Today, Qualia announced its newest feature designed to help title & escrow companies manage their vendor operations at scale: Automatic Ordering. Automations can help Qualia users quickly respond to volume fluctuations and changes in the market. Automatic Ordering arrives on the heels of the new Marketplace Vendor Performance Reports (announced in late 2021) and gives Qualia users the power to efficiently manage their vendors and complete closings faster than ever.
Automatic Ordering: how it works
With Qualia’s new Automatic Ordering functionality, title & escrow agents are able to set up rule-based automations to place orders for closing services (such as title search, release tracking, HOA documentation, and more) and assign high quality vendors in Marketplace.
An automation is triggered after a user creates an order and selects a particular transaction type, underwriter, state, county, or settlement agency. The vendor chosen by the title agent will then be assigned to files matching that specific criteria.
For example, Qualia users can add a rule that says, “For all refinances in TX, order a Current-Owner Search Plus from ABC Abstracts,” and the products will be ordered automatically when they open a file.
Additionally, vendor assignment strategies give title agents the power to:
- Assign a vendor to all orders or a certain number of orders in a particular state.
- Assign a vendor via a percentage weight. For example, in the state of Florida, 25% of Full Search orders go to X vendor, and 75% of orders go to Y vendor.
- Assign a vendor using a round robin. This means that each new Marketplace order is assigned to a different vendor until everyone has been assigned the same amount, and the cycle repeats.
Leverage reporting to identify opportunities for automation
The power of Automatic Ordering is truly unlocked when the feature is coupled with a consistent analysis of Vendor Performance Reports. The reports centralize performance tracking and help surface data points like price, share of spend, and average turn times to inform title agents’ decisions around vendor management.
Title agents are then able to use those reports to identify opportunities for automation. In situations where they’re repetitively ordering the same products from the same vendors, they’re able to take the additional step of automatic ordering configuration.
Automate tasks, operate more efficiently, and reduce errors
In a recent Qualia user survey, respondents reported they were able to reduce their turnaround times by an average of 4 days per closing with Marketplace. Automations play a significant role in those efficiency gains.
“Anything we can do to trigger things automatically, particularly during the order opening process, to make our team more efficient, is worth setting up,” said Jason McCord, IT Director at Legacy Settlement Services in a recent interview with Qualia.
“Manually entering our orders can take five minutes or so per file, so for the hundreds of orders we’re placing each month, this new functionality in Marketplace is going to save us hundreds of hours.”
Additionally, Qualia supports the central administration of vendor relationships. By storing all vendor information in one system through technology and integrations, vendor data automatically stays up to date and is easily accessible across an organization. For example, with Automatic Ordering, Qualia users are able to divide business evenly among select vendors, or alternatively to place a certain number of orders with a vendor to maintain a pricing agreement.
Automations also remove the potential for human error. “In situations where we’re ordering a certain product from an underwriter over and over again based on the county, we will definitely be using this feature,” said Amanda Madden, Operations Director at Titleocity, in another recent interview with Qualia. “Automatic ordering helps our team with quality assurance. With this automation, we’re able to avoid a situation where someone forgets to order the work, and then a week later we realize it.”
Automatic Ordering, Vendor Performance Reports, and other subscription-only features are available to Qualia Marketplace subscribers. To explore Qualia’s full suite of vendor management features, click below to schedule a time to speak with a Qualia expert.
