Many citizens struggle to make their mortgage payments as the foreclosure crisis impacts communities. Because of this, affordable housing departments are experiencing an influx of applications for funding assistance with First Time Home Buyer Down Payments, Housing Rehabilitation, Neighborhood Stabilization, Refinance Assistance and Foreclosure Assistance programs.
As the housing agencies scramble to help, the volume of paperwork is increasing. They are realizing that to perform their duties efficiently, they need a faster, organized and secure way to route, store and maintain auditable records of the applications and supporting documents.
Using an electronic document management and compliance system can increase the operating efficiency of any affordable housing department, saving on costs by reducing time searching for and processing paperwork, ensuring document protection from disaster and finally, providing complete transparency and information security.
Here's what an online document management system would do for your affordable housing department (AHD):
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As the AHD receives applications, the department uploads, scans, or imports the submitted documents into the housing application where all information will be securely stored.
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Using the workflow functionality, the electronic documents can then be automatically routed to multiple individuals in the workflow process for review.
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Depending on the type of paperwork, whether it be funding contracts, loan and mortgage documents, etc., the documents will be archived where they can be easily retrieved anytime and anywhere using your internet connection. Searching is easy using the document metadata; search by applicant name, application number, case number, or other keywords.
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Using an application with a Records Management module, you can easily comply with auditing and legal-retention requirements by setting the application to track the document's retention deadlines. You can set reminders to alert you when it's time to purge documents that have met their retention date, maintaining compliance with ease and managing each record's entire lifecycle.
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Your department will free up office space or off-site rented space by removing the need for document storage file cabinets. All documents can be stored electronically within the online system!
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Complete security. With the online platform, your department's information in not stored on-premise, it is in a Tier IV, secure, online facility where your documents are always protected, safe from disaster and monitored closely to prevent software or hardware failure.
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Eliminate confusion. With version history enabled, you can see who, when and how a document is viewed and edited, and then easily access the most recent file.
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Staff turnover. Every business is suffering. Each time they lose a team member they lose critical information and process knowledge. The easy to use and intuitive solution helps avoid processing downtime enabling your business processes to continue.
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If your department is thinking about consolidating offices, an online document management system will ease you through the process. No transporting files, no need for complete reorganization - all information will be electronically stored within repositories that can be accessed from any computer connected to the internet.
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Manage contracts and reporting documents for the monitoring phase of affordable housing projects.
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Organize and control your planning documents.
Affordable housing departments are realizing that shifting to electronic document storage makes document management quite simple. See how Florida's Hillsborough County Affordable Housing Department improved the efficiency of its administration with an online document and compliance management system.