Finance Case Study: Mortgage Broker
Problem: A Mortgage Company was experiencing heavy losses in revenue each year, and each Sales Rep was losing several thousands of dollars a year in income due to quickly changing market terms and conditions and rates.
While assisting a prospect through the application process, the Salesperson gets alerted of industry bond rates every five minutes by a commercial pager service to gauge relative stability in offering the office rates from each morning. Despite this, the office may or may not be able to quickly adjust according to market conditions but rather have to anticipate what will happen the next day. When this happens, the Office Manager has to quickly call or page all 30 Reps in the field to tell them of changed terms. It takes the Office Manager at least an hour to send the messages and/or leave voice mails, and to field calls requiring more information. If the Rep does not receive the notice before signing the papers with the prospect, the package suffers a loss right from the beginning of the mortgage process. This happens to about one third to one half of the Reps on at least one occasion a month, with a minimal loss of $500. In one case it was as much as $3000. For this office, it means a minimum of $60,000 in annual net profit lost to the head office and about 10% of the Office Manager's time to do manual notifications, or another $7,000 of fully loaded annual salary spent on messaging overhead.
What the Office Manager needs is an easier way to send a complete, detailed message once, that will simultaneously reach each Rep. The Manager also needs to know if each rep has received the message to determine if other means of notification are necessary in the event of failed delivery, either manual or system-automated. To summarize, the company needs to put in place an efficient and convenient messaging system to monitor and improve upon its operation each time a loss needs to be resolved and responsibility identified.
Solution: After narrowing down the choices between three wireless messaging applications, HipLinkXS® was recommended by the Office Manager and Sales Manager because of its advanced messaging capabilities, including group messaging and pre-defined triggers for event-driven alerts that can save them from real losses and lost time.
Results: The Company now expects to reduce most losses resulting from last minute changes in terms or rates. As a bonus, the Office Manager now has time to implement many shelved projects that otherwise could not be done without hiring additional staff. They are now operating more efficiently, while their competition continues to lose money at inopportune times due to poor field communications. Total savings per year on this one application: $67,000 for a 30-rep team. Not bad for less than $8,000 spent on this investment.