Banking & Financial Services White Paper When will COLD get the respect it deserves? By Craig LeClair, Director of Marketing TASC Imaging and workflow have gotten all the attention, but what about COLD? As we peruse our survey of 300 companies and look at trends in customer service, COLD has many of the tangible elements of re-engineering, data warehousing and a great Internet and intranet future--with an economic pay-back that will get your CFO to attend vendor presentations. In fact, COLD has the highest payback of the leading computing initiatives. When compared to imaging, data warehousing and Multimedia, for example, COLD wins hands down. COLD immediately eliminates the high cost of ongoing microfilm development, printing and distribution. The cost in labor, paper and time to produce hard copies disappears. The bottom line offers an easy business case for investing in COLD. Applications for COLD The two primary types of COLD data are internally consumed company reports and externally provided statement data. Increasingly, other data stored in COLD systems include EDI (electronic data interchange) and the output of desktop productivity tools such as spreadsheets. TASC has installed COLD in high-volume production operations for credit card processing, brokerage, commercial banking, investment management, and other applications. The primary users of COLD data in TASC applications are the front office staff who speak directly with a firm's customers, and the back office staff who perform paper-oriented workflow tasks. The routine front office call is from a customer who is viewing a company statement. The COLD system allows immediate access to what the customer sees, including marketing messages. Before COLD, the customer service agent used a transaction file or log with the basic information content rather than the actual statement, thus created a confusing and frustrating transaction. If the actual statement was required, a microfilm request would be made and a re-search file created. It was expensive, required a high volume of customer call-backs and necessitated the maintenance of a micrographics department. Back office staff use COLD reports on line, rather than read cumbersome hard copy print-outs. The productivity of back office operations is enhanced through features such as annotation, bookmarks, the ability to access segments of a large report and sophisticated search capabilities. COLD survey results In a COLD survey conducted at this year's AIIM show by TASC, 300 participants with an interest in COLD were asked a series of questions. We asked people if they thought basing COLD projects on industry standard relational databases was important. The responses indicate that COLD data are being looked at as more of a strategic repository and less as a simple microfilm replacement This means proprietary databases for COLD will become unacceptable for the enterprise solution. Respondents were asked about the importance of various COLD product features and whether a proposed solution should integrate imaging (paper) with COLD (reports, statement data, EDI). The results show that end users are trying to justify the weaker business case for imaging systems with the savings from COLD. Also of great interest to respondents was the ability to handle large data volumes (over 100,000 COLD records a day). This indicates that users are viewing COLD as an enterprise-wide, not a departmental, solution. Efficient data compression was also given high marks. The current TASC product allows the compression algorithm to be trained for a customer's specific set of COLD reports. This allows a three-fold improvement in compression ratios compared to the typical LZW ratios, and results in lower storage costs and better overall system performance. Future trends: the internet and data warehouses As electronic dissemination expands with EDI and Internet applications, the role of COLD is quickly expanding beyond report storage to broad-based electronic archives that need to be part of the warehouse, and available over the Internet. The data sent routinely to customers summarizes their use of the organization's products and services. COLD statement data are an ongoing "free" survey of what your customers think is important, what they like and don't like about your products and services. Intelligent access and management of these data can divulge important trends in customer behavior. For example, what effect did lowered credit card interest rates have on customer credit card balances? How about for different age groups and parts of the country? What about last month's data? Can anyone doubt that the trend in Customer Service is to have the customer access their statement from home over the Internet? Let me roll off a few meaningful industry terms that, when combined, will be the foundation of a workable near-term COLD internet capability. Take Adobe 3.0 with the Netscape plug in, advanced compression, enhanced security within a bullet proof standard database environment, and a production quality COLD application. The parts are available for intra and internet applications today. TASC, a $350 million company, has installed COLD in high-volume operations for credit card, brokerage, commercial banking and other applications. For more information about TASC COLD and other TASC solutions, contact TASC, 55 Walkers Brook Drive, Reading, MA 01867; (617) 942-2000 or also csleclair@tasc.com Craig LeClair, Director of Marketing for TASC is an industry expert on COLD, imaging, and workflow and a founder of the imaging and COLD business.
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