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March 28, 2023

The Essential Elements of Successful Workflows: Standardization & Simplicity

Today’s on-demand consumers expect quicker, more digitally-enabled closing experiences. This permanent shift in consumer expectations has been a call to action for title agencies to become more efficient while maintaining a highly customer-centric experience.

With this need to maximize operational efficiency, the team at Qualia set out to hear directly from agents across the country about how they build their own workflows. To do so, we launched a nationwide survey to gain deeper insights into how agencies create operational processes.

The research included responses from agencies of all sizes across the country. Among other observations, the survey results demonstrated that workflow standardization frequently correlates with higher efficiency and greater pipeline visibility.

A look at title operations across the country

As mentioned above, our team was curious about how agencies set up their workflows and reporting. We also wanted to understand how these operational decisions impacted efficiency and pipeline reporting across agencies. To gather these insights, we asked agencies several questions, including:

  • How they set up their workflows and how many workflows they leveraged
  • How they set up their production pipeline reporting
  • How often they leveraged features such as tasks, automation, templates, and other features within their workflows
  • How confident they were in their ability to configure features within the software
  • How confident they were in their ability to track pipeline performance

The responses to our survey ran the spectrum. Some agencies created unique workflows to account for any individual client and regional differences. Meanwhile, some agencies leveraged workflows as the “base” element of their process, meaning they created 2-3 standard workflows that could be configured with unique tasks and other elements to account for regional and client differences.

With this wide spectrum of responses, our team was able to identify meaningful correlations between workflow setup and operational success.

Standardization is a key ingredient for operational success

Our analysis of the survey responses indicated that standardization is a key characteristic of operational success. Agencies who use workflows, order templates, and transaction types systematically and sparingly (i.e., as the “base” elements of their process) reported greater efficiency and overall confidence in their operational setup.

Our analysis also found that standardized and simplified workflows enabled greater pipeline visibility and reporting. Agencies with standard workflows reported that they could systematically leverage reports to track production pipeline. Meanwhile, agencies that lacked workflow standardization were largely limited in their ability to report on pipeline in a consistent way.

The results of our survey indicate just how valuable standardization is when it comes to setting up processes. In the coming months, we’ll dive deeper into how standardized workflows and processes can enable everything from quicker employee onboarding and job satisfaction to accurate reporting and improved client experience.

Alex Brown Headshot
Alex Brown

Alex is a real estate attorney with a Title and Escrow background spanning the local, regional, and national levels. Prior to Qualia, Alex worked at Mortgage Connect, a national title and escrow services provider focused primarily on high volume refinance transactions and with Opendoor to launch their joint-venture national title company. Alex developed Opendoor’s title operation from a single state/single market in 2017 to their 2020 multi-state coverage area processing nearly 15,000 transactions with an approximate value of $7.2 billion.

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