Automated Financial offers imaging.

Automated Financial Systems Inc. has announced that its Task Management System is now available with document imaging capabilities.

The Exton, Pa.-based developer of banking software has designed the Task Management System as a workflow monitor that gives banks centralized control of processing tasks where many personnel and computer systems interact.

Geared to Complex Tasks

Company officials said system can organize a bank's tasks and resources, serving as a process-management tool to prioritize and schedule work, as well as to ensure quality control within specifically defined time frames.

Task Management is designed for use in areas such as cash management and commercial loan origination where complicated procedures and frequent deadlines are the rule according to Hector Estrada, project administrator for the software.

Imaging technology eliminates having to locate the original paper document every time it must be reviewed. It also eliminates the need to track a document as it moves through the work process.

Mr. Estrada said the new imaging enhancement, which uses International Business Machines Corp.'s ImagePlus software, expands the capabilities of the entire system.

Simultaneous Access

"Working with images enables a bank to eliminate the flow of paper for certain tasks," Mr. Estrada said. "Once a document is scanned into the system, that's it." The Task Management System "monitors that document and will take it through to its final destination."

With ImagePlus, users can view an image on a workstation screen, zoom in and out of it, or rotate it as if they were holding it. A single scanned image can also be accessed simultaneously by several users.

Mr. Estrada said that Automated Financial will start by developing an imaging application for banks' loan origination departments, an area that traditionally uses a great deal of paper.

"We've carefully studied the flow of tasks involved in making a loan," he said. "An applicant's signature, for example typically gets entered five times in the course of an application. Once the task is remanaged, it will only be entered once."

Task Management operates on either a network of personal computers or on a single PC running IBM's OS/2 operating system. It can also communicate with application software running on IBM mainframe computers. Ms. Sullivan is a freelance writer based in New York.

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