Upromise Investments Automates the Processing of Financial Documents with Kofax Intelligent Capture & Exchange

Such a method has its drawbacks, however. When a transaction is initiated, a financial agency must commit to a share price for the funds in which its members invest. If the market price changes before the trade is executed, the financial agency responsible for recording participant requests must pay for any difference in fund price resulting from the delay. Upromise aimed to avoid this pitfall by implementing a 529 plan administrative platform that would automate as many transactions as possible.

The firm's first step was to configure an online 529 enrollment vehicle for customers and an Internet portal for outside client service associates, through which it could collect enrollment and other data via the Web. While the portals provide a convenient means for families to invest online, Upromise also recognized that many individuals are uncomfortable posting personal financial information on the Internet and prefer to submit investment documentation in paper form. Thus, it sought a information capture and workflow solution to help manage these forms.

The Solution
Upromise evaluated several solutions, but only the Kofax Intelligent Capture & Exchange solution, the foundation for Kofax's strategy to help organizations streamline business processes, was found to suit its requirements.  Says Peter Angus, the firm's vice president of client services, "Because we were in the process of building a state-of-the-art transfer agency, we absolutely needed a capture solution that would not only allow us to convert documents to digital images, but to go beyond that and manipulate captured data in a meaningful way," He continues, "For us, it wasn't just about image capture; it was about intervention, e.g. handling image capture, processing, and delivery with a single solution set. No application other than Kofax Capture offered that capability."

To implement the system, Upromise turned to Kofax Certified Solution provider, Paragon Systems of Virginia Beach, VA. In addition to the Kofax Capture technology, the solution comprises Bowe Bell + Howell 8125 Spectrum scanners, Plexus ImageFirst Office and Plexus FloWare. "One of the most valuable aspects of the solution is the fact that we were able to hook the Kofax Capture product into our relational database," Angus notes. Data is extracted from images captured in the back office and shared with the firm's platform database via an XML bridge. If any of this data already exists in the system, validations can be made automatically and information contained in the database can be used to automatically populate fields (e.g. participant name, Social Security number, bank information) on the transaction screen.

For example, Angus points out, if a customer enrolls in a 529 program via the Upromise Web site, but decides to mail a check instead of providing information for an Automated Clearing House (ACH) transaction, the check is scanned in the back office and data such as name and address is extracted from it using the Kofax Capture product. This data is then used to locate the database information that exists from the customer's online enrollment. This information automatically populates corresponding fields on the transaction screen; all the back office employee needs to do is enter the check number to complete the transaction.

Similarly, when an existing customer sends in a form to open a 529 account for an additional child, the Kofax Capture product allows information to be captured from the document image to locate all the data provided by the participant for his or her first child. Information common to the new account is automatically displayed. As a result, in most cases the back office employee can finish the transaction by simply entering the new child's name and Social Security number into the system.

Just as significantly, Angus states, "Kofax Capture's flexibility also enables us to tailor modules to support precise business processes. For example, modules can be modified to extract data from any document type, as well as to automate many  forms processing functions." Other modules can be incorporated to facilitate automated document separation, postal mail scanning, and automatic classification of unstructured documents.

With Kofax Intelligent Capture & Exchange technology in place, the firm can also export data to any ODBC (Open Database Connectivity)-compatible database. This capability is integral in sharing information captured from documents scanned in Upromise's back office with the participant database and customer-facing 529 administrative platform. To help accelerate the capture process, Kofax VirtualReScan® (VRS) technology is being used as part of the solution to automatically adjust the brightness, contrast, skew, and other attributes of an image, thereby ensuring that the proper data is located and extracted.

The Results
By deploying the Kofax Capture product and integrating it with its platform database, Upromise has reduced the average handling time per transaction from 12 minutes to less than two minutes. "This productivity boost helps us manage labor costs far more effectively than ever before," Angus says. "Using our automated system, we have been able to reduce our personnel needs from 175 employees to 33 employees. This staff of 33 is currently processing 22,000 transactions per day approximately 73 times more than the daily 300 transactions we processed when we first opened for business."