February 12, 2015
Banks and financial institutions deal with a heavy document load on a daily basis. Providing effective services to customers and meeting tracking requirements in the financial sector requires a suitable document management solution. However, in many cases, banks struggle to maintain documents in an organized fashion, often dealing with documents that exist in isolated silos that make it difficult to stay on top of paperwork.
Stearns Bank recently brought order to the chaos of their document processing with the help of M-Files document management software. What happened at Stearns Bank? What are common frustrations with documents in the workplace? And more importantly, what solutions are available to avoid these problems?
A Brief Look at Stearns Bank
Stearns Bank, located in St. Cloud, Minnesota and 12 other locations across the nation, had previously adopted a decentralized document management solution that was user-managed. Stearns Bank lacked central administration over all of their documentation, creating an environment in which each department stored information in a different manner.
The company faced a number of difficulties as a result of their user-managed solution. Among the biggest problems for this financial institution were duplicate copies of documents in multiple databases and inefficient service for customers. Stearns Bank turned to M-Files document management software as a solution.
Stearns looked to M-Files to help centralize administration of documents and improve enterprise workflow, all while integrating easily with core systems already in use. The result was an unbelievable turnaround in document management. The company’s loan department was the first to integrate the new document management software into their core systems, and noticed almost immediate benefits.
The loan department was able to slash loan application process timelines from weeks to days, and in some cases even hours. Documents that were once printed, signed and re-scanned up to four times were now stored easily within M-Files. Now customers are able to apply for loans and get an answer faster, while Stearns spends less money on paper document storage and avoids the confusion of multiple copies throughout the office.
Common Document Frustrations and How to Avoid them with M-Files
M-Files can help your business avoid headaches, improve workflow and enhance the services enjoyed by your end users. What are the common frustrations that plague ineffective document management solutions, and how can M-Files solve these issues?
Document Searches
When your employees need to locate a specific document, this simple task can quickly turn to frustration without document management software. Consider Stearns Bank’s issue. Files were stored and managed by different departments, in different locations. CIO Insight found in a study that 73% of workers encounter frustrations and issues trying to locate documents.
M-Files provides advanced, intuitive search techniques that make it easier for your employees to locate documents. Your employees no longer have to search complex folder structures to find the necessary files. A simple search locates documents wherever they are stored.
Version Confusion
Two problems arise when your employees cannot locate the correct version to work on. First, workflows are interrupted and confusion is created when an employee makes changes to a document, but uses the wrong version. Second, customers can be sent the incorrect version of a document because it is unclear which version is the most recent. The same CIO Insight study found that 47% of workers admitted to working on the incorrect version of a document.
M-Files document management software ensures that your employees are working on the correct version of a document by streamlining the workflow. M-Files eliminates the creation of multiple versions of the same document by centralizing control over documents across various departments. Better collaboration allows employees from different departments to work on the same documents without creating various versions. At the same time, employees will be certain that the file sent to customers is the current document.
Avoid Document Loss
Hardware failures and malicious software could alter or destroy your vital documents. With M-Files, automated backup, archiving and automation make disaster recovery easier, while offering your company with the document security compliance and support required by industries such as finance and healthcare.
From file recovery and enhanced document searching to centralized management and compliance support, M-Files document management software removes the headaches involved in managing the files and documents your employees deal with each day.
