Seattle Financial Group

Seattle Financial Group (SFG) is the parent organization for several companies that provide different kinds of financial products and services such as real estate financing, commercial and consumer banking, and insurance. Its business units include Seattle Bank, Seattle Mortgage Company, Seattle Escrow, Seattle Capital and Seattle Insurance Group. Headquartered in Seattle, SFG operates throughout the Puget Sound area and has affiliated mortgage offices in other parts of Washington and in California, Nevada and Oregon.

For years SFG had used Laserfiche technology to store its scanned documents. However, the company lost this capability when a business unit that had the contract with Laserfiche was sold, leaving SFG without a scanning repository. As the company evaluated its options, it sought strategies that would provide for integrating documentation into other systems.

"Rather than redeploying a stand-alone document capture system, we wanted to find a broader document management system that could help us improve communications and collaboration throughout our operations," says Derin Bluhm, Chief Information Officer for Seattle Financial Group.

The company wanted to integrate scanned documents into its Microsoft® Office SharePoint Server® 2007 system, which SFG deployed in January, 2008. SFG also hoped to implement features such as meta-data tagging for searches, stronger user controls for document searches and enhanced document security integrated with Active Directory.

Seattle Financial Group decided to work with KnowledgeLake, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, to provide document imaging, capture and workflow solutions that integrate with SharePoint Server 2007. KnowledgeLake solutions extend the Electronic Content Management (ECM) capabilities of Office SharePoint Server so businesses such as SFG can streamline their operations, reduce shipping costs and achieve regulatory compliance using familiar Microsoft products. KnowledgeLake products include KnowledgeLake Capture Server, KnowledgeLake Capture, KnowledgeLake Branch Capture, KnowledgeLake Imaging for SharePoint and KnowledgeLake Connect.

SFG deployed KnowledgeLake Capture and KnowledgeLake Imaging for SharePoint solutions in its Human Resources department for managing employee files, and in Seattle Escrow for handling escrow documents. The HR solutions allows secure on-line workflow for collecting and updating employee personnel file information. For the escrow files, barcodes are printed on cover sheets, allowing paper copies of files to be scanned and then bulk loaded to a workgroup scanner. An SFG line-of-business application integrates with the KnowledgeLake Capture engine to perform lookups on meta-data associated with the barcodes so the escrow business can easily index the scanned documents for future searches. Quality assurance checks are built in to the scanning process to ensure documents are properly filed.

SFG began implementing the solution in 2008. The KnowledgeLake technology is used to automatically export images and associated indexing data to the SFG SharePoint Server repository. The company is gradually emptying out rooms full of paper documents, scanning them and uploading them to the network. From there, documents can be found on the company's SharePoint Server-based intranet using the new streamlined search capability.

Using the KnowledgeLake document imaging and capture solutions along with Office SharePoint Server 2007 is delivering a number of benefits to Seattle Financial Group. The company is converting paper files into electronic documents that can be located quickly and shared easily. The solution is freeing up valuable office space, and is helping SFG increase the safety of its document library in the event of a disaster. The technology is also changing the way SFG does business by providing a much more streamlined, efficient means for employees to access important documents.

Reduced Paper

The KnowledgeLake solutions used in tandem with SharePoint Server 2007 is helping SFG dramatically reduce the amount of paper files that it keeps in physical locations.

"The KnoweldgeLake solutions is helping us take rooms full of boxes containing archived documents and convert them into electronic records," says Bluhm.

Once documents are digitized, SFG shreds the paper files, thus freeing up hundreds of square feet of valuable office space that can be used for other purposes. It also saves the company time and money over the long term by eliminating the manual labor required to print, box, store and -when necessary- relocate paper documents.

Greater Security

The KnowledgeLake solution also helps increase the security of SFG documents that contain sensitive customer and financial information.

"From a disaster recovery and business continuity perspective, the ability to take our paper documents and turn them into electronic records is incredibly valuable." says Bluhm. "Storing paper documents creates a real risk if there is flooding, fire or some other kind of disaster. Using the KnowledgeLake solutions, we now replicate the electronic files to a backup site where we will continue to have access to business critical files in the event of a disaster."

Improved Productivity

The new document management solution is also helping improves business processes, resulting in better employee productivity. Features like the meta-data tagging and well defined indexing make it quick and easy to find documents.

"Our company made a strategic decision to focus on Microsoft technologies and SharePoint as our core communication and collaboration platform," says Bluhm. "The KnowledgeLake platform provides seamless marriage for document capture, enhanced tagging and greater accessibility to documents for employees. At the same time, it enhances security management for our documents. It's a winning combination for the Seattle Financial Group."