Owned by 15 REALTOR Associations, North Texas Real Estate Information Systems Inc. (NTREIS) is an IT company providing real estate information storage and retrieval services to 25,000 subscribers in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metropolitan area and surrounding counties of North Texas.
The Challenge. CFO John Robert Pharr was looking to improve the custody of contract and transaction documentation, reduce storage costs, speed recovery of information and better manage the cost of the company’s annual audits. Additionally, he had a primary need for portability. Being out of the office for extended periods of time, he wanted to stay connected at work, but also be able to make on-screen presentations at offsite board and shareholder meetings.
The Solution. Pharr came across an electronic document management solution by Cabinet NG called CNG-SAFE at a QuickBooks event in Phoenix. CNG-SAFE can store and manage any document format with its client/server architecture, flexible security, workflow management and activity tracking. After seeing the seamless integration between QuickBooks and CNG-SAFE, Pharr was sold.
“With CNG-SAFE, we reduced the time auditors spend in our offices each year from three weeks to four or five days simply by giving them controlled remote access to CNG-SAFE and QuickBooks," said Pharr. “We no longer spend hours of unproductive time finding and refiling paper documentation for the auditors. Now, they find what they need themselves, and in many cases, they find that information from their office, which saves travel time and expense. It’s a win-win for both sides."
Pharr said that computer memory is cheaper, faster and safer than filing space in downtown office buildings which can run as much as $30 per square foot in downtown Dallas. Years ago, Pharr spent $60,000 rebuilding paper files damaged by smoke and water from a fire in the company suite. More recently, the company had a water pipe break in their filing room. Luckily, they were in the middle of transitioning their documents over to CNG-SAFE, which meant that most of their files were already entered into the new system. Rather than spending money to recover damaged documents, they were able to toss most of the files and turn the extra space into a more useful computer lab. “Our filing room is about a tenth the size of the one we had before and now, with daily offsite backup, we never worry about damaging or losing files," said Pharr.
What Pharr also wanted was the ability to access this information remotely. For many years, Pharr was using a laptop as his main computer so that he would be able to work remotely from home or on the road. Unfortunately, the need for more power and larger screens led to bigger and heavier laptops that were not nearly as fast or stable as comparable desktop computers. “There began to be a trade-off between portability on the one hand and stability and speed on the other," said Pharr.
