(Interview with Regina Mangan, Owner/MD of Liberty Blue Estate Agents and Bookaroom Property Management)
In business, nothing closes until all the documents are signed, sealed and delivered.
Therein lies the bottleneck for many organisations and the use cases are numerous, from Human Resource departments on-boarding new employees to retail organisations signing up consumers to new contracts (e.g. mobile phone contracts, insurance policies and rental agreements).
In all of these scenarios the collection, verification and storage of consumer documentation can be chaotic, stressful, and fraught with inefficient time consuming processes and compliance risks. For customers, it’s cumbersome and inconvenient to prepare and securely send their documents.
The market needed a solution to allow businesses to seamlessly and securely manage the collection and storage of confidential client and employee information in one place.
That is the reason behind PlanetVerify in a nutshell.
We recently spoke to Regina Mangan, Owner/MD of Liberty Blue Estate Agents and Bookaroom Property Management to discuss these challenges and the transformative effect PlanetVerify has had on the efficient management of identity processing.
With its high volume of customers, property lettings is a good example of the challenges involved in the collection and storage of highly sensitive, personally identifiable information. Everything from identity cards, passports, bank details, utility bills and other personal identification markers needs to be collected, and securely stored, before the transaction can be completed.
“We were introduced to PlanetVerify at an industry event, so we tried it and I have to say, it is a game changer for our business.”
Many consumer focused retail companies have traditionally relied on email to collect this type of information. Apart from the man hours lost to the inefficiencies of email trails, the channel itself represents a huge operational risk. Emails are rarely encrypted and can be intercepted. They are stored on physical disks on both the sender and recipient’s server and potentially many other servers in-between, with every additional layer increasing the risk of data breaches.
These days Regina’s employees enjoy a single, user friendly, highly configurable dashboard to control the collection, and storage of all sensitive data relating to prospective and current tenants. The dashboard immediately flags what documents are missing from all individuals with automated reminders sent out in a specifically configured workflow sequence.
“The brilliant thing about PlanetVerify is that we can send a link to the prospective tenant and it manages the collection of their data in one place.”
It’s been a game changer for her customers too. Through the PlanetVerify app, her prospective tenants benefit from an intuitive, contemporary, user experience. They simply download the app, take photos of the documents requested and share in real time. Everything is centralised, organised, and automated.
‘Privacy by design’ is becoming the new norm and a foundation stone upon which PlanetVerify has been built. With new GDPR regulations in place since last May, which dictates that the burden of legal responsibility of handing consumer data lies squarely with any company that collects, accesses, or uses this information.
Additionally, recent high profile cases revolving around personal data held by Facebook and Google has led to a decline in trust, with consumers demanding the right to have all of their information purged upon request. Unless companies can prove that they have a legitimate interest in holding this data, they must oblige to such requests.
This is another pain point alleviated by PlanetVerify.
“We can trust PlanetVerify to be GDPR compliant – where features like the Opt in button, the Purge button – the basic stuff that protects our business and ensures that we are GDPR compliant.”
The benefits can be seen beyond the operational level, as the platform is proven to drive revenue, through lowering the time and cost of data collection, the reduction in order cancellations and fraud, and a shortening of the sales cycle.
In this regard, we’ll let Regina have the last word
“It has probably saved us in the region of one day per week.”
WATCH THE INTERVIEW WITH REGINA
