It will manage $1.1 trillion in assets and have revenue of about $12 billion a year, the companies said today in a statement. The companies said they will cut pretax costs by about $700 million a year, or about 8.5 percent, in part by shedding about 3,900 of their 40,000 employees over three years. Restructuring charges from the merger, which the companies expect to complete by July 1, 2007, will be about $1.3 billion, they said in the statement."

Below is a ranking of custody banks by assets as of September, assuming the Bank of New York-Mellon merger:

Company Assets:

Bank of New York Mellon Corp. $16.6 trillion
JPMorgan Chase & Co. $12.9 trillion
State Street Corp. $11.27 trillion
Citigroup Inc. $9.6 trillion
BNP Paribas SA $4.56 trillion

Source: Company financial statements.

Visit: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aoXC0e3ZPnHU&refer=home for entire story.

If you are one of the unfortunate 3900 employees who happens to be in payment processing operations, post your resume on TAWPI's Careerlink http://www.tawpi.org/careerlink.html.

If you have not registered for the TAWPI-AIIM Capture Conference next week in Florida you are making a very big mistake.

Check out the educational content alone:

Keynote Address The Future of Information Capture: Craig LeClair Sr. Analyst from Forrester Research.

Best Practices in Forms Processing and Data Capture- 2006 Survey Results Revealed- John Mancini AIIM and Harvey Spencer

Compliance and eDiscovery- Robert Blatt Electronic Image Designers, Inc.

Next Generation Imaging beats Data Entry- Artur Vassylyev, Director of Professional Services, ABBYY

Process Improvement through AP Automation Gary Phillips, Cash and ROIC Analysis, Lockheed Martin & Robert Fresneda, President, ReadSoft North America

Image to Archive: Managing the Complete Document Lifecycle: Bryan Gard, Product Marketing Manager, EMC Captiva

User Best Practices – Financial Services
Moderator: Priscilla Emery, e-Nterprise Advisors
Haynes Ward, First National Bank of Oxford
Rema Deo, Capital Markets, Credit & Risk, Citicorp
Ron Victor, JPMorgan Chase

User Best Practices – Government
Moderator:Dan Elam, eVisory Consulting
Sylvia Ellis, Virginia Department of Social Services
Jim McNair,Utah State Tax Commission
Boyd Winn, Louisiana Department of Revenue

Data Capture Challenges and Opportunities in the Healthcare Industry
Jay Foster, SVP and Chief Information Officer, WorkingRx, Inc.
Shiek Shah, Chief Technology Officer, Azima Health Services
Gary Provo, Executive Vice President, eGistics, Inc.
Moderator: Mark Brousseau, Brousseau & Associates

Emerging Trends in Document Capture – Vendor Perspectives of What’s on the Horizon
Facilitated by Dan Elam, eVisory Consulting
Panelists: Abbyy, BancTec, PaperHost, IBML

Closing Session: “Forces Driving Shifts in Imaging Strategy: Distributed Capture”
Michael Maziarka, Director, InfoTrends, Inc.

There’s still time to register. Visit http://www.tawpi.org/Capture2006.html.

On December 1st 2006 Supreme Court's Extensive Changes to Federal Electronic Discovery Rules Will Take Place

• On April 12, 2006, the United States Supreme Court approved, without comment or dissent, proposed amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that will significantly alter the way in which litigants must handle discovery of "electronically stored information.“ The new rules and amendments have been sent to Congress and will take effect on December 1, 2006, unless Congress enacts legislation to modify, reject, or defer the amendments. Among other changes, the proposed amendments will modify Rules 16, 26, 33, 34, 37, and 45, as follows:
  
• Rule 16(b): The court’s pre-trial scheduling order can include provisions concerning electronically stored information;
• Rule 26(b)(2): There is no duty to produce data reasonably identified as inaccessible, though the court may still order production upon good cause, with conditions;
• Rule 26(b)(5): Creates a “claw back” procedure whereby a party can request the return of inadvertently produced privileged documents;
• Rule 26(f): Parties must meet and confer on e-discovery issues before the pre-trial scheduling conference;
• Rule 33(d): Parties may reference “electronically stored information” as a type of business record from which answers to interrogatories may be derived;
• Rule 34: Production request may specify desired e-data format and response must state any objection to requested format; “ordinary” (a/k/a “native”) file format or “reasonably useable” form is production default;
• Rule 37: Provides “safe harbor” (i.e., no discovery sanctions) for inadvertent e-data loss if based on “routine, good faith operation” of an IT system; and
• Rule 45: Applicable new e-discovery rules extend to subpoenas, too.
  

For those of you who are working on 2007 budgets..

Just another Cyber Monday..Why Not Buy Your Registration for TAWPI 2007 Today?

Top 5 Reasons to attend TAWPI 2007 in Boston Aug. 12th to 14th:

1. Education - TAWPI has announced that we will have 3 simultaneous & educationally packed Forums which attendees can participate in all 3 with one expo floor with the top industry vendors. Forums will include the Remote Check Capture Forum, the Imaging, Forms and Capture Forum and the Remittance/Payments Forum. As always TAWPI presentation's will take a deep look at the practicality and implementation of these key business area's as well as technological advancements, ROI analysis, risk management and how to improve your work processes within your organization.

2. Savings - Register before December 31st and bring a colleague for free. 2 for 1 special!

3. Networking - TAWPI always brings together the best of the best in the industry. Whether you are an end-user in charge of a large or small document capture operation or accounts receivables, a treasury manager looking for an ROI analysis in rolling out a Remote Check Capture solution, remittance processor, or mail processor this event is the best way for you to network with like peers in the payments, remote check capture, and imaging industry.

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4. Keynotes & more Keynotes - Along with a main keynote presentation to kick off Monday morning- Each individual forum will have an industry thought leader keynote presentation in the Remote Check Capture, the Imaging and Forms Processing, and the Payment Forum's. Hear first hand an independendent analytical viewpoint from these leaders on industry trends, best practices, and technological advancements.

5. Location - Boston in August. Can you beat that? Bring the whole family and check out the Red Sox (their playing by the way) along with Fenway Park, Fanuel Hall, Newbury street, duck tours, the North End, the Freedom Trail, and much more....

visit: http://www.tawpi.org/forumexpo.html to register.

Company Merger's and Acquisitions. How is this affecting you?

Over the course of the last year (it may even be longer than this) it just seems there have been way too many company mergers and acquisitions in our industry. Just the other day Oracle purchased Stellant. From an association's perspective I guess this is status quo? But I've been wondering how this affects the end-users out there? Have you had enough of these mergers? Have the specialized small businesses with white glove service disappeared? From your perspective have you noticed a decline or increase in service levels? Have your providers offered you a commitment in technological advancement and process improvement regardless of these mergers and have they followed through with it? Just curious...

This is TAWPI's First Blog Entry

What do you think?