Financial services company flourishes thanks to business process management

Paper-based files can quickly get messy, making everything from routine organizational tasks to compliance audits into a major challenge. Such was the case for Lansing, Mich.-based financial services company Rehmann Financial, which had a confusing manual filing process that varied from one office to another – a major issue considering the firm had 13 offices in multiple states.

"In one office, the yellow file was correspondence, the purple file was new account paperwork, the green file was insurance," Rehmann's senior operations manager, Amy Flourry, told TechTarget. "In another, they would use manila envelopes and you had to read the tabs. Deciphering all those different systems, pulling files – let alone having someone pull the wrong file – it would take a couple of days per office for all that back and forth."

But now, thanks to an enterprise content management initiative that grew into a push toward overarching business process management, Rehmann's filing process is much more streamlined. As a result of the deployment of document imaging solutions, digitization tools and standardization processes, the roles of Rehmann's compliance team have been revolutionized.

"Now the compliance team can do everything behind the scenes," Flourry told the news source "They don't have to spend two days on-site pulling files and reviewing paperwork. They are doing it remotely and they are doing it all the time."

The project was a massive undertaking, but according to Flourry, the company's one-step-at-a-time approach has been successful.

"We're not 100 percent there, but most offices have been able to get rid of their paper and those huge beast filing cabinets," she noted.

Paper company Envelopments has also benefited from going paperless, a recent article by Baseline Magazine noted. Specifically, the company was able to bolster its gains, reduce costs and lower prices as a result of implementing business process automation.

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