Divided They Stand
For many businesses, the vision of a paperless office is often the driving force behind implementing digital document management. For Professional Planning Service of New Hampshire (PPS), going paperless while maintaining the separation between two distinct business interests was giving staff double vision. But by implementing document management solutions, PPS has avoided mixing their two business’ documents during their transition to a paperless environment—and improved efficiency and service quality along the way.
In addition to providing estate, tax and investment planning services, PPS is also an office of supervisory jurisdiction (OSJ) of a major national broker-dealer, supervising 37 registered representatives. With a combined 40 years’ worth of account information to manage, it’s easy to imagine the mountainous paperwork that PPS had accumulated. For Business Processor Aimee Ellis, OSJ paperwork alone had become overwhelming. “We have to keep virtually every piece of paper related to each client,” she says, “so we had 24 cabinets full of paper files.”
PPS’ broker-dealer recognizes the challenges of managing so much information, and provides OSJs with a proprietary document images system. PPS could have easily chosen this system, avoiding implementation and maintenance costs altogether. But maintaining compliance—and staff sanity—required a system that could keep OSJ files separate from agreements, correspondence and reviews related to PPS’ other services. It wasn’t until attending a virtual seminar given by another firm facing a similar situation that Director of Operations Cindy Peckham saw the ideal solution to PPS’ problem.
The key to maintaining the separation between OSJ and independent business activities was the document management software platform’s granular security controls. By creating unique Laserfiche templates for each document type, then defining user-specific template viewing permissions, PPS ensures that staff from one business can’t view the other’s documents. Because Laserfiche access rights are based on Windows® Authentication, implementing and enforcing these security controls has been especially easy.
Dividing the two interests isn’t just a smart business practice; it also makes complying with industry, state and federal regulations much easier. “During our yearly audit by the broker-dealer, the auditor can sit down at a workstation and search the OSJ documents exclusively,” says Peckham. “Meanwhile, if the state were to request a piece of client correspondence, we’d be able to quickly retrieve the precise pages they were looking for.” Naturally, document management has also helped reduce the physical labor required to produce requested documents.
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Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - Divided They Stand