Introduction

A private retirement fund firm located in Houston, Texas, since 1956, reached out to local document management companies to provide a solution for their paper business records. The company needed to maximize its office space, consumed by records going back to the company’s inception. Their plan consisted of ECM Services (The scanning of all records, to upload into a managed application). Once these records were digitized, the next step within the plan was to lease office space, previously utilized for records storage.

Background

The retirement fund firm issued a formal request for proposals to multiple records management companies in Southeast and North Texas. Upon inspecting and assessing the site, it was evident that the company had a substantial volume of records. These were scatted on multiple floors and in a variety of file formats ranging from file cabinets, banker boxes, and open shelving. The files consisted of standard size paper plus historical index cards that contained important information for members dating back to the 1950s to early 1990s.

After further consultation and discussion with their associates, VeriTrust discovered that the collection could undergo segregation into two categories; a) active plan information b) and historical company information. Additionally, the information in the company category needed maintenance due to regulations, but the firm rarely accessed it.

VeriTrust Solution

VeriTrust’s solution incorporated four different service offerings.

  1. For records that fell into the active-plan information category, VeriTrust performed off-site document scanning services. These include auto color detect scanning, Full-Text OCR, and document indexing.
  2. VeriTrust deployed an Electronic Document Management Application onto the client’s servers and configured it to accept the bulk scanning from VeriTrust along with daily scanning by the client associates.
  3. The paper records in the historical category were boxed, indexed, and transported to VeriTrust’s secure records center in Houston, Texas, for off-site storage.
  4. Scan-on-demand services are available to the client. Whenever a record’s retrieval from stored boxes takes place, it is scanned and electronically transmitted to the client for upload into their electronic document management application.

Results

VeriTrust’s integrative solution (document scanning & off-site records storage) reduced the overall cost of the solution for the retirement fund firm by 41% over a traditional complete back-scan solution. The office space, previously utilized to archive records, has been leased, and the organization receives recurring revenue from the reclaimed office space. The firm’s records have remained current with the use of scan-on-demand services. If they experience increases in inbound volumes, such as annual enrollment cycles, VeriTrust provides overflow scanning support via our off-site scanning center.