Perfecting the Process
We work in a complex, competitive, and fast-moving industry. I’m often at the centre of the storm, making sure that all our departments are holding up and working together. Setting everyone up for success means that I have a unique perspective on what makes us great.
One of the biggest factors is how Milborne Group is constantly evolving our process to make it more efficient. Since I started as Director of Operations, this improvement has been a priority I share with senior leadership, and it’s been well worth the effort.
Moving Ahead
I make sure our operations are meeting with the technology we use. Much like how I coordinate departments, I coordinate their use of technology. I also coordinated a lot of the development for Milborne Group’s in-house app—I gave our app developers lots of user-side insights.
Years in the industry have made me familiar with the old methods, so the evolution is really striking for me.
When I started at Milborne, we were doing lots of manual work creating deals, using lots of spreadsheets and mail merges. We used to hire multiple people whose duties revolved around Excel. All the lengthy manual processes spread over many departments meant lots of room for human error.
When Milborne moved to the in-house app we really started to see the benefits, but there were some pain points as well. We had to push to get some associates on board with electronic signatures. Many legal professionals were not comfortable at first, but as they adopted e-signatures, we all gained a lot of efficiency—important when mitigating the 10-day cooling period for deals.
The Digital Advantage
Milborne Group’s in-house app has helped improve all of our processes. Clients are quick to appreciate when there are fewer errors. We can hire better-rounded people instead of dedicating an entire team to Excel management—with automation it’s much easier to ensure correct data is in everyone’s hands.
In terms of volume of business, we’ve advanced significantly. With older, less efficient methods, we could finish maybe 50 deals a day. Now we can easily achieve 150 to 200 deals a day, which is important as some developers really want to capitalize on a project while it’s hot.
From digitizing to building our own app, I feel we’ve built a lead over the competition. They’re catching up, but we also continue to improve and innovate—and we created and own our software. With the launch of our broker portal, we will be fully independent in terms of software. We won’t have to pull data from external sites and various departments within Milborne—it’s going to be extremely helpful.
Pushing Onward
Evolving has put us under some internal pressure, but it has also created efficiencies that will give Milborne Group plenty of breathing room in the long run. Still, we can’t afford to rest on our laurels, because the process of improvement that brought us to this point has to continue to keep us on our upward trajectory.