Franklin American Mortgage Company (FAMC), based in Franklin, TN is an emerging leader in the mortgage industry. It serves small to large lenders through its Correspondent Lending Division; mortgage brokers through its Wholesale Division; and consumers through its Retail Division’s 35 branch offices.
 
As a mortgage company that has been consistently recognized by state and local organizations for business growth and contributions to its communities, we wanted to continue this pattern, enhance our customer service and deliver more results using IT and automation.
 
To do so, FAMC’s IT team began evaluating ways to create more efficiencies in managing diverse loan documents that are generated by offices across the U.S. What we needed was a system that could leverage our mixed fleet of Multi-Function Peripherals (MFPs), integrate into the current document management systems, deliver a high level of security, and adapt easily across the enterprise. We wanted to eliminate the individual silos of automation we had throughout the company and develop more integrated communications.
 
Leveraging Best-In-Class Data Capture Technology  

To maintain our competitive position, we looked to leverage the use of data capture technology to reduce costs by at least 20%, increase the efficiency of our staff - saving them an estimated 20 hours week by being able to automate their processes. We were able to enhance customer service and provide more security for loan documents by eliminating manual processes.
 
FAMC’s advanced IT infrastructure includes the usual front and back office applications and several document management specific technologies to support mortgage lending functions. These include multiple systems for document imaging, storage, archive, retention, process automation, security and output management.
 
FAMC looked to centralize all customer classes – commercial, wholesale and retail – into one technology solution to enable document capture, routing, and integration to multiple systems. The solution had to leverage an existing investment in MFPs as a document on-ramp to other business processes.  It had to be easy to use and flexible in a rapidly changing market and regulatory environment.   It had to be a process-driven solution to ensure consistent business practices no matter where documents were scanned, and seamlessly connect to the firm‘s document storage systems.
 
The technology could not require extensive reconfiguration or employee training when FAMC needed to respond to changing regulatory or market demands. And, it had to leverage FAMC’s privilege structures and provide audit traceability for all documents passing through the system. Finally, the requirements included recognition of users and the ability to automatically pre-fetch useful process data that would minimize manual data entry.
 
Managing and Integrating 67 Devices

FAMC chose AutoStore from Notable Solutions to meet the specifications.   “The tipping point for choosing AutoStore was that it completely fit the need,” says William Figueroa, Manager IT Operations at Franklin American Mortgage Company. “It met all our criteria with its versatility and the ability to more fully leverage the capabilities of our existing mixed fleet of MFPs. We’re now able to route documents within geographically dispersed departments and ultimately into our central document management system for storage.”
 
AutoStore integrates with 67 devices, including 47 Ricoh MFPs and 20 Fujitsu network scanners. It applies indexing information to scanned documents while predictive intelligence recognizes users and automatically pre-fetches useful processing data. “This process extends the business process to the front panel of the devices while minimizing data entry for the staff, yet gives us all the metadata we need,” William adds.  
 
Each retail loan may generate 100 or more pieces of paper from credit information to title documents. In the Correspondent Division, there are many different sets of paper collateral and   the Underwriting Group often manages up to six or seven document types at one time. AutoStore indexes these various document types so that underwriters, closers and other staff have a real time view of the loan status when they log in. 
 
Long-Term Benefits and Efficiencies

“The positive experience for the FAMC staff translated to a high adoption rate and 100% compliance with business processes,” says William.   “The adoption of AutoStore was successful because it helped people do their jobs better and more efficiently.”
 
Easy maintenance is a major factor in the success of the deployment too. “It didn’t have a huge ramp up time, it didn’t cost a lot of money and it’s not a problem to maintain. But equally important, we also have a more controlled and secure environment. We know who’s scanning and we’re saving time, money and reducing human error involved with manual data entry,” says William.
 
One significant ROI benefit, we singled out is the elimination of shipping documents between branches and headquarters. We’re probably saving about $12,000 to $15,000 a month in shipping costs alone.
 
AutoStore is currently used in the lending departments, but we see advantages for areas of the firm like Accounting and Human Resources, both paper rich environments, and we intend to investigate potentially expanding AutoStore for use in other departments as well. 

Michael Rhoden is VP of IT at Franklin American Mortgage Company.