Challenge:
NRL Mortgage struggled to unlock insights from all its business data using its mortgage industry-specific BI tool.  

Solution:
Using the RM Analyze App developed by Richey May, a Domo partner, NRL Mortgage can now leverage data from systems like the general ledger, payroll, and CRM, in addition to its loan origination data.  

Impact:
Thanks to Domo and Richey May, NRL Mortgage has been able to lower its lead acquisition costs, improve the customer experience, and make smarter, more timely decisions to manage cost to originate.

NRL Mortgage creates a better home for data with Domo.

With 80 branches licensed in 48 states, customers across the country rely on NRL Mortgage to dot every I, cross every T, and sweat every detail to ensure their home purchase goes off without a hitch. That’s why NRL Mortgage depends on Domo and Richey May.  

Before Domo, NRL Mortgage used a BI tool designed for the needs of the mortgage industry. While this BI tool helped solve for Loan Origination System (LOS) use cases, it prevented NRL Mortgage from also being able to leverage data from systems like the general ledger, payroll, or CRM, keeping NRL Mortgage from using all its data when making business decisions.  

Thanks to the RM Analyze App developed by Richey May, a Domo Partner, NRL Mortgage now leverages best-in-class business intelligence across its loan origination process, operations, marketing, finance and accounting, enabling the company to better manage its growth while juggling the impact of the pandemic on today’s housing market. By bringing all its data into Domo, NRL Mortgage has unmatched insights into the KPIs that matter most. “We can do things like identify our cost to originate, our profitability per loan officer, our headcount productivity, and other KPIs we want to track,” DeDominicis said.

Bringing leads home.

NRL Mortgage gets its leads from a number of online sources that cost thousands of dollars per qualified lead. Before Domo, the company often struggled to accurately track which lead sources generated a positive ROI, making it difficult to know where it should invest its marketing time and budget. 

“Outside of payroll, lead acquisition is our largest expense,” DeDominicis said. “Connecting Domo to our CRM allows us to really drill down into our lead data and find the ROI.”

In addition to quantifying leads, NRL Mortgage uses Domo to track if branches are working leads as they should. Rather than have 80 different branches manage leads in 80 different ways, NRL Mortgage created a single process that allows the company to accurately manage its loan acquisition costs, helping it reduce expenses. Because some sources tend to produce stronger leads, NRL Mortgage is able to use Domo to identify and prioritize those sources.  

“Before Domo, we were at about $3,500 per lead. Right now we sit at about $2,200 per lead, and are on track to reduce that to $1,500,” DeDominicis said. “We have about 25 different lead aggregators, so it’s really important to be able to differentiate which leads are effective and which are not.”

Keeping operations moving.

Because homebuying is such a momentous experience for most people, the right loan officer is paramount. NRL Mortgage carefully tracks loan officer performance to not only measure the revenue they generate, but to ensure each loan officer delivers the proactive experience NRL Mortgage promises its customers. 

“Domo makes it easy to see if there is a loan officer that needs additional help or coaching,” DeDominicis said.  

Branch managers carefully track every aspect of their operations to see where loans are sitting. If a loan stays in one spot of the mortgage process too long, it displays as yellow on a card, making it simple to see which loans need immediate attention to get them unstuck. This ensures that NRL Mortgage can meet its commitments so buyers don’t have to move back closing dates or moving trucks. “It’s a very easy way for operations managers within each branch to solve small problems before they become bigger,” DeDominicis said.  

Because the mortgage business is cyclical over the seasons and across multiple years, having the right headcount is crucial. NRL Mortgage now has a superior understanding of its business so it knows when to staff up or when it should hold off replacing employees who leave the company. DeDominicis remembers one period where, over a period of time, they saw five underwriters leave the business. While the gut instinct was to replace those staff members, the Company was able to look at the pipeline and determine that they had the right level of staff to handle its anticipated needs, saving NRL Mortgage from replacing approximately $750,000 in salary while avoiding unnecessary layoffs.  

“Our industry has a history of hiring up during heavy volume cycles and laying off people when it goes away. We use Domo to understand these cycles so we don’t hire too many people during peak cycles,” DeDominicis said. “This helps us stay staffed based on our actual pipeline, not gut instinct, while avoiding the disruption to operations a layoff can cause.” 

Thanks to Domo and its mortgage channel partner Richey May, NRL Mortgage can use data to see where the market is going so it can proactively adapt instead of reacting to the market.