The benefits of automation in everyday life are plentiful. Perhaps you’ve set up a monthly subscription for dog food, set your patio lights to turn on or off at the same time each day, or experienced that magic of a form auto-filling with your personal information online. While most people have adopted automated tools in their everyday lives, they often miss opportunities to leverage automation in their office lives.
In a recent Qualia webinar, Amanda Madden, Director of Title Operations & Experiences at Titleocity, Vishrut Malhotra, CEO & Co-Founder of InspectHOA, and Erich Wiedel, President of Mortiles LLC, joined Qualia’s Senior Services Account Director, James Varley, to discuss all things automation. They provided their insights on how automation can benefit title & escrow companies when working with vendors and how investing in automation can set businesses up for long term success.
Automation to improve employee bandwidth
During times of uncertainty, training teams and building leaders is crucial. To be successful in a purchase market, title & escrow companies are looking closer at their employee training programs to help staff transition from managing straight-line refinance transactions to handling more complex, multi-party purchase transactions. Leveraging automation can help businesses accomplish this by reducing manual tasks (such as status updates and rekeying data) so that employees can focus on learning new skills and practice handling new scenarios.
Madden explained that the time saved with automations has enabled her to invest in her employees. She said that with the 15 to 20 hours they’re saving each month on title searches through automation in Qualia Marketplace, they’ve been able to invest in additional employee training. In the long run, focusing on training helps existing staff accelerate their careers while giving them the confidence to tackle a variety of different transactions and deliver exceptional closing experiences.
By reducing the number of manual tasks agents must complete during closings, agents also have more time back in their day to focus less on tasks that machines can do and more time on pressing-case issues that require humans such as problem solving or relationship management.
Centralized vendor operations opens the door for automation opportunities
Switching between multiple tools to manage vendors—such as spreadsheets, paper documents, and email—can result in errors, miscommunication, and inefficiencies during closings. Consolidating vendor management and reporting in one place helps simplify processes while also enabling agents to compare vendor performance apples to apples. This enables teams to see how their vendors are performing at a glance and find opportunities for automation. For example, with consolidated vendor reporting in Qualia Marketplace, title & escrow companies can identify their top-performing vendors and prioritize them for future orders with Automated Ordering. This can create greater efficiency during orders by reducing the time needed to select vendors and submit orders.
Madden explained that consolidating vendor communication and reporting in Qualia Marketplace also enables her team to develop stronger relationships with vendors, which ultimately facilitates more streamlined closing operations. In Marketplace, Titleocity is integrated with many different vendors and can access data on all of its vendors in one place. Additionally, since Marketplace is integrated with Qualia Core, all vendor communication, such as status updates and completed orders, are viewable within the order rather than lost in the shuffle of email communication. These features help build stronger relationships with vendors and more efficient processes by facilitating smoother interactions.
How automation helps create a consistent, measurable process
A consistent process is important because it enables title & escrow agents to deliver a predictable closing experience to clients regardless of who is working on the order and which vendors are involved. Madden has been able to develop a consistent process with vendors by automating many of the functions inherent in vendor management. For example, Titleocity has automated many of the tasks required to complete title searches with vendors. In Michigan—where her title & escrow company operates—there are multiple counties with a variety of local nuances. Taking advantage of automation and vendors during orders takes the pressure off her team because they “know that they’re consistently ordering the correct product.” Automating this process helps her team take the guesswork out of orders to save time and improve accuracy.
Without automation and standardization, consistency can break down when transaction volume increases. Malhotra explained that automating parts of the process with high quality vendors can help assure consistency by reducing the long list of manual tasks title agents must complete. Instead of manually following up with vendors to ensure that tasks are complete or documents are received, Malhotra explained that with automation, agents can focus on “what’s important to them, which is closings and relationships.”
Watch the entire ‘Unlocking the Power of Automations for Faster Closings’ webinar by clicking below.
