What the spiritual gurus teach about the interconnected nature of life has come into focus more sharply in the past two decades for the broad swath of service providers we call the real estate industry.

Real estate agents, stagers, home inspectors, mold remediators, pest inspectors, surveyors, appraisers, county recorders, attorneys, notaries, lenders, title agents, escrow officers, homeowners associations, homeowners and home warranty agents are all connected and passing information through an interconnected web of portals fueled by a technological matrix.

A title agency is less a brick-and-mortar business on a street corner, and more of an intricate web of connections to data, service providers, applications, customers, financial institutions, cloud repositories, and governmental record holders.

What you need in your tech providers is not someone who wants to sell you a new gadget, but a partner who understands the intricacies of your entire process and can collaborate with you to improve and perfect your system for greater operational excellence. Someone who facilitates an interoperable network of resources, tools and people positioned for optimal results.

While agency owners rely heavily on their IT professionals to assess the technological efficacy of a new innovation, it is the owners who should be looking at the long game, and that is the relationship between the tech provider and their IT department over the life of the technology, as it moves through its integration, iterations, updates and improvements.

Vetting a tech provider’s commitment to partnership

Assessing the character and integrity of the provider as an ongoing partner is a little challenging, since every  company claims to have superior customer support.

Here are a few areas to explore to elicit a deeper understanding of the tech providers’ commitment to supporting your agency and your staff with the new solution or platform.

Service level agreement (SLA)

As a baseline, thoroughly evaluate the SLA and ask questions if you need greater clarity. One question to be sure to ask (and you may find it in the MSA): “What happens to my data should I ever need to change my tech provider?”

References

Request contact information for current users that you can interview for purposes of evaluating the relationship between the user and the tech provider, rather than to explore the functional aspects of the technology itself. Specifically, you are looking for a contact at the user’s location who most often interacts with the tech provider.  If possible, visit the operations of a customer using the tech or software. Do not buy based solely on what the provider claims it “can” do. Instead, do what you can to evaluate what’s in the market right now and being used every day in the real world.  

Customer service

Talk to the customer service team to understand the extent to which they offer support, the speed with which they can respond, and their realistic availability, i.e., Monday through Friday vs. 24/7.  Be certain the support entity includes tenured and experienced resources that truly understand the job and the title industry. Additionally, look for red flags that might suggest the support group is a revolving door of 3rd party providers.

Innovation

In the tech world, innovation is where the rubber meets the road. Your tech provider should have a plan on paper outlining where they are headed in terms of strategic vision, innovations and updates. If the tech provider is resting on its laurels, be extremely cautious about joining forces.

And finally, when you are talking to the tech provider’s representatives, pay close attention to what they are saying. Are they asking you questions about your needs and ambitions or are they hyper-focused on telling you how great their product and services are. A true tech partner will want to align their product and services to your needs, not just sell you on their attributes.

Settlor’s technology is built on more than 30 years of innovation and improvements based on thousands of transactions, user-centric input and industry professional feedback. Contact us to learn how we can help you build a cloud-based, streamlined platform to improve both operations and customer service to prepare your agency for future opportunities.

Contact us today to learn more.