Top-to-Bottom Process Coordination across EDI, ERP, and E-Commerce Platforms

Technology providers offer several software solutions designed to solve specific business problems. While comprehensive ERP systems that integrate all of an organization’s internal processes are very worthwhile investments and make a huge difference to productivity and bottom line, their specialized nature makes them ill-suited for managing external processes. Purpose-built solutions for interacting with customers, vendors, and suppliers are much better options for external supply chain coordination.

Integrating upstream and downstream platforms

“Upstream” supply chain communication with suppliers and other vendors typically fall under the purview of electronic data interchange (EDI) solutions, while promoting and selling goods and services to customers downstream is usually handled by e-commerce platforms. Each type of solution provides the best range of features for its designated function, and follows its own set of standards, so it makes perfect sense for organizations to have all three types of systems in place.

However, using each of these business information systems in isolation will yield somewhat limited benefits. Your staff will still have to spend a considerable amount of time manually reconciling supplier orders with internal inventory, matching vendor purchase orders with accounting ledgers, sales reports with online customer transactions, and so on. With so many cross-platform interactions to manage each day, labor costs can skyrocket. Most successful organizations have turned to platform integration solutions to ease their operational workload and boost profitability.

ERP: Your digital command center

In a typical platform integration project, your internal ERP system is of central importance. Instead of attempting to connect your e-commerce and EDI systems directly, it makes much more sense to use your ERP platform as a central data store. This gives you a single, comprehensive view of your entire supply chain, and allows you to take advantage of your ERP suite’s advanced forecasting and analytics capabilities.

Cross-platform integration solutions keep your ERP, e-commerce, and EDI systems synchronized in near real-time, which will help your organization’s decision makers take immediate action when opportunities or issues arise. They won’t have to wait for end-of-day or weekly reports to discover supply-side issues, distribution center stock levels, or changes in customer purchasing behavior. Instead, a real-time digital dashboard will keep them informed about all relevant upstream, internal, and downstream performance metrics throughout the day.

E-Commerce integration enables omni-channel fulfillment

By directly linking e-commerce and ERP platforms, organizations not only benefit from real-time sales information, but are also able to automate order fulfillment and offer new fulfillment options. Companies that still manage their brick-and-mortar, online, mobile, and call center channels separately can’t compete with enterprises that have implemented omni-channel fulfillment. Omni-channel enterprises can ship online purchases to retail stores, accept online returns in-store, allow customers to reserve an item at a particular retail outlet, and much more. Customers value these transaction options very highly, and implementing these fulfillment possibilities make your brand much more attractive in their eyes.

Pre-built integration solutions Visionet’s CommerceLink smart connector expedite and simplify ERP-to-e-commerce integration. Instead of embarking on a custom development project that won’t yield results for 6 months or more, these integration products provide a cost-effective way of implementing omni-channel capabilities much sooner.

Integrated EDI functionality streamlines partner interaction

On the other end of your supply chain, integrating your EDI and ERP platforms can result in several synergistic advantages. Instead of looking up inventory or purchase order information in your ERP system and then manually keying in and sending this information, a unified system can initiate data transfers in just a few mouse clicks. Integration also makes it much easier to process bulk orders or schedule batch jobs.

More advanced EDI solutions like Visionet’s PartnerLink go beyond traditional EDI by providing support for multiple EDI-based and non-EDI data formats, and can even trigger data transfers when specific criteria are met. For example, you might want to automatically place an order with a supplier when stock levels in your distribution center fall below a predefined threshold.

E-Commerce to EDI: Connecting both ends of the supply chain

Even though both of these types of integration solution can be deployed independently, having both e-commerce and EDI integration in place can be immensely useful. It becomes possible to pass customer demand forecasts on to suppliers almost instantly, or even send them product orders for direct fulfillment. There are hundreds of potential ways to optimize your supply chain by keeping customers and vendors informed of each other’s activities over time.

In short, internal process integration is what ERP systems excel at, but that isn’t enough for a smoothly functioning supply chain. Keeping partner, operational, and customer information synchronized using platform integration solutions can eliminate delays, keep your supply chain lean and agile, and even provide support for new and innovative operating paradigms. For more information on cost-effective ways of implementing cross-platform integration, please contact Visionet Systems.

3 sure-fire ways to cut down on loan review costs

Completing a thorough review of each loan application is a critical component of a mortgage lifecycle. However, several challenges limit lenders’ ability to perform reviews with the accuracy, efficiency, and impartiality that this task requires, and can also raise loan review unit cost. These challenges can prevent loan originators from taking on additional business and therefore restrict growth. This article lists the specific factors that lead to higher mortgage review costs, and then offers three options for addressing these issues.

The High Cost of Regulation

Ever since the Dodd-Frank Act came into effect in 2010, lenders (especially small and mid-size community banks) have been burdened with much higher compliance costs. Increasingly complex and frequently-changing mortgage regulations continue to increase the time and effort required to perform essential loan review activities. Since smaller institutions typically aren’t prepared to cope with additional regulatory requirements, these changes have had a major impact on their profitability. Over one third of banks have hired additional compliance personnel, and the results have been devastating; hiring two additional personnel reduces median profitability by 45 basis points. One-third of small lenders become unprofitable, and are nearly always bought by other community banks.

In addition to regulatory complexity, other challenges also increase review costs. Compared to ten years ago when loan packages usually consisted of less than one hundred pages, it is now commonplace to encounter loan packages in excess of five hundred pages. However, it isn’t just the sheer volume of these packages that increases the cost per review: the documents contained in each package can vary significantly, and they aren’t even arranged in a standard sequence. Poring over the contents of these loan packages and manually verifying every detail has become a daunting prospect.

The increase in business risk that these changes create is tremendous. There is much greater chance of human error, which could result in high-risk loans. Manual review is also susceptible to unconscious human bias, which can have similar consequences. Failing to catch transcription errors and other problems in the accuracy and completeness of documentation can result in dozens of hours wasted to rework, which has a significant impact on cycle times and customer satisfaction.

Instead of increasing your workforce, which quickly becomes prohibitively expensive, we recommend that small and mid-size lenders adopt productivity-enhancing digital technologies to counter the effects of increased compliance requirements. Here are three digitally driven techniques for easing your compliance team’s workload and improving turn times:

Automatically classify loan documents

Manually splitting huge loan packages into their constituent documents is a losing strategy. It makes much more sense to partner with a service provider that offers auto-indexing services. These digital process management firms use machine-learning technology to automatically identify and separate the different types of documents in each loan package in just a few minutes. Each document can then be sent to different document management systems, vendors or other parties for further processing. Leading business process management firms also offer “white-glove” human verification services that drive error rates down to almost zero.

Convert document images into searchable information

Auto-indexing services can identify documents and sort them into different groups, but each page in these documents is still just a digital image. For your LOS and other computer systems, there is no difference between these images and any other digital photograph – they’re just grids of dots. In this form, your compliance team or external vendors will still have to view and compare each digitized page.

To truly transform your loan review process, use optical character recognition (OCR) technology, which changes these images into text that can be copied, searched, compared, validated, and fed directly into your LOS and other mortgage software. High-speed OCR software can extract information from dozens or even hundreds of documents per minute. After extraction, you can use loan document review solutions to simplify the review process. These solutions use configurable compliance checklists to verify that each document conforms to federal, state, regional, and lender-specific requirements. Automated compliance checks take minutes to execute, and leading solution providers also offer fully integrated white-glove validation services.

Use dynamic workflows to eliminate delays

Lenders that rely on email and spreadsheet software to track loan review progress experiences longer turn times because of unnecessary delays between each step of the process. Documents and other information can sometimes sit in workers’ inboxes for hours or days. A mortgage review solution moves the review process smoothly using automated dynamic process workflows. As soon as one task is completed, the solution automatically determines the outcome and immediately initiates the most appropriate next steps, such as sending documents to various stakeholders, seeking approval from the correct parties, or reminding team members to contact the borrower. Automating these steps reduces delays while keeping manual follow-up activities to a minimum, giving you the cost advantage over your competitors.

Different digital technologies can have a significant positive impact on lenders’ bottom line and competitive pricing. While looking for a loan review solution, look for technology partners that offer a complete range of technology solutions and related review services for optimal effect.

Learn more about how meeting compliance in a cost-effective method can give you a competitive advantage.

References

Lux, M., & Greene, R. (2015). The state and fate of community banking. M-RCBG Associate Working Paper, 37.

The Essentials of Retail Resource Planning

Retailers that are always out of stock don’t survive for long. Maintaining adequate inventory levels is essential to running a retail business. In order to avoid both out-of-stocks and overstock, your business needs to perform careful resource planning. Otherwise, moving enough stock to turn a healthy profit becomes extremely unlikely.

Thankfully, modern enterprise software can help businesses with nearly every aspect of resource planning. Most solutions organize all business operations in an easy-to-use central dashboard that lets decision makers take a close look at individual business processes, and also offers a bird’s-eye-view of their entire enterprise, helping them understand how all the moving parts interact.

Introducing ERP technology

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms are technology solutions designed to integrate all the essential operations of your business into a single, intuitive, and accessible “dashboard”. All of your business data and management processes are tracked, generating a wealth of information that facilitates more effective decision making.

Successful retail resource planning requires an ERP solution capable of handling all your current needs. It must also offer features for your specific industry (e.g. merchandising, multiple POS applications, etc.), and scale as your business grows.

An ERP system simplifies your employees’ tasks by centralizing all essential operations into an easily understandable dashboard. Some tasks that your ERP must be able to perform include:

• Inventory control and warehouse management
• Supply chain planning and transportation management
• Business intelligence – data acquisition and organization
• Core accounting tasks
• Customer relationship management (CRM) functionality or integration with an external CRM system

If you’re implementing a new ERP platform or transitioning from an existing solution that isn’t working for you, there are a few things that you can do to avoid trouble:

• Gain a clear understanding of your goals before you begin. This includes selecting your ERP platform, determining its scalability, and learning how it will be implemented, because you really don’t want to go through this process again when your business outgrows the platform’s capabilities.
• Consider the benefits of a parallel implementation, where your existing system and new ERP solution run simultaneously for a short period, versus a phased implementation, where you bring each business line over to the ERP platform individually.
• Determine your customization requirements. Even within the same industry, no two organizations are identical. Every retail brand uses unique internal processes and operating procedures to generate competitive advantage. Your ERP system should reflect this uniqueness and enable you to work accordingly.
• Choose an ERP implementation partner that is experienced in your particular industry. Not only will an industry-savvy partner be able to customize your ERP deployment faster and more precisely, but will also help you minimize the risk of data loss or disruption during the transition.
• Assess the impact that adopting an ERP solution will have on your employees, especially in the beginning. By ensuring that your employees have the necessary ongoing support available, you can make their lives easier and your new system more effective from the start.
• Identify opportunities for external integration. While most leading ERP solutions provide a complete suite of tightly integrated internal business processes, their functionality doesn’t focus on communication with outside parties. One powerful way of enhancing your ERP system’s value involves integrating it with suppliers, service providers, and other external partners across the supply chain using EDI or direct B2B data exchange solutions like PartnerLinkby Visionet. Similarly, integrating your ERP platform with your online store is a relatively quick and cost-effective way of improving the value of your IT investments, since it will enable omni-channel analytics and order fulfilment, as well as centralized management of product information, inventory, pricing, merchandizing, and marketing in real time. Visionet offers CommerceLink, a pre-built integration solution that is quick to deploy.

Conclusion

Implementing an ERP solution is an effective and efficient way to organize your business data and processes. It can help your employees make more informed decisions that create a better buying experience and attract loyal and engaged customers. Choosing the right ERP platform and implementation partner are essential for ensuring that all internal and external stakeholders are happy and productive after adopting the new solution. Customization and integration with external partners and platforms further enhance ERP capabilities and maximize ROI.

Resource planning requires organization, patience, and an understanding of how individual processes can be optimized to maximize performance. If you’re interested in learning more about how to manage your resources more effectively, send us a message at sales@visionetsystems.com for your free consultation.

Improving Your Mortgage Process by Learning from Experts

Mortgage processing usually takes up to 50% of the total closing cycle time. Furthermore, the quality of processing can have a significant impact on the closing ratios. Not to mention, it forms a major part of the loan production cost. Lenders who are leveraging the right technology and global delivery model in processing can reduce their cycle time by 25% and reduce their loan production cost by up to 30%.

Lenders should partner with global business process management (BPM) firms with a strong technology base. Reputable firms handle variability in volumes and have the technology tools which will help lenders better manage the seasonality of the mortgage business without increasing the fixed cost ofhaving an internal workforce.

Efficient and comprehensive process management services

Leading BPM firms offer highly efficient mortgage processing services that span the entire origination cycle, from initial document capture, document ordering and verifications, conditions resolutions, to trailing document support, etc. Economies of scale help these firms deliver high quality, cost-effective services. Having worked for multiple lenders provides them cost-efficient vendor services which areeventually passed on to the clients. Moreover, technology-led BPM firms use specialized software and high-end document capture equipment that is much more efficient than most lenders’ internal infrastructure.

Importance of digitally enhanced processing

Digital transformation offers three main enhancements to mortgage process management firms -  faster processing, faster communication, and improved accuracy. By replacing manual chores like data entry with automatic document capture and indexing, these digital tools reduce processing times from hours to minutes. Mortgage processing teams that use integrated tools to send order results directly to their clients’ LOS applications (instead of via email) save several hours of clicking, copying, and pasting each week. Digitally enabled service providers that employ a combination of OCR, machine learning, and manual “white-glove” validation save their clients from non-compliance, rejections, and other forms of business risk that take a great deal of time and effort to address.

Advantages of hybrid onshore-offshore delivery

Global process management firms offer an additional advantage. By operating on multiple continents, global firms can offer a hybrid onshore-offshore delivery model that marries the cost-effectiveness of offshore resources with the expertise of onshore service providers. Paper documents and sensitive information can be handled onshore while experienced offshore personnel performs bulk processing after regular business hours. Virtually overnight, his onshore-offshore model can transform your firm into a 24-hour mortgage processing operation.

What to look for in a mortgage BPM firm

When lenders are evaluating potential partners, the degree of technological sophistication of the potential partner is often the deciding factor. The lenders should avoid conventional outsourcing companies that rely primarily on manual entry and generic project management tools. Instead, they should look for organizations that are highly experienced in mortgage processing services and use industry-specific technologies.

The ideal BPM partner will also offer the complete range of digital mortgage services that your firm needs. Instead of engaging multiple service providers and passing loan documents back and forth between different partners, a single firm that offers a complete range of mortgage processing services under one roof will offer much better value, and you’ll avoid a lot of potential confusion.

To discover mortgage origination services or to learn more about our optimized onshore-offshore hybrid delivery model, please contact Visionet Systems and schedule a complimentary consultation session.

Want a winning digital mortgage experience? Support borrower adoption

Implementing a digital mortgage strategy is a rewarding journey for mid-size lenders. Even without the mega-funds required for a complete and disruption-free rip-and-replace of their legacy LOS, digital adoption is an essential step that will help lenders lower costs and shorten closing cycles.

In our experience, two digital models are emerging. In the first, the lender integrates internal systems with supporting vendors as best as possible. However, their broker and back-office processes remain as-is, or might even require them to hire additional personnel. In other words, they fail to extend the digital mortgage experience to the borrower.

Successfully extending the digital experience to the borrower is where the second model succeeds. Digital mortgage smartphone apps improve borrower engagement and reduce document wait times. Back-office staff and interactions are limited in terms of processing, and lenders gain on cycle time.

Extending the digital experience to the borrower is not without its challenges. First, not all borrowers have the latest Android or Apple phone, so their mobile experience may vary. Second, borrowers differ considerably in technological sophistication. Where one user might need a few simple instructions, another might require in-depth guidance. In short, digital adoption becomes the bottleneck.

Here are some numbers for you. A survey of 400 users’ month-long mobile app adoption rates reveals that a staggering 39% of users abandon apps, while an additional 10% require extensive support before full adoption. 86% of all users require at least some support. Of course, the numbers above vary with task complexity and mobile UX quality.

In a nutshell, if you extend your digital mortgage UX to your borrowers, it is critical that you budget for technology support staff. Otherwise, you will experience serious customer satisfaction issues. If borrowers have trouble using your mobile solution, they will only be able to partially accomplish tasks. Your staff will experience increased workloads, and will have to spend time reconciling tasks that were completed and those that were left open. Budgeting for support will help you maintain long-term profitability.

Download our eBook below to learn more about how digital services and solutions can transform your mortgage operations. For a complimentary consultation session, please contact Visionet Systems.

Streamlining mortgage QC with digital process management services

If you visit the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) website, it is evident that mortgage regulations are amended dozens of times each year. It might be possible for a mortgage lender, servicer, or other service provider to keep track of these regulatory amendments on their own, but this essential task is best left to organizations such as mortgage business process management (BPM) firms. BPM firms focus on managing these activities and possess the technological capabilities needed to drive effectiveness. With their help, mortgage companies can avoid serious business risk and be assured that their loan packages and other documents are fully compliant with all local and federal laws.

Look for comprehensive service ranges

The range of mortgage quality control processes performed by leading BPM firms span the entire mortgage cycle, including white-glove verification of mortgage information during initial loan package indexing, pre-funding and post-close audits, reviews of disclosed loan estimates, closing disclosures, and fraud reviews. Instead of relying on multiple service providers for these services, you can get better value by selecting a BPM partner capable of performing all the tasks you need. Moreover, choosing a partner that offers an onshore-offshore hybrid delivery model can also reduce your overall cost by 40% or more.

Insist on a high-tech service provider

To determine which BPM provider is right for you, it is critical to assess their technological capabilities. The most successful BPM firms complete the bulk of their tasks by leveraging highly efficient, accurate, and reliable digital technologies instead of manually evaluating loan documents against multiple lists of federal, local, and company-specific mortgage compliance rules. Technology-led firms use document capture and indexing tools to identify and sort documents, from which loan information is then extracted by optical character recognition (OCR) and machine learning software. After extraction, this information is passed through a business rule engine that performs multi-level compliance checks with efficiency, accuracy, and impartiality that no human worker can compete with.

Why wouldn’t a tech-only approach be better?

Given the advantages of these digital technologies, you might be wondering why you need a service provider at all. Why not just buy these digital tools and use them to process everything in-house? Good question. Here are some important reasons why buying these technology applications is not enough to ensure success:

Reason 1: High-tech infrastructure is expensive

The investment required to automate document processing can be prohibitively high for all but the largest mortgage firms. It would take a long time to recoup the costs associated with the high-end scanning equipment, software licenses, and other infrastructure that you would need. Moreover, sustaining the effectiveness of these technology solutions involves huge maintenance and upgrade costs.

Fluctuations in workload also make such a large investment quite risky. Unless your mortgage firm has an exceptionally steady and large number of loans to process each month, partnering with a service provider offers better value.

Reason 2: Today’s technology isn’t perfect

Despite their clear advantages, even the highest-ranked technology processing systems are only 95% accurate at best, which leaves a gap in quality. To ensure 100% quality, these results should be reviewed by an expert. A capable BPM partner can comprehensively manage these activities, allowing you to focus on your core business processes.

Visionet and other top BPM companies offer an ideal mix of digitally-enabled solutions. These products and services are integrated, allowing you to place orders and receive processed results without leaving the mortgage processing software application. To discover the best mix of technologies and technology-led services for your mortgage firm, please contact Visionet Systems for a complimentary consultation session.

Transform your mortgage operations, download the eBook

How ERP Integration Enhances Multichannel Commerce

As e-commerce continues to mature, more and more consumers have begun to treat online shopping as their preferred retail channel. If you asked someone (especially if they’re under 40) to imagine a typical shopping experience, there’s an increasing chance that their thoughts will feature a virtual shopping cart, digital wallet, or same-day delivery. These days, leading retailers cannot afford to give their digital channels lower priority than their physical retail locations. An ERP platform can ensure that all of your sales channels operate on an equal footing.
ERP systems improve efficiency by centrally managing all of your retail channels and allowing them to share vital business information. The biggest multichannel advantages offered by ERP solutions include:

Faster, cross-channel order fulfillment

Order fulfillment teams that rely on manual actions are extremely inefficient. They might use paper records or spreadsheet software to keep track of orders, and contact suppliers and logistics firms by email or phone. Each of these separate activities creates an opportunity to make a mistake, and makes the fulfillment process harder to track. ERP platforms replace this complex collection of business actions with a single, efficient solution that generates its own audit trail. Automated dynamic workflows determine the requirements of each order and send information and instructions to all relevant personnel.

By consolidating business activities across all retail channels, ERP systems reduce the time and effort required to process each order, and even enables order fulfillment options that are simply too complex for manual processing. Retailers that use modern allow customers to pay online and pick up their purchased items from the retail location of their choice, return online purchases in-store, and several other cross-channel services that enhance their shopping experience.

Omni-channel inventory automation

Operating across multiple locations and geographical regions poses a significant challenge for large retail chains. Similarly, companies that offer multiple fulfillment options increase the complexity of their day-to-day logistics. Manually tracking and managing stock levels across locations is incredibly imprecise, with updates occurring on a daily or even weekly basis. This makes replenishment inefficient, and forces retailers to carry higher product quantities to avoid out-of-stocks.

ERP solutions vastly improve retail profitability and operational efficiency by allowing retailers to maintain stock levels that closely match actual customer demand. A single, consistent, company-wide record of all sellable inventory improves your omni-channel customer experience – if a product is available, say, on your online store, then it will also be available via mobile app or telephone shopping. In this way, retailers avoid the complications associated with managing separate inventories for each channel.

Universal customer records

Managing each retail channel independently leads to inconsistent and incomplete customer records. If an online shopper purchases or returns an item, store associates and call center reps would have no way of accessing the customer’s transaction history, which would severely restrict their ability to provide assistance or resolve issues.

ERP systems act as a centralized store for all customer information that is updated instantly whenever the customer makes a purchase, return, calls your support center, or accesses your customer web portal or online store. This helps you create a consistent and personalized experienced for each shopper, and also gives you a much more complete picture of their purchasing preferences. These consumer analytics are an invaluable source of information, and can significantly improve your product development, sourcing, and marketing efforts.

Accurate, real-time information

Improved accuracy is a major advantage of ERP platforms that cuts across all business processes. Having all of your business information in one application eliminates the need to transcribe information from one platform to another, which is a major source of error. Information that is entered once can be accessed by any other department or business process that needs it. Any transactions or shipping and receiving activities that take place are logged in the system in real time, preventing inconsistency across channels, departments, or physical locations. With a single version of the truth, your personnel no longer have to wonder whether their stock levels or sales figures haven’t been updated yet.

Operational cost-efficiency

On one hand, employing large teams to process orders and maintain paper records is expensive. On the other, relying on a smaller workforce will result in extremely low fulfillment rates, which impacts revenue. In both cases, using manual processes impacts profitability.

ERP solutions improve your organization’s bottom line by improving productivity while simultaneously reducing labor costs. Thanks to automated workflows and delay-free communication, retailers can process more orders and ship more products per hour. Managing all of your channels centrally also helps control costs, since you don’t have to maintain separate IT systems for each channel, and it takes less time to manage channel information. As mentioned above, ERP systems also improve data accuracy, which helps prevent costly mistakes and business risk.

ERP systems give your customers a superior buying experience, and help your employees provide better customer service by providing a seamless experience across all retail channels. Choosing a technology implementation partner with extensive experience in the retail industry is the best way to ensure that your ERP implementation complements your existing business processes and scales well as your business grows. A retail-savvy technology partner will deliver an industry-specific solution on an accelerated schedule, which means that you’ll begin seeing results sooner. An implementation partner’s level of industry familiarity also reduces the chance of business disruption, missed deadlines, or going over budget. To discover the ERP solution and implementation strategy that aligns best with your business objectives, please contact Visionet Systems to schedule a complimentary consultation session.

Exceeding Borrower Expectations

Exceeding Borrower Expectations

As the landscape of borrowers’ profile changes where millennials are becoming prominent in the home buying process, lenders must differentiate themselves on quality, speed, and innovation to match the expectations of this generation of home buyers. Lenders that fail to do so will be quickly left behind. Statistics show that 99% of millennials are going online to search for homes and 58% of them found a home online.

The importance of borrower engagement

Borrower engagement is quickly becoming a key differentiator for lenders. Intangible products like mortgages rely almost entirely on the client experience to create the positive emotional cues that improve brand perception, and engagement is a big part of that experience. Simpler, quicker, and more convenient interaction can easily set your organization above your competitors.

Leading mortgage firms are rushing to meet borrowers’ rapidly increasing demand for digital and mobile services. Organizations that continue to rely on traditional methods of borrower engagement will find themselves unable to attract today’s increasingly sophisticated and well-informed buyers.

The borrower experience must be consistent, engaging, and delay-free. Lenders must find ways to unify the channels they use to communicate with the borrowers. Luckily, various digital technologies and technology-led services exist that help lenders achieve these objectives.

Enabling a consistent experience

Using inconsistent and diverse communication channels is an ineffective way to manage the borrower engagement. For example, if different software applications or IT systems are used to manage borrowers’ call logs, emails, text notifications, and status updates, it can create inconsistencies and data integrity challenges. Even worse, mismatches between channels might lead to inconsistent information and responses. In today’s digital environment and hyperconnected social media, these issues can potentially impact your firm’s brand value.

Using a multi-channel communication portal is the best way to ensure that your team always has access to each buyer’s complete history of interactions. Multi-channel portals allow organizations to log every phone call, document submission, email, chat session, text notifications, etc. on a single, seamless platform at a centralized location. This system will help your team to have a reliable source of information for all borrower engagement.

Expediting loan origination

Loan processing can involve long approval cycles, time-consuming document management, and complex reviews of loan packages that typically contain several hundred pages. Eliminating manual processes is arguably the most effective way to improve efficiency. Switching to automated solutions for managing mortgage documents and verifying regulatory compliance allows lenders to process loan applications faster and serve more clients than using manual loan processing methods. Industry-leading mortgage document management solutions convert scanned documents into searchable text that can be sent directly to loan origination systems (LOS), mortgage document recording platforms, or other servicers/vendors.

Ensuring regulatory compliance is another potential source of delay, which can impact the client experience. Failing to identify gaps in QC and compliance can lead to rejections and time-consuming rework. The leading mortgage firms are moving to automated solutions for QC and compliance reviews because of their ability to perform these tasks accurately, cost-effectively, without human bias, and at scale.

Another way to improve processing efficiency is by partnering with a global technology-enabled business process management organization. These organizations perform numerous important mortgage-related tasks for their clients with a high degree of accuracy, efficiency, and value. Since these services are usually performed in processing centers around the globe, twenty-four hours a day, you can also expect a greater speed of execution.

Combining engagement-enhancing technologies

These technology-led solutions help mortgage firms improve accuracy, save time, lower operating costs, and deliver a superior borrower experience. Visionet Systems is one of the few organizations which combines its 20-years of mortgage industry experience with the next generation of technology accelerators to provide a superior end-to-end offering to its customers. Please contact Visionet to schedule a complimentary consultation and discover how you can leverage Visionet to grow your business and meet your customers’ demands.

To learn more about how to begin transforming your mortgage operations and exceed borrower expectations, check out our e-book below!