Jennifer Garland Discusses the Growing Importance of Specialized Field Services in Modern Business Operations

Business operations are gradually turning towards decentralization; however, the demand for speed, regularity, and conformity remains on the rise. Whereas businesses preferred local companies for each operation, they now require common solutions across the country to ensure that qualified work is done wherever it is needed. Jennifer Garland saw this shift in business attitudes long before it became popular; therefore, she created Prestige Companies based on the belief that contemporary legal support services must go beyond the traditional notarization.

As a founder, president, and CEO of Prestige Companies, Jennifer Garland helped the company transform its services from the dormant area of document execution into providing elaborate services of various field agents for many different law firms, banks, healthcare institutions, and legal departments. She was able to gather significant experience as a paralegal in Attorney General’s Office of the Washington State and as a manager of the mortgage company; those experiences brought valuable information about how any operations can become stagnant due to poor service providers and imperfect workflow. Such experience ultimately drove the company’s global model.

This change reflects fundamental changes in the whole industry. Businesses stopped seeing mobile specialists as independent executors; rather, they started to rely on qualified mobile professionals who give their clients complete satisfaction.

One of the major misconceptions that Garland is facing is the idea that notarial work starts and ends with putting a seal. Modern legal support means understanding legal standards, state regulations, requirements of the signer, and the changes regarding compliance processes which are also different depending on the state. An expert in the field coordinates the amount of work to be done and the extent to which legal limits can be obtained.

The importance of that knowledge is growing over time due to the fact that the current situations for the clients are much more complicated than they were ten years ago. The law office is involved in nationwide litigation, while the financial institutions deal with a huge flow of regulated transactions. Besides, there are healthcare institutions which handle pretty sensitive documents, as well as governmental bodies which deal with public programs. All of them need assistance that should go beyond the office.

For law firms, the use of specialized field agents is becoming a competitive edge in the struggle for survival. Instead of sending affidavits, plaintiffs fact sheets, and settlement documents and hoping they will come back on time, agencies start to use certified professionals who come to clients in order to make sure that documents are filled out and executed in accordance with regulations. According to Garland, these specialists should be treated not like freelancers, but just as part of the agency’s operations.

These challenges are also related to financial institutions, which conduct mortgage transactions, document loans, verify the compliance, and face difficulties in meeting customers’ requirements. Rather than create various local vendors across numerous locations, businesses are beginning to turn towards a national service operation that can implement the same procedures everywhere but still be flexible enough to meet state requirements. By doing this they obtain predictability in terms of operations. 

Alongside other industries, the healthcare sector has increased its usage of mobile professionals to deal with ever-changing needs and requirements communicated by patients. There are numerous situations when patients express their preferences for certain services occurring at particular places and points of time rather than requiring them to travel or visit places for no reason. And mobile field professionals can solve logistical problems.

Government structures can also gain benefits from numerous nationwide providers. Many projects are executed in different states and therefore require people who are familiar with the requirements of certain jurisdictions of the US while still meeting the same demands in terms of accountability and reporting. By dealing with just one partner, the amount of work that needs to be done is cut down significantly and coordination becomes easier.

In addition to governments, corporate compliance departments also started using specialized legal recruits extensively. Large companies work in various states with different laws, but they need to apply the same rules everywhere. Therefore companies need to find a way of working with different sets of laws in various states and ultimately need to work with a well-known partner with a good standing in this field of usage and understanding. 

All this suggests that working with suppliers who can be considered well-known in a field is not merely an issue of convenience.With regards to managing innumerable field operations every year, organizations enjoy major benefits when they partner with a supplier that can coordinate national resources on their behalf. Companies are able to take advantage of uniform vetting process, continuous communication, simplified reporting, and consolidated quality assurance instead of trying to deal with many different vendors from different places.

According to Garland, those standards have to be applied regardless of where you are. The Prestige Companies use standardized processes for running a business throughout the country while complying with different legal norms of each state. All the field workers pass background checks, credential validation, verification of commission (if necessary), and practical assessments before coming into contact with clients. Communication, control of quality and provision of operational assistance do not stop with onboarding.

Advancements in technology have tremendously changed the face of field operations in the 21st century.

Now organizations do not have to use the threads of electronic mail for communicating and making updates. To use the modern technologies companies should think of the way the technology can help business.

The Prestige Companies developed NotaryDash, the idea behind which is to pull together all the processes relating to communications, document processing, and beating deadlines in one secure place.Organizations are beginning to perceive their suppliers as the providers who help them solve their operational difficulties as opposed to simply performing any kind of transactions concerning service delivery. According to Garland due to national coordination some quite unrealistic deadlines can be met concerning certification of documents, getting the necessary authentications, as well as fulfilling delivery of completed products in only hours instead of days.

The above-mentioned ability is based not only on technology, but on the presence of a good network.

The industry embraces a new trend of service providers becoming increasingly outcome-oriented instead of only transactional. This means that the provider who knows the needs in terms of compliance, logistics, protection of confidential information and communication with clients replaces the service vendor with a strategic partner.

Garland was one of the first to notice this trend. The initial approach of noticing problems with document execution has evolved into a new paradigm where complicated business processes receive support through coordination of services.

The network of Prestige Companies now covers the whole nation providing quality assistance from experienced practitioners to customers needing help with field services.

The future of field operations lies in a mix of technology and human expertise. Remote online notarization becomes a common issue if regulations allow it. However, there is still a demand for actual specialists who can meet their customers face to face.

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