Case Study: RMC Vanguard

Growing in a down market

RMC Vanguard Mortgage Corporation is an independent mortgage company based in Houston that serves customers in over 25 states. Despite the turmoil in the mortgage industry, RMC has helped over 6,000 families with their mortgage needs, and has grown from 45 to 95 employees in the past two years.

This combination of growth and a rapidly changing business environment make corporate training and education a key organizational priority. That's why RMC's CTO, Teo Mayes, turned to PBworks.

Educating People Quickly With PBworks

"The mortgage industry is constantly evolving, with a lot of turnover, so it's important that we have the ability to educate people quickly," said Mayes. "There have been so many changes in our industry in the last nine months, it's tough to keep up. Loan officers are constantly in our underwriters' offices asking, "'Can I do this? How about this?'"

RMC had been using the traditional shared server/forest of folders approach to store all this information, but this solution didn't offer the necessary ease of use or accessibility. "Employees have the ability to work from home, so they'd have to log into a terminal access port to reach the server," said Mayes. "It was a big pain. We wanted a better way to securely publish information for use by our people, wherever they were."

PBworks Saves RMC Employees 30-45 Minutes Per Day

Mayes used PBworks templates to structure the wiki as a training and educational resource. The flexibility of the product allowed RMC to integrate all sorts of information, ranging from web links to official documents, and the searchability of PBworks makes it much easier for loan officers to find what they need.

This kind of training is crucial for RMC, since the company has been adding a lot of new people who need to come up to speed. The goal is to provide the necessary training while minimizing the time drain on experienced, productive employees.

"Our underwriters use the wiki to educate the loan officers," said Mayes. "Any time something changes, they post the new information to the wiki. Now the watchword in the office is, 'Did you check the wiki?'

The wiki has dramatically increased productivity. Mayes reports that the wiki saves each of the underwriters about 30-45 minutes per day, and it has saved significant amounts of time for the rest of the employees when it comes to finding documents, passwords, and other information.

RMC also found that PBworks provided many benefits beyond training and education. "PBworks has become a hub of information and communication throughout our office," said Mayes. "We've created a page for each of our employees, and a company directory with links to every page. We've even set up an internal 'For Sale' page for people who have anything they want to get rid of."