Located in southeastern Michigan, Wayne County is home to “The Motor City”, Detroit, and the large manufacturing economy that comes with the auto industry. With a population of over 2 million and nearly 900,000 parcels, the Wayne County Register of Deeds Office handles up to 700,000 recorded documents yearly. The office has met the challenge of constituent document management in a very effective way.
In 2000, Bernard J. Youngblood was elected the new Wayne County Register of Deeds and when he took office in January of 2001, the office was dealing the a 90-day backlog of recorded documents. After updating the office workflow to a more efficient process, Mr. Youngblood made the decision to upgrade the office’s current records management technology and began his search for a suitable solution.
Mr. Youngblood and his staff utilized their relationships with the many nationwide title companies that visited their office and sought their opinions on what county in the U.S. they could use as a model in upgrading their technology. One of the counties mentioned frequently was Alameda County located in Oakland, California. Alameda County is home to 1.5 million and has approximately 600,000 parcels. The County had been utilizing Manatron’s (then Hart Intercivic) records management solution, Anthem, since 2004 and is very pleased with the product and the Manatron team.
After an extensive search and a scrupulous decision making process, Wayne County chose Anthem to be their records management solution. As the project began, Manatron’s Records Management Division introduced a new product built on advanced technology, called GRM Recorder (formerly A2). Wayne County decided this product would be a better fit for them and went forward with the implementation process. Throughout the project, Manatron and Wayne County worked together to create a solution that suited the needs of the County’s office.
Training of the staff was key to the process and Wayne County handled it well. “As expected, the change was met with some apprehension,” said Benjamin Way, Wayne County Deputy Register of Deeds. “But with a focused training program and a quality system like GRM Recorder, our employees have come to appreciate and enjoy using the solution.”
Since the County went live in February of 2007, the results have been invaluable. The office has been able to consolidate three manual steps: reviewing, recording and cashiering in to one step. With the office handling up to 2,500 documents per day, this has saved a considerable amount of time and increased document turnover.
Prior to implementation, Mr. Youngblood and his staff worked diligently to decrease the 90-day backlog they had down to a two week accumulation of documents. The ability to auto index documents within GRM Recorder as they are being scanned has helped the office to have all documents completely indexed within a couple days of being received.
“This has been an exciting result for us as this was a huge focus for us coming into the project – to reduce the log jam and increase the efficiency in which we handle each and every document,” said Way. “We are very pleased with how the Manatron solution has helped us to accomplish this.”
In addition, the county set up an “instant recording desk” at which constituents are able to walk in to the Register of Deeds office and have a document recorded, paid for, scanned and returned to them all in one trip. This has been a very popular enhancement.
Mr. Youngblood and his staff set up a speedy and user-friendly search help desk along with public kiosks to assist visitors in retrieving recorded documents quickly and easily. Along with this on-site assistance, The Wayne County Register of Deeds office has established a public access site over the Web where citizens are able to access recorded documents 24/7 from any Internet connection. This has significantly reduced traffic to the office and has allowed the office to be more efficient and better serve the taxpayers of Wayne County.
“We are very pleased with our decision to utilize Manatron’s GRM Recorder solution and look forward to continuing our success with them in the future,” added Way.