Making your coverage area your office

Appraiser offices have grown from one or two person shops to five or six or more during the recent boom. And rarely are all of those people in the same room. Making being spread out, in the field, in the office, en route to the next inspection or at the county building, an opportunity for efficiency rather than a contributor to inefficiency is the goal of a la mode's new Mobility Product Manager, Alonso Portillo.

Portillo, a nine year a la mode veteran, has been working almost exclusively on development of mobile tools for all a la mode customers for a year now, and in his new role plans to ensure seamless mobile integration with new and existing products. Ultimately, mobile workflow will be a focus for all of a la mode's products.

Among planned improvements include updating Pocket TOTAL to take advantage of new timesaving features and workflow management in WinTOTAL Aurora, due out in the next couple months. He'll also head up development of mobile tools for XSites, with the goal of having access to all your data, whether in WinTOTAL, on your XSite or in the field. More important than synching up the data is synching up the people using it.

"If we can tie people in the field to the people in the office, that allows for better coordination which leads to better customer service, which leads to retaining existing clients and acquiring new ones," Portillo said.

Individual productivity will be enhanced through the ability to access instant driving directions, flood zone maps, and even local weather in the field or between inspections. With Enterprise XSites, appraisers will be able to accept credit card payments at the door. And more broadly, whatever an appraiser needs while on an inspection or researching comps, he or she will have - comps databases, order status, contacts and scheduling functions, and the ability to enter important information in the field and be done with it.

Portillo will also head up implementation of mobility functions for a la mode's products for real estate agents, mortgage lenders and inspectors.

Appraisers have too often been treated as just formfillers, especially by companies that produce formfilling software. An important part of a la mode's commitment to making appraisers more productive, efficient and profitable is our emphasis on and dedication to developing mobile tools.