AL Finans chose Nobly and OnBase as IT foundations

As a financing partner within private- and business leasing, factoring and loan financing, AL Finans is subject to strict legal requirements by the authorities.

In order to comply with current legislation and to comply with new legal requirements, AL Finans has chosen the future-proof IT platform OnBase as part of the foundation for the company’s digital workflows, risk classification and document management. Nobly has been responsible for the implementation of OnBase, which has resulted in short response times, releasing of significant personnel resources and strengthened risk classification.

AL Finans operates in a high-transaction environment, where safe and efficient case processing alongside fast response times are crucial for their competitiveness. The decision to step on the digitalisation accelerator resulted in a strong collaboration with the consulting house Nobly in autmn 2020.

“Our approach from the start was a desire for a modern AML system, i.e. an anti-money laundering system. We needed a fine-grained and consistent screening in our onboarding process and our due diligence, ranging from PEP screening and sanction screening of customers and real business owners, to screening terrorist lists, etc. All in order to automatically identify risk classifications and comply with legislation, which is continuously updated. We had a look at different systems that specialized in AML, but our choice quickly fell on OnBase. As a platform, OnBase provides us with a well-oiled engine for handling AML, but is also an integration platform that is integrated with our customer systems. At the same time, OnBase also knew a lot of other things that opened up some new opportunities for us as a business. Therefore, the decision was reasonably easy for us with the many future possibilities for automation,” says Johan Ploug Aagaard, Deputy Director at AL Finans.

The flexibility of OnBase stood the test shortly after the first part of the implementation, with new, stricter legal requirements for reporting citizenship. The addition to the existing risk classification was easy and smooth, as were the other layers of functionality that have subsequently been added to the system.

Saves 2300 hours on manual entries

Risk assessments were previously done manually in Excel, which was a very resource-intensive process. Today, all work processes are digital and automatic when AL Finans receives a loan application. The tailor-made OnBase solution looks up relevant databases, after which a risk classification is automatically produced. Meanwhile, employees can focus their time on more value-creating and customer-focused activities.

The entire optimized process flow has been created in close collaboration between AL Finans and Nobly, and has resulted in considerable time savings:

“If the number of applications that came through in 2020 is our starting point, then we can look forward to saving at least 2300 man-hours per year, only in this first phase of our digitalisation journey with Nobly and OnBase. But one thing is to have saved hours, another thing is that we have achieved uniformity and a higher quality in this work, precisely because it has been digitized. Users are appreciate because they do not have to spend time on manual entries and a lot of manual lookups, but instead can spend time in dialogue and in advising customers. The sooner we can return with an answer, the better – it gives us satisfied customers and of course also competitive advantages. We have become more efficient and can simply run more cases through per. employee, and we can therefore grow the business further with the same number of employees as we have today,” as stated by Johan Ploug Aagaard.

A supplier with industry insight

As Europe’s leading OnBase consulting house, Nobly specializes in business-critical IT solutions for industries including banking, finance and insurance. A position that weighed heavily when AL Finans had to find its future partner.

“Nobly won our trust primarily from their great insight in the industry we are part of, and by virtue of their competencies in the AML area in particular. It is a field that is constantly evolving in our industry, and which can challenge us to execute new legislation quickly. The easier and simpler we can implement regulations, the smoother and faster we are able to service our customers – which is crucial in our industry. This understanding brought Nobly into the collaboration from the start. It was reassuring to sit with a supplier who had insight in both the industry and the requirements we had to live up to, ”explains Johan Ploug Aagaard.

OnBase as a catalyst for digitization

AL Finans has high ambitions for the continued digitalisation of the business, where OnBase will be a central solution.

“Our entire customer archive must be located in OnBase, to provide a 360° customer overview of all relationships, leasing and loan contracts, signed documents, etc. In future projects, we must also build more ongoing due diligence into our risk classifications. When we can continuously screen our customers on various critical parameters, then we also know what risk we are looking into. At the moment, we make risk classifications in connection with the actual onboarding, but we want to make it more dynamic in the upcoming projects, so that the process runs continuously through our entire portfolio. This will mean that we get the right customers on the books over time, and always have our finger on the pulse of the portfolio. OnBase is an important part of our future hedging and growth engine,”concludes Johan Ploug Aagaard.

Visma increases security and minimizes processing time with OnBase

As a provider of online invoicing- and debt-collection services, Visma Collectors AS receives large amounts of physical letter mail every day, which contains person sensitive data. This places great demands on the time-consuming handling of the documents. The implementation of OnBase has reduced the handling time per letter with 70% and has digitized the archiving process 100%.

Norwegian Visma Collectors AS provides invoicing- and debt-collection services to private and public companies. This means that large amounts of sensitive letter mail are received daily from customers, authorities, debitors, and creditors. Previously, 4-5 annual work units were spent on handling the received mail, which must legally be answered within 2 days of receipt. It could be a challenge to meet this deadline, just as mail could be lost or risk being freely presented to the individual caseworker. On this basis, the management decided to streamline and digitize the handling of the incoming mail.

“We wanted to outsource the process to an external partner, who had to ensure that safety, efficiency, and punctuality were top notch. We contacted Iron Mountain, who in collaboration with Nobly introduced us to the ECM-solution OnBase. It was the perfect solution from the start – a really good match”, says Thomas Skjørten, Head of Business Development at Visma Collectors AS.

An efficient and safe solution

Based on a thorough analysis of the internal business procedures, Nobly provided a tailor-made solution where Iron Mountain is responsible for scanning the mail directly to OnBase. In the individual letter, information such as reference, case and personal identity number is automatically identified, and the letter is categorized and archived correctly in the system.

In this way, the handling time has been reduced from 4-5 annual work units to approximately 2 annual work units at Visma.

“The solution has reduced the handling of physical mail by 100%, and reduced the processing time on the individual documents by an average of 70%. It is financially a big gain for us. All caseworkers can easily find documents, as everything is logically categorized and archived in OnBase. In the past, we could see that we did not respond in a timely manner to a document because it had not been registered in our system. Now we can fully comply with all our internal guidelines and legal requirements as no record is lost in this system. It is also a great benefit for us that OnBase is GDPR approved. We no longer have letters lying around with the individual caseworkers, as all physical mail is destroyed after scanning and archiving in OnBase. Here, the documents are also automatically deleted when the case has been processed. It has traditionally been a huge challenge, which has now been solved, ”says Thomas Skjørten.

Easy to customize

When several vital IT systems in an organization have to talk to each other, it is typically an expensive and time-consuming process that can end up providing rigid solutions. One of the great advantages of OnBase is that it does not affect the core system, but can be easily integrated and tailored to the needs of the individual company. As an IT-supplier, Nobly has been responsible for adapting to the current business processes as well as training select employees who have been driving the process.

“OnBase has been easy to adapt to our existing systems. We use, for example the Actic debt-collection system, where we previously had to spend 4-5 clicks on forwarding a document for legal processing. Nobly developed a “quick button” in OnBase, which forwards via 1 click. In general, it is my experience that OnBase is a very configurable solution where it is easy to add buttons. It saves us a lot of programming time,” states Thomas Skjørten.

Phase 1, which included the digitization of the incoming mail, is now so well established in the organization that Visma Collectors has now begun to look forward to the next phase:

“All our employees have received OnBase very well, which has become a natural part of the workday. It is the employees who are the driving force in the process, and they are happy to be able to work more efficiently with the cases. The employees are our most important ambassadors for our services, and they look forward to getting started with phase 2, which includes outbound communication. All the documents that we produce internally and send out must also be stored in OnBase in the long run to provide the optimal work flow. For example, customers must be able to sign documents digitally when they have received a notification that they are ready online. This in turn must help to ensure that sensitive personal data and case history are processed correctly and automatically deleted when the loan is paid off and the case is closed. It is my expectation that this integration will streamline treatment time by an additional 20%,” estimates Thomas Skjørten.

BMW Group Financial Services improves workflows and efficiency in contract processes

In the automotive industry, car dealers and customers need rapid access to finance. Financial lenders need to make the process of contracting as fast as possible and the financing easily accessible in order to maintain lifelong relationships with business partners and free up working-capital.

BMW Group Financial Services needed a high degree of coordination and streamlined workflows to effectively support car sales in more than 50 countries by speeding up the processing time for contract applications. That is why OnBase® from Hyland was chosen.

“We recognized that the fact that we work across many different countries and with three separate business lines, BMW Group Financial Services, Alphera Financial Services and Alphabet, meant that an improvement in workflows required a greater degree of automation of the contracting process, “says Stefan Karlsson, BMW manager of Business Development, Nordics.

In 2009, the head office of BMW Group Financial Services approved a budget for Enterprise Content Management (ECM) with two key conditions: the solution should be in one database and there should be a common supplier in all markets to minimize implementation time and facilitate collaboration across countries.

“We signed a contract with Hyland on OnBase in 2010 and a structured implementation plan was launched,” said Bert van den Berg, Process & Quality Manager, BMW Group Financial Services. In the period May to October 2011, the ECM solution was installed in five countries: the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, Sweden, and Norway.”

The difference :

Eliminates paper and manual work:

BMW Group Financial Services no longer spends time manually handling contracts or appendix. “When working with OnBase, all paper documents can be scanned automatically and sent to the appropriate department via a secure file transfer protocol (FTP),” says van den Berg.

Accelerates the process of entering a contract:

“Previously, it could take up to 10 days to process a completed contract package and even longer for incomplete packages,” says van den Berg. The OnBase solution reduced the processing time from day one. In July, the processing time for contracts was reduced to 5 days and in August to 3 days. In September, the processing time was down to just 2,5 days. Finished, incomplete and incorrect contract packages are now processed faster and more effectively.”

Automatically notifies about defective applications:

OnBase marks defective applications and sends an email to dealers, informing them of incorrect or missing data. This provides a more proactive workflow and makes it easier and faster for dealers to take action. “We have gone from a reactive to a proactive solution,” says van den Berg.

Allows for continuous improvements throughout the company:

“The next step for BMW Group Financial Services is to continue to increase coverage with OnBase by integrating the system with other business systems and increasing the utilization of the reporting service,” says Lars Karlsson.