Innovative Scanning System Enriches Swiss Bank

Digitized document imaging streamlines Basler Kantonalbank's workflow, improves customer service

Paper should be used to print money, not keep records of it. What might have seemed like a strange perspective to Basler Kantonalbank (BKB) a year ago is now the company's new attitude. By integrating a digital document imaging storage system, the bank shredded its reliance on a physical document archive. "After scanning all of our records into the new database, we destroyed a lot of our paper documents," said Jean Doescher of BKB. "We threw away enough paper files to create space for an enlargement of our computing center."

BKB opened in 1899 in northwest Switzerland as a full-service financial company for local and international customers. Today, the company has 18 community branches in Basel, a Swiss town of 250,000 people, and two branches in Zurich and Olten. As a local operating bank aiming for stability rather than growth, BKB depends on consistent daily routines internally to make the best use of its employees and externally to surpass customer expectations.

Records management is critical to both customers and employees in the banking business. With more than $14 billion in assets for 250,000 customers around the world, the bank's files swell to carefully track an average of 50,000 transactions daily ranging from credit contracts to basic withdrawals. Yet, because of the complicated logistics BKB used to rely on to share its millions of paper records with a 700-person workforce spread throughout different locations, this effort was generating more hassle than help. Paper-based processes confronted BKB employees with a daunting paper trail. To see anything in the archive, the old-fashioned workflow required an employee to submit a request for a specific document then wait for another employee to find it in an optical archive and finally e-mail it back. The process was time consuming and did not earn high satisfaction marks from employees and customers.

To streamline its workflow, the company realized it had to integrate modern big-business technology into its century-old commitment to small-business customer care.