‘Time is precious, more valuable than money’, is the old adage, though the meaning of time in a property transaction can be very different depending on your stakeholder role.
Clients’ view of time can often be based on outside factors and their growing home move to-do list, which, if misjudged, can lead to a great deal of frustration with delays. Mortgage Brokers and Estate Agents have their own cashflow driven timeline, which doesn’t necessarily align with the reality of the transaction. I say this as I don’t think there are many property professionals in the UK that are happy with current pipeline conversion rates, there is always a push for cases to complete quicker. Likewise, the conveyancer is always in pursuit of a swift and easy transaction, which delivers a positive experience for the client throughout.
It’s easy to see that every party in the process would benefit from saving a bit of time on property transactions – how you achieve this, is the challenge.
I have seen many technology solutions in my two decades working in the property market, with many of the solutions focusing heavily on B2B features and functionality. Though this can be beneficial for the parties on the business side of transactions, it doesn’t address the issues for the client. Ironically, many of the challenges that businesses face can be solved by putting the clients’ needs at the top of the list for new technology. In an industry of paper, pens and high street solicitor offices, the consumers often have no technology available to them during a transaction, so are most easily pleased and ready to embrace change.
You can absolutely understand the common frustration from clients, too. Unless you work in the industry, you can’t understand the legalese, track a process through a combination of post-it notes, spreadsheets, emails and sporadic phone calls. It’s no surprise that home moving is one of the most stressful experiences in life, for this reason.
So how do we remove the stress and anxiety that comes with property transactions? Technology is not a silver bullet, as people have a massive role to play, but it has a pertinent role in delivering a positive change for everyone involved.
In my view, the only way to meaningfully save time in the process is by creating an ecosystem that connects our community together and to avoid bringing more complexity to the process with unconnected, bit-part solutions.
From the outset, we have taken this approach with DigitalMove. Yes, it’s much harder to build an end-to-end, all-encompassing solution, but it’s the only effective way of ensuring the client journey is consistent, and that the technology works for every party involved.
From property listing, all the way through to legal completion, we are laser-focused on how every interaction can be communicated to every stakeholder. I am sure I can speak for all conveyancers when I say nobody wants “yet another login” – by focusing on the touchpoints and interactions, we can have a holistic view of every transaction and remove these sorts of barriers from the technology solution.
This does rely, in some part, on all parties buying in to the solution. Many businesses are hostages to habit and their internal systems, and some firms have developed their own technology in-house, believing it will give them greater control. However, very few businesses have the time or financial resources to develop and maintain in-house systems, making our solution, DigitalMove, a much more attractive proposition. What we won’t do, is tell you how to manage your processes – we encourage our conveyancing partners to draw up their workflows and proof of concept documents, and work with us on implementing DigitalMove in the most effective way.
The best strategies after all, start small, are customer-focused, and are both repeatable and scalable.
