How Banking Institutions Can Use Automation to Enhance the Customer Experience

Banking institutions — including banks and credit unions — place high value on the interaction between customers or members and employees in order to build loyalty and drive business growth. Today, the customer-first approach is more important than ever before, and the digital customer experience is at the top of their priorities. While brick-and-mortar branches are here to stay in the post-pandemic era, customers expect consistent in-branch service as well as a seamless omnichannel experience. Recent BAI research reported that consumers expect 61% of their banking business to be digital and 39% to involve human intervention by 2024. To achieve omnichannel excellence, banking institutions need to provide 24/7 access to services and digital self-service for activities ranging from new account opening to loan applications, as well as an online portal for clients to access their own documentation.

In order to keep pace with customer expectations, banking institutions  are leveraging process automation to enhance human interactions — by supporting customers’ ability to access the services they want when they want them; reclaiming time for employees to spend on value-added activities and customer service; and easing collaboration between teams, departments and branches. Digital workflows and processes are also key to boosting productivity so that banking institutions can take on more customers and add new services without the resource strain or sacrificing quality of service. Here are some of the top transformative process automation initiatives that forward-looking banking institutions are leveraging to enhance the customer experience:

1. Self-Service Portals and Online Forms
Even when digital, incoming applications and customers’ records are often scattered electronically across organizations’ local network drives and individual repositories without a standardized folder structure. Studies have shown that the average employee spends 3.6 hours each day searching for information. When customers are waiting — whether in-person at a branch or online — this translates to longer wait times and decreased satisfaction. Self-service portals with links to online forms where customers can easily initiate service requests or send in information — which can then be automatically routed to the appropriate departments or personnel for approval, or to customer folders — help to alleviate the headaches of manually routing data and shorten processing time, while also creating a 24/7 access to services for customers.

2. A Single Source of Truth: Automated Records Management in a Central Repository
Digitization of paper files is nothing new to banking institutions, however, many of them can take these efforts much further. By establishing a centralized repository, and leveraging process automation tools to auto-file customer information into a standardized folder structure, banking institutions can save time for employees who are able to be more responsive to customer needs since they have customer information at their fingertips. At the same time, automating processes related to customers’ data eliminates error-prone manual tasks, improving accuracy of information. With a centralized repository that has granular access controls, too, banking institutions support information governance and compliance with regulatory requirements. As a result, organizations mitigate the risk of unauthorized access to customer information and build and maintain trust with their customers.

3. Integrate Line-of-Business Applications for End-to-End Automated Solutions
Many banking institutions took a piecemeal approach to digital transformation during the pandemic as a reaction to immediate needs. Today, however, organizations need to assess the technologies adopted over the past few years in order to consolidate and optimize IT investments. Integrations can help to connect the different applications, systems and sites where customer data is stored, enabling banking institutions to create more holistic automated solutions and a complete digital experience for customers and the employees who serve them. For instance, integrations can further reduce manual and repetitive data entry by prepopulating customer information into electronic forms. Integration tools such as integration-platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) connectors and APIs can support organizations’ increasingly complex integration needs. By creating a more connected enterprise, banking institutions can better facilitate information flow and avoid repetitive data entry; provide branch employees with accurate, real-time information; and enable a better, more personalized customer experience overall.

The Member-Centered Digital Transformation Journey

Even as many banking institutions are accelerating digital initiatives, the human element remains the most important piece of the transformation puzzle. A recent survey found that more than 80% of credit unions are prioritizing digital as a competitive differentiator, however, only 14% provide solutions that focus on their members’ digital experience. Banking institutions are at an inflection point, and it’s critical that business leaders make decisions about digital initiatives — whether it’s creating an automated customer onboarding process or implementing an AI-powered chatbot — through the lens of the customer experience.

How can Laserfiche help banks and credit unions enhance the customer experience with process automation?

Check out our banks and credit unions solution page for more information!

SIU Medicine Modernizes and Streamlines Processes with Laserfiche

SITUATION

• Complex processes surrounding procurement, service requests and other business needs lacked consistency and oversight.
• The organization sought a solution to automate business processes and streamline them for staff.

RESULTS

• Automated solutions accelerated key workflows including the timesheet process, which was reduced from one week to less than a minute.
• Digitization and automation initiatives supported staff satisfaction, new hybrid work models, interoperability and compliance across the organization.

SIU Medicine is a publicly assisted medical school and clinical practice with more than 2,000 providers, researchers and staff members across the state of Illinois. Additionally, SIU is home to a world-class scientific research facility. The facility’s more than 100 active projects complement the institution’s mission of optimizing the health of the people of central and southern Illinois through education, patient care, research and community service.

SIU’s multi-pronged approach requires complex business processes for procurement, service requests and other everyday activities. The organization has been using Laserfiche for digitizing records for the past 10 years, partnering with Laserfiche solution provider TKB Associates. Recently, SIU found a need to modernize processes and expand use of Laserfiche to include Laserfiche Forms and workflow.
Pandemic Prompts SIU Medicine to Modernize and Streamline with Laserfiche

“[We saw] an opportunity to get executive buy-in and automate processes like online timesheets,” said Jennifer Washburn, IT manager at SIU Medicine. “And since then, we’ve had people lining up and really wanting us to tackle their projects.”

Today, the organization has embraced process automation across departments, leveraging Laserfiche as a capture, decision-making and workflow engine. With streamlined processes and automated records management that reclaims time for employees to focus on more value-added work, Laserfiche supports the organization’s goals, enabling SIU to sustain high employee and patient satisfaction.

Responding to Change with Tech-driven Solutions

Like healthcare IT teams across the country, SIU Medicine’s Process Automation Team has navigated three significant challenges in recent years:

  • Staffing and new work models: Healthcare provider shortage remains a growing concern to public health professionals. The industry must adapt to new hybrid and remote work models.
  • Interoperability: Operating across numerous systems, healthcare organizations need timely and secure access to health data to optimize outcomes for the people they serve.
  • Compliance: The regulatory landscape is increasingly complex, and requires fast and full adherence to avoid poor outcomes, financial penalties and negative attention.

The Process Automation Team’s commitment to continuous improvement has been a boon to the organization’s ability to respond in innovative ways.

“Laserfiche allowed us to tackle problems and solve them in ways that I don’t think would have been possible otherwise,” said Jennifer Washburn, IT manager at SIU Medicine.

Supporting New Work Models

To support hybrid and remote staff, the organization started by automating the timesheet process with Laserfiche Forms.

“Laserfiche Forms allowed us to help our staff continue to do their jobs from wherever they were,” said Washburn. The team created electronic forms and associated workflows for different types of timesheets in various employee categories.

SIU’s timesheet process was reduced from 1 week to less than a minute.The difference in the automated process was significant. “Previously, the manual processes could take a week or longer,” Washburn said. “Today, it takes less than a minute.”

This initial automation project also sparked a shift in which many departments began to see real value in digital transformation.

The selection of timesheets for a pilot was also strategically successful for the Process Automation Team. “Not only was it a huge efficiency gain for us, but it also introduced every single member of our workforce to Laserfiche Forms,” Washburn explained.

The Process Automation Team has continued to take on new projects with the goal of enhancing the employee experience and empowering users to do the work and research that supports the organization’s mission. Meanwhile, Laserfiche tools like electronic forms, automated workflows and electronic records management also support compliance with internal and external requirements, as well as users’ ability to access data across different systems.

Improving Interoperability across the Organization

SIU Medicine has automated both simple processes such as animal requests — enabling researchers to request animals for research projects, with streamlined approvals and documentation— and more complex workflows that are used organization-wide.

For example, purchase orders are now on Laserfiche Forms. What was once a manual process that involved PDFs being emailed or paper forms being passed from desk to desk is now completely digital and automated.

“We created a Laserfiche form that pulls budget purpose numbers and auto-populates the necessary information from another system, which then brings in the fiscal officer that’s responsible for that budget number,” said Mike Overmeyer, data architect at SIU Medicine. The automated system also helps employees by auto-routing POs that may need to go to multiple officers, or that are rejected by one or more officers. “We also give purchasing the ability to run POs by IT or an administrator, if they need to. It’s conditional, and we’re not putting the onus on the employee to make those decisions or execute those manual tasks that can end up causing delays.”

Washburn said that budget purpose numbers are housed in a separate, legacy accounting system that can be leveraged via lookups from Laserfiche Forms. “Users enter a number and it all pre-populates. They click submit and it’s near instantaneous getting to the next person. The end users are amazed that they can do all of this in one place.”

Feedback has been so positive that the project was expanded to include purchases that are made through state procurement cards. “The intent is now to use it for everything that gets purchased for the school, from paper towels and office supplies to computer or laboratory equipment,” Washburn added.

medical sector can modernize and streamline data with LaserficheSIU also used Laserfiche to expedite the collection of patient information when a local healthcare provider retired. “There was a local practice where the provider retired, and all of their patients were transitioned into our practice,” Washburn explained. “We had to collect release of information notices, so we quickly deployed a Laserfiche form to streamline that process. Our clinical staff just had to enter the patient’s health record number. Our system integrates with our practice management system to pull everything automatically, which significantly reduced the time it would have taken manually.”

SIU Medicine’s IT department also stood up its own Laserfiche-powered system for entering requests. Employees fill out an electronic form to request a variety of IT services, including reports, software installation, or even new processes through Laserfiche Forms. “Prior to using the forms, we would get requests that were very unstructured, and there might be a lot of follow-up questions to find out, for instance, what reports someone needed, or what we could to do provide support,” said Jeff Wilson, IT director at SIU Medicine.

Other processes that the organization has transformed using Laserfiche include:
  • Medical provider onboarding
  • Student registration
  • Proof of vaccination collection
  • Program requirements tracking for medical students
  • Animal research laboratory access requests
  • Human resources performance evaluations
  • HR applications for retention bonuses
  • Position change requests
  • Invoice distribution
  • Special event approvals
  • Equipment move requests
  • Equipment inventory count certification

Navigating Compliance and Supporting Staff Satisfaction

SIU leverages Laserfiche’s robust records management capabilities on a daily basis for compliance with industry and state requirements. All forms and information generated from Laserfiche processes are saved and managed in the Laserfiche repository, supporting information governance practices at SIU.

SIU Medicine - million-plus (or 2 million+) documents in Laserfiche“We have well over 2 million documents in our repository,” said Washburn. “If there’s not an existing folder structure for the area that we’re working in, Laserfiche Forms can create it dynamically. We make sure that everything lands in Laserfiche at the end of the day.”

Finally, the organization’s digital efforts have extended beyond process, productivity and compliance improvements, into staff resilience and satisfaction — which has been invaluable in the current healthcare climate. “Working in healthcare, there’s a lot of pressure and demand, so we are constantly thinking about how our staff is doing and what we can do to make the experience better,” Washburn said. “SIU’s executive leadership has emphasized that staff are more contented in their roles when they feel supported and know what they can expect from their leaders. In the most recent employee satisfaction survey, we were rated highest in staff understanding of their roles and responsibilities, and we ranked steady in satisfaction.”

Embrace The Game Changer: Transform Wealth Management Operations with AI-Driven Process Automations

Recent advancements in artificial intelligence, or AI, have captured attention and imagination around the world. In fact, AI and its enabling technology, machine learning, have been around long enough to drive game-changing benefits that we already enjoy as clients and staff.

For wealth managers in particular, AI can improve what both clients and staff experience, while saving on operational costs — in effect, better results for less investment. Supporting interactions with AI-driven tools such as automatic form fill, chatbots and automatic documentation filing can streamline operations and reduce the potential for human error. It also frees employees to focus on higher-value tasks such as supporting clients and developing new business. AI-driven automation can improve the top and bottom lines, while helping organizations tighten their compliance programs.

For example, the implementation of AI makes workflow automation tools for processes like client data transfer even more powerful, further elevating positive outcomes, such as freeing up back-office administrators from repetitive tasks. Imagine having a cleaner, better-documented process with fewer data-entry errors to resolve, and more time for staff to spend on higher-value tasks such as resolving those errors — or automating more processes. Moreover, making client data available across a wealth manager’s systems also creates opportunities to leverage that information to provide tailored services. The ability to offer clients new products and services at the right time can further improve the investor experience— particularly when wealth managers can offer these opportunities before clients are even aware they need them.

AI-driven process automation tools are already available and can be simple to customize or even build using low-code or no-code platforms. In other words, you don’t have to be a software engineer to get started. The key for advisors looking to take advantage of these tools is to take an incremental approach. There’s no need to do everything all at once—however, it is important to have a broader digital transformation strategy to serve as a guide and to prioritize your efforts in a way that yields the greatest operational impact over time.

Want to learn more?

Download the whitepaper “What ChatGPT Means for Wealth Management”.

Hyperautomation Is The Future, But It Starts With This First Step

By Grace Nam, Laserfiche strategic solutions manager for manufacturing and healthcare.

Hyperautomation started as a tech buzz word but is now influencing leaders as a top strategic technology trend, with many seeing the potential value in leveraging RPA (robotic process automation) and AI (artificial intelligence)/ML (machine learning) to transform legacy processes. According to Gartner®, “ hyperautomation is a business driven, disciplined approach that organizations use to rapidly identify, vet and automate as many businesses and IT processes as possible”1 It is increasingly becoming a vital part of organizations’ digital transformation roadmaps as a means to achieving digital resilience and agility.

As you dive headlong into hyperautomation at your manufacturing organizations, it is critical for leaders to plan strategies to accelerate processes and deliver value without getting lost in the current technology weeds. After several years of planning and implementing digital transformation and smart manufacturing initiatives, how far do the benefits currently extend at your organizations? Even with recent events and disruptions like COVID-19, supply chain issues, and staffing shortages, 60% of executives say digital transformation is their most critical growth driver.2 Though digital transformation can be difficult as it requires organizations to change culture and traditional structures, digitalization is crucial to the industry’s ability to increase efficiency in production and drive further growth of the enterprise.
Image showing current bottlenecks to digitizing business processes: inadequate budget - 27%; competing priorities - 46%; legacy system limitations to digitizing across the enterprise - 28%.
Note: Percentages are rounded and may not add to 100%.

While disruptions and challenges have stalled out, major challenges with the supply chain and increased operational costs can persist through digital transformation initiatives. Of course, it’s not realistic to expect to eliminate longstanding challenges in such a short span of time. Currently, many leaders share common challenges in justifying ROI for smart manufacturing investment using end results.3 While having access to data is now certainly realistic for most organizations, building visibility into real-time data across multiple databases at the organization remains as a huge roadblock. Siloed data and unstructured data sets, multiple versions of pieces of digital content without the ability to track them — such as sales contracts and datasheets — and the inability to streamline business processes across different applications and departments are just some of the unimproved roadblocks that are still managed manually. When envisioning the end-results of our digital transformation efforts, it may not be what leaders were expecting: It is a common reality that employees are still spending hours on repetitive manual tasks.

Want to learn more?

Download the whitepaper, “Making Automation Accessible, Connectability Universal & Workforces Eager To Contribute“.

1Gartner IT Glossary, “Hyperautomation,” as of 16 January 2023. https://www.gartner.com/en/information-technology/glossary/hyperautomation. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

2PWC Pulse Survey: Executive views on business in 2022.

3SME, 2022 Smart Manufacturing Market Survey.

NWFM Streamlines Accounts Payable to Scale with Growth and Increase Transparency for Investors

SITUATION

• Company expansion led to a need to optimize paper-based accounts payable processes.
• NWFM sought a means to manage invoices digitally and increase transparency between back office and field operations.

RESULTS

• Achieved hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings
• Increased accuracy in invoice processing
• Over 300% increase in invoice capacity
• Increased investor confidence in the company

NWFM is a locally owned, full-service farm investment and property management company based in Yakima, Washington. Established in 2018, the company had initially processed all its vendor invoices manually. However, as NWFM expanded, the amount of paper invoices increased proportionally with its growing operations and client base.

“Originally, we manually processed about 250 invoices a month,” recalled Tim Hull, administrative manager at NWFM. “As a few hundred acres of new land came under our management, I could see a paperwork tsunami coming.”

Recognizing an opportunity to optimize paper-based accounts payable processes and improve back office and field operations, NWFM searched for a digital capture and workflow solution. Due to its reputation as a robust cloud content services platform, Laserfiche was chosen, and NWFM worked with solution provider FreeDoc of Lynnwood, Washington, to design a dedicated, customized accounts payable workflow.

Since implementing Laserfiche to keep up with a rapid growth trajectory, NWFM has achieved substantial cost and operational savings, as well as gained the ability to leverage data and metrics built into Laserfiche to improve transparency and accuracy throughout its operations.
Farmer in the field with a crop

Cultivating a Digital Invoice Processing System

Managing hundreds of acres of farmland across Central Washington, NWFM recognizes the value of automation and technology in its operations for the sake of efficiency and accuracy. Assessing its original invoice processing system, the company identified significant challenges:

  • Area managers working on-site would typically make purchases with local vendors, but the process of tracking purchases and matching them with the correct invoice in a timely manner was prone to bottlenecks
  • Employees had to manually manage documents that could be easily misplaced during the process

“As we took on more farmland to manage, I wasn’t sure how I was going to handle such a big influx of invoices every month,” said Hull. “Laserfiche helped us to create a solution to connect our employees located almost 100 miles away to our central office and resolve many of our major challenges.”

The digital accounts payable system at NWFM routes all electronically imported invoices into a dedicated folder within the company’s Laserfiche repository. Each invoice can be reviewed for accuracy before sending it for final approval and payment processing. Throughout the process, the administrative team can make changes to expense category codes and make notes to the bookkeeper.

NWFM’s Laserfiche system is integrated with FastField purchase order software, which allows area managers to upload pictures of invoices directly to Laserfiche from remote locations. The integration extracts vendor names, ranch names, individual blocks, numerical codes and other relevant information needed for processing and approvals; facilitating the management of clear, categorized information while processing invoices.

This has significantly increased the efficiency of invoice review and finalization. NWFM has gone from processing 250 invoices a month to more than 1,000, with the potential to scale up as the company continues to grow.

“Laserfiche has really proven to be the backbone of many of our processes,” said Hull. “Its cloud-hosted infrastructure and the ability to search for specific words within documents has helped us to form a solid connection between our central office and the ranches we manage — we are able to understand each other more clearly in terms of orders and financial documents.”

In addition to the need to establish a revamped AP system, the NWFM team wanted to give investors located out-of-state the ability to review invoices and financial documents digitally. Rather than continue with the legacy process of storing invoices in filing cabinets, NWFM now has a standardized digital repository and has been able to increase its financial transparency when working with investors, giving them access to invoices in real-time. Built with email import functionality, purchase order integrations and granular access rights, the new AP management system has supported NWFM’s efforts to modernize its operations and position the company for growth.

A Fruitful Digital Transformation

Hull explains that NWFM initially tracked cost savings from the AP automation initiative for the first several months after implementation.

“We happily stopped counting savings after it exceeded $1,000 per month,” he said. “The savings was used to hire a chemical inventory specialist who now tracks inventory movement and returns unused stock. This allowed us to already return $72,000 in unused chemicals this year alone.”

NWFM’s new AP system also enables employees to process invoices while checking the price of products against bid sheets. In addition to the time savings from managing invoices, this process has additionally saved NWFM thousands of additional dollars by enabling the company to catch vendor billing errors, identifying $14,000 in billing errors per year. Leveraging data extracted from its invoice repository, the company is now making more accurate and productive purchasing decisions, and identifying savings opportunities.

Following the success of its AP system, NWFM has plans to establish satellite offices to further localize invoice processing in a more distributed strategy. This puts invoice processing closer to the ranch managers who make the purchases and generate the purchase orders. As the company continues to expand, Laserfiche has proven its effectiveness as a scalable solution.

“Organizing invoice and purchase order information by project or by ranch and block for review would have taken me weeks,” stated Hull. “Now I have it all at my fingertips.”

Laserfiche Supports F&M Bank in Growing Assets from $7.6 to $11.7 Billion

With economic uncertainty being the new normal, the demand for reliable financial institutions has risen tremendously. F&M Bank is one institution that has been able to maintain its customer trust for the past century, seeing significant growth particularly in recent years. Now with 25 branches across Los Angeles, Orange, and Santa Barbara counties, F&M’s expansion has led to more information management needs, technology demands and regulatory compliance requirements.

The bank initially implemented Laserfiche as a document management system and quickly expanded its use organization-wide. F&M’s experience using Laserfiche as a document management system was the foundation for the bank’s expanded usage of Laserfiche for process automation.

“What started as a way to scan and search for information is now a fully integrated enterprise content management solution,” said Morgan Wheeler, business intelligence manager and vice president at F&M Bank. “We have roughly 90 different active workflows running to the tune of about 1,500 times per day. We have about 60 different production forms, and nearly every single bank employee uses Laserfiche as part of their job.”

As F&M grew and workplace needs evolved, the bank sought a business process automation solution to create more efficiency and connect with its core banking system for a seamless employee experience.

The bank turned to Laserfiche, and its Laserfiche solution provider CDI for support in leveraging the platform’s business process automation and integration capabilities. F&M integrated Laserfiche with its core banking system and deployed automated workflows that have sped up processes such as financial certification and loan applications, helping the organization to scale. Meanwhile, Laserfiche’s robust governance tools support compliance with regulatory requirements.

“At the close of 2019, the bank had $7.6 billion in assets, and we have now reached $11.7 billion,” said Wheeler, adding that there was a period during the onset of COVID during which F&M’s assets grew more in 100 days than the institution did in its first 95 years of operation (1907-2002). “Laserfiche has been a critical component in our growth.”

“Just storing things digitally isn’t enough. The information we store needs to be functional digital assets within wider business processes, and that assumes not only automation but integration.”

— Morgan Wheeler, Business Intelligence Manager and Vice President at F&M Bank

Increased Efficiency and Accuracy in the Financial Certification Process

One process F&M has reimagined to achieve impressive efficiency is financial certification, which previously required tremendous amounts of manual tasks to coordinate dollar amounts with all of the branches, emailed spreadsheets between managers and departments, and validation against historical information.

“For our branches, it means counting cash, teller drawer amounts, vault and cash center amounts — and we have all these different accounts, cash in transit, night-drops, merchant services … it’s a high-volume, complex activity,” Wheeler explained.

The bank deployed a Laserfiche solution that allows all departments across all branches to enter information about their accounts in a Laserfiche Form, which is prepopulated with information about what their financial position should be. The form calculates the difference and routes it to the bank’s finance and accounting department, and through proper approvals.

“The Laserfiche process has streamlined how we present our financial figures each month,” Wheeler said. “These figures are audited both externally and internally.”

The new process has saved the bank an estimated 700 hours per month of employee time, while providing a more transparent, prescribed procedure for certification. After the solution was deployed, employees were able to better utilize their time on value-added activities.

Overnight Process Deployment With Flexible Forms and Workflow Tools

As a bank deeply embedded in its community, F&M acted quickly during the COVID-19 crisis when information about the Payment Protection Program was released. It was an opportunity to help people when they needed it most — and the team had the tools to deliver with Laserfiche.

“There was very little guidance on how the payroll protection loans were supposed to go out,” Wheeler said.  “When the dust settled, F&M Bank issued more than $1 billion in PPP loans to the local community.”

The executive team assembled to map out how the bank would receive applications and distribute the money, and the F&M team stayed up all night creating a Laserfiche Form and PPP Loan application process.

“Within a matter of days we were funding loans. The nimbleness of Laserfiche Forms and workflow, plus SQL allowed us to build out an application process for those PPP loans literally overnight. I was not only impressed by F&M as an institution, but I was also impressed with our ability to create literally something out of nothing.”

— Morgan Wheeler, Business Intelligence Manager and Vice President at F&M Bank

Applicants began seeing their loans funded in a relatively short time frame, underscoring the bank’s commitment to its community, especially in a time of need.

Today, most of the bank’s loan processes involve Laserfiche, including the Loan Document Draw process: When a client asks for a loan, Laserfiche helps the bank centralize the process and effectively prepare the pieces of content that need to be gathered for the final document draw when the final loan agreement is drawn up for client signature. Having a strong presence in the commercial real estate industry, F&M has streamlined the collection of loan documents — which can be hundreds of pages long — in order to help ensure accuracy and speed.

Delivering on Innovation and Compliance

As an institution regulated by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Federal Reserve Bank, and California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI), F&M’s standardized compliance processes continue to pay dividends for the organization and its clients.

In today’s uncertain economic conditions, F&M has also leveraged its technology to build stronger business resilience. The bank’s team worked closely with Cities Digital to build a resilient infrastructure that allows the bank to confidently handle unplanned network events, and gracefully failover for planned upgrades and maintenance. “Due to the cooperative effort of Laserfiche, Cities Digital and our IT team, Laserfiche regularly achieves 99.99% uptime during business hours,” Wheeler said.

F&M’s use of Laserfiche has evolved along with the bank, empowering staff to innovate the way they do business while remaining compliant with industry regulations, and protecting client information and assets.

“Laserfiche is a critical way in which we deliver to our auditors, to our community, to our employees and, most importantly, to our clients.”

— Morgan Wheeler, Business Intelligence Manager and Vice President at F&M Bank

Learn more about how to invest in a Laserfiche solution today.

Automate or Die – The New Reality for Wealth Management Businesses

WEBINAR

Automate or Die – The New Reality for Wealth Management Businesses

It’s no secret that digital transformation is more than underway in wealth management, however, most advisory
firms are way behind the curve, saddled with creaky, manual and paper-based processes. As we know, wealth
management is a client-focused industry, and the client experience is rapidly becoming one of the key
differentiators for advisors and their firms. Currently, advisors are spending a significant amount of time on
paper-based operational processes that negatively affect the client experience. Many firms are looking to deploy
cloud-driven technologies that streamline manual operations using intuitive electronic forms, automated
workflows and quick access to client files in a secured, organized repository.

Join this complimentary webinar to discover how a low-code approach can accelerate digital transformation in
wealth management and enhance client experiences.

You will learn:

  • Trends for implementing technologies using a low-code/no-code approach
  • How to give advisors time back to focus on client engagement by automating operational processes while achieving SEC- and FINRA- compliance
  • How to jumpstart your business processes with pre-built solution templates and workflows
Please join us on
Date: May 9, 2023
Time: 4:15 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. ET (America/New York)
Duration: 1 hour

What Can Financial Services Gain from Process Automation?

Financial Services Firms Are Leveraging Process Automation to Drive Growth

Financial services (FS) organizations of all types, including wealth management firms, insurance firms, credit unions and banks are adopting technologies to stay ahead of the game under economic uncertainty. Customer experience and streamlined internal process efficiency are the major drivers of their digital transformation strategies which are critical accelerators of overall growth. A recent survey conducted by WealthManagement.com and Laserfiche found that 88% of the respondents changed workflows as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, especially for customer-facing processes such as adoption of virtual meetings, digital signatures, online client onboarding and processing of new accounts.

Challenges Facing Financial Services Firms and Reasons to Adopt Workflow Automation

Today’s customers look for intuitive, seamless and personalized digital engagement with organizations, whether it’s for new account openings, insurance claims, e-signature requests or wire transfer requests. In a recent survey conducted by Digital Insurance and Laserfiche, findings revealed that 77% of insurers prioritize customer experience in the majority or entirety of their digital transformation initiatives. Moreover, organizations that have streamlined their operational workflows are inclined to characterize their digital transformation initiatives as customer-centric. Thus, a customer’s decision to do business with an organization may be dependent on the robustness of a digitized experience.
Despite this change in customer expectations, many organizations are still having manual, error-prone and labor-intensive processes that drag on employees’ productivity and efficiency, including:
  • Re-keying data onto spreadsheets or across line-of-business applications.
  • Inability to retrieve or recall email conversations with customers.
  • Manual review and approval processes.
  • Manual execution of data analytics initiatives.

Due to these inefficiencies, many employees are swamped with tedious administrative tasks, which can increase the turnaround time for customer requests. As a result, customer service delivery is adversely affected. According to a recent survey conducted by Forrester Consulting, more than half of the respondents believe that their company’s tech stack is outdated and restrictive, which prevents employees from working efficiently.

Real-World Examples of Financial Services Firms Benefitting from Process Automation

How are your peers strategizing to get the most out of process automation? Rehmann in Michigan, a wealth management firm, has been designing workflows across professional service lines in a low-code/no-code approach to streamline data collection and reporting. Using Laserfiche forms and integrations with customer relationship management (CRM) software, information can always be automatically populated when a customer fills out an electronic form, e.g., new account opening. It saves customers’ time, provides accurate information to associates and supports compliance. Amy Flourry, wealth management director of operations at Rehmann, shared in a webinar that they opened 400 new accounts and brought in $200 million in new assets in 2022 alone. “Our biggest problem with [Laserfiche forms]…tends to be keeping up with demand for new ones,” said Flourry.

F&M Bank in Long Beach decided to use process automation in order to meet the demands of their rapid growth and evolving workplace. They decided to go beyond a simple document management solution and transform it into a fully integrated enterprise content management system that included process automation solutions and integrations with their core banking system. For example, they leveraged Laserfiche in most of their loan processes, “the nimbleness of Laserfiche Forms and workflow, plus SQL allowed us to build out an application process for those PPP loans literally overnight. I was not only impressed by F&M as an institution, but I was also impressed with our ability to create literally something out of nothing,” said Morgan Wheeler, business intelligence manager and assistant vice president at F&M Bank.

Customer experience was the major focus of Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Group (MSIG) Hong Kong throughout the design of its process automation strategy. MSIG Hong Kong leverages Laserfiche to develop a widely recognized EASY Claims System that helps manage all claims in a centralized platform. It saves more than 200 workdays a year for the claims processing organization-wide, supports business continuity in case of unprecedented transitions and maintains a high level of customer service at the same time. “Claims is only the beginning of our digital transformation. Since implementing Laserfiche, we are looking at expanding to multiple channels, underwriting teams and core business processes to digitize and automate as well,” said Alan Yue, senior vice president of information technology at MSIG Hong Kong.

Benefits of Digital Process Automation for Financial Services Firms

Financial services organizations must be nimble and innovative to digitally transform how they provide services throughout the customer life cycle. One way to achieve digital transformation in such a way is to utilize digital process automation (DPA), which helps eliminate manual steps and improve user experience for customers, employees and vendors. By leveraging electronic forms, business process management and reporting and analytics, key advantages of DPA include:

Avoiding capturing information through error-prone and inconsistent methods: Operation teams receive customer information and requests digitally with metadata in an audited and tracked approach.

Eliminating manual reviews and approvals, lost documents and unknown statuses: Workflows are triggered once requests come in — for example, reviews are automatically routed to appropriate parties for rounds of approval with due reminders.

Spotting bottlenecks of delayed tasks: Get a clear picture of workflows using dashboards so teams can identify where and when delays are happening.

Integrating with core business applications and systems: Eliminate data silos and improve collaboration.

Improving customer experience: Customers receive notifications at each step of their requests, resulting in increased transparency between them and the organization they’re doing business with.

Freeing up time for employees: Enable employees to spend their time on more value-driven tasks and drive productivity.

Archiving information and supporting documents: Bolster your efforts to stay in compliance with regulations and audits using records retention tools.

Scarce IT resources remain another challenge for financial services organizations even if they are ambitious to evolve. Pre-built solution templates help organizations jumpstart automation with less overhead on these resources. Laserfiche users have the ability to get these kinds of templates from the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace, which provides more than 100 publicly accessible, industry-vetted and departmental solution templates for organizations accelerating digital transformation.

Learn more about how Laserfiche solutions help financial institutions drive business growth and productivity.
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Canadian Seed Growers’ Association Pioneers Digital-First Agriculture

The Canadian Seed Growers’ Association (CSGA) is a science-based non-profit organization committed to supporting a competitive Canadian agriculture sector as a respected global leader in seed quality assurance and genetic traceability.

CSGA provides leadership as the only Canadian organization to monitor and certify pedigreed seed for all agricultural crops in Canada except potatoes. CSGA certifies over 1.2 million acres, over 60 different crop kinds of 2,000 varieties for nearly 3,100 seed growers and 2,500 seed-growing businesses annually. Bringing together plant breeders, seed growers and seed sector stakeholders to reliably deliver a national seed certification program through the assurance of genetic identity of pedigreed seed.

Canada’s seed certification system ensures germination and mechanical purity while providing a third-party verified audit trail of the seed’s varietal identity. It ensures that the agricultural supply chain is secure, farmers trust the seed they purchase and plant, and trading partners have the utmost confidence in the seed and food products they import. The system is a globally trusted quality-management system that ensures plant breeding innovation is delivered from the lab to the farmer, producer and end market.

To continue strengthening Canada’s global reputation for producing high-quality seed, CSGA has been at the forefront of seed certification system modernization and digital transformation over the last decade.

Since 2014, CSGA has used Laserfiche as a behind-the-scenes champion for many of its key business processes. Using Laserfiche’s electronic forms and business process automation capabilities, CSGA accelerated the seed certification process for its 3,100-plus members.

Agriculture is an essential sector where relationships are key. The recent push for a more digitally driven CSGA has led to better relationships with growers, sector stakeholders and government. The Association’s “CSGA 2.0” Business Plan includes a focus on digitalization or providing transparent, digitally enabled, enhanced traceability services that reduce administrative burden and add value.

A recent blockchain validation pilot project enabled consumers to see their food’s journey from seed-to-table. Using data gathered from seed crops and the blockchain pilot, CSGA’s model tracked and verified a product’s history, which consumers could access by scanning a QR code on the packaging.

These digital initiatives continue to underscore CSGA’s commitment to its stakeholders, the Canadian agricultural community, and the Canadian public, who consume Canadian seed growers’ products every day.

“In any given year, we receive roughly 16,000 to 20,000 applications. The vast majority of these are processed through Laserfiche. We’ll have over 1,000 workflows running in the background. It essentially runs our business.”

— Doug Miller, CSGA Executive Director and former Managing Director, Certification and Technology Services

Streamlining Key Business Processes

CSGA is the delegated regulatory authority for the Canadian Seed Crop Certification System via a public-private partnership with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA). CSGA certifies that a seed crop is produced in compliance with CSGA standards for varietal purity in pedigreed seed crop certification.

In the past, the Canadian government provided inspection services for thousands of fields seeking seed crop certification from annually. In 2012, however, the government announced that it would no longer provide those services. Going digital was the solution to connect CSGA, the CFIA and 23 different inspection companies across the country. The CFIA now oversees private seed crop inspections with ensured coordinated access to information.

CSGA created SeedCert, an online portal and one-stop-shop powered by Laserfiche Forms and business process automation to streamline the inspection and verification processes.

Today, seed growers request certification online by logging into SeedCert and submitting a Laserfiche form routed to staff for review. Approved applications are transmitted to inspectors who access requests through Laserfiche on a computer or mobile device. Those inspectors submit completed inspection reports online, even when they are out in the field.

By removing paper and the manual shipping of information, CSGA took something that once took weeks and created a more user-friendly, standardized, and simplified experience for members, inspectors and CSGA staff. CSGA staff now have access to reports quickly, allowing CSGA to promptly communicate with the grower if issues are identified in the field, allowing the grower to address those issues before harvest and obtain certification

A Data-driven Approach to Decision-making

What initially started as a challenge ultimately drove innovation for CSGA. “Our whole system was paper-based and back-logged. Now, processing takes only days,” says Miller. The new digital processes enabled the Association to scale up. CSGA’s SeedCert platform now helps coordinate 23 different Authorized Seed Crop Inspection Services (ASCIS) organize inspections and their 250 individual inspectors — saving CSGA’s current staff countless hours.

CSGA-certified seed crop information is stored in a database, allowing CSGA staff to dive deeper into the data. They can identify patterns and gather insights that could influence strategic decision-making, improve processes and operations, and strengthen relationships between seed growers and regulators — all to serve CSGA’s members and the sector as effectively and efficiently as possible.
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A Digital-First Future for Business

CSGA is finding new ways to leverage technology every day. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the organization used Laserfiche Forms to enable inspectors to report if they were sick, allowing in-field inspections to be reassigned. Electronic forms also allowed the Association to communicate coronavirus-related travel restrictions with inspectors quickly. In a time of worldwide uncertainty, the improved communications facilitated the continuity of essential operations.

The CSGA sees a new, more diverse wave of producers in the future. The younger agricultural professionals expect digital-first, intuitive interfaces, and quick responses to requests. This highlights the need for the agricultural sector to keep pace with new innovations and technology-driven solutions.

With the help of technology like Laserfiche, CSGA has adapted to this new set of expectations and changing business climate. “We’re looking ahead for the next generation of seed growers and the entire pedigreed seed certification system. We’ve already launched our digital crop certificates and taken big strides forward to a digital end-to-end seed crop certification system. Leveraging digital platforms will elevate the seed sector and Canadian Agriculture,” Miller says.

Process automation has made it possible to certify seed faster, and e-forms have made it easier for CSGA to coordinate among its large and growing network of growers, inspectors and government. All these improvements are critical to CSGA’s mandate to deliver a national third-party seed crop certification system for Canada.

“Regulated sectors like agriculture are going to have to adopt digitization technologies as a necessity.”

— Doug Miller, CSGA Executive Director and former Managing Director, Certification and Technology Services

To learn more about how Laserfiche drives digital transformation, schedule a consultation today.

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