Case Study
The Challenges Faced |
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The Enterprise Solution |
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Lowering Cost & Increasing Operational Efficiency - An AKPK and Datamation Success Story
Credit Counselling and Debt Management Agency {Agensi Kaunseling Dan Pengurusan Kredit} (AKPK) is an agency setup by the Central Bank of Malaysia in April 2006 to provide financial counseling and debt management services to the Malaysian public. Being a central bank initiative, AKPK also strives to provide financial education to help individuals take control of their financial situation and appreciate the wise use of credit.
The challenges faced by AKPK
In order to help individuals address their financial difficulties, AKPK counselors provide advice and counseling on personal financial management. For customers who require AKPK Debt Management Program (DMP), the counselors will review their monthly expenditures and loan obligations to determine the net disposable income before they formulate the loan restructuring proposals for individual customers. This process involves the customers having to list down all their expenses and debt obligations in the application forms, of which the information contained therein is subsequently translated into a spreadsheet by the counselors. The AKPK counselors will then need to obtain customers loan information from the customers’ creditors’ i.e. financial institutions via fax and e-mail to perform manual verification and finalize the restructuring proposal. Once the proposal is approved, an offer letter is manually prepared and sent to the customer.
All business processes were handled manually; as a result the turnaround time to process an application averaged between 45 to 60 working days. Although AKPK had a set of well defined standard operating procedures to assist applicants in enrolling into the Debt Management Program (DMP), AKPK’s management knew automation was key to ensure a healthy turnaround time to service increasing number of applicants.
To date, there are 8 AKPK branches across Malaysia. Some of these branches have recorded huge demand for AKPK services. In an effort to help improve the turnaround time taken to process applicant’s enrollment into the Debt Management Program, some cases from high demand branches were transferred to AKPK counselors in other branches to assist with the processing. It became evident that a centralized system was needed to handle this process as manual transfer of cases was time consuming and incurred additional cost.
AKPK’s counselors would often liaise with financial institutions over telephony & fax to obtain applicants’ credit information to support the successful enrollment of an applicant into the Debt Management Program. This process was time consuming and was not efficient in supporting AKPK’s overall objective in reducing the turnaround time to process an application. The necessity for a self serving portal where financial institutions and AKPK could commonly share information became critical.
The number of documents processed grew as the client base became larger and larger. Retrieval of physical documents was time consuming, thus the viable choice was to implement a document management system to ensure scanned images of documents were stored in electronic folders.
Addressing the challenges with an enterprise solution
As AKPK’s challenges started to grow at an exponential rate, Datamation was awarded the project to deploy an enterprise solution capable of improving the processes within AKPK. With that objective, Credit Counseling & Debt Management System (CCDMS) was conceived; using a combination of cutting edge technology from Enterprise software ReadSoft Form Processing and Metastorm Business Process Management (BPM).
Taking manual document processing heads on
The birth of CCDMS paved the way for Data Automation. Applicants could directly submit an application online via AKPK’s web portal. Physical application forms are no longer required to be manually processed by AKPK’s counselors; the forms were fed into a scanner and all vital information was automatically captured into CCDMS using ReadSoft Form Processing. With Metastorm BPM, workflows were built to manage AKPK’s processes and to directly interchange customer’s credit information with Financial Institutions electronically. Customers’ satisfaction and confidence undeniably grew as AKPK’s reputation to assist distress borrowers soared.
Improved Turnaround time
The average turnaround time for customers’ application processing dropped from 60 days to within 30 days, on occasions as fast as 14 working days! With a reputable and proven solution in place, the exponential growth in terms of customers’ application is no longer a concern for AKPK. As of June 2008, there are 15,000 successful applicants enrolled into the Debt Management Program and 40,000 more who have attended AKPK’s counseling sessions. More customers are coming in as awareness of AKPK’s services grew.
Distributed workload improved efficiency
The deployment of a centralized system promoted a unified workforce. AKPK counselors from any branch can review and assess any case captured centrally by CCDMS as the distribution mechanism developed by Metastorm BPM automatically distributed the workload across all users. This further improved the turnaround time in assessing a case as it gave AKPK the ability to distribute the workload evenly.
Zero consumable wastage
With all business processes automated, a reduction in consumables wastage was evident. With financial institutions able to access the self serving portal to retrieve and update applicant’s credit information, there was no longer a need to wait for information via fax or e-mail as everything was made available electronically through CCDMS.
Efficient Collection of Payments
With CCDMS, AKPK customers were provided monthly notification via SMS on payment due date. Counselors were now able to identify customer payment trend and follow up with cases where payments were either short or not made at all efficiently and accurately. With automated reconciliation using CCDMS reconciliation program, AKPK finance division can now produce accurate reports on customers’ payment status with ease. The CCDMS has also enabled AKPK to offer customers to make payment via the Financial Process Exchange (FPX) facility where the customers payment records are processed and updated promptly into the system.
A Secured system
Customers’ information are now processed and stored securely in an Enterprise Relational Database Management System (RDBMS). All document scanned using ReadSoft Form Processing are stored securely on a file server. Branch access to the CCDMS system is only possible via Virtual Private Network (VPN), thus increasing the security for remote access. All transaction processing performed in CCDMS are also audit trailed by Metastorm BPM and stored securely within the database. System users are assured that they are following standard operating procedures as all processes within CCDMS are controlled by Metastorm BPM.
Introducing ViewWise Integrated Document Management System (iDMS)
The introduction of ViewWise Integrated Document Management System complemented CCDMS to provide an end-to-end data automation process. Physical supporting documents provided by the customer are digitized and stored into iDMS. These documents are tagged to the customers profile on CCDMS, allowing counselors to retrieve them in a matter of seconds at the click of a button. Document retrieval time was dramatically reduced; which directly improved the turnaround time to service customers. Every document that is checked in and out of iDMS is audit trailed and controlled by user access rights which eliminated documents potentially being misplaced. Multiple copies of documents were no longer made and kept by individual counselors as everything was stored online. As documents are now stored electronically, backup copies can easily be made by AKPK system administrators to auxiliary media and stored securely on site and off site, which safeguards customer’s vital information from being destroyed in an event of any disaster.
The way forward…
The success with AKPK does not stop here. As new requirements arise, so does the need for the enterprise solution to evolve. CCDMS is built using “best of breed solutions”; which translate to AKPK having the ability to deploy new components as and when required to better service the people that matter most; AKPK’s customers and the means to transform AKPK to a paperless environment.
