How These Two Businesses Improved Efficiency with SaaS

Broadview Mortgage, in Orange, Calif., knew there had to be a better way to handle file management and found the solution in the cloud.

David Steven, vice president of IT, says the company’s process for sending documents from third-party appraisers to Broadview Mortgage’s internal appraisal department was too cumbersome. “We would send the documents over email and the third-party appraisers would lose their passwords, which meant we’d have to set up new passwords and create a folder,” he says. Not only was the process time consuming, but it generated concerns about email security.

About a year ago, the company began using the Box Software as a Service application when staffers in the lender’s 14 Southern California locations needed a more expedient way to access documents and reports.

Exchanging documents in Box has proved to be more efficient and secure, Steven says. Appraisers simply created an account and dropped files into easy-to-create folders that the Broadview appraisal team accessed via a web interface. “Managing documents via Box reduced support calls as well as the number of IT people who needed to focus on the appraisal tasks,” he says. “Plus, Box integrated well with our Microsoft environment.”

Robert Mahowald, program vice president for SaaS and cloud services at IDC, says the Broadview Mortgage experience with a cloud service such as Box aligns with much of IDC’s recent research.

“We found that 65 percent of organizations say they use some aspect of the cloud today,” Mahowald says. “And this corresponds to both IT departments and line-of-business organizations.”

Adobe's Cloud Rises to the Challenge

Delaine Suess, senior graphic designer for Banner Engineering in Minneapolis, says her team moved to Adobe Creative Cloud about a year ago when Adobe shifted to distributing applications over the cloud.

That move came with some real benefits. “Everyone used to be on a different version of the Adobe applications, which caused some compatibility issues,” Suess says. Now, she reviews and tests the updates to make sure they work well with the company’s systems and lets staff know when it’s OK to accept the updates.

Most updates contain a new feature that speeds workflow, says Suess. “Adobe added a new feature in InDesign that made it easier to automate tables,” she says. “The best thing is that the updates apply to everyone.”

In addition to users in the Minneapolis marketing department, the graphics arts teams in Belgium and China rely on Creative Cloud. Suess says most of the staff use Adobe InDesign, Illustrator and PhotoShop, while a dedicated video person uses Adobe Premiere and AfterEffects for video editing.