Investor Services Provider

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One of the countries largest investor services companies provides high-quality automation technologies and distribution solutions to banks, investment advisors and mutual fund management companies. Its strategic commitment focuses on providing clients with the technological tools, service platform and professional expertise necessary to identify, sell and service customers across multiple distribution channels.

The company currently services more than 16 million accounts that represent more than $500 billion in fund assets. Services include:

• distribution and marketing
• telesales/servicing
• database marketing
• electronic commerce applications
• shareholder record keeping
• fund accounting, reporting & administration
• employee benefit records & reporting
• print/mail fulfillment and proxy services

Impetus for Change

While the company's initial interest in storage and retrieval solutions was prompted by an immediate need within its Transfer Agency Department, this evolved into a strategic initiative to improve business processes in many other areas of the company.

The company has several different departments with over 500 users all generating, distributing, printing, retrieving and storing a combined total of approximately 75 million pages quarterly. It is a mission critical requirement that information contained in these documents is accurate, meets the required criteria of the active life of the document, and adheres to compliance regulations of the Security Exchange Commission (SEC).

The "active life" or length of time these documents have to be available for immediate access is six months. With the existing SAR Online Viewing system the data was available only for three revisions on DASD (magnetic storage) and three revisions on magnetic tape. In addition, a call had to be made to the help desk to acquire the data from magnetic tape. Paper printing of reports was the preferred medium for end users.

However, keeping paper for any length of time was not practical and after six revisions the data had to be sent to microfiche. The company had a dedicated team that was assigned to process microfiche requests, but this took up to twenty-four hours. The entire process was costly, labor- and time-intensive, and often incurred serious delays in delivery of services.

The initial interest in an optical storage and retrieval solution was to eliminate the costs and time of delays of the existing microfiche process while reducing the amount of paper printing. Another related concern was to implement technology that would improve personnel productivity and customer satisfaction. At the base of all this was the critical need to better satisfy all the demands of the company's clients while at the same time maintain its leadership position in the fiercely competitive financial services market.

Technology Selection Criteria

As the company began evaluating various technology providers, it did so with a number of fundamental requirements and goals in mind. Among these were:

• An open system capable of integrating with the existing corporate computer, network and software environment
• Support active life of documents through combined magnetic and optical storage
• Store once for simultaneous multiple retrieval for the active life of documents
• Provide fast electronic access to reports and documents
• Provide instant printing and/or faxing of an exact replica of the original document
• Eliminate printing and filing duplicate copies of reports (300 million pages yearly)
• Eliminate hard copy printing of internal and external reports
• Reduce direct labor and courier costs associated with the filing, retrieval and delivery process within the company
• Support active life of documents through combined magnetic and optical storage
• Support the archive life of documents through combined optical and shelf storage

After a period of extensive research and evaluation, the company selected INSCI to implement its COINSERV report and document management system - including high volume storage, retrieval and viewing capabilities - throughout the corporate enterprise.

Upon its selection, INSCI technical and integration services personnel immediately began working with the company to collect, quantify and analyze output media types, volumes, frequencies and costs to determine the potential of replacing some percentage of this output with the COINSERV system.

INSCI addressed a key company objective by implementing and integrating the COINSERV system into a heterogeneous enterprise environment. COINSERV also provided the foundation for a turnkey solution with enterprise-wide unlimited user licensing.

The entire turnkey solution consists of COINSERV software, application development services, hardware integration with the existing Sun Ultra 3000 Enterprise Server along with a Clarion Model C150 RAID system and a Cygnet Jukebox with 2 Philips 1600 drives used for optical storage.

INSCI's WinCOINS client software allows users to easily access the COINSERV digital document repository from Windows-based desktops. This client interface provides an exceptionally fast method of retrieving documents for display, printing, faxing or export.

The entire system was installed and operational within 60 days of the first agreement. Based on current use of the COINSERV system, the company is projecting an annual saving of over $2 million. They've also completely eliminated use of the SAR Online system, and anticipate complete elimination of microfiche and an 85% reduction in the use of paper.

Moving Forward

The company has every intention of staying on the cutting edge to keep one step ahead of the competition. The Internet plays a very important role in this effort. WebCOINS, INSCI's Internet solution, gives both internal and external users the ability to view documents using a web browser. Today, users are viewing only reports. In the next implementation phase, WebCOINS will make statements and tax documents readily accessible to the company's clients.

Summary

Since its installation, the COINSERV system has allowed the company to realize a significant improvement in the level of service to internal and external customers and has increased levels of productivity across the enterprise. Through the elimination or substantial reduction of microfiche and paper-based report/document management, production and inventories, the company also has achieved significant cost savings.

INSCI continues to work closely with technical, support and administrative personnel in the organization to implement enhancements and upgrades which will better leverage competitive advantages and improve overall business operations.