Automated Cheque Processing Business Solutions Reduced manual processing of daily cash allocation Improved customer services Tighter credit management Outsource service options Straight through / click through validation instead of re-keying Eliminate bottlenecks and delays
02 Cheques are here to stay for as long as customers need them, prompting organisations to re-examine the staff time and cost of manually processing cheques and remittance advice notes. But does implementing an automation workflow make a difference to the accounts receivable function? What is there to be gained?
03 Cheques tend to be treated in a separate workflow to other means of incoming payment. Their varying shapes and layout, the importance of the information contained on them, the accompaniment of remittance advice notes, and the way that they are used mean that cheques have always been processed in a highly manual way. The procedures involved for organisations can be a significant demand on staff time - and that s before someone has done the bank run! If cheques were routinely treated as just another class of document to be scanned by a well-run scanning department, the different shape and high concentration of crucial data on such documents would not matter. The organisation would benefit from: Faster processing of incoming payments Reduced cost of processing Assisted validation and exception handling Elimination of manual keying in cheque data Automatic import of cheque data into financial systems Intuitive matching to accounts and outstanding invoices, so that it is easier to see which payments are received and which remain outstanding Filing and archiving. Under these circumstances, the bank run is the only task left to be done! A reduction in salaried man-hours coupled with a faster route for the data are particularly valuable, since data confirmation, correction or analysis can be undertaken that much sooner. Depending on the solution deployed, these costs can be reduced by up to 50%. Thanks to our in-house processing solution provided by DCS, we now process in 15 minutes cheques that would have taken us 75 minutes manually Similarly, a 30-page crib sheet of remittance advice notes now takes 5 minutes to be safely completed on our systems, instead of a day. Carol Woodfield, Operations Manager, Accounts Receivable, Birmingham City Council
04 How can Data Capture Solutions help improve your cheque processing? DCS are experts at analysing business processes and then recommending and implementing solutions which focus around the automation of paper based processes. We can help you implement a solution which automates the scanning, validation and dataextraction from cheques and remittance notes. The solution comprises Kofax scanning and recognition technology coupled with robust, flexible and scalable FileStore EDM to store information and images in a database. The solution is easily integrated with financial systems, and offers online access to all cheque and remittance advice notes for authorised users. Kofax Kofax Capture scans cheques and remittance notes, transforming them into accurate, clean electronic images for use in financial applications and databases. Kofax Transformation Module (KTM) streamlines the transformation of scanned cheques and notes into structured and actionable data by automating classification and data extraction. Kofax Virtual ReScan (VRS) gives optimal quality of images from even the poorest document. This ensures that ongoing classification and extraction processes produce the highest quality recognition results. FileStore Cheques and notes can be compartmented according to specific requirements. Automated filing minimises risk of loss or error. Quick and easy retrieval / exporting of records via user-friendly web browser-based application. Featuring multiple field and specific content keyword search. Secure and compliant to ISO15489 and BS BIP0008. Your existing scanner, configured with Kofax Capture, VRS and KTM, will probably be sufficient to accomplish the scan-to-capture and data processing of your cheques and remittance notes, using separator sheets to classify them.
05 Process and validate batches Having run the scan using marked separator sheets, you will have a series of images queued in Kofax for data extraction. KTM will search for the defined fields for cheques and remittance notes and display the values detected for each in turn for the validator to examine and tap through. Via colour coding, Kofax will make it clear which values it declares to be correctly extracted and which values it would like a second opinion for. Its decision is based on pre-set levels of confidence. The human adjudicator is usually required to confirm that the data is correct. On occasions when the data is incorrect the user can overtype fields or select bits of alphanumeric text to drag over from the image. The system also learns as more and more batches of cheques and notes are run through it. The time saved by scanning-to-validate instead of continuing with full manual processing adds up to significant productivity gains while other tasks are attended to. Kofax KTM displaying a scanned cheque to be validated. The green data requires no intervention, and the red data is either a click/tap to confirm or, less often, a re-key. Batches are processed far faster into back-end systems this way. We used to have to validate customer payments in different screens according to the transaction type. The Kofax-led system brings together all the validation tasks onto one screen. In addition, we now have a far better audit trail. Nicola Murray, Collections Manager, Neopost
06 What if we would rather outsource it? By outsourcing you can strip out internal overhead costs and pay only on demand charges which our clients usually say are around 50% less than their own internal overhead costs. This option also avoids capital expenditure and frees staff from having to manually handle the physical cheques. We would arrange for all the cheques to be redirected to us via a dedicated PO Box number or Hays DX. Upon their arrival, we then apply precisely the same Kofax-FileStore solution as we would install for you in-house. As DCS process many such transactions for other companies you receive the economies of scale of using our sophisticated IT processing systems. Your transactions also benefit from the efficiency and reliability of a proven large volume UK service who is also an accredited supplier to the Home Office, MOD and a number of Government Security Agencies. How would we then get the information? Once cheques have been digitally scanned, and information extracted from the data fields (account name/number, sort code, amount, etc), we send an email notification with a link to your licenced FileStore web application where you can view, file, or process the data further as required. FileStore integrates well with most back-end systems so the information is always accessible and actionable. Some clients request the image files to be passed onto them on CDs or via FTP - either as backup or as their main requirement. What other benefits does automation bring? Besides the business process cost savings, our users are seeing other very important more subjective business benefits including: Better visibility of the whole process Improved transaction tracking Automated processing gives less manual errors Improved accuracy More accurate and faster financial liability reports Improved financial compliance Ease of scaling to cope with peak loads. How can I find out more information? As a next step we can arrange a free and no obligation meeting with your senior Financial Management Team and our Business Consultants to consider your specific cheque processes. We will evaluate your overall cheque processing costs, stage/step costs and volumes. Additional discussions might also cover what other business challenges exist such as poor management information or delays/bottlenecks in specific process steps. After considering all of the above, DCS will then provide you with a report giving recommendations, potential savings/roi and budget costs for a solution to either automate your cheque processing or for an outsourced solution. What about the actual cheques? We still need to bank them... No problem. We can either arrange to send the cheques back to you once we have digitised them, or we can do the bank run for you. Whichever is most convenient. Once in digital form your mail can be processed by in-house staff or by DCS staff as part of a fully outsourced business process. Some of our customers use our outsourced services to fulfil a pilot scheme and then bring the whole solution in-house. DCS can always be called upon if ever you struggle with peak demand... we offer total flexibility!
07 Our digital mailroom customers include: DCS provides enterprise information management software solutions and services to more than 1,000 worldwide companies, bringing intelligence and automation to the creation, capture, management and distribution of information. DCS s solutions make it possible for companies to share content globally across all internal and external systems, applications, and departments, while maintaining central control and management.
Data Capture Solutions Ltd 69 Buckingham Avenue, Slough, Berkshire, SL1 4PN, UK Tel: 01753 616720 Fax: 01753 616721 Email: info@dcs.co.uk www.dcs.co.uk