Viewpointe's View on Outsourcing Check Image Archives
Viewpointe has released research on the decision-making processes associated with outsourcing check image archives - including an industry whitepaper titled "In-House or Outsourced Image Archive Services: Plotting Position and Course'' that was developed with the independent research firm Financial Insights. Viewpointe has also released a Customer Experience Profile with BB&T Corporation chronicling the bank's results derived from outsourcing its check image archive to Viewpointe.
"We realized fairly quickly that we could not build an archive with the technical complexity, scale, performance and within our time frame that was on par with the Viewpointe archive,'' said Joe Brannan, BB&T executive vice president and processing services manager. ``Viewpointe is the only service provider that could offer the level of security, speed and disaster recovery protection in line with our strategic initiatives.''
Today, BB&T stores 100 percent of its primary check images in the archive, and experienced zero downtime during the transition. BB&T currently exchanges and stores millions of images daily through Viewpointe -- well beyond even the greatest capacity of its original proprietary archive. BB&T estimates that its potential cost savings reaches into the millions of dollars.
The decision-making process experienced by BB&T is not unlike the other financial institutions that we evaluated in our study,'' said Financial Insights analyst Aaron McPherson. ``We found that most forward-looking institutions understand that there are long-term strategic benefits to outsourcing their check image archive to a trusted provider, especially as check volumes continue to decline.''
Strategically, BB&T concluded that the considerable financial, technical and labor investments needed to build an in-house archive would take resources away from key business drivers ultimately requiring the investment of additional resources. BB&T, like other financial institutions, found itself under increasing pressure to reduce resources and infrastructure costs. Sharing costs with other institutions and outsourcing technology investments, such as an image archive, can often alleviate these costs. This way, organizations pay only for what they use, eliminate redundant resources and dedicate more time to their strategic business objectives.
There was never a question of whether or not Viewpointe could deliver the quality of service we required; they were already doing it for the largest banks and check volumes in the country,'' said Brannan. ``We knew that outsourcing was the right decision for us...and it's probably the right decision for many other institutions out there that would prefer to grow their business, rather than their in-house archive.''
Add your comment... (note that all comments are reviewed before they're published)