Despite two decades of loan-production automation efforts, the mortgage industry has not been able to achieve dramatic improvements in production efficiency.

The authors suggest that one reason lies in the lack of integration and synchronization of the loan production process with other members of the mortgage supply chain, such as borrowers, investors, brokers and realtors. As business interactions with supply chain partners are increasingly conducted electronically, channel members need greater visibility into each other's operations and greater connectivity with each other's information and transaction processing systems.

The author provides three automation lessons:

• Lesson One: Supply chain automation relies on two-way communication. Channel members must be willing to share internal information with their channel partners.
• Lesson Two: Understand all the data: Where does the data come from? Who uses it? Which data drives the process?
• Lesson Three: While process improvement technology can lower costs and improve employee productivity, the main goal should be to improve customer satisfaction.