National Business Systems (NBS)
Compart software and NBS help banks reduce statement costs, strengthen relationships
In the competitive world of banking, growth and profits are harder to achieve than ever before. Minnesota-based National Business Systems (NBS) is giving banks a powerful way to drive process efficiencies and cost savings by addressing the opportunities within statement operations. A further benefit is improved statement communications for stronger customer relationship management (CRM).
NBS offers complete document management services including digital imaging, scanning, data capture, database management, high speed laser printing, inserting, mailing, web presentment and archiving. Customers include financial institutions, government agencies, manufacturers, utilities and marketers.
Put simply, NBS eliminates the hassle of getting statements out. By outsourcing statement production and distribution, banks, especially small to mid-sized operations, can streamline this critical process and make life easier for stretched internal operations and IT departments. Using its professional data experience, state-of-the-art operational resources and software tools like DocBridge Mill from Compart Software, NBS helps banks drive down costs, simplify workflow, and use statements and other transactional documents to broaden and deepen customer relationships.
Advantages of Outsourcing Statement Production
Banks that outsource statement production to NBS avoid the capital expense of buying, leasing and maintaining printing and inserting equipment. They solve the problem of constantly re-staffing operators for production equipment. Many banks can capture savings of 20 to 30 percent by outsourcing these functions. Yet, they still maintain control over the documents and their content. NBS becomes an extension of the organization, while the banks are freed to focus on opportunities in the financial marketplace.
Outsourcing dramatically reduces statement-related manual labor. At one bank, twelve fulltime employees handled printing and hand inserting of all statements. By transferring production and inserting to NBS, the bank eliminated one fulltime position and repurposed other employees to other areas without adding to the total payroll. As a further benefit, production and mailing cycles have been shortened or eliminated. Before, work was spread over eight mailing cycles. Now these are down to two per month. Printing expenses were reduced by more than half.
Growth through CRM
--- PICTURE: DocBridge Mil - customer relationship management (CRM) has emerged as a critical strategy for the financial industry ---
Bank marketers know they can find new revenue at lower cost by expanding relationships with current customers. Ongoing customer relationship management (CRM) has emerged as a critical strategy for the financial industry, and use of variable messaging in statements is a successful CRM practice. Not only is it more cost-effective to reach existing customers, banks already have data that can be tapped for selective inserting and variable messaging in regular statements. For example, while a retirement-related promotion might be appropriate to an older customer, another might be more attracted to a first home loan offer.
The statement is one of the best ways for banks to reach customers on a consistent basis. However, the inability to manage data is a stumbling block to greater statement utility and more effective CRM. Legacy systems and proprietary software prevent banks from maximizing the value of their statements as relationship tools. Small to mid-sized banks are especially strapped to justify modification of their data infrastructure or expand IT staffs to accommodate variable data applications.
With data management from NBS and DocBridge Mill software, bank operations and marketing can collaborate to drive more value from statements as communication vehicles. It is possible to achieve sophisticated, relevant messaging, add color, and use digital printing technology to do more with statements than was possible with in-house production. This helps justify the decision to outsource to experts like NBS.
NBS helps banks do more with their data. Using CRM tools, they can do selective messaging ensuring the right message is sent to the right customer, either within the statement itself or through selective inserting. Selective messaging helps banks maintain regulatory compliance more easily. DocBridge Mill lets NBS repurpose financial data so it can be used for personalized messaging, postal sorting, and selective inserting. Data and statements can be reformatted for better branding consistency and appeal. The statement can become something that makes a bank stand out in the crowded financial marketplace.
Delivering Immediate Benefits
One bank was limited by the outdated appearance of its statements and by inefficient production processes. The bank corporation was actually comprised of 25 banks, and each did its own printing. Documents were output without any ability to customize or modify the layout, and other problems plagued the process as well. Further inefficiency resulted when the corporate data center pushed print data out to each of its member banks for local printing, inserting and mailing. By mailing individually, the banks lacked volume for postal discounts, and each statement was sent at the highest first class rate. The bank couldn’t take advantage of postal discounts without purchasing new sorting software from its existing vendor and acquiring inserting hardware. Centralization of statement processing and production wasn’t feasible. It meant a huge investment in assets and at least a six-month ramp up for training and implementation. Payback would come slowly, if at all.
Using Compart’s DocBridge Mill software, NBS helped this bank reduce labor, print and postage costs and achieve more manageable legacy statements. With DocBridge Mill software, NBS improved statement appearance, increased postal discounts and eliminated labor-intensive processes. The bank immediately saved $36,000 in postage and avoided another $125,000 expense by not needing infrastructure to centralize the production process.
More Usable Financial Data
NBS found DocBridge Mill software was very strong at converting documents and spooled print output into more functional content and data, so users can modify, optimize and output to practically any device or system. As a service bureau faced with all types of applications and customer jobs, the automatic separation, splitting, merging, modifying and extracting content in both batch and transactional workflows was very compelling to NBS. The software is so versatile, it also provides automatic classification, indexing, barcoding and impositioning.
Before, the bank’s legacy software produced composed customer financial statements without regarding to postal sorting or user friendly formatting. Now, using DocBridge Mill software, NBS takes output in a PDF format from the old software and extracts the address to CASS and PAVE systems to optimize the postal processing. DocBridge mill software also interrogates the PDF input file to separate statement text from cancelled check images. An output file is created in a simple text format, so copy can be easily imported for re-composition, and check image pages (named by account number) can be recombined as a more effective communications document.
Maximizing Marketing Value of Statements
The marketing appeal of a bank statement is that it will be opened and read. By reformatting, personalized messages can be included without incurring additional production cost, further enhancing the statement’s appeal. The bank’s statements are now impressive examples of successful execution “transpromo” documents that combine relevant messaging with transactional content.
DocBridge Mill made the statement data stream usable for marketing campaigns, so the bank could take its marketing to a new level. NBS can easily split, modify, reconstruct and presort data to help banks create documents that are more appealing and cost-effective. One result is significant postal savings, from 41 to 33 cents per piece, as well as an improved look and greater marketing value for statements.
Time to Market in No Time
Statement cycles can’t be delayed, so it was important to get everything in place quickly, and Compart contributed to a successful transition to outsourcing. “What was challenging was the opportunity relative to the timeline,” said NBS Director of Software Development, Rick Scherping. “Compart supplied a turnkey package, and we essentially just run the software without concerns about compatibility and integration.”
As a result, adoption and ROI have come rapidly. Scherping also anticipates speed enhancements, functional ease and processing reliability because of DocBridge Mill software. “Support was also a deciding factor in Compart’s favor. Compart responded very quickly, usually solving any problems within a day.”
New Business Opportunities for NBS
For NBS, key benefits of DocBridge Mill software are new client acquisition and revenue generation. As a result of the successful initiative, NBS saw an opportunity to help other bank customers upgrade their basic statements, while drastically reducing production and postage costs. With expanded data capabilities enabled by DocBridge Mill, NBS can capture more business from banks needing easier statement reformatting and reduced postage costs. “This solution opens up a new billion dollar market opportunity for NBS,” said NBS President Joe Tafs.
“The solution is ideal for small to mid-sized banks now struggling with manual processes to prepare monthly statement mailings, and paying the highest postage per unsorted piece,” added Tafs. “It creates new opportunities for NBS in services that realize more savings and expand marketing efforts for our bank customers.”