New York’s YMCA Retirement Fund adopts Vignette system to streamline pension processes, ensure disaster recovery.
The YMCA Retirement Fund was swimming
in paper. It manages more than $3.5 billion in assets and provides financial
services, education and retirement services to 80,000 participants and retirees
– all of which requires enough paperwork to fill one of its trademark Olympic
size pools many times over.
The organization soon found that its
customer service and disaster recovery response times were becoming increasingly
inadequate, while its paper storage costs were climbing. And not only was it
difficult for employees to find, track and access critical documentation, but
security was also becoming an issue.
"Sept. 11, 2001, was a big wake-up call
for us in terms of our business continuity strategy," said Elliott Buchholz,
chief technology officer at the YMCA Retirement Fund. "Our offices directly
overlook Ground Zero. We realized that we could no longer think of &singlequot;disaster
recovery&singlequot; simply in terms of temporarily losing access to one of our
floors."
The organization put out an RFP, and
after a thorough analysis, it selected Vignette’s Integrated Document Management
system, formerly Tower’s IDM.
With the system, every piece of paper
that enters the organization is immediately scanned and indexed. Then, using the
system’s customized automated workflow tools, it is routed to the appropriate
department for action. This ensures that all inquiries are handled quickly and
efficiently, the group said.
Buchholz said the Vignette system not
only ensures that all retirement records are instantly accessible, but it also
will eventually provide fund members with Web access to some of their own
documents, such as their annual statements and other benefit information,
further streamlining customer service.
The Vignette system also helps the fund
meet membership growth without adding staff. "Our participant count has been
growing steadily," Buchholz said. "Vignette Integrated Document Management will
enable us to do our job more efficiently today and for the foreseeable future.
This implementation directly supports one of our current strategic goals, which
is to apply cutting-edge technology to our business processes while controlling
expenses."
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