10 Must Haves In a Brokerage Paperless System and Vendor

A paperless system should be easy to use, but it's too easy to get lured in by a slick demo, only to realize later, the system doesn't really have all the tools you need. It may be easy for an agent to get a document into the system, but can your staff really manage the files? Does the system have the tools your office admin or transaction coordinator needs to do their job, all within that paperless system?

Here's a list of what we think are ten must haves:

1. An Established and Stable Vendor – You're putting your most important business documents in the cloud. Will the company be there in a year, three years, five years? Are they an established company or a new VC funded startup? If you're really going paperless and want to make sure the files are there when you need them, make sure your vendor will be around in the long run.

2. Document Retention and Security – Along the same lines, the vendor should keep all of the transaction files for a minimum of the legal retention period on your state (and not charge you extra to do so). All of your data, documents and transactions should also be stored in multiple data centers in multiple metro areas for protection against manmade and natural disasters.

3. A Customer Service Portal – Clients want 24/7/365 access to information. They don't want to have to wait to be able to reach their agent before they can access a document they want right now (even at 2am). A good customer service portal should allow an agent to give customers secure access to documents in the transaction and to define which documents they should be able to view. That access portal should also be flexible enough to allow access to other participants such as title companies and attorneys, on a custom basis with templated security profiles for each role.

4. PDF Management Tools – Document and file management is about more than just uploading and viewing PDF files. You need a system that allows you to manipulate PDFs – split a file into multiple files, merge PDFs, rotate pages, delete pages, markup or annotate documents – all online.

5. File Review Workflow – The system should have a way for agents to notify the company that documents are ready for review and for brokerage staff to mark documents and files complete or incomplete in one easy to use process. Anyone looking at a file should easily be able to see the progress and status of each document and the file as a whole. Automated alerts regarding documents being ready for review, being marked approved or incomplete are also key.

6. Offline Copies of Transactions – You're going to need offline copies to provide to auditors, attorneys (or, hopefully not) and possibly others. The system should be able to output a complete copy of the transaction that is organized, includes all the documents, history, participants and other important information in a format that's easy to read and review by someone who does not have access to the system. This offline copy should be readable using common software (e.g., a PDF reader) that virtually anyone will have available.

7. Fits into your software "ecosystem" – Your document management system should be part of the same software or be well integrated with your forms system, your electronic signature solution and your task/transaction management solution. Integration with your local MLS is also a plus, as is integration with you brokerage back office accounting system (e.g., brokerWOLF, Profit Power).

8. Great Reporting – You should be able to search for and find any transaction quickly. You should be able to pull-up transactions by status, closing date, office, agent, keyword and other important search keys.

9. Meets the Needs of All Levels of Technology Proficiency – You don't want your less technical agents keeping you from going paperless as a company. So make sure your solution offers the ability to fax documents into the system and other tools that allow you to go paperless without requiring your staff to scan documents for those agents who just can't move into the digital world.

10. Team friendly – We all know there are lots of teams in real estate. Make sure your system allows teams to share transactions and that it has other team friendly features.

To view the original article, visit the Instanet Solutions blog.