By combining its Scanning and Indexing module with Microsoft SharePoint, Ergo was able to significantly improve Ulster Bank’s existing document management solution while providing a scalable and affordable open standards platform for future workflow projects.
The Business Need
The Dublin office of Ulster Bank provides complete capital markets solutions to business and corporate customers. A financial institution that prides itself on efficiency and customer service, it has always been a strong advocate for the benefits that technology can bring to a business.
An early adopter of document management solutions, the bank recognised that scanning and indexing electronic documents would reduce the administrative burden of excessive paperwork. Applied to records management and processes around loans, settlements and PIBS (Permanent Interest Bearing Shares), as well as accounts payable and other internal finance functions, the company was able to increase efficiency and save money.
The average number of documents scanned per day varies from 50 to 2,500, undertaken by six work groups using a variety of scanners distributed around the building. Individual and batch scanning was also supported. An index and retrieval system based around 50 different content types made the scanned documents available to their relevant departments.
Over time, however, the proprietary system was proving to be too expensive and inflexible. The bank found itself locked into annual costs that were disproportionately expensive when similar solutions were coming on to the market that were more affordable and open.
“This was at a time when Ulster Bank was undergoing a cost review across the entire organisation, so saving money was an important driver,” said James McCabe, Ulster Bank’s IT Service Delivery Manager. “We were at a crossroads. Unhappy with a legacy solution that would be too expensive to upgrade, we went to the market for an alternative.”
The Solution
Ergo set out to build Ulster Bank a scalable and affordable platform that could be used across the entire business, meeting its document and records management needs, now and into the future. A new system was built by Ergo around two components, its own Scanning and Indexing application and Microsoft SharePoint.
SharePoint is an enterprise information portal with a browser based document management platform and comes bundled with the Windows Server 2008 operating system. The majority of the bank’s requirements were met with the ‘out of the box features’ and modest customisation. SharePoint could also provide a platform to fulfil future business requirements as they arose, such as workflow and forms automation.
James McCabe had encouraged the approach: “We looked at SharePoint as the key driver for a new system. It was already something we owned, and with SQL databases at the backend we could build on it and put it into solutions for automated workflow.”
The Scanning and Indexing application was developed by Ergo to sit on top of SharePoint, offering businesses an easy and affordable inroad into document management and electronic workflow. Because the module uses hardware standards recognised by most scanners, it was easily deployed into the bank’s scanning stations where it supports batch as well as single scans, and double as well as single-sided pages.
Documents are scanned direct to SharePoint repositories from where they can be searched and retrieved using the bank’s indexing criteria. At the user end, Ergo was careful to ensure that the look and feel of the old system was retained, smoothing the path to adoption and minimising the training requirement. A web app was built that sits on a server and allows any user to access the data through a familiar interface. As a result, the transition from one system to the next was seamless.
The Benefits
For Ulster Bank, Ergo’s Document Management System was the right solution at the right time. A legacy system that was costing too much to run and was too expensive to upgrade sat uneasily with the wider organisation’s strategy for greater cost control.
The deployment of the Ergo Document Management solution has saved Ulster Bank up to 40 per cent each year in support costs with the number of helpdesk calls falling by 20 per cent. “We have a small IT department so with every solution we put in we want to keep the overhead and support calls down,” said James McCabe. “Our main objective was to find a solution that was scalable, flexible and low maintenance. The Ergo solution has all those qualities.”
The Ergo system was also a way for the bank to future-proof its investment. It’s not just robust; it’s scalable and able to facilitate further process improvements at minimal extra cost. SharePoint supports a range of workflow features, including task creation and document review. It can also be configured to read barcodes and could be used in future to automatically identify content types and other related information.
A safe and secure document repository for all of the bank’s documentation, SharePoint is also easy to integrate with other systems in the bank. It retains the best of the old system, the ability to rapidly search for and display documents based on multiple search criteria, while introducing valuable cost savings.
“We showed how simple it is to save a lot of money,” said Peter Masterson, Project Manager at Ergo. “The cost of our combined solution was a lot less than the yearly maintenance and support they paid to the previous supplier. The bank saw a return on investment in six months.”