Processing of payment orders
In today's dynamic market conditions, quality has become one of the basic principles for the successful organizations. For all organizations, especially financial institutions, one of the basic measures of quality business became customer satisfaction.
Therefore, efforts have been made in organizational and technological terms to put client in center of the business.
The need
Waiting time for the service provision is becoming one of the main indicators for the quality of provided service. Long waiting times at, or in front of, the counter which are repelling clients are becoming unacceptable.
Financial institutions that perform payment transactions are encountering challenges of optimizing business processes related to the processing of payment orders. Typical process of processing orders is as follows:
- An employee at the counter receives an order from a client.
- While client waits, an employee at the counter checks the validity of the order.
- Further, signature and seal of the order are compared to the signature and seal on customer signature card. The time is spent on finding signature card that belongs to the client.
- If the order is valid, an employee at the counter enters the order into a computer system.
- In case of problems while entering or carrying an order, employee at the counter must contact the staff in the back office to resolve the transaction status. During this time, client is still waiting.
- After entering the order, employees on the counter have to take care of storing physical copies of the orders and their archiving.
This way of working carries multiple risks, primarily due to the possible delays in the work of the employees at the counter, as well as the potential loss of physical copies of the order. Both of these reasons can result with a clients dissatisfaction with the level of provided service, as well as possible problems related to the legal regulations of business.
The solution
By using a wide range of modern information technologies in ECM platforms, Senso IS has developed a System for the processing of payment orders. This system is highly automated and integrated solution for transactional processing of payment orders. By using proven technological platforms, it enables reliable and robust operation of the system, along with exceptional scalability.
The system enables distributed acceptance of payment orders by using multiple channels (scanning, e-mail, fax), and centralized processing of payment orders. Order processing consists of the automatic text recognition of the orders by using most advanced algorithms for optical character recognition (OCR), indexing, control of signature and seals and control of order validity by the operator, storage in the archive repository with automatic conduct of transactional order bookkeeping in the central information system of the user.
Payment orders processing is executed as follows:
Order entry in the system
- The counter staff takes the orders from the clients.
- Using Web application for scanning, orders are scanned at the branch office and automatically sent to the central processing system for processing payment orders. With this, job of emplyee in the branch office finishes.
- In addition to scanning, it is possible to send orders to be processed by fax machine or e-mail.
The advantages of using a Web application for scanning are following:
- It does not require installation on client computers.
- It supports work with low bandwidth network connections, as well as offline mode of work. In the offline mode, scanned orders are transferred to the central system when network connection is established.
Order processing
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Orders are automatically processed at the central location. At the beginning of a process, received images are refined. This corrects anomalies, such as: noise created when scanning, image rotation, too strong or too weak contrast or brightness and similar.
- In the next step, by using algorithms for optical character recognition (OCR), useful information is being extracted from scanned images. OCR algorithms can recognize printed and handwritten orders.
- Next step is indexing. This step is carried out by operators that are using specialized application. This application enables very fast input of required information, supported by the data that was previously obtained with OCR. As the operator fills individual fields, application focuses the part of the image of the payment which contains text that needs to be entered. Large percentage of the indexed fields have been filled with the data obtained by OCR. Work of an operator has been reduced to input the information which the system has failed to recognize with sufficient degree of certainty. In addition, the accuracy of the input values (account numbers, customer names, ...) are additionally checked with queries toward database in the central information system. This maximizes the speed and accuracy of input.
- After indexing is performed, control of accuracy, and control of signature and seal is performed. This operation can not be performed by the same operator who performed the indexing. Thus, the so-called four eye principal is achieved. When controlling signature and seal, application also displays the payment order and signature card of the customer that gave the order. The operator does not have to search for the signature cards; they are stored in Documentum repository and application finds and displays them automatically.
- Indexing and control are the only steps performed by the operators. Other steps in the processing of payment orders are executed automatically.
- By successfully completed control, payment orders are automatically stored in the ECM document repository. At the same time, they are sent for bookkeeping in the central information system.
- If the bookkeeping of the order has been successfully performed, process ends.
- If the bookkeeping was not successfully completed, system detects the type of noise, and by using EMC Documentum system for business process automation, it starts a process to correct the fault. Typical interferences are:
- lack of funds in the account - system automatically tries to process the order by the end of the business day, after which it informs competent officer about inability to process the order,
- blocked account - system informs employees of the department of forced collection and offers them the possibility to temporary unblock the account or, refuse the order,
- incorrectly filled order - when attempting bookkeeping, if one of the data in the order is incorrect, system notifies the competent officer, which tries to correct the error or, if it is not possible, rejects the order.
Upon completion of processing, payment orders are located in ECM archive repository. This practically excludes the possibility of losing the order.
Benefits
Senso IS's System for processing payment orders is an end-to-end solution which covers the entire cycle of payment order processing, from the receipt on the counter, to archiving. With it's usage, many competitive advantages can be achieved.
Increased productivity
Using Senso IS's System for processing payment orders, enables doubling the number of processed orders that an individual employee can process during the working day. This is possible due to the two important factors. The first one is usage of automatic character recognition, which significantly speeds up the data entry. The second is centralization of order entry, which allows employees to concentrate better and focus on the current work operations.
Cost reduction
Cost reduction is a result of reduced number of employees needed to handle a certain amount of orders, as well as reducing the cost of transport, storage and archiving of physical copies of the order.
Significant performance increase in processing orders
Processing time of each order is significantly reduced. This is particularly important when receiving the order at the counter, which drastically reduces the waiting time for the client, that in contrast increases the quality of provided service.
Security and availability
Archived payment orders are stored in the archive repository, where they have a set of security rules in motion. Orders can only be accessed by authorized employees in a fast and efficient way by using the search function of archive repository.
Increase in efficiency and execution control of business processes
Using system for managing business processes for processing unsuccessfully posted payment orders greatly increases efficiency of the organization. In addition, it is possible to control whether all of the processes have been processed and whether they have been carried out on time.
Given the potential cost reduction, a typical period of investment return when using System for the processing of payment orders ranges from six months to one year.