THE GREAT MIGRATION: TRANSITIONING CLIENTS TO A NEW REMOTE DEPOSIT CAPTURE SOLUTION A BANK CASE STUDY

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1 THE GREAT MIGRATION: TRANSITIONING CLIENTS TO A NEW REMOTE DEPOSIT A BANK CASE STUDY Migrating clients to a new remote deposit capture (RDC) platform is no easy task, especially when all your bank s clients already have existing technology. But a private wealth management bank with over $6 billion in deposits successfully navigated the process through best practices and a strong partnership with its RDC vendor. The bank offers an extensive line of products for individuals and businesses, including deposit services, and residential, commercial and personal loans. The bank is achieving 20 percent annual growth overall and 24 percent annual growth in the business banking sector. We embrace a client-centric model, says the bank s director of cash management products and services. We never say no to our clients. The bank s culture is to deliver exceptional, relationship-based service with a commitment to responsiveness and action. We are driven by a core set of values that define what we must do every day to best serve our customers, says the director of cash management products and services. Our model is not fee-based. Considering its strong client focus, it is no surprise that the bank was an early adopter of remote deposit capture. They deployed their first remote deposit capture platform in 2004, and deployed a second remote deposit capture platform from the same technology provider in All of the bank s clients use remote deposit capture. It is for this reason that migrating its clients from legacy remote deposit capture platforms to a new system was a significant endeavor. In 2015, the bank issued a request for proposal (RFP) to find a remote deposit capture platform that was more user-friendly, and offered customer support that better aligned with the bank s client focus. The bank also wanted an RDC solution that included the ability to automatically identify the geographic location of depositors to identify potentially fraudulent transactions.

2 2 We wanted to pull all accounts into a single relationship with the bank to more easily determine who belongs to who, and to set appropriate deposit limits. After an evaluation of available solutions, the bank selected the Deposit 24/7 RDC platform from WAUSAU, a Deluxe Company. Deposit 24/7 allows convenient and secure check deposits from the office, at home or on-the-go, complete with full administration and risk management functionality. MIGRATION CHALLENGES The bank s objective was to migrate all its RDC clients to the new platform with no complaints by mid THE BANK DEVELOPED A MIGRATION PLAN BASED ON CLIENT TYPE: Client risk rating (high, moderate, low) Clients with a single location Clients with multiple locations The bank also planned to leverage WAUSAU to assist in migrating some of its easier RDC users. The bank faced several challenges in migrating its remote deposit capture users to a new platform. The first challenge was staying true to the bank s philosophy of not forcing customers to do something they didn t want to. We didn t want to arbitrarily pull customers off a remote deposit capture platform that they liked, the bank s director of cash management products and services explains. Second, as part of its migration program, the bank wanted to change its deposit limits from being account based to relationship based. We wanted to pull all accounts into a single relationship with the bank to more easily determine who belongs to whom, and to set appropriate deposit limits. The bank also faced a huge data cleanup effort because of operating two legacy remote deposit capture platforms (with some clients running on both platforms). The bank s director of cash management products and services says there were instances when her team found themselves thinking, What do you mean that you have more than one location, and 50 scanners? Nobody had ever closed an account on the old RDC platform, she notes. The bank identified users of the legacy RDC platform by generating a report of all the accounts that deposited at least one transaction during the previous 36 months. And clients were using multiple operating systems that were not supported by the bank s legacy RDC platform. Finally, they were

3 3 There was no correlation between the data in our core system and the data in our RDC platform. unsure of the number of scanners it had deployed, the location of all its customers remote deposit capture sites, or current customer information. There was no correlation between the data in our core system and the data in our RDC platform, the bank s director of cash management products and services says. The data was so dirty that the bank was unable to use a tool offered by WAUSAU to convert RDC users to its platform, she adds. The challenges made the process of converting to a new RDC platform feel akin to white water rafting: There were moments of calm, and moments of sheer terror, she recalls. A THREE-PRONGED APPROACH Balancing these challenges caused the bank s migration to its new RDC platform to get off to a slow start. The turning point came when the bank determined three months into its migration to the new RDC platform that the project would take an additional 1 1/2 years at the slower pace. After reevaluating its costs and options, the bank developed a three-pronged plan to speed migration: 1 Offer financial incentives to bankers who provided information required to migrate remote deposit capture users to the new RDC platform. The bank s old remote deposit capture platforms did not track company information, the number of installed check scanners or the location of installed scanners. We needed a way to get our bankers to engage with us to get this information, says the bank s remote deposit capture product manager. The bank offered its bankers $1,300 per client to track down the information that it needed for the migration. While some bankers simply left voice mails for their clients, the financial incentives made a huge difference overall, he says. The bank paid out 80 percent of the money it budgeted for incentives to bankers. 2 Expand its RDC migration team from nine team members to 17 team members. The bank s expanded migration team included: three dedicated schedulers, three dedicated migrators, three dedicated schedulers-migrators, four data analytics team members, three managers ( cheerleaders ) to serve as liaisons with bankers, and one dedicated Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and Anti-Money Laundering Act (AML) resource. The additional schedulers were especially effective in accelerating the project. The bank s staff scheduled all migrations, even those done by WAUSAU. The bank offered the team incentives for speeding the migration to the new remote deposit capture platform.

4 4 Storing this information in a single location online made it easy for migrators to see any interactions that took place. 3 Watch the project like hawks. THE BANK ALSO EMPLOYED SEVERAL TOOLS TO SUPPORT THE PROJECT: The bank s data warehouse and legacy platforms generated information on customer transaction history and daily limits, and the bank s client population. Microsoft SharePoint stored information on schedules, general contact information, each client s RDC contact person, account details, the owner of each account, scanner locations and serial numbers, configuration of legacy systems, and notes. Storing this information in a single location online made it easy for migrators to see any interactions that took place, the bank s director of cash management products and services explains. The bank also stored all system procedures, tutorials and best practices guides in Microsoft SharePoint including training materials from WAUSAU. Microsoft Outlook shared folders managed communications and any additional scheduling data. The bank reviewed the migration status of each client weekly and also required members of its team to put the name of each account into the subject line of every to make it easier to locate communications, and track the activities of bankers. Microsoft Office Suite was used for documentation and reporting. WebEx was used for training. The bank offered its customers two training options. The first option was training via WebEx with a follow-up 30 days later. The bank also offered on-site training for those accounts that bankers identified as being technologically challenged. Each session was scheduled for one hour, although most took about 20 minutes. The bank checked with clients before the scheduled migration time to ensure that they had checks to deposit. Upon completion of the training, each client was provided with instructional materials and information on who to contact at the bank in the event of a problem. The three-pronged approach enabled the bank to migrate about nine times as many RDC locations per month: from approximately 30 locations per month at the start of the project, to nearly 300 locations per month at the height of the migration. The bank migrated all its remote deposit capture users to the new platform 14 months after starting the project in October In all, the bank migrated 30,000 accounts, representing 1,900 clients, to the new platform. The bank offers scanners from Digital Check and Panini to its clients, at no cost. The bank retains ownership of the scanners, and maintains a two-year warranty on each one. A third party maintains the bank s scanner inventory, and tracks the serial number of each scanner.

5 5 FOUR LESSONS LEARNED: Importantly, the bank completed its great migration under budget. The bank s director of cash management products and services shares four lessons learned for other banks embarking on their own great migration: 1 Collaborate with your technology provider. Bank personnel completed a week of training on the system provided by WAUSAU. The bank also leveraged WAUSAU to migrate easy clients from its legacy RDC platforms to the WAUSAU system. 3 Iterate. Be open to change. 2 Ensure open communications. The bank s migration team met every Tuesday and Thursday during the project to check in on the status of the project, identify any technical issues, and to determine any cranky clients that required special attention. 4 Remain upbeat. Nobody dies. Following these lessons will ensure that nobody will fall out of the raft, she concludes. WANT MORE INFORMATION ABOUT WAUSAU? Contact us today. WEB wausaufs.com CALL or contact your WAUSAU sales representative. About WAUSAU Financial Systems WAUSAU, a Deluxe company, partners with industry-leading financial institutions and corporations to help accelerate working capital and reduce exceptions with straight-through processing across all payment channels. WAUSAU is recognized for consistently delivering market-leading financial services and solutions that integrate receivables, accelerate payments and eliminate paper. To meet clients needs, WAUSAU offers flexible delivery options whether installed in-house, hosted, or BPO. Because of WAUSAU s deep domain knowledge and experience, the company understands customers challenges and tailors its solutions and services to ensure they have a competitive edge. That s why thousands of companies, including 23 of the top 25 largest U.S. treasury management banks and more than 50 Fortune 500 organizations, depend on WAUSAU solutions.