trumpet DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT: It s It's More Than Going Paperless

Transcription

1 trumpet d. 4 I DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT: It s It's More Than Going Paperless

2 CONTENTS Executive Summary 1 Ease Compliance Concerns 2 Improve Productivity 2 Save Time and Money 3 Enhance Client Service & Grow Revenue 3 Streamline Workflow 4 Guarantee Success with Your DMS 4 About Trumpet 5

3 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY If you ve never spent hours looking for a misplaced client file, you re in a class of one. The financial advisory industry is a paper-intensive business. Every financial advisor knows the importance of accurately documenting each transaction and creating a complete paper trail. But with the increase in government regulations and a favorable investment climate, firms are facing the challenge of managing more documents, forms, and reports than ever before. The result? Expanded workloads to organize, file and retrieve documents, increased costs to store documents, and potentially a situation where you re spending more time managing volumes of files than you are building client relationships. In essence, you and your staff are working too hard for little return. Going paperless is no longer a hopeful idea for financial advisory firms; it s a necessity now! Choosing the right electronic document management system for your unique business can make your head spin unless you know the basics. YOU HAVE TWO OPTIONS: 1. A simple storage and retrieval system governed by a static folder tree structure. 2. Scalable document management software (DMS) that can help you do the tasks you are doing today, but with speed, efficiency, and fewer errors. MORE AND MORE FINANCIAL ADVISORY FIRMS ARE GOING THE ROUTE OF DMS BECAUSE IT: Eases compliance concerns Saves money Improves productivity Enhances client service and grows revenue Streamlines workflow There are a myriad of ways to improve your current workflow and reduce mouse clicks with DMS. Features such as saving templates, prefilled metadata, saved searches, and advanced searching can ease the burden of time-consuming document management tasks. In addition, DMS can integrate with other software packages you may be using to allow quick-access to files and easier ways to save files. The bottom line is that DMS lets you spend more time working on behalf of your clients and less time on administrative tasks. 1

4 Ease Compliance Concerns As the regulatory and compliance landscape continues to evolve, the number of requirements imposed on advisors grows every day. Managing these requirements is becoming more difficult as the number and type of documents increase. When auditors and regulators knock on your door and provide their list of requested documents, you need to produce them quickly without interrupting your firm s primary functions. Without DMS, this will be a major time suck. Staff will spend time searching through multiple folders, browsing for the right documents from the right clients, and finally dragging and dropping files into even more folders. A DMS MAKES IT MUCH EASIER TO SATISFY DOCUMENT REQUESTS FROM REGULATORS AND AUDITORS BECAUSE IT ALLOWS YOU TO: Track all kinds of metadata about the files you need to save. Build advanced searches. Create retention rules on documents. You can define templates for files and their associated metadata, ensuring that all files are stored correctly, with the right information, even as the quantity increases. When it comes time to produce certain types of documents, you can easily filter only those documents to provide to regulators. Improve Productivity Even if you have your documents in digital form but in a traditional folder structure your office productivity may still be taking a hit. While your firm may use robust naming conventions, folder structures, and file policies for handling your documents, efficiently managing your digital (or worse, paper!) content is still a massive task. According to the Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM), a typical, knowledge worker spends anywhere from 15 to 35% of their time looking for information. DMS can change all that. This software lets you save your documents faster and more accurately by giving you more structure and control over where and how documents are saved. You can create rules for how documents should be saved or named and you also have the option to save a document to the same place as a similar document that is already saved in the system. Finally, you can create templates for saving documents so that documents you save routinely can be saved in a similar way every time. In addition, with DMS you can quickly retrieve documents because of its advanced search functionality. You can search across the entire system in any of the various fields, filter results based on when files were saved or modified, sort the results by any of the fields, and even search within a search result. All of these features allow employees to spend less time in their day-to-day interaction with documents and more time serving your clients. Employees are able to contribute to the firm in more meaningful ways when they are not bogged down with dreaded administrative tasks. 2

5 Save Time and Money Improving productivity with DMS also saves money because your staff can access documents faster and with improved accuracy. No longer is it necessary for your staff to spend hours locating, copying, printing, and filing documents. And then there s the wasted time (and money) spent searching for misfiled documents. DMS allows you to create disciplined filing rules, which help prevent typos and ensure only applicable options are available when classifying documents. In addition, there are many ways to prefill fields, reducing the possibility for errors even further. DMS can also reduce the expensive real estate space you need if you are still a paper-based firm. AIIM reports that each four-drawer file cabinet holds an average of 10,000 to 12,000 documents, takes up to 9 square feet of floor space, and costs $1,500 per year. With DMS, you can assign fewer employees to manage the same amount of work and some firms have been able to eliminate the task of filing completely. Not only will you be able to eliminate those filing cabinets, freeing up large amounts of space in the office, you will also be freeing up employee desk space. This allows your staff to focus on tasks that have more value to your firm, rather than deal with the paper clutter on their desk. DMS goes one step beyond saving money because it supports efforts to generate revenue. Enhance Client Service & Grow Revenue Successful financial advisory firms are always looking for ways to enhance the client experience. For example, timely responsiveness to client requests can position a firm to compete on quality instead of price, thus improving your overall margins and profits. A DMS lets you worry less about saving and retrieving documents and focus more on the work you do for your clients. The ability to easily retrieve documents when a client is in your office or on the phone is a necessity in today s competitive environment. DMS offers several options for finding documents. NOT ONLY CAN YOU USE TRADITIONAL SEARCH METHODS, YOU CAN ALSO: Search on different criteria per metadata field. Use Boolean operators for complex searches. Save predefined searches for common queries. Save bookmarks for one-click access to the most-used searches. Filter or text-search within the results of another search. In addition, tech-savvy advisors will score extra points with today s clients who are expecting anywhere, anytime access to their financial information. From a security standpoint, DMS is essential. Your clients trust you to keep their personal and financial information safe and secure. An effective DMS typically includes multiple levels of security and version control that allows access to sensitive documents only with the proper permissions. The less time you spend on the administrative functions of managing documents, the more time you can spend on providing value-added services to existing clients and expanding your client base. 3

6 Streamline Workflow Is your current document workflow cumbersome or efficient? With DMS, you can design a workflow to expedite your business processes. You can create saving and searching templates to reduce the number of mouse clicks required for your common tasks. Plus you can use status fields, notifications, autofiling, and other features to improve your workflows. Business rules can be applied to ensure workflow rules are followed so documents are automatically routed without any manual intervention. Documents don t need to be hand-carried or ed. There are also third-party apps that seamlessly integrate with DMS and completely optimize the entire workflow process of scanning and filing, making it as easy to work with paper documents as it is to work with electronic documents. Finally, DMS makes it possible for you to improve many of your internal business processes human resources, accounting, administration not just those related to client files. This is just the tip of the iceberg there are countless ways document management can battle mundane, dreaded administrative tasks. Guarantee Success with Your DMS In 2010, a Financial Planning survey revealed that 70% of advisors did not use true document management software. One investment counselor was quoted as saying, Document management is very important to us but we struggle with the implementation of a paperless office...we would be willing to pay for a consultant that can offer a complete solution that works for document management. We are in the business of planning and investing not document management. Since this survey was conducted, more financial advisory firms have gone paperless, but they are still struggling with document management because they ve simply converted everything to a PDF and saved it in a folder tree. A successful document management strategy focuses on making it easy to find the right documents, at the right time, and in the right format. Your staff will be able to operate more efficiently and with less frustration. Remember that DMS requires customization to be truly effective for your unique situation. You ll want to maximize all its features and even push the envelope. WORK WITH A CONSULTANT THAT PROVIDES YOU WITH GUIDANCE AND EXPERTISE: A dedicated implementation project manager to ensure your success. Design sessions with a document management specialist to customize the DMS to fit your workflows. Guided training workshops. Access to online forums and a wrap-up session to address questions after you go live. Complementary software that will ensure you leverage the full potential of your DMS. Making the leap to DMS is worthwhile. Making the leap with the help of a DMS consultant makes it easy. 4

7 About Trumpet Since 1999, the Trumpet team has partnered with financial advisory firms to deploy a suite of robust software packages to improve the workflow efficiencies within practices throughout the country. Whether you are a new firm hesitant of the technology choices facing your firm, or a well-established firm looking to take advantage of new technology, Trumpet has the experience to help you make the right decisions. Our insight into the financial advisory industry allows us to offer real-time solutions to everyday processes so you can enjoy the way you work and focus on the important things. We don t assume anything. We listen and learn and offer our advice because it s truly what we love to do. 5

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