Accelerate Change to Alleviate Pain – An Oxymoron?

The need for operational change is a never-ending fact of doing business. Required and yet scary to staff and customers, change comes from all directions. Servicing has continuously grappled with regulatory and internal operational change since the financial crisis, compounded by pandemic impact. The advent of artificial intelligence and the acceleration of technology overall have added pressures to abruptly transform and evolve how we do business. Embracing these changes can be powerful, propelling servicers to innovate systems, envision processes differently, and ingest regulations and internal requirements imposed on us; however, the path of transition can be painful, even when the end result is to remove pain points and gain change efficiencies.

Change is a Constant

The importance of change management as a critical component of servicing should not be understated. Consider that change is constant and presents itself in numerous forms, whether operational, which can include everything from renewed processes to reorganization, regulatory change, or system innovation, where aging systems sunset and emerging technologies are embraced. This is where intelligent engineering and smart workflow automation play a pivotal role, helping to deliver a modern change management strategy. Moving beyond historic change management rhetoric, today’s vision of change management is more holistic, with technology enabling traceability, accountability for results, and iterative improvements that create process transparency and fluidity in our industry and our organizations. Tapping a more collaborative slant to support complex transitioning of processes, data, and results, current change management approaches should consider the pressures from ongoing, constant customer impact, staff change fatigue, frustration and fear, and heightened expectations for meaningful results.

Where is your Change Management Focus?

The emergence of innovative tools offered by trusted partners to drive adoption is making the change process smoother, more impactful, and more rapid.  As you push for more comprehensive, nimble, and frequent change management processes to become more of an integral part of your operations, the key focal points to mitigate transitional pain and accelerate change should be as follows:

1. Who – Understand the impact of change, who and how it affects internal staff, customers, investors, and oversight. For example, consider how regulatory change affects technology, whether it is rule or developmental interpretation of results, it’s pivotal to manage development’s impact on quality control, testing, agile planning, open forums and more.
2. What – What and how will different areas be impacted; consider complexity, create stability, and establish clarity; discuss various experiences in reaction to changes and assess how to best communicate and implement the change.
3. When – As change occurs, acknowledge that familiar processes are being phased out and embrace a new way of doing business. An emphasis on education and inclusivity of teams in the change increases adoption and leads to impressive results.
4. Where – Establish consistency, communication, and agile strategies, with a change roadmap that identifies where and how change is taking place. Communicate the cross organizational impact before and after it occurs. Be inclusive and empathetic.
5. Why – Understand and communicate why specific changes are important, celebrating the results as well as individual and departmental successes. Be sure to highlight why these changes are valuable to everyone, both inside and outside of the organization. Town Halls are a great way to share.

Addressing Competitive Pressure

As the competitive pressures of our industry, in particular the regulatory changes, continue to push companies to redesign their processes on a fluid basis, they have been incorporating the Who, What, When, Where, and Why into their change management approaches to business. Using collaboration with all of the parties as a key driver to successful change management CLARIFIRE^® focuses on easy-to-change, easy-to-add, controlled processes that provide complete traceability and auditability. The culture of change is, therefore, more comfortable and allows all parties, internal and external, to participate with visibility and results.

Concluding that the progression of change management is imperative to the evolution and success of mortgage servicing, customers, staff, and industry participants, the need to embrace change becomes equally important, as well as an understanding that the end result is to alleviate friction, minimize the fear of process change, and eliminate escalating expenses. CLARIFIRE^®, a pioneer of change process management innovation and automation, synchronizes change capabilities with strategies for efficiency. Enhancing flexible workflow operability to promote intelligent customer engagement, smart data utilization, access to results , and rules driven decisioning, enables CLARIFRE^® to swiftly incorporate change management into your organization.

Don’t be held captive by outdated change management practices. Take advantage of the power of change and future-proof your organization with CLARIFIRE^®. Visit us at eClarifire.com or contact us directly at 866.222.3370. CLARIFIRE^® is Truly BRIGHTER AUTOMATION^®

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Jane Mason | @janemasonceo

Jane has applied her vast experience (over 25 years) operating process-driven businesses to successfully redefine client-focused service. Jane has worked with expert programmers to apply cutting-edge web-based technology to automate complex processes in industries such as Financial Services, Healthcare and enterprise workflow. Her vision confirms Clarifire's trajectory as a successful, scaling, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider. A University of South Florida graduate, Jane has received many awards related to her entrepreneurial skills.

 

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