STRATMOR Group Report Investigates Methods for Ensuring Better Technology Implementations

In its November Insights Report, mortgage advisory firm STRATMOR Group, Greenwood Village, Colo., said lenders who choose the right tools to empower their teams to best serve customers, and who implement these new technologies effectively, can win a significant competitive advantage via a speed-to-market strategy.

In “Digital Success: The Power of Process Led Implementation,” Michael Grad, STRATMOR Group senior partner, discusses the implementation process and prescribes a solution that will lead to better outcomes.

“Margin compression and lower volumes will drive lenders to seek out new solutions, while at the same time increased M&A activity will have them investing in technologies that will enable them to make necessary pivots to capitalize on new synergies to improve performance,” Grad said. He said a 360-degree, voice of-the customer approach, starting with defining the critical customer moments of truth and continuing through designing and implementing the enabling process/technology to deliver success from the lender’s perspective.”

Grad said far and away the most common challenge his team sees is a lender with a non-existent or poorly developed operating model for the current market, or a technology provider with a poor understanding of the lender’s operating model. “Understanding the lender’s Target Operating Model is so important that we consider the solution to this final challenge an absolute requirement for a successful implementation project,” he said. “We believe a top-down, customer-driven strategy drives the required digital core platform capabilities, processes and the enabling technology infrastructure. Without this target operating model in place, lenders are literally investing in the dark.”

Grad said the most significant benefit of beginning the work with the TOM is that it can conceptually align all parties involved and provide the required direction, structure and discipline for the implementation work that follows. The approach is called Process Led Implementation; he says it has been very effective for customer-facing technologies such as Point-of-Sale and Loan Origination Systems.

Grad added having the right framework for the implementation process is a vital first step. STRATMOR recommends lenders form their own internal, multi-disciplinary teams to seek out answers and to respond to the problems that naturally arise during the digital design and implementation processes and as changes in the industry create new challenges.

The report can be found at https://www.stratmorgroup.com/insights-report/.