Smartmove general manager Darren Little credits the achievements of the booming brokerage to a business model that is process driven and concentrates heavily on customer experience.
The award-winning business has experienced a record-breaking level of success over the past 12 months, reaching $500m in settlements during a financial year for the first time in its history.
“Smartmove has invested wisely in driving process efficiencies,” says
NextGen.Net sales director, Tony Carn.
“That investment has been critical to the firm’s success. Not just because it provides cheaper, better and quicker outcomes – also because at the end of the day it gives a far better customer experience. That’s the clincher.”
Little says Smartmove’s partnership with NextGen.Net has been the lynchpin in a winning formula.
“As a business, which is very process driven, we focus on efficiency and wastage and the ‘Supporting Documents’ module in NextGen.Net’s ApplyOnline has produced efficiency and Straight-Through Processing to banks, which is quite frankly, unparalleled,” Little says.
Smartmove’s embracing of technology and innovation extends to its Operations staff.
“Our Operations team does all our preparation of applications for banks. ‘Supporting Docs’ ensures we havea consistent application format andquality,” he says.“The key for us is to minimise errorand wastage.”
An added and unexpected benefit is that Supporting Docs has helped sharpen the Operations team’s credit knowledge.
“That’s because there’s a lot of self-validation in the Supporting Docs system,” Little says.
Praising NextGen.Net’s training sessions, Little said once his Operations team got over the hurdle of needing to spend a bit of extra time upfront becoming acquainted with the technology, the Supporting Documents service has revolutionised Smartmove’s processes.
Equating the exercise to buying a car, Carn says: “A car dealer will offer to take 10 minutes to run through all the features. If I choose not to avail myself of the offer, I could end up wasting some really good efficiencies or not maximising their uses.”
“With ApplyOnline Supporting Docs, the benefits to the customer far outweighs the additional work upfront,” adds Little.
Little encourages his team to become adaptable to change and adopt innovative enhancements.
Technology is “the absolute key to our success as a business and to the future of the industry,” Little says.
NextGen.Net launches new features to ApplyOnline on a monthly basis.
“This month, we’ve enabled lenders to update their supporting document requirements online – what documents they need and in what scenario – and manage that themselves and publish it in realtime,” says Carn.
This means that when a broker is using ApplyOnline Supporting Docs the requirements of lenders are up to date in real-time.” Carn refers to the willingness to dedicate time to learn new technology as “a mindset”; and maintains that
the alternative is not an option in a world in which technological change is as inevitable as dying.
“It doesn’t just relate to Supporting Docs. It’s about investing time on a regular basis to get up-to-speed and understand how to get the best out of whatever system you’re using.
“I think everybody would be very pleasantly surprised at the enormous return they get out of that. Smartmove is the living proof,” he exclaims.
