The pandemic has put pressure on firms to evolve their products and optimize their processes
Taking on a new high-profile job in the middle of a global pandemic may not be most mortgage professionals’ idea of onboarding, but for Jasen Portero, the freshly minted COO of Applied Business Software, helping lead a company out of the shadows of COVID-19 was an opportunity not to be missed.
“I’m extremely excited,” Portero says. “Yes, there’s some uncertainty behind what’s going to happen, but I’m really looking forward to the future, and getting past this and getting back to some kind of normalcy.”
MPA wanted to pick Portero’s brain and find out what the COVID-19 recovery might look like at one of the country’s mortgage tech companies. The following interview has been lightly edited for length and continuity.
Mortgage Professional America: What is ABS’ office environment going to be like coming out of COVID-19? Are you going to be allowing your staff to work more remotely or are you going to try and get everyone back in the office?
Jasen Portero: We will probably want to get everyone back in the office. Working remotely is great, and it’s worked out, but one thing we found that’s missing is that team environment – being able to turn and ask a quick question, or have a quick gathering and discuss anything from sales to development in an instant. You can do it remotely, but the interaction just isn’t the same. We feel like we’re most productive in an environment where we’re all here in the same office building.
That said, for those that need to work home for whatever reason, we have put measures in place as far as moving our own company systems to cloud versions so people can log on at home and have access to the same information they would from here at the office. Even down to the phones, we went with a VOIP system so they can use their cell phones and it’s like they’re calling from here in the office.
What’s been the biggest challenge to the company’s business model during COVID-19? How have you been dealing with it?
JP: We’ve been through similar issues in the past, so our model’s always been ‘We’re going to keep going. It’s going to be business as usual as much as possible.’ Our support team was here to support our customers and answer their questions about the software. Our sales team was really hit at first, because it went completely quiet for the first few weeks. A lot of our sales guys were very concerned, but we said, ‘Nope. Keep going. Head down. Calls. Leads are going to start rolling in. Sure enough, we found other markets during this crisis. It’s actually opened up some doors for us.
During this whole thing, we’ve been concerned about what’s going to happen, but what we’ve seen so far is that things are coming back. And they’re coming back pretty strong. Origination’s down, but everyone’s going out and refinancing, so we’re getting a lot of calls for that.
MPA: You mentioned your sales team. They must have felt fairly restrained by COVID-19. Is there anything you’re doing to ensure they hit the ground running and can claw back some of that revenue that might have been lost?
JP: What we saw from most of our customers was ‘Let’s wait and see what happens,’ so leads and general activity came down. But we didn’t take that approach. We actually ramped up our marketing. We’re implementing strategies to reach people in different ways than we have in the past, because we’re finding that there are still people out there, just like us, who want to move forward, because they know we’re going to come out of this.
Did you take a similar approach to the company’s products?
Yes. We are actively working on developing new products now. We know that this is the time to push.
Have any of them been tweaked or redesigned because of needs you’ve seen arise during the pandemic?
Not directly, but what’s come out of it is the fact that we do need to live in a world that’s in the cloud and not in a physical office somewhere. We knew that, but coming out of this, it’s come to light that we live in a digital, cloud-based world and people need access to their information wherever they are.
Back in 2014 we made the move to the cloud, and it’s lucky we did that because it allowed a lot of the customers using our cloud solution to go home and still be up and running. That effort is continuing. We’re going to go fully web-based by the end of the year, at least our servicing products. We know that is the future of software in general.
We’re also building integrations to third-party software to allow for our customers to continue their remote work. E-signatures are huge, notary services are moving to digital. It’s a digital world. And we’re making every effort possible to allow someone to work in a digital environment and not have to deal with that one-on-one, face-to-face interaction.
Accessibility from anywhere is really the outcome, I believe, of this whole situation.
