Bank Boston

BankBoston is the 15th-largest bank holding company in the United States. It serves over 2 million customers at over 650 offices in 50 states. The Bank's major businesses include retail and small business banking, consumer lending, and the private bank. In June 1996 it acquired Boston Bancorp and BayBanks, which increased its assets to over $64 billion and global employment to over 25,000.

Paper flow

BankBoston has a centralized accounts payable department that receives over 3,000 invoices per day from the bank's nationwide offices. Once the invoices are approved, they are forwarded with supporting documentation to the accounts payable department for processing.

The invoices are then manually batched, processed, and a reimbursement check is cut during the next scheduled check run. When exceptions occur, exception invoices are identified and the research needed to identify the discrepancy begins.

The Problem

BankBoston realized that manually processing the thousands of invoices received by the accounting department had became costly and extremely slow. And the BayBanks merger doubled the accounts payable volume.

After the merger, the accounts payable staff found themselves spending more time just searching for and retrieving files in an effort to answer questions and process exception invoices as quickly as possible. They also had to handle an increase in telephone calls from outside vendors and department heads inquiring about disputed charges on invoices.

Processing stretched from hours into days, delaying the processing and payment of the invoice even further. Time, money, and people needed to complete the researching process became unacceptable. And the impact on customer service became eroded.

The Solution: Ascent Capture

The project group selected Kofax Ascent Capture software. The document imaging project team began installing and customizing the accounts payable system in late February and finished by summer. They installed two Ascent Capture scanning stations and four Ascent Capture indexing stations networked to an NT server. Invoices are fed into the system using Bell & Howell scanners, and the documents are stored on Hewlett-Packard optical disks.

Within three months of system implementation, the accounts payable department is handling double the invoice volume with no increase in staff. The team is now working on installing a "find and file" system for BankBoston trust offices in the Bahamas.

Advantages and Savings

The advantages and savings have been significant:
     o      Time-consuming manual processing of invoices has been eliminated.
     o        Inquiries regarding customer service issues take minutes, not days.
     o      Accounts payable department can immediately access invoices.
     o      Time to process exception invoices has significantly decreased.
   o      Clerks began scanning and indexing within hours of the Ascent
          Capture installation, enabling rapid system implementation.
     o     Quick access to scanned invoices has improved outside vendor
          relationships and customer service.