Information Management, BPM and Integration: Achieving Cost Efficiency in the Financial Sector

For financial institutions to be viable, they must be cost efficient. Even high-profile giants aren’t immune to closures, mergers, and takeovers if they neglect to control costs. Competition today is fierce; only the fittest survive.

If you read industry literature, you’ve noticed the plethora of information about streamlining and automation, from banking journals highlighting productivity tools to technologies that enhance credit unions’ member services, or the benefits of going paperless for tax preparers and accounting firms. Yet despite the focus on streamlining and automation, many financial institutions continue to overlook the fundamental barrier to cost efficiency: cumbersome access to the information they need. Why? Because they lack an integrated approach to the digital workplace.

Digital capture and storage make information easily retrievable and useful, but don’t necessarily enable enterprise-wide efficiency. Data housed in customer relationship management (CRM) software, accounting, human resources, and other applications has limited value if it’s not reused efficiently everywhere it’s needed. The solution? Instant, secure, central access to all of your digital content. A work management system that systematically drives work forward, drawing on your business systems for pertinent documents and information. Electronic document management (EDM) and business process management (BPM) do both and more, unleashing great power by connecting people with information and transforming both service and institutional performance.

EDM: an integrated approach to information access
Extensive information gets trapped daily in business systems, mostly in unstructured documents and communications systems such as email. Employees who don’t use the applications or can’t access the email accounts where work-related information resides are challenged with limited access to information as they make decisions. Sometimes, they might as well work blindfolded.

Stringent regulations require adherence to strict policies regarding information access, complicating organizational connectivity. EDM makes it easier, allowing or blocking access according to preestablished rules. Whether data is stored in legacy software or line-of-business applications, with EDM it can be imported, extracted, viewed, and manipulated according to permissions. Thorough indexing ensures workers with different needs find answers. Efficiency and productivity rise without compromising security.

Today, browser-based EDM is the standard, enabling 24/7 access to information and projects via desktops, laptops, and mobile devices anywhere around the world.

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