Digiscribe in Elmsford and Benchmark Title Agency in White Plains have several similarities.
Dually celebrating anniversaries, 10 and five years respectively, they simultaneously saw a freeze in business post-downturn and proactively embraced digital innovation to lessen the shock.
“In a recession, what helps you is not to have all of your eggs in one basket,” said Mitch Taube, president and CEO of Digiscribe, a document scanning and management company (digiscribe.info). “I think our biggest customer is maybe 8 percent of our business and I think that”™s helped us be successful.”
So too was introducing new services for clients that range from food service to hospitality.
“We”™ve been doing scanning for a lot of our clients, but we never had electronic forms, which is a whole different application,” said Ellen Rothschild, Digiscribe”™s marketing director. “It”™s very different than filling out a PDF and having them print and sign it.”
Taube said the company”™s biggest competitor is “inertia, because people know they want to do it (go paperless) but it can be hard to get off the dime.”
For Benchmark Title Agency L.L.C., movement was also a concern.
“We make our money when anyone purchases or mortgages a property, so the severe downturn in transactions severely impacted us,” said Jean Partridge, company co-founder and chief counsel for Benchmark. “People were afraid to buy, afraid to sell and afraid to make any moves.”
Company co-founder Thomas DeCaro said, half-jokingly, that “we set aside one day a month to panic.
“I think, fortunately, some of the electronic innovations that had been taking place allowed us to handle it better. We were able to take a lot of work in-house where we used to have independent contractors who would be there. But because we had electronic access to and the ability to search (Westchester County”™s Property Records Electronic Portal) online, our folks in house picked up a lot of the slack and we kept them busy with other tasks.”
The company utilized the very technological advancement they helped beta test in conjunction with the Westchester County Clerk”™s Office.
All documents submitted to the Land Records Division were required beginning last winter to be accompanied by a cover sheet generated through the county”™s Property Records Electronic Portal.
“Deeds and mortgages weren”™t getting recorded for months and that was a huge concern for the whole industry because we call it the gap period when liens can be filed,” Partridge said. “There was almost an eight-month lag time to recordings and that”™s now down to about four days, and I”™m not taking credit for it, but between technology, the economic downturn, Tim (Idoni) coming into office and working on the committee, it all helped.”
Benchmark has now seen an uptick in business, closing a couple of commercial transactions last quarter, with “the potential for others at the end of the year.”
Digiscribe, too, has what Taube called brought in more client brands, including a 3-million page document conversion project for a major pharmaceutical company.
People are beginning to pay greater attention to the productivity that results from technological advancements and streamlined office workings.
“Our goal is to help companies become more profitable and reduce space requirements, increase efficiency, reallocate personnel and reduce overall operating costs,” Rothschild said. “Immediately after the downturn, people didn”™t move at all, but when they started moving, they started looking for technology to help them become a leaner and meaner company.”
