Avoid 2 Colossal Mistakes When Going Paperless

Moving away from physical files and adopting a paperless transaction management system has its perks. It can improve client satisfaction, reduce liability, and help agents work more efficiently, according to a recent RealTrends report. Going paperless is also an ideal way to instantly access and track your office's vital numbers. But we all know that the road to success often has some bumps along the way.

I was an eyewitness to a semi-paperless office (SPO), where agents turned in paper contracts that were then saved to the cloud for review and storage. This was a trying period that resulted in at least one agent threatening to leave for another firm.

Here are two colossal mistakes that brokers should avoid so that more of their agents accept the transition to the cloud and adopt the paperless revolution in the industry.

Mistake 1: Adding More Time to Your Agents' Workload

At the SPO, many of the agents were already accustomed to the local MLS's online forms that automatically populated the agent's information, synced additional data added to the forms (like cooperating agent or client information), retrieved MLS data, and transmitted the forms from the MLS with e-signing options built in. This was fantastic for agents because they spent less time filling out contracts and chasing parties down to get signatures. Thus, the agents of the SPO wanted a new system to include those same features — because who wants to upgrade to something that requires more work, right?