When beginning your Robotic Process Automation (RPA) journey, it’s important to start with a plan. A Process Automation Pipeline is used to determine the series of steps or stages in automating a business process or workflow.
Approaching technology and information management updates within a company requires a change management focus that begins with people.
Technology offers vast opportunities to title companies to improve their data capture, title processes and customer service, but in spite of having access to more effective technology, sometimes agency staff find themselves still slogging through tasks in the same old way because “that’s the way we’ve always done it.”
There are four key reasons to consider automation in the title industry: to reduce errors, to manage escalating business, to maximize workforce hours, and to reduce costs. The last one may be the most critical when navigating a decelerating real estate market.
Every time you add an application, you add the staff hours needed to input the information the application feeds on. This tech stack can become unwieldy and ineffective unless you can get these applications, systems and software to talk to each other and share data to cut down on all that manual input.
I recently spoke on a panel at ALTA ONE. It was a great conference and the session was attended by a number of curious title agents. The one thing that surprised us throughout the entire conference, however, was the number of title owners and executives who asked us, repeatedly, “Bots can do that?”
Let’s face it, trying to get accurate data from deeds, contracts or legal descriptions continues to hobble the real estate industry, with inaccuracies still abounding. It’s also time consuming and, at times, even mind-numbing for staffers who’d be better utilized facilitating closings or generating marketing leads.
While our industries thrive because of the data available to us, the challenge our industry faces is ensuring the data is accurate. The need for accurate data in the transaction itself is a paramount. But we also heavily rely on the data, as do all companies, to run and grow our businesses.
Automation of the title searching process on residential property in Washington County Arkansas.
While our industries thrive because of the data available to us, the challenge our industry faces is ensuring the data is accurate. The need for accurate data in the transaction itself is a paramount. But we also heavily rely on the data, as do all companies, to run and grow our businesses.
RPA software automated the process of validating residential property tax status in Miami-Dade County.
Expect to see title businesses continue to invest in new technology during the current slowdown. But not a spending spree. Instead, the best title business owners are already realizing that their traditionally narrow margins could soon become unacceptable margins as their profits continue to be eroded by compliance, client and market demands. And so, title businesses are moving selectively to attack specific pain points in their workflows, realizing real benefits without breaking the bank.
As you are considering the wisdom of adopting the latest innovation to address a specific business need, it might also be an opportune time to do a little analysis around your legacy systems to see what is still effective in managing and growing your business and what might actually be holding you back or slowing you down.
The growing wave of digital transformation in the title industry is not eliminating jobs. Far from it. Instead, it will go a long way towards improving employee retention rates.
The trend toward digitization should be much larger than the title and origination sectors of the greater real estate industry - a word about REO / foreclosure / default businesses and servicers.
Automation is an effective way to redirect an agent’s skilled staff to do what they do best, whether that is focusing on the complexities of the escrow side of the business or having the necessary time to listen attentively to the needs of their real estate agent, homebuyer and seller customers.
Our preference is to use RPA technology to implement automtion allowing greater budget flexibility for title agents.
As we enter our first truly competitive purchase market in years, there’s good news and bad news.
As we enter our first truly competitive purchase market in years, there’s good news and bad news.