9 Questions for Thinking About the ROI of Data

1. How does your firm liberate value from customer data?
   • Exploiting your data in ways that are largely similar to competitors does not create value that differentiates your products or the customer experience.
2. What is the value to your business of unstructured or dirty data?
   • Mortgage lenders have to process unstructured data sources and the human effort required is costly and time-consuming, leading most firms to focus on what is necessary rather than what is possible.
3. How much of your potentially available data do you use and how much do you trust?
   • Capturing richer mortgage loan data is one thing, but putting it to use requires data that is trusted and seen as a worthwhile resource for exploitation.
4. What business improvements would result from a 20 percent improvement in data quality?
   • Gains in productivity and efficiency are important, but the easiest to envisage. Consider how better-quality data might feed a cycle of continuously improving ROI.
5. What current or future key performance indicators (KPIs) would best represent a successful implementation?
   • The business case for clean data solutions depends on your ability to capture and monitor metrics that can reliably reveal business impact.
6. How much of what you spend on data cleansing and analysis is a variable cost vs. a fixed cost – and what are those costs?
   • In most mortgage businesses, human intervention is required at multiple stages through loan origination and represents a sizable fixed (or inelastically variable) cost. Automation can turn data processes into a responsive variable cost, reducing the pain of transitioning to cyclical volume changes.
7. What have you learned from experience with mortgage process automation? How can the experience be improved?
   • Many mortgage lenders report a lack of ROI from their loan origination system (LOS) due to a lack of process automation in these platforms. Intelligent automation of clean data unlocks ROI from sunk LOS investment.
8. Where can your firm gain value from intelligent (AI/ML-based) automation? And how can that automation best be implemented for your firm?
   • As intelligent automation takes hold in the mortgage industry, the firms that derive most value will be those who conceive of and implement differentiated ways of exploiting data.
9. Which solution vendors offer these capabilities tailored to firms like yours?
   • Many mortgage lenders are reluctant to replace existing productivity solutions, despite underwhelming outcomes. Identify vendors that can integrate with your technology stack and unlock the ROI existing investments. The right partner will fit with existing goals, such as touchless automation, and be able to deliver change without major disruption. 

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