How a Major Financial Services Company Saved Time and Labour by Updating Their Existing Workflows

“XML Compare is one of the key elements of the data processing workflow creating compliance filings for our clients. The implementation of XML Compare significantly reduced the proofreading time needed to compare filing versions generated by the workflow. In addition, it eliminated the element of human error in the proofreading process. Under the stressful conditions of limited time and significant load during the filing peak periods, these are the major improvements introduced by XML Compare.”

Words from our Customer

The Painfully Slow Reviewing Process

Our customer, a major US Financial Services company, undertakes, as a major part of its business, the preparation of clients’ regulatory reports for submission to the SEC. This is, of course, a regulatory and statutory requirement. The company’s role is to create these reports based on data received from the client and then to file the reports electronically with SEC. The creation and editing of these reports are mainly automated, with some manual intervention.

Throughout this process, many versions of the report files might be created. Many people work simultaneously and concurrently on different sections of these documents. The edited versions of the sections are periodically merged by an automated process. The final versions of these documents are then reviewed and proofread before submission. In the past, this review process was carried out manually. This was slow, costly in man-hours and prone to inaccuracy.

Automating Finding Change

The solution adopted by this company was to integrate DeltaXML’s XML Compare product into their existing workflow. XML Compare is used to compare the versions and present the difference reports to the reviewers and proofreaders. XML Compare is fully integrated into the internal automated file processing workflow application and receives comparison requests as they are generated.

The process is initiated automatically by an integration system when it receives a message on the Message Bus requesting the comparison. The message can be sent from any application requiring the comparison functionality. The comparison is then executed, and the difference report is presented to the user for review. Looking at the report, the user makes sure all changes in the document are intended.

XML Compare has eliminated the element of human error in the proofreading process.

The number of comparisons run per day can be variable. During quiet periods XML Compare executes approximately 10-15 comparisons per day. However, during the reporting peaks (when the clients are filing their quarterly and yearly reports) this increases to about 100 comparisons per day.

Proofreading Made Easy

The financial services company found:

• Ease in identifying and displaying unintended content and style changes in versions of documents produced during the automated or manual file editing processes
• Reduced time required for document review & proofreading (our customer estimates that using the difference reports produced by XML Compare, the proofreading now takes about 10% of the time spent doing it manually in the past, taking, as an example, a 150-page document)
• Reduced cost of labour required for document review & proofreading
• Reduced errors and inaccuracies (essential within a regulatory framework)

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