Outsourcing An Enterprise Image Archive

Today, Feb 2004 by Redvers, Chris

How Whirlpool Cleaned Up Its Lockbox

The world produces between one and two exabytes of unique information each year. That translates into about 250 megabytes for every man, women and child on earth. Finding a single document truly has turned into a hunt for the proverbial needle in a haystack.

While digital imaging of checks has broadly become accepted for its significant productivity benefits, companies are only now coming to recognize the advantages of imaging beyond cash-management applications. In fact, considering the events of the past few years, the importance to businesses of effectively tracking both physical and electronic records has become paramount.

In the wake of the September 11 tragedy, there has been an increased focus on corporate disaster recovery, including a greater scrutiny by regulators and compliance officers. The liast Coast blackout served to highlight the impact to businesses of not being able to access their systems and files. And with the addition of new regulatory mandates, corporations are feeling the pressure to find effective solutions to their image archiving needs.

WHIRLPOOLCHOOSESTO OUTSOURCE

In March 2002, Whirlpool Corporation's Cash Claims and Credit Department selected JPMorgan Chase as its wholesale lockbox provider. As the world's leading manufacturer and marketer of major home appliances, with annual sales of over $11 billion, Whirlpool relies on long-term, online access to images of its lockbox items.

Whirlpool's previous lockbox provider had given forty-five days of online access to images, after which time they were sent CD-ROM archives each month. "While this was clearly more efficient than retaining boxes of copies of physical checks and remittance advices, we quickly discovered that the six CDs we received each month were also problematic," said Heide Briggs, national account credit advisor lor Whirlpool. "Our credit representatives had to search through what rapidly became an expanding collection of CDs, just to find a particular image. This proved to be extremely time-consuming and costly."

JPMorgan's lockbox platform stores images in i-VAUIT!, the bank's enterprise content management service. Whirlpool gained 24/7 online access to its images lor up to ten years, with the immediate impact of improved productivity and customer service. The solution proved to be more cost-effective than archiving images on microfilm or CD, and it mitigated user fees associated with ill-house software. Whirlpool realized further savings typically associated with the physical on-site/oll-site storage oi critical documents, and the costs surrounding shipment of those documents nationally and globally.

DECENTRALIZED IMAGE ACCESS

After the integration of the new lockbox system, Whirlpool approached J!'Morgan and asked il they could also load two years of CDs containing 250,000 checks from their previous lockbox provider. JPMorgan was able to convert those images and load them to the system as well. The result improved search capability, subsequently saving credit representatives at Whirlpool from having to search two different types of media when researching claims. "The productivity improvement was simply dramatic," said Briggs. Where it had previously taken between ten minutes to an hour to find an image, they can now be retrieved in seconds. "I can't tell you how thrilled the credit reps were to actually be able to rely on obtaining those images versus hit-or-miss searches through a CD, or pouring through boxes," added Briggs.

Decentralized access allows greater integration across departments at Whirlpool, helping to further reduce data migration issues. By choosing an outsourced solution, Whirlpool was also able to achieve the benefits of full business continuity and disaster recovery capabilities. The system offers a number safeguards to ensure privacy and confidentiality. Business continuity and disaster recovery is provided through dual-site "hot" backup whereby documents housed at one of the two archive sites (set 1500 miles apart) are backed up by a duplicate set at the other. The archive also has a Web-based, multitiered security administration module.

The advantages of storing both lockbox images Irom CDs, and lockbox checks together in i-VAULT! prompted Whirlpool's Credit Department to evaluate the relative costs and benelits of its existing document image system. Whirlpool's existing system stored credit applications, security agreements with trade partners and financial statements. "The expense of our existing soltvvare licensing fees, along with a pending expensive software upgrade prompted us to look at the significant savings we would achieve as a result ol employing JPMorgan's archive solution," explained Briggs. "By eliminating the need to maintain the technology and specialized technical resources in-house, we avoided a sizeable capital outlay."

The new system has enabled Whirlpool to set up an unlimited number of users with access to documents from any of the company's three separate U.S. Credit Department locations. Providing convenient and timely access to documents to end users was critical to improved efficiency and customer service. An added benefit from digital imaging was the virtual elimination of lost documents.