Leading Aviation Financial Services Company Case Study

Industry:
Financial Services

Customer:
Leading Aviation Financial Services Company

Scope:

• Scan and convert thousands of pages stored in existing transaction binders into digital files; streamline processes of creating, retrieving and maintaining new contracts and agreements.
• All documents to remain in-house to comply with client's security requirements.
• Make digital files associated with lease, purchase and sale agreements easily accessible to both internal and remote personnel.

Solution:

• Set up entire scanning production line on-site in customer facilities.
• Enlist subject matter experts to sort and tag legal documents according to specific document category designations.
• Convert scanned images to searchable PDFs; improve OCR processes to enhance search capabilities in the company's ECM software.
• Develop customized software scripts to accommodate hundreds of different document category designations when loading files into ECM software.
• Improve staff productivity and reduce risk associated with lost documents.

A leading California-based financial services company supporting the aviation industry was faced with mounting costs involved with management of aircraft lease, purchase and sale agreement documents. These documents, which often spanned over a thousand pages for each transaction, were printed out and stored in large three-ring binders which then circulated through different departments during the course of the transaction.

Managing a file room of thousands of binders being accessed on a daily basis by over a hundred employees was a significant challenge. As the company continued to grow and the volume of sales and leasing contracts increased, the process became less efficient. Hundreds of binders accumulated on floors, desks and chairs. When binders went missing, staff would have to send company-wide e-mail messages and even search office-by-office to find the binders.

Keeping these documents available at all times was critical, as a single binder could represent a $100 million asset. If a document was lost or destroyed, the company faced unpredictable liability. Adding to the complexity of the situation was the fact that the transaction binders were dynamic and constantly being updated. Although backup copies of binders were stored offsite, there was often a great discrepancy between the offsite copy and the active binder.

To help address their identified need for improvements in the contract management process, the company turned to Continental DataGraphics (CDG). They recognized that CDG offered unique capabilities as a vendor, possessing proven expertise in managing large-scale digitization projects as well as intimate domain knowledge of the aviation industry and its business processes.

After initial meetings with CDG's Professional Services team to assess the scope of the project, the company's goals were very clear: Find a way to rapidly scan and convert thousands of existing transaction binders into digital files while also streamlining the entire process of creating, retrieving and maintaining new transaction documents.

The company had previously purchased an Electronic Content Management system, which, while robust, was underutilized. This existing system provided the infrastructure necessary to store transaction documents. Continental DataGraphics provided the hardware, software, personnel and production expertise to manage the process of converting hundreds of thousands of pages from the existing transaction binders. Because of the liability that could result from lost documents, all aspects of the project were performed on-site in the customer's offices.

The CDG team consisted of subject matter experts, document preparation specialists, scanner operators, data entry personnel, a document re-assembly team and a quality assurance team. CDG subject matter experts were responsible for identifying and classifying the more than one hundred different types of legal documents. This was by far the most challenging aspect of the project.

"We had to work closely every day with contracts personnel and legal specialists. Although we had tools and technologies for automating the document identification process, there was really no way around having a contract specialist review and identify each legal document. It was a long and meticulous process, but our client agreed we had a phenomenal team of subject matter experts to support this process," commented Fred Vasquez, Account Executive for CDG.

Within each binder, the CDG preparation team identified each individual document and preceded it with a barcode separator sheet. CDG selected Kofax Ascent Capture® as the front-end software for use with Kodak i600 series scanners. Kofax VirtualReScan (VRS) technology helped to ensure consistently clean, de-skewed images, while the Kodak scanners provided the speed and reliability necessary for large-volume production scanning.

Once the images were scanned, the resulting digital images were converted to full-text searchable PDFs with industry-leading Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology and then reviewed using strict quality assurance standards prior to export into the ECM system.

Bradley Morrison, Sr. Sales Engineer for CDG on the project, noted, "The customer was accustomed to sub-standard quality OCR coming from their own in-house scanner/copier equipment. Right away they noticed the improved quality of our OCR processing. They were typing English words, German words, even whole sentences into the search bar on the software, and were extremely pleased as they watched the system present all of the correct related documents."

Once the scanned images were reviewed by the quality assurance team, they were pushed into the ECM software system via various release scripts that were developed and customized by CDG to represent the different transaction binder types.

As a result of this project implementation, CDG is helping the company achieve several important objectives:

• The company is now able to share the contents of contracts not only with over one hundred internal personnel, but also with dozens of remote personnel.
• Company employees now have access to information in seconds instead of minutes or hours, and have confidence that information in the system is the most current version.
• Productivity of personnel has increased significantly. This represents a substantial benefit insofar as the organization is largely composed of attorneys, contract specialists and other highly skilled workers whose time is better spent on critical, knowledge-intensive tasks instead of searching for documents.
• The open-ended liability associated with risk of lost documents has been eliminated.

Finally, the missing binder alarms are a thing of the past.