MONROE, Mich.-Monroe County Community CU clamped down on employees having to shuffle paper-a process that only increases expenses and slows member service-by moving ever closer to the much-vaunted paperless work environment.
The $114-millon CU has already reduced annual paper usage by 80%, cut document storage expenses by the same amount, and resulted in a 40% increase in staff productivity, shared MCCCU CEO Paul Assenmacher. "We use technology whenever we can to cut costs. Keeping technology up-to-date can be expensive. But that's more than returned in savings."
Starting more than a year ago, the CU converted all of its dot matrix printers, which use expensive pre-printed forms, and consolidated printing operations to laser print centers located throughout branches and shared by staff.
"This eliminated dozens of dot matrix printers throughout the organization and combined all of our forms printing to print-on-demand laser printers," Assenmacher said.
Document management software allowed Monroe to go "virtually paperless" for all of its documentation purposes, and move information "at the speed of light," Assenmacher said. "Not only has that improved staff productivity, it has improved our member service levels. Members aren't waiting for answers, especially when it comes to sharing loan information between branches."
Assenmacher estimates the paperless system saves the credit union more than $6,000 a year in employee time alone. An electronic library of all the CU's internal documents and forms was created.
"Prior to the implementation of our electronic solution, member files were stored within our records department at our Winchester office or within the loan department at the main office," Assenmacher explained. "Files needed to be physically located in order to be reviewed, and then if they were needed at a branch where the information was not stored, we had to fax or transport."
MCCCU wanted a single source for its electronic workflow solution, and at the start of its effort turned to the Rochester Hills, Mich.-based Carswell Data Products, using the company's Laser Print Solution and e-Sig Plus products. Tom Carswell, president of Carswell Data Products, pointed out that moving to a paperless workflow process has also improved the security of the credit union's member information and disaster recovery processes.
"Instead of having vaults full of paper that the first tornado can spread personal member information over three counties, that information is locked up in servers. And only those who need to have access to the data have access," Carswell said. "e-Sig Plus automatically encrypts and transmits all of the documents Monroe creates electronically every day to its archive at our data center that's backed up out of state. The credit union can view and research those documents in the offsite database over the Internet."
When it comes to saving on printing costs, MCCCU no longer pays for printer ribbons and cartridges or the preprinted forms.
"All of that preprinted paper went away, and the templates and forms are stored in a program inside the laser printers," Carswell said. "When something is printed the program recognizes what it is-a check, receipt, loan document-and pulls up the correct form or template."
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Monroe County Community CU, Monroe, Mich.
Category: Workflow, Security
Provider: Carswell Data Products
