The most two powerful words in business productivity today are “what if?” There are other iterations of this powerful two word mantra such as “should we?” or “how about?” If these questions are asked often, it’s amazing the productivity you can obtain for your appraisal or credit department.
Aspiration is defined as a hope or ambition of achieving something. An aspiration for your department might include gaining confidence from the lending side. Confidence that you know what you’re doing. Confidence that you know the stage of every appraisal and environmental request. Confidence to track all communications to discuss when a potential loan go sideways.
Other definitions of aspiration include a strong desire to achieve something high or great. A strong desire for advancement. The desire for recognition of accomplishment. It breaks down into ambition and aim. The aim of your department might be the hope that things can run smoothly, problem free pipelines. That same ambition would be a specific objective to obtain said goal.
Regardless of what role you play in your department as chief appraiser, job manager, reviewer, environmental or construction, your workday is defined by processes. The lack of processes is evident when you don’t know the stage of appraisals, reacting to jobs falling through the cracks or frustrating loss of your time trying to figure out why a review went sideways.
To be in the driver seat is the goal. An appraisal workflow platform is the basis of that springboard of aspiration. In order to truly caffeinated your department and operate on all cylinders, everyone needs to be working off the same page. Or in this case, the same dashboard to see what’s going on, real time.
What if?
- We if we had reporting that helped us achieve our service level agreements (SLA)? Transparency facilitates performance accountability. The ability to track performance is paramount to efficient operation of your department.
- YouConnect provides the tools to improve the culture of your financial institution, particularly communication through reporting substantively improving the relationship between lending and credit.
- YouConnect connects people and processes with real-time reporting.
Should we?
- Should we use automated vendor workflow matching appraisers to their most competent property type and geographical area? As Bob Parson, MAI retired appraisal specialist from the OCC has said, “If you hire the right appraiser, 80% of your job is done.”
How about?
How about getting together with your peers and discussing best practices? Wisdom Circles is a once a month (currently Zoom) meeting hosted by the Financial Institution Valuation Advisors – FIVA. These discussions are very helpful to determine what your peers are doing with day-to-day issues that you’re facing. Relationships are built and trust allows a further deep dive into how best to run your department.
Trends are pointing that the C-Suite is mandating the requirement to have the ability to “see what’s going on” within the financial institution. You can’t fix what you don’t measure. Accurate data, together with meaningful real-time reporting, are best practices for your bank. Start asking questions. What if, should we or how about? Asking these questions and implementing workflow will caffeinate your appraisal and credit department. Grab a cup and enjoy!
