Social media is rife with stories about misguided purchases, like buying an expensive boat just before being transferred to Arizona for work or filling up your wedding register with expensive kitchen appliances and gadgets only to learn neither of you enjoy cooking and you end up eating out every night.
Failing to consider long range plans before investing in technology is of the same ilk. While some technology may solve today’s problem, modern software and applications can be pricy and that must be weighed against your long-term goals and where that new solution might fit into the bigger picture.
For instance, signing a contract for an expensive social media platform may be helpful in the short run, but if you have already decided your expansion plans require you to outsource your marketing to a professional firm means that fancy new platform is soon going to be sitting idle.
Here are some elements to consider if you are building a tech stack with your long-term growth in mind.
The right fit
Sometimes the tech upgrade you are considering may be a stand-alone – like a social media platform. But more often than not in the title insurance industry, you will be integrating various elements of the tech stack so that data can be passed seamlessly from one platform to another. It’s critically important as you consider new investments that you solicit the best expert IT advice on approaching those integrations in a way that will make sense in light of your 1-3-5-year plan to build out a more sophisticated stack.
Price flexibility
The real estate industry is notorious for its seasonal and historical fluctuations. Technology pricing that is adaptable to the size of the organization and/or the volume of the work is key for the title insurance industry so that you don’t find yourself tied to a huge monthly fee when the market goes into free fall. Make sure you understand how pricing will change with volume and use so that it best matches up with your particular business needs and cycles.
Scalability
Like price flexibility, you want to find solutions that grow with you, meaning that you can easily add users, expand usage, or get more complex as your business changes and grows. The solution you buy may have 100 applications and if you are only using 10, that’s what you should be paying for, but if your business plan envisions you tapping into 60 of those applications in the future, you want to know that you can easily scale up when the time comes to take fuller advantage of the technology’s functionality.
Customizable
And finally, look for the most customizable solutions. As we all know, title insurance, escrow, and closings are handled quite differently from state to state and if you have a multi-state business – or are planning to expand into a new market in your 5-year plan – you want to know that your solutions can be adapted to the specific parameters of each market.
Developed by forward-thinking real estate professionals, VizionX creates powerful, intuitive, and customizable technology that automates everyday tasks, allowing your clients to become your focus. At VizionX, we are here to assist you in perfecting your skills and technology to improve your service offerings. Contact us today to learn more!
