ISSI - One Solution

Many Business Process Requirements (One Solution)

Integrated Solutions, November 2003
Written by: Jay McCall

Regardless of how many departments or customers you serve, you have to consider how much money you could save by using a business process management solution. Imaging Solutions and Services, Inc. (ISSI) (Memphis, TN) is an info imaging integrator and services bureau that helps customers outsource document capture and storage. ISSI's customers operate in vertical markets such as government, banking and finance, insurance, and healthcare.

Each customer has complex business requirements. Consider a typical example of the steps ISSI employees follow for processing accounts payable forms. First, employees ensure documents are controlled (i.e. not mishandled). The employee receiving the box of records logs a description of the content of the documents into a spreadsheet, including the location of the documents. If the box is relocated at any time, the spreadsheet must be updated. Next, all the jobs entered in the spreadsheet are assigned to various workers. The workers prepare the documents for scanning by removing the documents from the box and removing staples, rubber bands, and "dog ears." Then documents are imaged using a Kodak scanner equipped with OCR (optical character recognition) and indexing software. After the digital image has been created, a production worker has to check the accuracy of the original to the digital image. If an error is detected (i.e. the OCR software misread a word), the document is given a third look-over to ensure accuracy. After the image passes the inspection step and the data is captured in ISSI's database, the digital image is formatted for the customer to retrieve. For instance, the content may be uploaded to a password-protected Web site where customers can log in and view data via a Web browser. Other customers may require images be saved to a CD, sent electronically via FTP (file transfer protocol), or saved to microfilm.

There are dozens of combinations of business process requirements within each vertical market. Add to this the fact that ISSI has customers across several verticals and you can see how complicated managing all these business processes can be.

Growth Requires Automated Workflow
As ISSI's business grew and customer requests became more complex, the integrator needed to automate its workflow process. ISSI selected Silas Reveille for Content Management for Kodak Capture Software from Silas Technologies, Inc. (Winston-Salem, NC). The solution did not require ISSI to add any additional servers or make any other hardware changes to its infrastructure and was installed to support each of ISSI's five corporate locations.

The solution assists production workers by monitoring and tracking documents throughout their life cycle. For example, after a box arrives and is logged into the system, the Silas Reveille solution monitors the production of the person scanning the documents. "We can monitor stoppages of any given scanner," says Brad Moritz, chief marketing officer of ISSI. "If one machine scans 10,000 documents with one stoppage and another machine scans 12,000 documents with 15 stoppages, it alerts us something is wrong. The problem may be with the scanner, the type of paper that is being scanned, or maybe there are some employee training issues we need to address."

Besides helping ISSI monitor its scanner performance, the Silas Reveille solution also monitors content that resides on the company's Web servers. If a Web server goes down, the solution sends alerts to the appropriate personnel. The business process management solution is credited with a 5% labor cost reduction. "The hard dollar savings were substantial, but the soft dollar payback is equally important," says Moritz. "When clients see how we monitor documents and track the uptime of our servers, it leads to more customer wins." Moritz estimates the hard and soft benefits provided by the business process management solution led to a 9-month payback. In the future, the company is considering setting up its solution in a centralized fashion to enable managers to simultaneously oversee multiple jobs in progress at different facilities. This will help ISSI handle larger jobs from customers with multiple facilities, for instance. Rather than having to send all documents to one location, each of the customer's branch offices will send the job to the nearest ISSI facility. This will be one more example of one solution providing multiple savings.

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