Four Reasons Innovation is Important

As a technology vendor, we understand the importance of innovation. That’s why, in the past 8 years, Loan Vision has seen 3 major product releases with multiple functionality additions and upgrades and is getting ready to undergo another one. Technology advancements don’t just happen unjustifiably; at the end of the day, they are to make your customer’s experience easier and smoother. However, there always needs to be more logic when investing money in anything, not just innovation. How does innovation help the business behind the scenes?

1. Gives the ability to stay ahead of disruptions
2. There’s a stark difference between reactive and proactive technological upgrades. Those who are ahead of the curve tend to have smoother transitions and are more likely to meet disruptions head-on when they happen. We heard a litany of times over the past year from our lenders that if they hadn’t been on Loan Vision, they wouldn’t have been able to handle the volume they were seeing.
3. When you are upgrading as a reaction to disruption, you’re likely to get overwhelmed more easily. Not only are you trying to mitigate the problems, but you are also trying to make a massive change in your technology stack. This overwhelms your staff and can cause a host of issues later, such as improper setup and incomplete training, especially if you don’t have a solid tech partner.
4. Mitigates risk
5. Using technology that was created 10-15 years ago can invite a lot of risks, especially when it comes to security. The cybersecurity of yester-year is not what it is today and that is in part due to the increased sophistication of cyber threats and attacks. If your system wasn’t created with this in mind, it most likely isn’t going to be able to withstand an attack, putting your business and your customers at risk.
6. Also, automation and verification technologies help reduce the risk of human error by eliminating the need to manipulate data. Manually pulling information from multiple systems to feed it into another invites multiple opportunities for mistakes and inaccuracies that can end up costing the business money.
7. Helps your company grow
8. Innovation can help spark growth in 2 ways: efficiency and creativity. Technology is inherently designed with efficiency in mind, meaning that its goal is to decrease the number of manual workloads a person has to complete. This helps lower the cost of human capital, saving valuable resources. Increasing the rate of efficiency also gives employees more time to do analytical, higher-value work, in turn further benefiting the business.
9. However, just offering time and efficiency isn’t what will encourage your employees to get analytical and creative. It’s the atmosphere created when leadership shows that they value a forward way of thinking. By having continual open conversations around innovation and creativity, employees can feel comfortable in exploring their roles and consequentially will provide valuable business insight.
10. Keeps your company relevant
11. With the plethora of awards, discussions, and conferences with innovation and technology at the forefront, it should be no surprise that staying on the innovative side of the industry will keep your company relevant. There aren’t many panels with topics on how lenders have made their 30-year-old technologies work. With the technological landscape constantly changing and adapting, the conversations need to change as well. If your company’s tech stack isn’t up to date, there won’t be much to contribute to these conversations and the brand won’t be as significant.

The aforementioned points are really just scratching the surface of why innovation is important. As you dive into the different departments and areas of business, those reasons become more specific and can produce tangible results. We also can’t just tell you that your business should live and breathe innovation. It’s also something we, especially as a technology vendor, need to live by. That’s why, as mentioned above, we are excited to announce that over the next year we will be rolling out the newest version of Loan Vision. Completely web-based and hosted on Microsoft Azure, Loan Vision isn’t just moving into the future, we’re taking you with us.

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