5 roles
The operations stack
The half of a brokerage nobody sells software to. These roles do not generate a lead or close a deal; they are what stops a settled loan becoming a complaint two years later.
For: Whoever is accountable for the file being right, not for the file existing.
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.
The single largest recurring operational cost, and the most automatable.
33 products we track →
Identity and credit checks. A legal precondition, not a nice-to-have.
13 products we track →
Storage and security, with retention that survives someone leaving.
29 products we track →
Audit trails and BID evidence, produced by the system rather than reconstructed later.
15 products we track →
Telephony and comms that log against the file rather than a personal handset.
23 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.
- Anything that only produces a report for a meeting
- Any tool whose audit trail lives outside the client record
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.