If it Takes That Much Time...

For years I've heard that 60% of what we do in commercial real estate is managing paper. OK, to be fair, we probably spend 60% of our time managing data. That's a lot. I was reminded of this the other day when I was chatting with a couple of attorneys during a deposition. Chatting really isn't the right word. I was sharing with them that I detest how much paper it takes to work one's way through a lawsuit and they remarked that only commercial real estate was more paper/data intensive. I'm not sure I agree with them, but I do know managing a transaction's "paperwork" takes up a huge part of our working hours. I wonder why we can't seem to get out from under it all.

It would seem that if we spend 60% doing one thing, making marginal improvements would have a big impact on productivity. Has it for you? Do you really put effort into making the process of pushing paper easier? It seems that every day I'm confronted by people who would just as soon keep on doing things the same way they did more than a dozen years ago when word processing and the Web became mainstream. Of course no one uses a typewriter anymore, and faxes are rare, but it's the incremental improvements to the transaction process that seem to have stalled, while the amount of documentation has stayed the same or increased. Is it because we can't seem to quantify the benefit? Are we still crazy enough to think that automation takes the human element out of things and we worry about job security? I'll bet not. But what is it? Why are we so willing to have the latest digital music device, smart phone, laptop, DVD player and the like, but we don't stay on top of the fastest way to get a transaction done, which in the end, means the cash comes in more quickly? If you did 100 transactions and the cost per transaction in hours was $6,000 (based on a total team processing cost of $150 per hour), a marginal improvement of 5% in the processing time would save $30,000. That's real money, and it would seem to be plenty enough to make spending a couple of thousand on some software, training or self improvement pretty smart.

But hey, I'm probably just on a rant since I had to work my way through that darn deposition with mounds of paper being set up as exhibits (multiple copies for all), adding to a bunch of minutia that has no hope of getting us closer to the end of anything. Maybe I'm being negative and I should just sit back and be patient with the way our profession is evolving. Maybe I should forget trying to help people learn how to make more money so they have more time to spend on things they get more pleasure from. Maybe I'll just be quiet and not worry that 60% is too much time to spend on something that produces so little real value. But then again, maybe not.

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