Management Buy-In Key To Outsourcing

By Mark Brousseau

Whether your organization is a financial institution or a corporate biller, one of the most important things you must do when looking at outsourcing lockbox processing is to get senior management to buy into the process early-on, Serena Smith, senior vice president at Fidelity National Information Services said during a presentation this week at TAWPI's Payments Automation: Beyond Capture & Clearing Conference in St. Petersburg, FL.

"What's also important to know is whether senior management is looking for a vendor or a partner," Smith told the audience. "The service provider needs to know what a customer's plans are five years down the road, to help us with our planning."

Smith's co-presenter, John Mintzer, vice president at Citizens Bank, said companies outsourcing their lockbox operations must be committed to following a formal project methodology all the way through the process. "If you don't follow a project methodology, you will be 'committed' at the end," Mintzer joked. What do you think? E-mail me at m_brousseau@msn.com.

Capture Conference-Imaging to Archive-December 6th to 7th

This is a must attend event for end-users looking strategically at the future of document capture, workflow, back end integration and improving your own image based operation. Whether your company is looking to automate and improve upon your invoice processing or scanning of EOB's, claims, forms, the TAWPI Capture Conference at the Doral Resort December 6th to 7th will be the place to be. Click Here to register.

Partial Conference Agenda:Solutions Overview

Ralph Gammon, Editor, Document Imaging Report
Join us for breakfast and hear a brief overview detailing what products you’ll find in the vendor showcase.

Keynote Address: “The Future of Document Imaging”
Dolores Kruchten, General Manager, Document Imaging, Vice President, Eastman Kodak

Keynote Address: How Intelligent Capture & Exchange Solutions Can Effect Positive Organizational Change and Automate Business Processes Andrew Pery, Vice President of Marketing, Kofax

Strategies for Outsourcing Document Processing
Jan Trevalyan, President, Direct Data Capture;
Bob Zagami, General Manager, DataBank IMX;
Devang Thakkar, Senior Product Manager, Enterprise Information Capture Solutions, Anacomp

Case Study: Montgomery County Increases Efficiency and Accuracy with Forms Processing
Dieter Klinger, Enterprise Services Division Chief - Department of Technology Services, Montgomery County
Craig Laue, Eastern Regional Manager, ABBYY USA Software, Inc.

Trends in Invoice Processing
Ralph Gammon, Editor, Document Imaging Report

Case Study: Beyond Claim Processing at Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina
Jay Keogh, IBML
Christina Lane, Operations Manager, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina

NEW Success Stories in Enterprise Content Management Bill Premier, Chief Operating Officer, Hyland Software

Unstructured Document Processing Panel Discussion
John Craig, Account Manager, ReadSoft North America
Ken Kriz, Product Manager, AnyDoc Software
Jerry Metcalfe, Sr. Director, Captaris
Andy Lawrence, Product Manager, Eastman Kodak

From Transaction Systems To Analytics

By Mark Brousseau

In an article on trends in IT capabilities and advancements in healthcare finance that appears in this month’s issue of HFMA’s magazine, Deb Davis and Jim Adams, both of IBM Global Business Services, identified the move from transaction systems to analytics.

“As advanced clinical systems are implemented, the value of clinical information can be extended beyond the transaction level to be used for risk management, trend analysis, and analytics that include financial and clinical data,” Davis and Adams wrote.

The development of a health analytics roadmap can determine strategic priorities in the analysis and use of data with research, finance, and patient care, they conclude.

Sounds like another example of the convergence of payments and document processing to me. What do you think? E-mail me at m_brousseau@msn.com.