CEO Image Systems is a company I've been following since 2001. I first came across the firm while I was researching material for my first book, Virtual Office News for a High Margin Practice, co-authored by Financial Advisor magazine practice management guru David Drucker.

At the time, CEO was beta testing a new document management product called Executive Assistant, which was targeted at solo practices and ensemble practices of up to roughly eight employees. Upon final release, the product garnered a strong recommendation from our T3 newsletter for its strong feature set, ease of use and highly competitive price. Since then, CEO Image Systems has gained a loyal following among price-sensitive advisors who put a high value on customer service.

Recently, the company invited me to test their new Image Executive product. The application is very scalable: It can be deployed in a single-user environment, but it is equally capable of serving thousands of users and storing millions of documents. With a base price of $499 for a single user, Image Executive is affordable to firms of all sizes, so I was eager to see how it compares to previous CEO products, as well as some competing packages.

As was the case with PaperPort Professional 12, the subject of last month's review, Image Executive allows advisors to operate more productively, to become more organized, more efficient and more environmentally friendly. Like PaperPort, Image Executive offers a more secure method of managing documents than paper, but Image Executive's security features go far beyond PaperPort's, and its filing and retrieval capabilities far exceed PaperPort's as well.

Image Executive is built on state-of-the-art technology, incorporating .NET, XML, AJAX and SQL. It's equally suitable for a stand-alone installation or for a multi-site enterprise configuration. This is particularly attractive to newer or smaller firms with growth ambitions because it means that you will not need to change applications as your enterprise grows; you can simply add users to the existing installation.
The filing system is highly configurable. CEO usually handles this task, but let's walk through it to examine the software's capabilities. Your document repository starts at the company level. Most advisory firms store all records under a single company, but if a firm operates under a multi-company structure, for example a B-D and an RIA, a separate company can be maintained for each. Within a company, there are departments. A company can have an unlimited number of departments. Within departments there are folders, and within folders there are documents.

You might set up a department for client records. Within this department, you could set up a folder for each client. A small firm might set up one department for internal corporate records; a larger firm would create separate departments for accounts payable, accounts receivable, etc. Each department can designate it as a WORM (write once, read many) department or not. All records within WORM departments become unalterable the minute they are filed. That does not mean you can't edit a document. You can edit it after scanning it and before filing it, but once it is filed each change made is recorded in the audit trail and each version of the document is stored so that a full history of each document is available.

Once a storage structure is established, you create users and functions. An administrator might have permission to maintain companies, departments, create new users, give permission for different users to work on various tasks, etc. You could create a role called "scanner/filer" and allow those employees to scan files and view documents. Others might get permission only to view. These roles, once created, can be assigned to multiple employees at the company level, at the department level, for each folder or even for each document. So if an employee doesn't generally need to view documents in more than one department, then that's all he or she would be allowed to do. Furthermore, since each user has a unique identifier, an employer can easily audit user action within the system.

Employers can also give permission to individuals to edit a document, print, run reports, import, export, edit a description, edit retention policies, edit indices, change folders, add notes, delete notes and add annotations.

You can also set up retention codes. A code can be applied to individual documents automatically. For example, you can instruct the system to assign a specific retention code by default to a department or to a folder. Of course, you can also manually assign retention policies to individual documents or override defaults as needed, as long as you have the proper authorization.

Image Executive has a highly sophisticated and configurable filing/retrieval system. To begin with, you can assign indices to each folder. Why would you want to do this? Let's say you want to create a folder for each client. Perhaps you want to see whether you have a copy of the client's trust documents. You could create an index called "Trust Docs" and require a value of "yes" or "no." If you want to find out which clients you do not have trust documents for, you can simply search for client folders marked "no."

Rather than assign the required indices to each folder manually, you can create a folder template that automatically assigns the proper indices to each folder in a department. For example, in the client record department, you might want to assign a Social Security number, date of birth and citizenship index to each client. By creating a default folder template for this department, you can automatically create these indices for each folder created within the department.

Perhaps you want each document that you file associated with a client to have his or her Social Security number as an index value. If so, you can create a Social Security folder index so the number is associated with the file. Then, using another Image Executive feature (the document template), you can set up the system so that each document filed in this folder includes a Social Security number index with the value (the client's number) automatically populated.

As with folders, you can create a default document template for all documents in a folder; or you can create a different default document template for each type of document. For example, you might want to automatically include the date a document was scanned and filed, which the system can automatically populate. You might want to automatically record which employee filed the documents, as well as a beginning and end date for the retention period. You can create as many indices and templates as you want, but unless your document repository is very large, you usually only need a few indices to find what you are looking for. Some additional information may be desirable for audit and compliance purposes, however. In addition to searching by indices, Image Executive offers you the option of performing optical character recognition (OCR) on documents and then performing full text searches.

The scanning module is high quality. It works with both TWAIN or ISIS drivers, but it is optimized for the more sophisticated ISIS drivers. Some systems charge extra for ISIS (if they support it at all); CEO includes it. The scanning module allows you to scan directly to a folder or to the document queue. The queue is used when you scan a batch of documents that need to be filed in more than one folder, and it serves as a temporary storage folder until the scanned documents can be filed in their permanent locations.

Documents can be scanned to TIFF (G4). This format offers better compression than some other formats and it provides a high-quality black and white image in a much smaller file than a GIF or a JPEG format. This format is suitable for internal use, but it may not be the best format for sharing files with clients. As an alternative, the module also offers the option of scanning to PDF format. JPEG scanning is also available. For those who prefer to store their images in TIFF (G4) format but who want the flexibility of sharing images with clients in PDF format, Image Executive allows you to create a PDF file from an existing stored TIFF (G4) file so it can be e-mailed to a client.

The module includes other important features. For example, documents can be separated in various ways, allowing the system to automatically create a new file based on a number of pages, blank page separators or bar codes. The software can accommodate black and white, gray scale and color in both simplex and duplex. If you scan a hole-punched document, you can remove the holes. In addition, the software automatically straightens crooked scans. Another extremely useful feature is the color dropout. If you've ever tried to scan a document printed in black on a blue (or red or green) background, you know that the resulting scans can be very difficult to read. This scanning module can automatically correct for this, producing highly legible scans.

Annotation tools allow the user to highlight portions of a document and/or redact text. There are also text and image annotation tools. The latter are useful to affix a signature image, for example. Shortcut icons are available in the viewer to send a document to a printer, to save or to send to the default e-mail application.

The workspace is customizable. In many cases, you can drag to resize elements so that the desktop can be customized to individual needs. In addition, users only see the functions they have access to, so while an administrator might have a lot to learn initially, someone who only needs to access documents already filed can learn the system very rapidly.

Image Executive offers substantial security and audit features. In a typical installation, there are multiple levels of security both within the application and outside of it. The security protocols built into Image Executive and similar products are extremely important, but if they can be bypassed, the security protocols are of minimal value.

With regard to exterior security, Image Executive is usually installed on a server. Generally, only administrators have direct access to the server. As an added security feature, the directories that hold the CEO documents are hidden, making them harder to find should an unauthorized person gain access to the server. Since the server is difficult to access, and since the directories and files are hidden, a casual theft is highly unlikely. Unless someone knows what they are looking for, and unless they have a fair amount of hacking skill, the odds of a security breach are minimal. The security measures we've discussed so far do not require a CEO product to implement. They can be done with many products, but CEO employees can help ensure your firm does this properly.

As an added layer of security, CEO offers a remote document server option. This configuration hides documents within a database, making them virtually impossible for an unauthorized user to find, assuming the person was able to access the server itself. By configuring Image Executive properly, your firm ensures that there are no easy back doors available to access your documents. That means the only avenue of access is by logging on to the application with proper credentials. These credentials are governed by the user groups and by the administrator's grant of permission to each user.

Pricing is competitive. The retail price for one to four licenses is $695 per license, but CEO is currently offering a special price of $499 per license to Financial Advisor magazine subscribers. For larger orders, the FA rates are $449 (for five to 14 licenses) and $399 (for 15 or more licenses). For those who want to Web enable Image Executive, the FA price is $2,500 ($3,995 retail) for unlimited view licenses. This allows you, among other things, to create an unlimited number of client document vaults or client portals.

There are a few additional charges you may incur. For example, if you are not running Microsoft SQL Server, CEO strongly recommends installing a Vale Software application at a cost of $79.00. It is also highly advisable to have CEO install and configure the software for you ($298 for a standard small firm installation). Some training on a group or individual basis is recommended. Costs vary based on firm size and complexity.

CEO's Image Executive is a very robust, enterprise class document management system that is well suited for large firms. It is also well suited for small firms that hope to become large firms in the future. Executive Assistant or PaperPort Professional 12 are low-cost alternatives for small firms but the superior scanning module, audit trail and security features included with Image Executive may justify the additional outlay. The option to Web-enable an unlimited number of Image Executive folders for a flat price of $2,500 is also compelling.

Based on capabilities, Image Executive is a compelling value. Proper setup is essential, but CEO can handle that task. Once the initial configuration has been completed, however, Image Executive should be able to handle anything you throw at it.

There are a number of excellent document management systems available to financial advisors, but because of its flexibility and value, Image Executive should be on every advisor's short list of products to consider when shopping for document management software.