Cortes and Hay, Title Insurance Agency - Flemington, NJ - When it comes to residential, commercial and industrial Title Insurance, Cortes & Hay offers the necessary combination of experience and expertise across the entire range of professional services. Since 1971, their business has been defined by customer-centered relationships that are as personal as they are professional.
To properly serve their customers, Cortes & Hay must create files of documents that need to be distributed to appropriate parties. The documents that comprise a title insurance binder come from two places. 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 internally generated documents. In 1997, they switched from DOS to a software program specific to the title insurance 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 and borrowers. 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 to take 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 original office. As their business grew, so did their mountain of paper. The basement was transformed into rows and rows of filing cabinets. When there was no more space, they rented additional storage space offsite under a bank building. Their backfile grew until it totaled hundreds of thousands of files. During that period, they not only needed to keep those files, they needed to have access to the information contained in them.
”Keeping all that paper can be critical for many reasons,” says Michele Newhouse, Vice President Operations of Cortes & Hay, “We have to keep everything for seven years, but it can be a great benefit to keep everything forever. We often have to search back through 60 years of clear title. If we save the back titles, we can search in a couple of hours what might have taken two weeks. We’ve accumulated a lot 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 the growing mountain of paper. The two envisioned a paperless office. Together, they began researching electronic 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 that would 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 all wanted 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 a lot 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 researching new technology solutions had to be put on the back burner while the company concentrated on meeting customer demands. During this period, however, the increase in paper files caused by the upturn in business underscored the need to act.
In mid-2002, Cortes & Hay hired Pathfinder Consulting Group, LLC to host their web site and serve as IT consultants. After extensive research, Pathfinder recommended Computhink’s ViewWise as the central software application of the paperless office.
