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TAWPI BLOG

Question of the Week

Listserv Discussion

 

FROM THE BLOG

Production Scanning Still Hot

Don’t let the growth of workgroup and distributed scanning fool you – there is still a need for production scanners, particularly among companies implementing shared services organizations. That’s according to Mark Fairchild, senior vice president, technology portfolio management, at BancTec, Inc. Fairchild noted that many shared services programs begin with financial business processes, but expand to include general document processing.

Demand for production scanners is particularly strong in the accounts payable space, Fairchild told me, where manufacturers, utilities and retailers, among others, are looking to automate invoice processing. Meantime, declining check volumes has created an opportunity in the financial services arena for scanners that can handle documents and checks comingled, he said.

Not surprisingly, Fairchild says BancTec continues to see growth in its high-speed scanner sales, with financial services and educational testing companies and service bureaus leading the way. The draw? Reductions in labor and customer service costs, and improved quality.

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Expect Branch Capture Renaissance

Jeff Vetterick (jvetterick@myriadsystems.com), executive vice president of marketing at Myriad Systems, Inc., thinks the ‘next big thing’ in distributed capture may be an old topic: branch capture. “Although branch capture preceded merchant capture by several years, it never took off like merchant capture has,” Vetterick told me this week. “Some banks just couldn’t see the incremental operations improvements that branch capture offers. But what merchant capture has done is show banks how powerful distributed capture can be.”

Also working in branch capture’s favor is that many banks now have imaging and distributed capture deployments – and the associated software and hardware infrastructure – on which to piggyback. “I see a renaissance or second, much larger wave of branch capture building across the market,” Vetterick said, adding that Myriad Systems has been selling branch capture solutions to community banks “left and right. We’ve just closed a bunch of deals.” He expects mid-tier and large banks to start jumping on this trend as well, “big time. Banks that have bought into merchant capture are now turning their attention to branch capture.” Vetterick said the debate about front or back counter branch capture still exists, with back counter capture remaining the least obtrusive to bank operations and workflow. Unless it is integrated with the bank’s branch automation system, front counter capture is “kluge and clunky” and creates problems associated with not being able to talk to the host, he said.

What has been resolved, at least to Vetterick, is that ASP will continue to see tremendous growth in the branch capture space; more banks view ASP as a more appealing option than spending big bucks on an in-house system or giving up control and outsourcing the work.

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Reduce Trade Show Costs

Potential recession aside, exhibitors always are on the lookout for ways to get more bang out of their trade show buck. One strategy may be to minimize costs and avoid unnecessary charges on their material-handling bill. In the February issue of Exhibitor Magazine, exhibit-management consultant Candy Adams provides the following six ways to save money on material handling:

Stop shipping unnecessary items. Think: massive quantities of literature.

Consolidate small shipments. General services contractors typically charge exhibitors a weight minimum for each shipment they handle, which can add up.

Choose your shipping method carefully. Palletizing your pad-wrapped pieces can mean significant savings, for example.

Meet the inbound target dates and times. If your carrier misses the targeted window of time for its truck to arrive in the marshalling yard to unload your freight, you’ll be saddled with additional material-handling surcharges or penalties, Adams notes.

Verify weight slips. Adams recommends stopping at the service desk the day after your freight arrives on site and ask to see your inbound certified weight slips.

Audit your material-handling invoice. Review every line item of your general services contractor’s invoice to make sure you have been billed correctly.

Read the complete TAWPI BLOG.

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FROM QUESTION OF THE WEEK

Is your organization benefiting from remote deposit capture?

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How big a role are compliance and audit issues playing in the demand for unstructured documents solutions?

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FROM LISTSERV

Refusal of Payment; Destroy or Return?

Q:  In an order entry application, is it legal to destroy a check instead of returning it, if the order cannot be filled and the payment must not be accepted.

Or in a mortgage payment processing environment, if the mortgage holder does not want to process a payment after the delinquency grace period is over, can the mortgage holder just destroy the check and return a notice (instead of the check itself) to the person who sent the check?

R:  The check is a legal item for collection. When an organization endorses or deposits the check – they accept that payment and the banking system collects the funds. An IRD is a image replacement of that document used as a legal replacement of the check for financial clearing purposes. The IRD is not a valid replacement if there is not an endorsement or deposit.

If an organization does not agree to accept the payment then they need to return the original check. It would be great in the Check 21 world to truncate every check and either pass the image for presentment or print an IRD for rejects – but our legal department pointed out the differences. If any other institutions received a different answer from their legal group I would love to hear it. Exception item pull is an expensive process but required if you are rejecting a payment.

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Check Database - Protecting Customer and
Financial Information

Q:  I had a question regarding protecting your database with check images and customer information (financials). The NACHA rules waive their hands at data security; indicating that commonly accepted technology, systems and practices should be employed. What are you doing or providers doing for data protection? Obviously good data handling practices such as securing backup tapes; limiting access to authorized personal, securing operating systems, etc. are common and expected practices.

What about encryption; is anyone using whole database encryption or column level encryption? Is anyone using more complex protection tools like Eruces Tricryption?

R: Encryption is essential for security in today’s networked environments. We do recommend getting away from back-up tapes which are generally not encrypted. Real time back up to redundant servers do have encryption options and audit trails to identify all accesses and are more reliable for recovery purposes. There are also on-line back-up services available that use encrypted transmissions and storage. They are quite reasonable and charge by the Gigabyte.

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Remittance Coupons - location of perforation

Q: Please advise on the following:

1. If you have a perforated tear-off remittance coupon, is the actual perforation on the top of the coupon (thus, it is torn from the bottom of the remaining remittance notice) or is the perforation on the bottom of the coupon (thus, it is torn from the top of the remittance notice)?

2. We are evaluating re-design options of our premium notices and considering relocating the tear-off coupon to the top. If you currently have a top-tear off, have you noticed any production problems (ie., equipment jams) or tearing issue(s) ?

3. Any literature or supporting documentation would be appreciated on placement of the perf.

R:  Yes, most billers have or are moving to a “bottom third” tear off. The perforation is at the top of the return coupon.
Scanner manufacturers prefer a coupon with a straight bottom edge as they tend to jog more uniformly and there will be no tears at the bottom of the coupon if the payee does not tear the coupon cleanly from the statement.

R: 1. Our perforation is at the top of the coupon and our coupon is 8 1/2 inches long (no side perf).

2. Having the perf at the top of the coupon gives a clean edge on the bottom of the document which gives better performance when the documents ‘feed’ through the sorter during processing. The specific construction of our top perforation does cause dome ‘dog eared’ edges on the top of the coupon. We have used both BancTec Unisys sorters on our coupons and this does not affect the performance of the sorter or cause jams.

3. A tear off coupon located at the top of the invoice may require the use of a ‘sanding type device’ to clean up the bottom edge. This would not only would reduce exposure to paper dust (from the perf) in your sorter but would also reduce the exposure to skewed documents which would affect your read rates.

 

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