The Technology Shiny Penny

At least once or twice every year, someone comes out with a newer, cooler, easier, prettier technology to purportedly give offices and agents a leg up on the competition. We have seen this over and over again. Most of the time, the sales pitch for the new shiny penny is so good that you have no idea what you are buying or what advantage it will give you, just that it is really cool! And often overlooked are the questions such as "How will it fit in with our operations?", "How will my staff be trained?", "Will there be more work for staff?" and "Is this shiny penny company going to be around for the long haul?"

If you want a really good example think back to the craze over QR Codes. "You've got to have these" was heard at every conference and meeting. Put them on your signs, your ads, your benches, even your kids' lunch boxes. If you don't have QR codes in your office, you are a dinosaur. A year later, you never heard a whimper. In the meantime, software companies were scrambling around to keep up with the latest shiny penny. Your staff were scrambling to be trained and your agents spent a lot of money getting all their printing changed.

The biggest challenge is that brokers, agents and staff feel that they have to jump into the first thing that looks good, regardless of the consequences to time and money spent. It can be hard to stay competitive if the competing office down the street has a coffeemaker that brews your coffee by sensing that your car has pulled into the parking lot. (Hey, not a bad idea!) The challenge is the new shiny coffeemaker doesn't use the same coffee, filters, and requires special cleaning separately from other coffeemakers in the office. In the end though, the expensive coffeemaker costs too much money and brews coffee every time any car drives by the office. Then, agents become upset because they can't just make a simple cup of coffee without viewing a 30 minute online tutorial. Sound familiar?

Well I can tell you, it's happening again. This time the buzz phrases are paperless closings, e-signatures, online closing rooms, and all in the cloud. Many brokers have been bombarded with pitches about being paperless and signing everything online. Agents are asking their brokers, "What is this new shiny penny that you don't have and that my agent friends are telling me about?"

This is not to say that paperless is not a good thing or that being able to work across the internet is a bad thing. What I am saying is that introducing this kind of shiny penny to your existing infrastructure takes planning and execution by your software vendor, by your management team and especially by your staff.

At Lone Wolf, our phones ring off the hook after each of these shiny pennies gets adopted. The first question is "Can we integrate Lone Wolf to Shiny Penny?" Really, that should have been the last question. The first question should have been to the shiny penny salesman. "How does your system work with my existing software products like Lone Wolf?" "Will I have to enter my agents and all my closings in two places?" "Will there be a seamless transfer of information back and forth as closing details change?"

While there are many great software suppliers providing great new shiny pennies, ask yourself if they are interested in making your business easier and more efficient to run, or just interested in turning their shiny penny into lots of your hard earned dollars.

To view the original article, visit the Lone Wolf blog.