How to Choose Closing Coordination Software By Jonathan Cutler From:The New York Mortgage Press June 2001 issue More transactions, more stress, thinner margins. These qualities could describe any number of businesses, but they hit a bulls-eye for anyone involved in real estate. The increasing volume of transactions required to maintain profitability is causing everyone to look for new technologies that break through the frustrating “glass ceiling” of efficiency. Closing coordination software is an entirely new category of software which works alongside your current software, increasing your margins by eliminating the built in redundancy in your business processes. It shatters the efficiency ceiling. By adding reporting, archiving, tracking, and Web integration features to the software you already use, closing coordination reduces the management overhead of the average agent, title company, builder, or lender by as much as 35% -- while simultaneously improving customer service. Most of the gains are achieved by eliminating redundancies in faxing, phone calls, filing and looking for files, email, and travel. Ironically, the same real estate pros who have been slow to investigate this new technology might be surprised to find that their clients are already wondering why they can’t get their transaction information over the web. Think about it, your clients are the same people who already uses the web to check airline schedules, research their ailments, check school closings, trade stocks, and email jokes to their friends. In an average real estate transaction, there are typically 10 different parties and 20 different steps that must take place concurrently before a transaction can be finalized. There are also more than 50 forms faxed or reviewed, and between 150 and 400 phone calls, depending who you ask. By using closing coordination software, each party sends their documents to their unique Web site, posts their messages on one electronic bulletin board, and makes their lists of open items where everyone can “click in” to see them. With a 24 hour place to do business with you, your customers become MORE, not LESS connected to the people involved in the transaction. While most companies already have Web sites, the next step is to understand that a Web site can be more than an electronic brochure or information service – it can actually do work. When evaluating closing coordination, therefore, it’s not a matter of finding the right Web site, but of finding the right set of software tools which use the web to implement their communication components. Not every software package is created equal. So like any other new purchase there’s homework to be done. Questions you should ask yourself and software providers are: Communication & Document Delivery: Can the service offer secure document delivery, document sharing, scheduling, task tracking, messaging, and group email? Ordering: Will it allow you to order an appraisal, inspection, survey, or anything else you need with a few clicks? Must you work with in-house or network services, or can you work with your usual vendors? Logging: Is it capable of tracking everything that happens on your Web site? If something doesn’t look right, or you end up with a “different impression of events” than your client or vendor, your Web site event log should tell the true story of who said what and when. Archiving: If your website logs every message, document, form, task, and calendar item from every closing, can you keep that record for perpetuity? Get it on CD? Logging without archiving is like a car without gas. This will ultimately greatly reduce the mountains of paperwork you have to file and save.   Reporting: Can you see all of your current closings on a single screen or in one simple report? Does that report give you the information YOU need and care about? If you do a significant volume, you need to be able to access any one of your transactions with a click or two, and without logging in and out each time. Also, is recent activity flagged for you? Look for a system that can export reports to a spreadsheet, or email that report to others with whom you work for maximum efficiency.   Can you get multi-level and reporting for corporate oversight? Neutrality: This is probably the least discussed, least obvious, and yet most important feature for any software that will survive more than a year or two. Several closing coordination platforms are designed specifically for realtors, just for lenders, or primarily for relocation use. Yet the word “coordination” means that any tool you use must be meaningful and powerful for the other professionals you work with as well. Why? It seems obvious, but if the title company, the appraiser, the lender, the builder, the inspector, the agent, etc. don’t all find it to be a time saving and economic application for their business, they won’t use it -- and you won’t reap the benefits. You want the software you use to also be the software they use. Integration: Can your closing coordination software import data from your production software, or export it in a format useful for your vendors? Integration means that the software you choose can import and export common file formats that are useful for all parties to the transaction. Without integration, everyone is forced to re-enter the same data, data which may already exist in their other software. Security: Is the Web-based software you are considering hosted in a true national data center, or in someone’s office. Or worse, are you expected to host your own web server? Hosting an application server with web access is a unique and special business, and one that should be outsourced to the pros. This is your assurance of 24/7 availability, fire protection, power redundancy (especially in California!), and nightly data backups. With good hosting, security on most web-based applications significantly exceeds the security of keeping the same information in your own office. Cost: Any good closing coordination software will save you more than it costs, but how much does it cost? There are basically five ways companies charge for services: A per transaction fee, where you only pay for what you use, make no time commitments, and can often pass the cost on the buyer/borrower. Advertising supported services that are free to the user, but not sustainable over the long term. Referral fee supported, which is free only if you are willing to ask your vendors to sign up and pay a fee. Per seat or license charges tied to a period of time – which usually requires set-up fees and a time commitment, and are hard to pass on to the buyer/borrower or share between offices. Vendor supported, which is free only if you use that vendor for every transaction, and they build it into the price of the service. If you are a volume player with access to the Web from your office and reasonably up to date computers (less than 4 years old), then you can immediately benefit in a big way. If you are a smaller office sharing a single connection to the web, the advent of closing coordination is probably sufficient reason for you to look at adding additional locations in your office for web access and upgrading your connection. If you’re still using a free or consumer email account which filters or limits attachments, you probably don’t realize it, but you are advertising yourself as small and dated to all of your vendors, clients, and associates. It is no longer true that businesses are ahead of consumers in new technology. Your clients already research communities, find builders, realtors and other services, and research loan pricing online. They (or at least the almost 75% of the population that are online) assume that you will give them access to their closing and escrow documents and information over the web. Don’t let your competitors beat you in this game, it’s too easy to be a winner. Jonathan Cutler is president of SettlementRoom, Inc. For more information, visit www.settlementroom.com.