Florida-based investment management firm Raymond James Financial, Inc. is deploying a Microsoft SharePoint-based Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solution for financial firms from BlueThread Technologies, Inc. to increase the efficiency of new account openings and several other paper-based processes.

Raymond James will deploy almost 10,000 seats of the BlueThread solution, called SmartDesk, and it will be used to manage massive amounts of data, paper-based content and business processes that drive new account opening and other operations processes across the company’s 2,200 investment offices. BlueThread SmartDesk is an ECM composite application that leverages Microsoft’s SharePoint Solution stack and K2’s business process management technology.

“The financial industry still relies heavily on paper.  We needed a way to accelerate these processes by digitizing paper documents at their source and merging their data into a totally digital process,” said Mark Abbott, Raymond James’ senior vice president for IT. “After full deployment, we expect significant increases in efficiency and cost savings. Our branches will have greater transparency into and control of the documents they submit to the home office and will be able to handle transactions in a fraction of the time.”

The new solution will increase the efficiency of new account opening by eliminating many manual steps, simplifying and speeding complex processes and delivering the right information to the right processor at the right time. Users will be able to quickly review applications and all supporting documents to complete the work in a fraction of the time it normally takes.

BlueThread’s SharePoint-based solution was selected over legacy and industry standard ECM vendors after a stress test proved the system could process in excess of a million documents and transactions within a single day. 

“By integrating multiple best-of-breed Microsoft-based technologies and providing comprehensive domain knowledge, our company will help Raymond James realize their business objectives cost effectively and at a very low risk,” said Mark Brazeau, BlueThread’s president and senior principal.

Raymond James has more than 1.6 million accounts in 2,200 locations throughout the U.S., Canada , and overseas.