Financial Services Company Achieves Digital Transformation with Alfresco Cloud Migration

The Challenge: Modernizing an Infrastructure with a Mountain of Documents

The company’s IBM CMOD system needed modernization to align with the company’s broader cloud-first and API-driven technology strategy.  Key drivers for change included the high run-rate costs of the existing environment, scalability limitations that impacted performance, and slow document retrieval times affecting customer service efficiency.  The company’s inability to enforce manual data deletion and retention policies meant the repository grew unchecked.  It contained over a billion documents and hindered effective data governance.

The company knew there was an opportunity to modernize its content repository.  It involved transforming and moving diverse document formats to Hyland Software’s Alfresco, including PDF, AFP, and line data reports, while ensuring data integrity during conversion.

Results and Impact

The company selected Alfresco, drawn by its modern cloud architecture and comprehensive APIs that facilitated easier integration. The migration to Alfresco delivered substantial results across the board. Financially, the project convincingly demonstrated the business case for reducing operational costs compared to the IBM CMOD system. Operationally, the new platform dramatically improved efficiency; enhanced search capabilities allowing customer service representatives to locate documents faster, reducing turnaround times. Alfresco’s APIs proved remarkably easy to integrate, enabling IT teams to connect other systems and applications swiftly, sometimes within hours for proof-of-concept work.

Crawford Technologies: A Key Partner in Transformation

Crawford Technologies emerged as an indispensable partner in this complex migration and digital transformation, collaborating closely with the financial services company and Hyland.  Its upfront planning, especially around security models and data migration strategies, proved valuable early in the engagement. Crawford Technologies’ software played a pivotal role in processing the vast document volumes, expertly managing the conversion of various legacy formats, breaking down reports into manageable individual PDFs for ingestion into Alfresco and auditing the entire process, ensuring that all documents were effectively migrated.  Its technology was integral in scaling the process, transforming and migrating 70 million documents a month while managing day-forward ingestion loads.

Data Governance and User Experience Improvements

Implementing Alfresco delivered robust data governance. By setting document retention policies during the migration planning phase, the company reduced the initial migration load by millions of documents. Alfresco also provided the ability to assign specific retention codes aligned with corporate policy. This, coupled with its capability to break down enormous reports into individual documents, enabled granular control and finally allowed for the purging of outdated content—a critical deficiency of the legacy system.

The user experience also saw substantial improvements. Business users praised the customizable search interface and the convenience of single sign-on.  The cloud architecture provided essential scalability, effortlessly managing volume peaks such as quarterly reporting cycles.

Looking Ahead: AI and Future Innovations

The successful migration has set the stage for future innovations. To further enhance business processes and user experience, the company is considering leveraging AI to strengthen data governance and security.  This forward-thinking approach will ensure that the company continues to optimize its operations and deliver exceptional service to its customers

Conclusion: The Foundation of the Future

The migration from IBM CMOD to Hyland Alfresco represents a significant achievement in large-scale digital transformation. Initially driven by the need for cost reduction and modernization, the project delivered far-reaching benefits, including enhanced operational efficiency, improved data governance, superior user experience, and greater strategic agility. With support from key partners, Crawford Technologies and Hyland, the financial services company has established a future-ready document management platform. This transformation streamlines operations and positions the company to support ongoing innovation and growth in the dynamic financial services industry. Beyond the technology, Crawford Technologies and Hyland were lauded as true partners, working together to provide crucial support, problem-solving expertise, and a deep commitment that helped navigate the pr