Document Retention Services Company

The decline of paper documents has caused the market for traditional document retention services to shrink at an alarming rate. But one leading provider of document retention services anticipated this trend and refocused its company five years ago on scanning and document capture services. Since then, the company has grown its scanning and document capture volumes more than 800 percent and expanded its scanning service to six locations across North America, all while improving cycle times, lowering operational costs and increasing its margins. The document retention services company credits its tremendous growth on its decision to standardize on ibml’s software and hardware for scanning and document capture.

The Situation

The document retention services company began offering its clients services to digitize, organize, store and access their critical paper documents.

The company initially deployed “one-off” software and hardware solutions for the few clients that it targeted for its digital services. The projects were profitable, but the “disjointed systems” and “cumbersome and slow desktop scanners” that the company initially employed eroded its thin profit margins. What’s more, each image had to be visually inspected to ensure that it met the company’s quality standards, which was a “significant bottle neck.” And the desktop scanners that the document retention services company initially used required it to hire one or two more operators each time it deployed another scanner.

The Solution

The company discovered ibml’s scanning and document capture solution, it initially was drawn to ibml’s ultra-high-speed processing. But it was the solution’s superior image quality and end-to-end capture software that convinced him it was a better alternative to the company’s legacy systems.

ibml offers a series of intelligent production scanners, ranging from mid-volume desktop models to ultra-high speed scanners. ImageTrac intelligent scanners are installed in the most demanding document imaging, document management, and enterprise content management environments, and are proven to lower costs, speed access to information, and eliminate downstream exceptions.

ibml’s Capture Suite provides a comprehensive end-to-end capture solution.

Its powerful modules enable organizations to scan pages on ibml ImageTrac and TWAIN scanners, automate document classification and metadata extraction during scan time, centralize administration and control, and analyze scanner and operations performance. ibml’s Capture Suite users can more easily integrate scanners into their operations, automate the processing of multi-channel inputs, and standardize their document scanning operations and the information they track.

The document retention services company installed ibml’s ImageTrac-Lite scanner in a Wisconsin facility to process mid-range volumes for several verticals, including finance, education and county and state government. The company initially used the ImageTrac-Lite with its legacy back-end software. The ImageTrac-Lite immediately delivered faster cycle times and superior image quality compared to the company’s existing desktop scanners, enabling the company to eliminate six desktop scanners and reallocate six full-time equivalents (FTEs). The ImageTrac-Lite also accelerated the company’s document processing cycle times by over 30 percent, giving its management team the confidence to more aggressively market digital services.

The next year, the document retention services company acquired a scanning and document capture facility in Los Angeles that used an ImageTrac scanner to process documents primarily for the healthcare industry.

Buoyed by its success with ibml’s scanning solution, the document retention services company purchased an ImageTrac to begin selling imaging services to the oil and gas clients served by its Calgary, Alberta, Canada facility.

As part of the deployment of the ImageTrac in Calgary, the document retention services company began standardizing on ibml’s Capture Suite software for postscan processing. The company’s oil and gas clients also had stringent Service Level Agreements for throughput. To meet these demands, ibml carefully documented the requirements, and spent several weeks on-site during implementation to help the company reengineer its processes.

The company also uses four ibml ImageTrac scanners in a client site in Oklahoma City, to scan documents for the biggest energy company in the state. Ninety full-time employees of the document retention services company scan documents across two shifts in an effort to empty a 100,000-square foot facility the client wants to use as offices. The company initially rented the ImageTrac scanners in Oklahoma City from ibml. The company purchased the scanners once it established the long-term return on investment and was sure that its client was satisfied.

The company also uses an ImageTrac in its Denver facility to process documents for an oil and gas client.

Most recently, the document retention services company deployed ibml’s ImageTracDS high-production desktop scanner in its Toronto site to process documents for a municipal pension fund.

ibml Capture Suite

Standardizing on ibml’s Capture Suite has made the document retention services company more cost-competitive. The company’s old capture software required a hefty upfront license fee, a “click charge” for each document processed, and a large annual maintenance fee. The license fee for ibml’s Capture Suite is 40 percent lower compared to the company’s old capture software, ibml’s Capture Suite requires no “click charges” for processed documents, and Capture Suite’s annual maintenance fee is 35 percent lower compared to the company’s old capture software.

Additionally, the quality control module for the Capture Suite is three times as fast as the company’s old post-scan processing software.

ibml’s Capture Suite is also easier for new employees to learn compared to the company’s legacy post-scan processing software.

Using a single scanning and document capture platform across its sites also speeds the time it takes new employees to become proficient with the system, allows for crosstraining, reduces maintenance costs, and makes it easier for the company’s staff to become experts on the system to reduce support calls.

Summary

The document retention services company says its partnership with ibml has been key to its growth. ibml’s scanning and document capture technology has helped the company win “many” scanning projects, and enabled the company to process tens of millions of dollars from start-to-finish on a single platform. ibml also has allowed the company to meet tight client deadlines. In one case, ibml delivered an ImageTrac scanner from Birmingham in just a few days.