Ask the Experts: Process Automation, ECM and EIM Software Solutions for Banks and Credit Unions

Leverage AI and Advanced Tools to Maximize Efficiencies

Cameron Marks, Director of Product Management, sat down with the team to talk about workflow automation, data acquisition, and streamlining processes. Although each financial institution is at a different stage of their digital transformation journey, best practices and techniques can be applied, yielding short and long-term productivity, cost savings and enhanced relationships. Cameron leads Alogent's Process Automation product team.

• Financial institutions are notoriously paper-heavy. What best practices can be applied for the conversion from paper to digital? 
  
  Understanding all existing processes at the bank or credit union, along with employee and account holder needs, should be prioritized before embarking on a digital transformation journey. Eliminating manual, paper-heavy processes with automated workflows and data acquisition capabilities affords a digital means for capturing, storing, and organizing institutional data. Working with disparate systems requires a flexible, intuitive approach to enterprise content and information management (ECM / EIM) and promotes seamless integration into the core system for cross-channel data exchange. Dynamic, user-friendly, data-backed automation tools ensure banks and credit unions stay ahead of their digital transformation efforts, keeping employees and account holders front and center.  
   
• Are there tools available for banks and credit unions working with different systems but still looking to include everything in a central repository?
  
  When applied, tools that digitize information from the point of capture work to centralize data, eliminating common pain points associated with the manual keying, sorting, and searching of information through self-service options. External-facing, web-based APIs can enable your EIM platform to integrate with other systems and 3rd party solutions to call upon a centralized hub, automating and streamlining all touchpoints, including online, mobile channels, and email clients. These tools replace paper-based workflows, including varied and unstructured document types, effectively reducing overhead costs and improving efficiencies. 
   
• How can technologies like machine learning and AI enhance a bank or credit union’s EIM solution? 
  
  With AI and machine learning capabilities, financial institutions benefit from the most advanced levels of automation, including automatic document classification and complex data extraction. With fast access to information and the ability to leverage data for better responses and more personalized services, banks and credit unions enable faster search and retrieval, along with overall better organizational efficiency. These capabilities also allow new layouts and templates to quickly and easily enter the workflow, enabling banks and credit unions to process non-template driven workflows with even more flexibility and less downtime.
   
• Many institutions have unique workflows, and often see new form types and layouts. Can all institutions integrate automation technology specific to their own rules and requirements, without disrupting the existing banking ecosystem?
  
  EIM has grown far beyond just document and content management. While workflows are unique to each process, institution, and department, automation empowers financial institutions of all sizes to garner superior workflow and routing capabilities. In turn, they capitalize on digital transformation efforts by reducing error-prone paper tasks and transforming information into actionable knowledge for strategic decision making. Every FI’s workflow is different, data volumes are surging, and countless layouts of documents are received each day, where they need to be handled consistently downstream and be made searchable and retrievable - regardless of format. On a holistic level, AI and machine learning-based classification and extraction engines evaluate any type of document, from any source or format, automatically digitizing and routing them to a specific department, employee, or workflow based on keywords and phrases. 
   
• Aside from back-end benefits to process automation, how can an EIM solution benefit account holders and increase engagement, especially from afar when many branches are still closed? 
  
  An effective EIM system should be easy to use, yielding short and long-term productivity, while saving costs and enhancing relationships. Less manual labor grants employees more free time to focus on customers and member services - securing their loyalty, while keeping consumers and businesses engaged with relevant products. That extra time is critical to drive engagement, especially from afar. With many branches still closed, self-service capabilities marshal a secure, two-way portal for account holders and employees to exchange information and documents on their own terms. Providing 24/7, 365 accessibility eliminates the need to visit branches for simple document exchanges, signatures, and transactions. With an inherently customizable UX, banks and credit unions deliver consistent, secure user experiences on customer or member-facing interfaces, providing the same familiar look, feel, and comfort they would receive in-branch. 

FASTdocs, Alogent’s cloud-ready ECM / EIM platform, benefits financial institutions and account holders alike with AI and machine learning-backed capabilities, rendering: Automatic routing and data extraction, streamlined business processes, intuitive workflows, advanced document classification, real-time access to third party integrators and self-service flexibility with FASTdocs WebShare feature. Contact us today to learn more about owning your bank or credit union’s digital transformation journey with FASTdocs. 

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