BeneSys

“We didn’t have room to store all of the paper files in our Troy facility without paying extra rent, and the files could not be stored in boxes because the documents need to be accessible. We also had concerns about moving single instances of documents,” says Steve Kokotovich, Director of Production and Support Services for BeneSys. “We needed to come up with a solution that could help us minimize the impact on the rent we’re paying for the Troy facility, provide better disaster protection for the documents, and keep the documents accessible.”

“We currently scan hundreds of documents a month into the system,” says Kokotovich.

Moving its pension and annuity documents to the company intranet using the KnowledgeLake products and SharePoint Server helped BeneSys address the most pressing issues related to its paper documents. Migrating the paper documents to electronic format allows users to access information in the pension and annuity documents much faster than before. The company has increased the level of protection it can give to documents that contain sensitive information. The solution also helps the company reduce the space—and related rent—that would be required to store paper-based files.

Faster Access to Documents

Deploying an electronic document management solution gives BeneSys users much faster, easier access to information than they had in the past.

“Putting our documents on the SharePoint-based intranet helps us improve the productivity of our employees—and provide better member service,” says Kokotovich. “For example, say a union member calls to check on the status of his pension application process. Our BeneSys pension coordinator navigates to the SharePoint site, keys in the search, and pulls up all the documents relating to that member as PDF files in a matter of seconds. In the past, this might have required significantly more effort to locate the documents before we could get back to the customer.”

More Protection for Information

By putting its documents online, BeneSys has greater control over the safety of information in the event of disaster. Instead of having just a single copy of important documents, the company can make backups for safe storage and archiving.

“The electronic document management solution has improved our security profile and backup and disaster recovery planning, giving us the ability to fully recover from a disaster,” says Kokotovich. “It also enhances our ability to satisfy more client requirements, certain federal regulations, and our own corporate standards. With the help of KnowledgeLake, ImageSoft, and SharePoint Server, we’ve improved access to important information, enhanced the security of our data, and provided a tool for employees to help them serve our customers more effectively.”

Reduced Space - and Rent

Eliminating the need for the extra physical space that was required in the past for file cabinets is allowing BeneSys to reduce the rent it has to pay by thousands of dollars annually.

“Digitizing our pension and annuity documents using the KnowledgeLake products and SharePoint Server 2007 saves us thousands of dollars annually in rent because we’ve eliminated square footage that would have been required for our file cabinets,” says Kokotovich.

He notes that the paper-based documentation accounted for a large portion of the physical space needed to run that part of the company’s business.

“Overall, it let us reduce the space we need for our pension and annuity department by about 70 percent. Going forward, the solution will allow us to reclaim enough square footage to accommodate company growth without incurring additional rent.”