Outsourcing of incoming mail processing - IRIS ECM

Outsourcing of incoming mail processing
With Docutec technology arvato direct services manages the incoming mail of a private
customer bank in Essen
The outsourcing of services to external companies has become a strong trend within the
concentration on core competencies during the past five years. Large and medium-sized
companies are increasingly adopting certain areas of their business, mainly in
administration, into the responsibility of third parties to corporate and optimize
structures and processes economically. The goal is to create certain products or services
no longer in their own companies, but to transfer them onto a service, which requires
the needed services more economically than the company itself could.
In general, any business that doesn’t belong to the core business of a company, can be
outsourced. However, there are certain fields, where experts companies have
established. Besides areas such as taxation and accounting, these are mainly the areas
of customer relationship management, document management and processing.
Document management - especially document capture - was and is also the area in
which a well-known retail bank in Essen wanted to outsource to a service provider. In
summer of 2007 it was decided to get the processing and acquisition of the whole
incoming mail outsourced in a middle-term. It should be started with the collection of
loan applications from the retail business. Here the bank had recognized that the
collection of up to 6.000 loan applications per day binds enormous resources and costs -
which should be reduced by outsourcing.
When searching for a suitable provider the bank from Essen discovered arvato direct
services GmbH from Gutersloh. arvato direct services belongs to the Bertelsmann group
and is the leading service provider in the management of customer relationships in
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Europe and the European markets. Its core competencies include the settlement of
claims and ordering processes of all kinds, customer communications and the processing
of Incoming customer’s requests. This demonstrably high level of competence of the
service provider in connection with a vast experience and a global cooperation in the
back have brought the bank to the decision to give the application to arvato direct
services.
For this interesting new order from the financial sector arvato direct services needed a
partner to give them the needed technology platform for collecting, classifying and
indexing the many thousands of documents. When searching for a suitable technology
partner, the decision was made in October 2007 for Docutec AG from Aachen.
Docutec is an expert for the digital mailroom and offers with the solution platform
Docutec Xtract for Documents the ideal base for the new application of the arvato direct
services. Both companies had previously shared projects in the field of account cards
and formulary capture. arvato direct services is one of Docutec’s service partners since
several years and profits from the know-how of the company in the area of document
classification and extraction. Since November 2007 Docutec is a member of the I.R.I.S.
Group and occupies the competence areas of invoice processing and digital mailroom.
I.R.I.S. is a leader in Intelligent Document Recognition and Document Management.
"We have a several number of reasons why we went for Docutec," says Andreas Nolte,
division IT manager at arvato. "Of course, the core competence in document and mail
classification was in the centre. Docutec has exactly the solution and the know-how for
this important project. Moreover, it was important for us that we work directly with a
solution manufacturer. Only in this way we can work quickly and flexibly on the
individual right solution for each customer. We as a service provider have to be fast and
flexible by handling the order. The same, of course, we expect from our partners. That
Docutec is exactly the right company for us was confirmed during our visit to the
Docutec booth during DMS 2007 in Cologne”.
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However, the decision for Docutec as a technology partner had not only project-related
character for arvato direct services, but is also of strategic nature: Since the successful
project implementation the Docutec platform Xtract for Documents applies as a set
system for the "Digital mailroom/inbox classification" in the Bertelsmann Group for the
future.
"The classification of the incoming mail for companies as a service is an important
component of our service range. With the solution of Docutec we are now in a position
to develop this area actively”, Andreas Nolte says.
Digital Mailroom with Xtract for Documents
The electronic handling and processing of incoming mail in a company is a very complex
process. You have to classify, to read and to process an extremely high number of
different documents with the highest degree of precision and certainty.
With Xtract for Documents Docutec commands a flexible product platform, that solves
all tasks in the field of digital mailroom most efficiently and cost effectively. The
essential component is the quick and safe working classification method “Docutec
XClassify”, which allows the intelligent use of different document properties (layout,
words, phrases, regular expressions, complex properties). The system only uses the
features that are needed for the precise distinction of the defined classes. Docutec
XClassify is based on a combination of complementary classification procedures (rulebased,
statistical and graphical methods), which complement one another and lead to
an unmatched security of classification. The system independently determines which
procedures have to be used for the different documents groups, and automatically
selects the most effective and low priced method. Moreover, with the means of
“Docutec XClassify” the system can automatically be trained for new classes and
adapted to new business processes. During the training the system gives direct feedback
on the quality control and assurance.
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First stage: loan applications
Medium-term, arvato direct services will take over the classification and processing of
all incoming mail of the retail bank. Launch was in 2007 with the processing of loan
applications from the retail business. Since then, all loan applications along with other
important documents such as salary proof, a copy of the identity card, etc. are
addressed to a mailbox of the bank that is supervised by the arvato-division in
Schortens/Wilhelshaven. The requests usually come from either private clients or free
credit shops/agencies on behalf of the bank.
The applications will be collected, scanned, classified and indexed at arvato and then
sended to the bank for processing.
From a few too many classes of documents
Today the Docutec system at arvato is “fed” with about 6.000 credit documents per day,
which aren’t a particular challenge for the classification, because only very few
document classes with required little training are needed. If in the near future all
incoming documents of the bank are processed by arvato, it is necessary that up to
50.000 documents in up to 100 classes have to be sorted.
But Docutec Xtract for Documents even copes with such challenges successfully.
Sophisticated product components such as Docutec XMailWorkflow provide an easy
definition of document classes and workflow rules for the classification and extraction of
any document disposition. It is the upstream of the actual classification process with
Docutec XClassify and offers an interface for all necessary steps regarding an optimal
classification. Also a definition of the process steps for an automatic document
separation on a PC is possible.
"Our customer is more than satisfied with the quality and speed of the processing and
can’t wait to expand the performance on other areas of the mailroom," Andreas Nolte
of arvato says. "The decision for Docutec and its platform Documents Xtract has been a
resounding success."
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Press- and company contact:
Docutec AG
Désirée Müller
Tel.: 0241-92035-83
Fax: 0241-92035-50
E-Mail: desiree.mueller@irislink.com
http://www.docutec.de
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