With so much new technology coming to market every week, it can be difficult keeping up with it all. When you’re busy running your mortgage brokerage and serving your clients, rolling out a new piece of software to your internal team is probably the last thing on your mind.
But understanding which tools can help you to build your business and run a more streamlined and efficient operation is key to success. It’s not only a matter of thinking about which individual tools work best for you and your team. Understanding how your technology stack can work together effectively is just as crucial.
What is a tech stack?
Every piece of technology that you use in your business should ultimately help you to achieve the same goal–generate more customers for your mortgage brokerage. But each tool won’t do this directly. Instead, your software should save you time, which leaves you with more hours for your clients, or help you to complete your work more efficiently.
A tech stack is simply the collective group of softwares or application suite that you’re using to achieve this goal. The best tech stacks are seamlessly integrated to allow data sharing across desktop and web applications to give your loan officers everything that they need to serve your clients.
Google Workspace is a great example of an effective tech stack. You may be using a Gmail-based email provider across your team, along with holding important notes about customers within Google Drive and individual Google Docs.
Attaching these docs to email is simple and takes a user directly to that file within GDrive. From there, edits can be made directly into one single document that all those with access can see. Gone are the days of multiple people editing 6 different versions of a Word document!
Most real estate agents and mortgage bankers use different tech stacks, depending on their needs. For instance, the marketing team of a brokerage or real estate business will need a completely unique set of tools to run social media or analyze web data than what your loan officers will need to complete a mortgage application for a client.
Why do you need one?
How is a tech stack going to help your business? Ultimately, it comes down to efficiency. Your customers are looking for speed and convenience during their home buying process, so it’s vital that your brokerage adapts to fit the needs of the modern consumer.
It’s also about keeping up with your competition. Large firms like Rocket Mortgage revolutionized the way that loans are processed and approved, and it was all thanks to technological innovation. Customers now expect to see this same level of service from any mortgage provider, so it’s your job to implement the right tech stack to make that happen in your business.
With efficiency also comes cost savings. While building your tech stack may be a significant upfront expense, the time and money savings that it can make across your team will make the investment worth it.
On the client side, customers can be served faster and more effectively, which enhances their experience with your brokerage. That usually leads to new business through referrals from happy clients, and it’s all thanks to your tech stack.
When don’t you need a tech stack?
Most large companies will have multiple tech stacks at any one time that vary from department to department. There’s very little server side integration between each stack across the organization as a whole.
As a small to medium-sized business, it’s important to know where your technology stack fits into the bigger picture of the company and when it’s best to outsource the work instead. Partnering with an outside vendor can often be a better solution than trying to build a tech stack that works for everyone.
With cyber security an ever-increasing threat to businesses today, it’s crucial to have measures in place to keep yours and your customers’ data protected. Working with an outside security firm is usually a cheaper and more effective solution to managing cyber security defense, rather than attempting to build systems in-house.
Marketing partnerships are also beneficial for smaller firms. Effective marketing takes specialized skills and expensive software that quickly adds up on the expense sheet. An agency like BankBound focuses specifically on the financial industry, so has a vast depth of knowledge that your brokerage can benefit from.
These types of strong partnerships help to make smaller and medium brokerages more competitive. Your agency will cover the cost of the marketing software, while still allowing you to benefit from it. Their knowledge and expertise also means that they know how to successfully promote your organization, leaving you with more time to serve your customers directly.
Customer communications are also a place where tech stacks can be helpful, but costly for a small business. Unless your company has the latest postal software, sending letters to your customers can be a frustrating waste of time and money. Businesses like PrintMail Solutions have worked with clients for over 30 years to solve this problem. In many cases, outsourcing your statement processing or communications through a business like PrintMail Solutions can free you up to complete other tasks internally.
What should you focus on?
No matter how big your mortgage brokerage, building and managing your customer relationships should always be a priority. As you’re building your tech stack, this should be your primary focus.
One key part of building a better experience for your customers is staying organized and on top of deadlines. Project management tools can be useful in the mortgage and home buying process to ensure that everything is completed on time and by the right people. Tools like Asana or ClickUp can help your team communicate and keep up with an application’s status in real time, making the whole process stress-free for your client.
Customer resource management (CRM) software is also a useful tool to deploy. As your brokerage looks to serve clients in a wider geographic area, you need to be extremely organized when it comes to customer engagement. A CRM can house all of your documents and communications notes, making it much easier for your loan officers to manage their own client pipeline. Pipedrive and Hubspot are two of the best CRM providers in the space right now.
With so many documents involved in the loan process, having good document processing and management is also a priority. This is one of the most important industry-specific tech stacks that you can build out. Electronic document signing like DocuSign offers end-to-end solutions to streamline your process and allows clients to have digital copies of all of their documents.
It’s always best to get feedback from clients as you build out your tech stack. Ask them about their experience using your current systems and processes, and gather information about where you could make improvements or need to find new solutions.
Make your mortgage brokerage more efficient
Poorly implemented technology can be a source of great frustration for both your internal team and your customers. Outsourcing tasks like marketing or client communications can free up much needed time for your employees, and allows them to focus more on the tasks and priorities that they’re skilled in and bring in more revenue.
Making the effort to focus on the customer experience during the mortgage application process really can pay off. Investing in the right software platforms that allow your team to focus on building customer relationships is one of the best moves you can make as a growing brokerage business.
Ready to make your mortgage brokerage run more efficiently? Contact us to discuss how we can partner with you to boost your marketing and customer communications.
