3 roles
The lean starter stack
The smallest set that covers a whole loan without a spreadsheet in the middle. Three roles, no overlap, and nothing here exists to look impressive on a website — at this stage every subscription comes out of a settlement that has not happened yet.
For: A broker writing their first loans, working alone, paying for everything personally.
The roles this stage has to fill
One tool per role, no overlap. We have not named the tools, because naming them is a recommendation five deep and no product has been tested yet — what follows is the shape, and the whole field for each part of it.
A CRM, not a mailbox. The single decision that costs most to reverse later, because everything else connects to it.
12 products we track →
Serviceability, before the fact-find. It is what stops a week being spent on a deal that was never going to work.
12 products we track →
Compliant e-signature. The alternative is printing, and printing is where files stall.
33 products we track →
What this stage leaves out
A stack is defined as much by what is not in it. Every one of these is a real category a broker could buy from today, and at this stage it does not earn the money.
- Marketing automation — there is nothing to nurture yet
- Analytics — the sample size is too small to read
- A phone system — a mobile is a phone system at this stage
Before this names a single product
Every tool in each role has to have been run in a real account for a working week and scored against the published criteria, and its list price confirmed in AUD rather than converted. Until then this gives you the shape and the field, which is worth more than a stack naming three products nobody has used.