Bank of Oklahoma Financial Handles Growth with RightFax and HP

Bank of Oklahoma (BOK) Financial Corporation employees used to discuss whose turn it was to stand by the fax machine. Processing thousands of loan applications, fund transfers and other financial documents required hours to feed papers for transmission, wait for confirmation, then organize the piles for filing. In 1997, BOK cut time—and stress—to manage communication by installing enterprise faxing from Captaris RightFax. In the years since, the solution continues to return substantial cost and productivity benefits.

BACKGROUND
BOK Financial Corporation (www.bokf.com) is a multi-bank holding company based in Tulsa, Okla., with offices in Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, New Mexico and Texas. Assets of the organization total $8 billion.

BOK’s trust company subsidiaries are responsible for $15 billion in assets. TransFund, the company’s electronic funds transfer network, has machines installed in a nine-state area and services more than 300 financial institutions and 1.6 million cardholders. BOK mortgage companies have offices in five states, with a total portfolio of $7.1 billion.

THE CHALLENGE
To contact customers across six states, BOK needed a reliable and secure communications medium, and found server based faxing best suited its needs. The trouble: BOK employees relied on a combination of slow fax machines and modems to send critical and confidential information to clients.

Billy Wilson, a BOK network specialist, knew the financial institution’s fax situation was not satisfactory. “In my eyes, we needed a faxing technology that would fit a six point criteria,” said Wilson. “First and foremost, it had to be secure: Because the materials we fax deal with personal and business finances, security was my primary concern.” Wilson was also looking for a fax solution that saved employees time, offered flexibility to perform with a variety of applications and maintained reliability at a reasonable cost with minimal administration.

The fax machines and modems in place didn’t meet any of the six point criteria. “The modems created a potential security issue that I wasn’t willing to risk,” said Wilson. Additionally, Wilson and others in his department spent considerable time servicing fax machines and individual computer modems at the bank’s various locations. BOK employees found themselves standing at fax machines waiting to send a fax, or trying to re-send a fax when the original transmission didn’t go through. Lastly, the cost of paper, toner and other supplies, as well as the expense of adding more phone lines for modems, was expanding far beyond a reasonable limit.
 
THE SOLUTION
To solve the faxing issues at BOK, Wilson researched numerous solutions. He found Captaris RightFax, the leading enterprise fax and e-document delivery solution, was the only choice that fulfilled BOK’s required criteria—and then some. RightFax has become a BOK standard since the first server installation in 1997. The company operates five servers in four locations and close to 900 users have found RightFax to be a mission-critical component of their daily work. “Once they have RightFax, they wouldn’t think of giving it up,” Wilson said.

“With RightFax, we now process several loans in the time it used to take to process just one.” Billy Wilson

Security—Wilson opted to use direct inward dial (DID) routing, which ensured a secure environment for the company’s confidential faxes. Rather than piling up on fax machines to be easily misplaced, incoming pages are automatically delivered to the intended recipient who then has an electronic storage of important documents.

Flexibility—RightFax allows BOK employees to handle documents sitting at their desks, rather than standing in line at the fax machines. “RightFax was the only solution we found that could do such a wide range of faxing with a wide range of applications,” Wilson said. The solution fax-enables BOK’s Microsoft applications, Iris mainframe system and other solutions. In fact, RightFax integration capabilities introduced BOK to Hewlett Packard Digital Senders, scanning devices for integrating paper documents into messaging and document management systems. “Using the solutions together has substantially increased our faxing capabilities,” Wilson said. “We’re able to scan images with HP and fax them quickly with RightFax.” BOK uses approximately 12 HP Digital Senders.

Productivity—By sending and receiving faxes at their desktops, employees save time and increase productivity, according to Wilson. What used to take hours now takes a few minutes. “With RightFax, we now process several loans in the time it used to take to process just one,” Wilson said. BOK plans to integrate RightFax with Microsoft Outlook and Wilson predicts the ability to manage faxes from an email Inbox will lead to even higher productivity returns. For now, RightFax speeds BOK’s response time to customers and partners. Wilson summarized: “Saved time can be a competitive edge. With RightFax, you get that time.”

Reliability—Wilson places RightFax in a unique group: “It’s one of the few products I’ve been able to stand firmly behind because it works so well,” he said. “Working in IT, what I love about RightFax is that once you put it out there, it works without babysitting.” RightFax has proven reliable even with a dramatic increase in fax traffic. In 2001, Wilson reported 49,000 pages; 2003 returned almost 180,000 pages for only the first few months of the year. Numbers continue to increase as BOK expands its customer base. “RightFax is superior in handling growth,” Wilson said.

Affordability and Returns—BOK realized a return on its RightFax investment immediately. “The return on the software was immediate,” Wilson said. “We obtained ROI within the first year,” he estimated. As a small part of the equation, Wilson estimated supply savings alone to be thousands of dollars per month.
Manageability—Centralized management of multiple servers significantly reduced the time dedicated to fax maintenance, leaving Wilson and his team to spend time in other business areas. “Also,” Wilson offered, “the support we’ve received from Captaris has been excellent. It is timely and accurate … and RightFax will stay with you until any problems are resolved. That is worth a lot.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Captaris is a leading provider of business information delivery solutions that integrate, process and automate the flow of messages, data and documents. Captaris produces a suite of proven products and services, in partnership with leading enterprise technology companies, delivered through a global distribution network. Captaris has installed over 80,000 systems in 44 countries, with 93 of the Fortune 100 using the company's award-winning products and services to reduce costs and increase the performance of critical business information investments. For more information, please contact www.captaris.com or 1.520.320.7000.