There’s more than technology to consider when looking to streamline operations and processes, attendees at the National Settlement Services Summit in Cleveland learned.
During a Tuesday afternoon session titled “Lean and Mean… Simplifying Your Title Machine,” panelists offered advice on process refinement and outsourcing.
The session’s main operators participated in a roundtable discussion on staffing and production strategies, including the use of outsourcing, offshoring and technology to reduce costs without reducing quality of service.
Adjusting the staff lineup was a major focal point, but as Real Living Title Agency President Timm Kalep noted, “If you have the right people in the right position on the bus, you’ll need fewer people.”
When a title deal reaches a certain level of volume and revenue, it’s impossible to have just the best-performing staff members running everything, added Prashant Kothari, founder of String Real Estate Information Services. That’s when it really matters to have a good process.
In terms of process engineering, many companies have been concerned with mastering Six Sigma. However, Six Sigma process implementation can be a daunting process, speakers explained, and reengineering need not be that intensive.
Simply opening the discussion with your employees can be a great starting point. Companies can start by committing to building a team that defines existing processes, which can be a big task in itself.
Jeff Eisenstadt, president of Title Source, said his employees are constantly working to “build a better mousetrap.” Introducing process refinement to workers has generated many ideas. Even if those ideas aren’t implemented, he said, employee morale improves because they’re involved in making the company better.
Eisenstadt got involved in outsourcing several years ago. Title Source used outsourced services in title production (mainly key efforts) and hasn’t gone much further than that to include summaries and reviews. Outsourcing the coding process has helped the company reduce costs and keep employees focused on their jobs instead of training new employees every time order volume increases.
“Those people who ‘get it’ can move on to brief and vet positions so they’re not tied to production work,” Eisenstadt said.
Despite the obvious benefits, outsourcing (particularly offshore services) remains a political and moral dilemma.
Title Source has used offshoring in the past, telling its workers, “They’re not here to replace your job. They’re going to be your assistants.”
Although title workers tend to worry about their job security when their companies outsource services offshore, anecdotal evidence suggests that outsourcing is not causing companies to downsize. Kothari, for example, said that his main clients are growing between 20 and 30 percent.
As Kalep said, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” In other words, there may be some churn, but outsourcing will help companies and their employees more than hurt them.
Still, there is a need to separate the truths from the myths when it comes to outsourcing.
One myth, the panel noted, is that outsourcing and offshoring are brand new. Outsourcing service work is nothing new from an economic standpoint, Kothari noted. It is basic global trade.
“If you’re against outsourcing, you should be against importing coffee and tea into the US,” he said.
The top countries that offer outsourcing/offshoring services to US companies (the Philippines, Ireland, China, and India, for example) account for just 1.5 million jobs. In other words, about 1 percent of jobs are outsourced, Kothari noted, which isn’t even a “rounding error.”