TheMReport — News and strategies for the evolving mortgage marketplace.
Issue link: http://digital.themreport.com/i/488965
Th e M Rep o RT | 25 Industry Influencers I t was like coming home. "The first moment I walked into this building, I knew it was the right place for our company," Dominic "Don" Iannitti says. Iannitti is president and CEO of DocMagic, the largest loan document production company in the U.S., and the building he's speaking of is an impressive, 25,000-square-foot state-of-the art technology center in Torrance, California. Within the mostly curved walls of this modern office space, more than 100 employees dedicate themselves to provid- ing unparalleled service for their clients, some of which are the nation's top lenders. Iannitti founded DocMagic back in 1988, and as he explains the open-office concept of the building to us, he can't help but reminisce over the company's humble begin- nings—three employees (including Iannitti) in a 1,000-square-foot of- fice. The company's first sales per- son joined the team as a part-time employee after successfully selling the company its first fax machine, a critical component in those early days of taking orders. But while the company's start may have been unassuming, its vision was always clear. "The core of what I found interesting when forming DocMagic was taking data in and leveraging it to produce documentation that would otherwise take hours to type out," Iannitti says. "It was amazing to me that we could now leverage a data point across many forms and reduce errors because there wasn't any re-typing going on. Of course all this grew into much more." A source of great pride for Iannitti is the fact that a high percentage of the company's 100+ employees have been with the company for the long haul. This not only includes his COO Alan Brisbane, who has been with DocMagic since day one, but many of the support staff as well. "DocMagic as a whole under- stands the immense value of its most important resource—the people that make this place run," Iannitti says. "A lot of companies get to the point of where they are patting themselves on the back for their own ingenuity, when the reality is it's the people that make up the organization that make it happen. We take a lot of steps to make sure our employees are comfortable." When you look at the design of DocMagic's headquarters, the high-esteem employees are held in is obvious. The open-office layout encourages workers to wander away from their desks, often convening together in one of the office's many lounges. While each employee has their own individu- al workspace with big, dual moni- tors on their desk, anyone can grab a notebook computer and log in from another location in the building. It's a type of collabora- tive design that's borrowed from forward-thinking companies like Google, which pride themselves on breaking the mold in office design and employee culture. Dramatic art, inspired by previ- ous ad campaigns, adorns the walls, chronicling different periods in the company's exponential growth. In between the art are large, dramatic windows that look out on the scenic greenery of the campus. Not just for gazing at, employees are encouraged to take advantage of all the amenities the building has to offer, including its outdoor space. "We enforce breaks," Iannitti confidently proclaims. "You can come and sit at your desk for the next eight hours and never move at another company, but that's not the way it works here. The company is positioned specifically so that our employees can go outside and relax, walk around, and get anything they may need within one block of the office. We also have an on-site gym. We try to promote good, healthy behavior in the sense that we make sure you're eating, taking breaks, and going out and walking. There are plenty of areas for play, such as our Ping-Pong table, where we have tournaments." It is this dedication to playing hard that Iannitti believes makes his employees dedicated to work- ing hard, too. And at a time when adoption of e-lending solutions is up and TILA-RESPA is on the horizon, this steadfast work ethic is crucial. For DocMagic, the move to the paperless loan is nothing new, and as an early adopter of e-sign tech- nology, they have made it their mission to promote it not only within the industry but among the general public as well. One way in which they have done this is to open up their e-sign tool for free, for anyone who wants to upload a document and use it. "You can come to our website today, and within a couple min- utes, upload your documents and send them to whoever you need to with your signature included," It was amazing to me that we could now leverage a data point across many forms and reduce errors because there wasn't any re-typing going on. of course all this grew into much more. The core of what I found interesting when forming DocMagic was taking data in and leveraging it to produce documentation that would otherwise take hours to type out.