It’s becoming clear that the fulfillment services industry, which has long resisted the adoption of new technologies, is finally moving towards full automation. In an industry where processes, customers, and compliance requirements vary widely from state to state, or even county to county, this is great news.
This lack of national consistency means that manual processes, “stare and compare” tasks, and data entry—one keypress at a time—continue to be done by hand, at the expense of productivity, customer experience, and turnaround time.
Although the title section has made tremendous strides in recent years, there is still a tremendous amount of “button-pushing” to be done. Most things happen “between” technologies and systems.
In other words, while several technological tools such as Title Production Systems (TPS) or online title search solutions have significantly helped title companies to improve and speed up their processes, there are still some areas in most workflows that still require the manual one Transferring information from one system to another requires even more keystrokes and potentially productivity-sapping silos.
Emerging technologies could fill technology gaps
The good news is that several types of new and ever-evolving technologies, many of which are artificial intelligence (AI), sometimes referred to as “machine learning” (ML), and robotic process automation (RPA), often referred to as “bots.” , ” are created to bridge these “intermediate” system gaps.
While RPA and AI differ in that RPA lacks built-in intelligence or the ability to learn from one’s own experiences, RPA is typically more affordable and customizable — two key characteristics for company titles and closures.
Increasingly, manual processes in title workflows are being eliminated by bespoke bots and AI. The first example is a known issue for title companies.
Typically, a title agency can get a new job through any number of different channels. A real estate professional can send an SMS or a fax. A buyer or seller could call it. A loan officer could send it via email or some other technology that doesn’t necessarily integrate with the underwriting agency’s system.
The result? The title professional who takes the order (and who doesn’t always take the order consistently either) may take that email or fax and then manually enter the data in it into the TPS. The result is extra time away from customers or other tasks, not to mention the potential for error.
However, a number of RPA and AI solutions are now emerging to collect this series of orders and enter them into the same format in the TPS quickly and automatically, without the need for human intervention.
Manual headache
Another manual issue for title agencies is the process of data collection. New orders and inquiries are not always complete, comprehensive or even absolutely correct. There are numerous data points on a title order, and most of the time it falls to a title agency employee to track down the correct or missing information.
Again, this data may come in by phone, email, SMS, or other means. And again, there are few large-scale technologies that can seamlessly intervene (or better yet, achieve) to collect this data and feed it into the TPS. But again, RPA and AI solutions are beginning to automate this “in-between” process.
The challenge for title agencies or fulfillment service providers serving multiple or unique markets goes beyond the need to understand and keep up with the differences in those markets. Some municipalities, counties, or states also have special requirements that do not apply statewide.
As a result, TPS and other broader platforms find it unattractive to automate these requirements – which typically come in the form of a unique form or document that needs to be filled out per transaction.
But what if an agent needs to fill out this unique form per transaction, even though there’s no major technology to automate the process? Again, this agency has likely assigned the task to one or more employees who will manually enter the data (and ensure its accuracy for compliance) at the expense of time and productivity.
Enter the tech bots
While more than a few technology vendors are happy to customize elements of their platforms for such tasks, these customizations are not always guaranteed, and they are rarely done at a price agents are willing to pay.
Enter customizable RPA solutions that can pull the data needed to meet these needs from any system that contains it and input it into the required form or forms quickly and seamlessly. This frees up the employee or staff tasked with these simple, redundant data entry tasks to handle sales, marketing, or more complex customer service needs.
A final example of the many gaps that custom automation can target in the title industry comes from reporting. More than a few title companies in the industry are tasked with manually tracking ledger changes in their daily title orders, from which they manually generate ledger balance reports.
Needless to say, the process is tedious, repetitive, and prone to errors and delays. We haven’t yet met a titular pro enjoying the process. And yet, every year, valuable man-hours flow into the inefficient process. However, there are RPA solutions that are able to quickly review every single title order and generate reports that are automatically converted into an account balance update and uploaded to the TPS. And unlike the productivity of even the hardest workers, these technologies are typically available 24/7.
Of course, as the title industry continues to work toward greater automation, the challenge is that there are hundreds of similar technology gaps that vary by client, agency, location, and market needs. As such, it’s unlikely that we’ll ever see a one-size-fits-all solution to most of these gaps. However, as RPA and AI technologies evolve, agents will increasingly use them to improve turnaround time, improve productivity, and make more cost-effective use of their most important resource—their people.
This column does not necessarily represent the opinions of the HousingWire editorial team and its owners.
Jimmy Lewis is the CEO and co-founder of TrueFocus Automation.
Sridhar Loganathan is COO and co-founder of TrueFocus Automation.
To contact the author of this story:
Jimmy Lewis at [email protected]
Sridhar Loganathan at [email protected]
To contact the publisher responsible for this story:
Sarah Wheeler at [email protected]
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