It's been nine years since I first joined Hyland, bringing my knowledge and vertical expertise to its growing financial services industry marketing efforts. Back when I joined Hyland, I was excited to work for an organization focused on helping financial institutions realize their full potential with document management software. Time has flown by, and when I reminisce about the early days, I find it interesting to see customers and prospects coming to us with the same pain points as those early days. Largely, they want to mitigate the heavy reliance on paper and learn how to combat that reliance to digitalize processes and more efficiently manage information to deliver better service.
In its recent Enterprise Content Management Systems Market Update, CEB identifies many of the same trends, outlining the shift to digital transactions and the importance of embracing paperless processes to remain competitive.
Why Is There Still So Much Paper?
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While the CEB research outlines multiple factors hindering digitization efforts, the top four include:
1. Lack of management initiatives or mandates to eliminate/reduce paper. Although organizations within almost every industry have made, or started to make, the transition to digital workplaces, there's still a large percentage within the financial services industry that lag behind. Even if employees and staff are advocates of a paperless environment, the case needs to be made to and embraced by upper management.
In fact, according to CEB's research, 47% of respondents stated their biggest hurdle was lack of initiatives from management to reduce paper. In order to achieve digitization, all employees, including executive leadership, need to be educated, trained and ready to institute paperless initiatives.
2. Staff preferences for handling/reading/notes. Once paperless initiatives are properly outlined, planned and communicated to staff, it's important to remind employees to keep processes paperless.
A surprising 44% of respondents stated paper remains in their business processes because staff prefer paper for handling, reading or taking notes. This statistic amazes me because of the duplicate effort it takes to print off a document, read it or take notes on it, then input those notes or approvals within a system to keep the process moving.
3. Physical signatures on paper. Another 44% of survey respondents said they still rely on paper for physical signatures. It doesn't surprise me that this is the third most common reason why paper still exists at financial institutions because we've heard similar statistics from our prospects and existing customers.
While there are some situations where a wet signature may be needed, electronic signature solutions exist to solve this issue. And many e-signature vendors have integrations with process automation systems, such as an enterprise information platform, to help keep processes electronic from the start though the final signature.
4. Lack of paper-free options. It comes as no surprise that organizations within the financial sector still lag behind on technology adoption. This fact is supported by CEB's research with 40% of respondents stating that they don't have paper-free options at their organization. While this percentage is high, I believe it would be lower if we sorted out credit union respondents from banks and traditional lenders because I see credit unions as some of the first to implement new technologies to have a competitive edge and improve member service.
As financial institutions look to digitize, eliminating paper is a critical first step and doesn't have to be a daunting task. In order to achieve digitization, credit unions are implementing single enterprise information platforms because they deliver enterprise content management, case management, business process management, record management and capture from a single content repository.
"CEB research shows that financial institutions investing in content management systems realize numerous benefits, including: A single point of access for member, regulator and financial institution documents; faster transaction completion at lower cost, while also reducing errors; and process improvements that enhance member experience and service," CEB Executive Advisor Craig Focardi said. "With members increasingly expecting to send and receive digital documents, financial institutions are finding it easier to identify use cases with high return on investment. They typically start with easier to automate processes, and then apply the technology into new areas as they learn to manage process change. Other critical success factors include working with solution provider partners that have industry domain knowledge and experience integrating with core lending, deposits and payments solutions."
And when you integrate an enterprise information platform with enterprise file sync and share capabilities and e-signature solutions, you gain instant and secure access to view, share and sign documents to keep processes entirely paperless. By doing this, not only do you decrease costs and process times, you improve member service, which is what it's all about.
Michelle Harbinak Shapiro is financial services marketing manager, Hyland. She can be reached at 440-788-6803 or [email protected].
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