Well over half of all industry professionals are taking a serious look at mortgage business intelligence (MBI), and if you’re one of these, you’ve undoubtedly heard the myths. As with any new, disruptive technology, misconceptions abound. Predictably, this misinformation about MBI comes from those who have had the least exposure to it. Here are three of the most common myths, with a bit of clarification on each one:
“It’s too expensive.”
This feedback generally comes from nonusers who have never been exposed to the value proposition firsthand. The best way to size this up is to take a look at your proposed MBI costs on a monthly basis. Whatever your total license or maintenance fees are over the term of your contact, figure out your monthly cost. If you’re running a small to medium sized regional firm, closing one or two additional loans per month with MBI should cover the cost of the system. For larger, national accounts, you really shouldn’t need more than another four or five closed loans to cover your costs. Experienced users understand that MBI can expand volume by much more than just one to five loans, and that there are numerous other ways a system can dramatically impact your bottom line.
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“I don’t have time for another technology initiative.”
This one is interesting, in that it’s not so much feedback about MBI as it is about a prior experience, usually an LOS implementation. If you’re interested in MBI but reluctant to move forward as a result of your experiences on a prior software project, you owe it to yourself to talk to some of your vendor’s references about their experiences. If you’re working with a reputable and capable MBI provider, you’ll find these conversations enlightening. Getting the software up and running should take a week or less, and your vendor should include a block of consulting hours with your implementation that not only covers training but also conversion services, in which they help you convert your most critical analytics into embedded analytics in your MBI platform. Both of these shouldn’t require more than one to three hours of anyone’s time during any given week.
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“It’s too resource-intensive.”
My favorite myth of all, because every seasoned MBI user I’ve ever spoken with wishes they had more resources to devote to their platform. But most didn’t start out that way. Just about everyone that embarks on an MBI project has some level of trepidation about resources, and the best MBI providers can demonstrate from the beginning that once implemented, the system actually saves time, as opposed to spending more of it. Once users begin to see the direct relationship between the extent to which they leverage MBI and their available bandwidth, not to mention their profitability, they become obsessed with finding more resources to engage with it. This is because every man hour invested in a good MBI system will yield several hours in time savings in the form of process and workflow improvements.