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October 14, 2003_________________________________________________________________________
ViewWise Enables Paperless Title Insurance
By Greg Rapport
Case Study Subject:
Cortes & Hay, Inc. Title Insurance Agency7 Main Street, P.O. Box 454 . Flemington, NJ 08822Tel: (908) 782-8850 . Tel: (800) 239-4952 . Fax: (908) 782-1998
When it comes to residential, commercial and industrial Title Insurance, Cortes & Hay offers thenecessary combination of experience and expertise across the entire range of professional services. Since1971, their business has been defined by customer-centered relationships that are as personal as they areprofessional.
To properly serve their customers, Cortes & Hay must create files of documents that need to bedistributed to appropriate parties. The documents that comprise a title insurance binder come from twoplaces. There are documents generated internally, and documents that come from external sources.
Early adapters of technology, Cortes & Hay's first computers used DOS to automate internallygenerated documents. In 1997, they switched from DOS to a software program specific to the titleinsurance industry, called WinTitle, which is compatible with the Windows operating system.
WinTitle files must be printed and combined with external hard copy files generated from deed copies,mortgage copies and easement copies to make a complete binder. The combined package of computer-generated paper and hard copy files (typically 25-100 pages) is distributed to the attorneys, lenders andborrowers. Cortes & Hay retains a hard copy file for their archive. The final package can be from one-to seven-inches thick. Cortes & Hay produces 120-180 packages per month. Given the recent frenzy totake advantage of low interest rates, they can produce over 2,000 packages per year.
The Paper Monster
For 30 years, Cortes & Hay stored files in filing cabinets in the 1,500 sq. ft. basement of their originaloffice. As their business grew, so did their mountain of paper. The basement was transformed into rowsand rows of filing cabinets. When there was no more space, they rented additional storage space offsiteunder a bank building. Their backfile grew until it totaled hundreds of thousands of files. During thatperiod, they not only needed to keep those files, they needed to have access to the information containedin them.
"Keeping all that paper can be critical for many reasons," says Michele Newhouse, Vice PresidentOperations of Cortes & Hay, "We have to keep everything for seven years, but it can be a great benefitto keep everything forever. We often have to search back through 60 years of clear title. If we save theback titles, we can search in a couple of hours what might have taken two weeks. We've accumulated alot of back titles. Whenever we do a search, there is no point in throwing out what we learn."
Along with Newhouse, company President David Hay wanted a more efficient alternative to thegrowing mountain of paper. The two envisioned a paperless office. Together, they began researchingelectronic alternatives to paper in January 2001 with an eye towards a completely electronic archive.Hay and Newhouse went to technology shows and called other title agencies to learn anything thatwould offer a solution. It wasn't easy.
Finding an Acceptable Strategy
"We had a lot of people come to the office and do product demos," recalls Newhouse, ".but they allwanted to promote a scan-to-jukebox strategy that seemed as inadequate as a file cabinet, only smaller.The scanning technology we were shown couldn't read handwritten documentation and we had to do alot of abstracting. Also, the scanners had trouble with odd-sized paper. We just wanted a simple,efficient storage, search and retrieval mechanism and couldn't seem to find one."
Meanwhile, Cortes & Hay's business skyrocketed. They had so much production work that researchingnew technology solutions had to be put on the back burner while the Company concentrated on meetingcustomer demands. During this period, however, the increase in paper files caused by the upturn inbusiness underscored the need to act.
In mid-2002, Cortes & Hay hired Pathfinder Consulting Group, LLC to host their web site and serve asIT consultants. After extensive research, Pathfinder recommended Computhink's ViewWise as thecentral software application of the paperless office.
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