Next Generation Check Imaging System Testing
Banking Magazine Article, Synopsis
Clear Statement of the Issue
Testing of Check Imaging systems today is either done through a manual audit process or the use of “live” production information. This creates expensive labor intensive testing processes that rely on production data that is inherently variable and risks privacy.
Substantiated Discussion of What is at Stake
For Banks procurement processes, the Request for Proposal and contracting processes could be better managed through a data driven performance demonstration. Outsourced solutions suppliers could be better measured and held accountable to quantifiable performance standards. The Banks could reduce development cycle times and costs. This lengthens the time and cost to deploy new systems while adding significant risks. For the Banks Check Imaging production operations, distributed and centralized imaging could be managed to a common benchmark, quality control costs and labor could be reduced and system upgrades and changes could be made with the ability to compare improvements to a known benchmark. Overall, true system performance of Suspect Rate vs. Precision AND vs. Escape rates for Check IQ&U / Recognition Tuning could be measured, with associated knowledge of costs and risks.
Stance on What Should be Done or What is Likely to Happen
Banks should move on to the next generation of check imaging system testing. Image or paper check test material would be utilized that is simulated yet realistically representative and statistically significant. Business rules such as fraud detection would be engineered into this next generation of test material for automated testing of system work flow processes. This test material would have pre-determined answers with the ability to create and test for known errors, both for image processing and collecting data from the image file.
Discussion of the Strategic, Managerial and Financial Implications of the Actions the Author Advocates or the Changes that he or she Foresees
Strategically, banks will significantly reduce privacy risk while enabling more competitive pricing and the ability to offer new technically enabled checking imaging services faster to their customers. Error rates will be reduced, along with a corresponding increase in the banks customer satisfaction. Management of Information Technology development and procurement processes will be improved with more precise system test information provided faster. With automated test processes of the check imaging systems, operations management will enjoy less cost and overhead associated with managing a smaller number of quality assurance personnel. Financially, current and new systems can be operated more efficiently by tuning systems for the optimum operating point of Intelligent Character Recognition Automation, Cost of Errors and the Cost of Keying. Service level agreements can now be implemented with quantifiable error quality metrics that will reduce the costs of outsourced services while improving quality. Costs of procured systems will decrease as well as system development costs, cycle times and on-going operational costs. On Shore of Off Shore Data Entry costs can be reduced by 30% through implementation of statistical process control of the data quality verification process.