Having the best loan origination and servicing systems will always be at the top of lenders’ IT initiative list, which is as they should be. But what about nonincome-producing departments? Those that we affectionately refer to as the “back office.”
Although these back office folks are nonrevenue generating, they are a critical piece of any organization. Without an accounting group, who would record revenue and pay the bills? Without an HR department, who manages payroll, benefits and recruiting? Of course, we can’t forget the licensing and legal staff.
These days, many lenders’ licensing and legal departments are larger than what they were budgeted for, and adding efficiency without adding head count to the back office must be a priority.
In an attempt to support the back office, organizations may also be deploying multiple applications to solve essentially the same problem. Although the individual solutions satisfy the needs of each department, the IT staff must support those disparate applications and the organization has to pay for all of them, too.
Firms regularly deploy what’s referred to an “enterprise-level” platform. But many times, those applications don’t really support the entire enterprise. However, organizations should understand that while certain purpose-built technologies will add little or no value to other departments, there are those that do.
E-mail and fax servers are a few obvious examples of solutions that add value to all departments—and so too should a lenders’ electronic document management platform.
Case-in-point: I would bet that the majority of lenders claiming to be paperless have file cabinets filled with invoices and employee files. Their servicing documents are on paper, or if they are electronically imaged, they’re commingled with origination documents because their doc workflow technology isn’t designed to independently support multiple departments on the same platform.
As a result, the time and money being saved on the front end by deploying technology is getting expended on the back end and not adding to profits. So let’s not forget that the support departments, although not revenue-producing, are a critical piece of lenders’ organization. And an “enterprise” solution, when deployed properly, will not put these departments into the black, but will certainly decrease lenders’ expenses.
