Internet Document Management Helps Canadian Bank Achieve Cost Savings and Better Response Time

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Imagine being responsible for the payroll of over 1 million employees for 13,000 clients.

Processing payroll is just one of the many services provided by Toronto Dominion Waterhouse, the fifth-largest bank in Canada. With interests in investment banking, brokerage and mutual funds businesses, their 1997 projected net income is $1.9 billion. TD Waterhouse not only has branches and regional representative offices, but also wholly owned subsidiaries and affiliates representing them in North America, England, Australia, Hong Kong and Tokyo. This provides for over 27,000 employees worldwide.

The main function of TD Waterhouse’s Payroll Department is to perform payroll processing for clients wishing to outsource this job. Because of this responsibility, the department must have immediate access to the information of its thousands of clients.

"We are a service-oriented department of the bank," says John Giardino, PC Network Analyst for TD Waterhouse. "We provide external clients with support of day-to-day payroll processing." This support includes payroll services, legislative support, group retirement savings, government remittance and technical support. Reports involved in these processes include payroll invoices, payroll registers, audit trails, company profiles, run edits and contracts.

Explains Giardino, "Our one-hundred plus account reps require the ability to view the various reports our clients would receive, so they can service them more efficiently. We had a microfiche system that was just too slow. We wanted something that was quick and at their fingertips."

TD Waterhouse needed a more efficient repository for their payroll information. Giardino was placed in charge of researching optional methods of storage. The goal was to find a solution, which would decrease employee response time to clients, be easy to use, and would decrease current storage expenses and research time. The key issue was to see a substantial return on their investment.

The evaluation of document management systems took 10-12 months, in which TD Waterhouse narrowed down the selection to Optical Image Technology, Inc. (OIT) and one other vendor. "We chose Optical Image Technology because it was quicker and easier to use," says Giardino.

Within two months, TD Waterhouse’s Payroll Department was up and running with modules from OIT’s DocFinity® Suite of Document Management Software: DocFinity COLD-ERM, DocFinity Imaging, DocFinity IntraVIEWER®, DocFinity Hierarchical Storage Manager (HSM), and DocFinity Print/Fax Server. They are using DocFinity COLD-ERM storage for payroll registers, invoices and audit trails while contracts and company profiles are among the documents being imaged. Users are able to access all of the information via the native client or the Internet.

Web is Solution to Excellent Customer Service

TD Waterhouse’s clients transmit employee hours and additional payroll information electronically, which is then posted on TD Waterhouse’s mainframe. All payroll reports are sent to a Windows NT Server that is running the OIT software, 2 processors, RAID, and a jukebox. All of the information is imported to Microsoft SQL Server and DocFinity IntraVIEWER.

Employees in the Payroll Department use DocFinity IntraVIEWER to view all reports stored within the OIT system via an Internet Explorer 4.0 web browser.

Prior to having internet access, information had to be retrieved from microfiche. Microfiche was not only expensive to produce, but also the response time to answer client questions could be days. Accessing information via the Web has turned the response time into just a matter of seconds. Employees also have the option of retrieving the information directly from the native client.

Since TD Waterhouse processes payroll from all over the country, they have broken down the Payroll Department to service the different regions of Canada - each region (there are 12 Provinces and Territories) having a different customer service phone number to call for inquiries. The department’s 200 employees are sectioned off according to region they represent. Each "region area" has 2 clocks on the wall - one telling the employee their current time and the other showing the time of their province of responsibility - and internet access to client information.

TD Waterhouse’s payroll departments in Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, and Vancouver are also connected to the OIT system via their own Intranet—adding approximately 200 additional users.

Why the Internet?

The web is easy to maintain and upgrade and allows for an unlimited number of users. Explains Giardino, "The web will save us the administrative headaches of updating all our machines in the company. With the web, we upgrade the web server only. Our goal is to make the web browser our single, standard interface for all our future products. Even more important, the web product’s performance over our 256kb WAN link from our regional offices is much better than using the native SQL front-end. There is also the ability to have any client access their data through the Internet. It’s very simple to use."

In addition, the open architecture of DocFinity IntraVIEWER has enabled TD Waterhouse to design and customize their web request form. The form has been re-designed to have employee log in, password, and a drop down list of all the payroll reports.

Immediate Cost Savings

The initial cost of the system, including hardware, was approximately $40,000 and return on the investment was one year. Giardino says that the most cost savings are in the area of microfiche production…or lack of it. Monthly microfiche costs were approximately $6,000 before being replaced by the OIT system.

Since implementing the document management software, the users have been very positive about the system and Giardino says that there was no adjustment period at all. Over 300 users in the organization are using the system and have been doing so since 1995. Comments Giardino, "Version 7 has been a great success with our users. Its interface has decreased the training time of new employees. (The OIT system) has improved the level of service we provide and increased our competitive edge."

System Setup

The OIT system in TD Waterhouse's Payroll Department consists of one Compaq 2500 Proliant Server, that is used for storing the reports on disk, while another is running Windows NT and a Microsoft SQL Server database. Two IBM 365 180mhz Pentium Pros are utilized for importing and archiving process or computer generated reports.

The archive machines are running OS/2 Warp Connect and a mainframe communication transfer program called XCOM to send and receive the files from the host. An IBM 365 PC running Windows NT, Pegasus for NT, and a Hewlett-Packard 20XT optical jukebox is being used for the DocFinity Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) module.

"On average, the system handles 300 megabytes of data nightly. In three years, 1 gigabyte of data per day is not out the question," says Giardino.

The DocFinity COLD-ERM and Imaging systems are also being used in TD Waterhouse’s Distribution Center, where they process all customer applications for stock shares. Using two 3099 Fujitsu scanners, they currently have 300 of their 500 platter Panasonic CD-ROM Jukebox filled. This is the equivalent of approximately 12,000 images per CD or 3.6 million images to date.

Giardino says future plans for the Payroll Department include adding OIT’s DocFinity WorkFlow module to automate and improve upon their daily business procedures. However, the primary focus will be to expand upon TD Waterhouse’s current use of its Intranet and OIT’s DocFinity IntraVIEWER.