The Challenge
Like many organizations around the country, Bremerton Housing Authority (BHA) in Washington state was seeking improvements in efficiency to lower its operating costs. The OnBase enterprise content management (ECM) solution was a key part of keeping BHA’s Contract Management Services (CMS) division meeting the housing authority’s mission.
- CMS involves multiple departments, more than one thousand contracts and tens of thousands of units administered. Here’s a quick snapshot of the numbers:
- Contracts Administered by BHA CMS: 1,438
- Units Administered by CMS: 74,615
- Departments Using OnBase: Contract Management Services, Executive Offices and Information Technology
While OnBase had played an integral role in improving their productivity, BHA needed to capture the documents faster with fewer people. The housing authority turned to the OnBase Advanced Capture solution to reduce staff requirements while still meeting its document management needs.
The Solution
CMS implemented the OnBase solution back in 2004 because paper was becoming overly cumbersome and problematic. Prior to implementing OnBase, staff could only access one file at a time and they had trouble finding documents because they could be misfiled or on someone’s desk, slowing down processes. In addition, they had a whole room dedicated to file cabinets of documents and even that was running out of space.
BHA turned to OnBase to convert its paper documents into electronic files so they could access them quickly, easily and securely. With documents available electronically, staff could refer to previous contract files during contract renewals or reconcile voucher discrepancies. Not only did this solution support good decision-making and accuracy, it also improved client service with faster responses to inquiries. In addition, CMS captured all of its invoices and reports, making them available through a secure web interface for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
By adding OnBase Advanced Capture, CMS now captures images of the content and automatically indexes them by reading and extracting the data on the image. Documents are regularly imported several times a day so the turnaround time is now much quicker and more predictable for the users.
Another important part of the Advanced Capture implementation was its low impact on the IT department. “The process went pretty quickly,” says Business Systems Manager Klayton Kuzminski. “In less than a month, we did discovery and built, tested and deployed the solution.”
The Results
“Challenged by budget cuts, we added OnBase Advanced Capture to our solution. Now, we need 2.5 fewer FTEs focused on capturing documents, so we can save more headcount for serving our clients.” – Klayton Kuzminski, Business Systems Manager
Managing Staff Cuts With Less Impact on Clients
By automatically indexing documents with Advanced Capture, CMS reduced staffing needs for document management, saving headcount for core services delivery. With documents captured more quickly and efficiently, CMS maintains document management with fewer people.
Quicker and More Predictable Document Turnaround
Documents are captured several times per day, giving users access to documents sooner. “With Advanced Capture, we have very good accuracy with only minor exceptions to straight-through processing,” Kuzminski says, “so users have access to documents as soon as they are imported.”
Supports HUD Reporting
With one place to go for information, CMS responds to HUD requests and annual compliance reviews more easily.
Low Impact on IT Resources
Because it’s easily configurable, the implementation of Advanced Capture took less than a month and didn’t require extensive IT resources.
Need a Competitive Advantage? Try the KeyMark Advantage.
At KeyMark, we make it our business to know yours, and we have a distinct, time-tested process for making information easy for you and those you serve. It’s called The KeyMark Advantage, and it covers every facet of business process automation.
