For years, decades really, we have been storing electronic customer communications: invoices, statements, bills, etc., because we had to. The documents are stored in their original “print image” format to comply with regulations and to provide an exact copy of what was originally sent to the customer. This “snapshot in time” of customer activity and history has value far beyond simply responding to a customer inquiry for an old invoice.
There’s Gold in Them Thar Hills
The documents you are storing include transaction details, opening and closing balances, minimum payment amounts, interest charges, changes to the terms and conditions, and other important details of your relationship with your customers.
All of these details only come together in one place and that is within these regulatory compliant communications to your customers. That is why the document repository is often referred to as the “single source of the truth”. More significantly, this is why the information contained within these documents is a vital source of data for your Big Data and Analytic initiatives.
The data trapped within decades of stored statements and invoices is a treasure trove of information that can be used to analyze customer purchases, buying patterns and payment cycles. When combined with available demographic information, meaningful programs, campaigns and promotions can be developed.
Easily meet Regulatory Requests
A large bank needed to provide legal proof of its compliance with banking regulations by providing a comprehensive analysis of its previous 10 years of customer credit card statements. They needed an automated solution to identify, extract and repurpose the necessary information in order to meet its compliance obligations. CrawfordTech software was deployed to retrieve statements archived in AFP format, and then identify and extract all of the required data, outputting it to XML.
Once extracted, the statements were pushed through an audit system so that the data could be analyzed for potential overcharges and over-payments. Deploying this solution has allowed the bank to proactively address any mistakes it may have made and provide proof of compliance to regulators, leading to increased customer satisfaction and avoiding potentially costly fines.
Define it, Mine it, Activate it
Using business rules that are easily defined with a graphical user interface, Crawford Technologies Data Extractor mines all of the pertinent data from documents and creates CSV, XML or other data formats for easy inclusion in your Big Data and Analytics initiatives.
As part of the IBM World of Watson conference, being held from Oct. 24 to Oct. 27, their blog will be discussing the importance of data and analytics. Take a look to learn more about how you can turn the static data trapped in your content repository into actionable information.
