A Leader with Clear Vision

For Neil, his father has been an inspiration. “Growing up on a farm he taught me valuable lessons of resilience, discipline, problem solving and there is never a ‘yes or no’ on the farm – instead it was always based on ‘how’.” Neil adds, “He would start my day at the farthest spot away from where he wanted me to end up. In short, tackle the hardest/toughest part of my chores first because as I work my way back to the farmhouse it will get easier. The other key element I learned was that quite often hard decisions are the right ones – don’t take the easy way out, stand for something you believe in.” At the time, Neil did not realize this type of modeling, in conjunction with the many business mentors and partners he had along the way, would influence business opportunities with the strong framework of ‘relationships and partnerships’ he believes in today. “Today I get to work side-by-side with creative brilliant minds every day and they have chosen to either partner and/or work with me – not for me. It is different and a much more collaborative approach.”

Simplicity Global Solutions users grow their business and improve client relationships from the get-go by reducing borrower frustrations and anxiety. Information is key to reducing frustration and the emotional stress that can occur in the real estate transaction; the Simplicity solution, Prolegis Real Estate, makes it easy for legal teams to provide the correct information at the right time. Prolegis facilitates timely and relevant communications that ensure visibility, including to borrowers with updates and requests through built-in text and email messaging and client portals. The company has added a proprietary PDF editor and low-touch functionality that auto-populates fields with data, customizable dashboards and customized workflows, all of which can be managed by the individual user. Features like this, as driven by the customers, mean that when a phone call is the best method to their client, staff actually has the time to make it. This, as a small example, impacts the customer experience in a very positive way.

Simplicity Global Solutions reduces pen-on-paper inefficiencies and the number of human entry inputs of the same data multiple times across multiple software applications for one transaction. Through built-in document editor software, document management and storage, document intake, and integrations, they address many of the inefficiencies of pen-on-paper work. Users can create, manage and store documents from wherever and on whatever device they are on. As three examples, Prolegis reads and imports property tax information from municipalities avoiding the need to enter that information. Prolegis exports information about fees and disbursements uploaded to PC Law, Clio, and Cosmolex. Users can order title information directly from the source of that title information through Prolegis and order title insurance from within solution.

“We continue to explore the application of machine learning for document handling and other functionalities. This includes the capability of web-based document editor tools to create templates, reducing the reliance to have Word processing software, and the solution displays more robust information from our database allowing the client’s team and users to access and create document templates in real-time. The technology also allows the user to develop customized dashboards and allows for better visualization on how the firm, as a business, is operating,” adds Neil. “Proactively these latest technology enhancements and features have combined with key partner solutions whereby we have created a new product.  Code named B.O.L.T., the Back Office Legal Technology is being launched across Canada with a national trust company and is a great solution for Financial Institutions and Settlement companies that need to automate and digitize the completion of mortgage documentation therefore removing the need to have multiple pieces of legacy software while improving business efficiency.”

Simplicity Global Solutions continues to build their company from the client up – not from the dollar down. They pride themselves in being a ‘human challenger’ based company. “Customers are frustrated with the status quo as offered by our competitors and continually share with us there is both a pricing problem and a feature problem with the competitor’s product,” explains Neil. “So we listen and then enable innovation as driven by our customers, therefore one of our main differentiating factor is about how we listen to our client and add features and experience based elements that matter most to them.    Recently this includes an innovation centre, customer real-time chat, content analysis on all incoming support calls and a lean agile approach to putting new features out – thus we can execute much faster.”

Sharing an instance, Neil talks about a small law firm in Alberta that recently spoke with our VP of Product, who, before onboarding, faced the prospects of learning a new software solution that did not meet their needs and a high-volume real estate practice that stretched their capacity. The primary conveyancer worked long hours and seven days a week. Post-onboard the strong real estate market resulted in increased volumes for the firm in Alberta. Amid those increased volumes, the lead conveyancer was able to transact exceptionally high volumes of residential real estate (at one stage, she transacted more than 100 transactions in a month, around 2.5 times what a proficient conveyancer would do). Two interactions highlight the power of Prolegis. On a Friday afternoon, typically a busy conveyancing day, the primary conveyancer reached out to thank our Product team; she could end her work early and have a glass of wine.  At another time in the midst of abnormally high volumes of real estate transactions, she reached out to indicate how much it helped her to be able to do her work from home (she would have had to come into the office with their previous software).

“The biggest achievement we can have is with people: Everybody in today’s economy has choices – who and where they work and what services and/or products they buy. The people that chose to work at Simplicity and those individuals that chose our solutions to help them be more productive in their day at law firms and financial institutions with our solutions,” elucidates Neil. “That is very gratifying and humbling. For me, it is reassurance and a strong indicator that we are on the right path, it is hard-work, however staying focused and measuring our achievements based on ‘people’ is the right thing for us to do.”

Simplicity Global Solutions will be venturing into new markets and continue to accelerate key integrations with industry stakeholders as part of their national expansion plan for the days to come.  The users will have access to even more automation; workflow customization, precedent document editors, integrations with key title insurance companies, and real-time live person-to-person support. According to Neil, the real estate industry, legal tech, lending, and mortgage are converging – People buy homes, access Realtors and Real Estate Professionals, need mortgages, and require lawyers/solicitors. Simplicity has focused on making the “last step” in the real estate transaction less stressful and giving users more control and certainty so they have more time to pursue other parts of their life and business. “Can you imagine for a moment how much easier the experience would be for all of those home buyers across United States, Canada, the UK and Australia if we inter-connected the ecosystem so that anybody, on any device from anywhere could have quick, easy and visible access to complete a residential real estate transaction? I do!”