The 1st Street Home Loans director shares his biggest business challenge – and how he tackled it.
Each week MPA brings you advice from the industry's thought leaders on their biggest business challenge and how they tackled it. This week we speak with Jeremy Fisher, director of 1st Street Home Loans.
MPA: What has been one of your biggest challenges in business to date and why?
Jeremy Fisher: A big challenge we have faced over recent years relates to the implementation of new technology into the business. The initial challenge is to decide which technology is worthwhile for the business, and then there is the challenge of effectively incorporating it into the business.
MPA: How did you overcome this challenge?
JF: As we ventured into a new and somewhat unfamiliar area, it has been important for us that we work with people who we trust and who have expert knowledge. Our new CRM/lodgement platform simplifies and unifies the home loan process for our brokers and it was developed by working closely with industry experts, Infinitive. We also worked with a team of IT experts to help us redevelop our website, optimise the business on search engines and expand our social media presence.
MPA: What are some of the key lessons you learned from this experience?
JF: We have learnt that with anything technology-related, there is always some trial and error initially. We have also found that refinements can be ongoing due to the ease of which the platforms can be evolved to meet changing requirements.
MPA: How have those lessons benefited you in business since?
JF: After seeing how much time and effort can be saved with the right technology, we are always on the lookout for new technology and we are still refining our existing technology as necessary.
MPA: If you were to tackle this again would you do anything differently?
JF: It was due to previous challenges that we decided to work only with trusted experts in the field, so fortunately that lesson was already learnt and if we were to do this again we wouldn’t do anything differently.
MPA: What advice would you give to other brokers facing a similar situation?
JF: The technology market is always growing and new opportunities are consistently available. It is important for brokers to carefully assess the value that any new technology can bring to their business plus the ownership of their database. Our decision to proceed with Infinitive was based on their new CRM/lodgement platform enabling our brokers to submit a loan application in 10 minutes. In addition, the ability to control/own our database was a key decision maker.
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