Many businesses outsource certain tasks for a whole host of reasons. Title agencies are no different.
A title agency is a complex business and title agency owners are often called upon to wear a lot of different hats in the course of running a successful agency. But the truth is, every agency owner has a particular set of skills, and some may find themselves managing one side of the agency with ease – the sales and marketing division, for instance – but may struggle with some aspect of the business end of things.
If you are thinking of outsourcing any portion of your agency work, here are tips on how to assess your skills, needs and processes to determine if and where you need outsourcing support.
Skills Assessment
The first step to assessing whether or not you should be outsourcing is to look in the mirror. You started the agency because you love some aspect of running a title company, but the unfortunate truth is, you may struggle with one particular aspect.
Remember the adage, “Do you what you love, and the money will follow?”
Well, the corollary is, “Do what you hate, and you will be miserable!”
But of course, it’s not just about your skills. Successful business owners hire the professionals they need to run many different aspects of the title agency. But sometimes it’s a payroll challenge to staff up to fill every need. If your team lacks the skills to carry out certain tasks effectively and you can’t justify hiring the talent you need to shore up that aspect of the business, outsourcing may be the best option.
And finally, title companies can be quite effective at cross training employees to handle multiple tasks within the agency. But you don’t want to force a square peg into a round hole, resulting in a half-hearted effort to perform important tasks, or worse, pull a competent employee away from their expertise to muddle through a task they are not equipped to handle. Outsourcing can resolve that issue best.
Needs Assessment
If you are contemplating outsourcing it may well be because you have recognized that your staff is struggling to get certain tasks accomplished and failing to meet deadlines time and again.
This could be for a very happy reason – you are growing faster than you can hire and those growing pains means something is falling between the cracks.
Or it could be because your ambitious management team has put together an extravagant growth plan with a lot of moving parts and you just can’t get it all done.
This is a good time to bring in your staff and find out from them what would be helpful. For instance, your marketing team may be struggling to fulfill the annual marketing plan. They know exactly what they don’t have time to do and may have a great suggestion for outsourcing a portion of the work to take the heat off, whether that is investing in a social media management platform or hiring a freelance event planner to manage educational sessions for your real estate agents, happy hour meet and greets, or the annual client open house.
Processes Assessment
Title agents have lots of deadlines to meet, starting with the ubiquitous closing deadlines.
But there are also strict rules and regulations title companies must follow that include paper trails, escrow accounts, accounting responsibilities, escheating, underwriter and state audits, and more.
Meeting with your department heads to assess where the logjams are in your systems can help you identify the perfect opportunity for outsourcing particular processes to ease the situation.
At Positively Balanced, we know how important it is to provide you with the most complete and accurate records to keep you in compliance on all fronts. Our reconciliation services do just that, offering an unparalleled level of data security, real-time transaction monitoring, fraud detection and audit readiness. Call us today to learn more!