West Chester, March 30, 2020

We have noticed many businesses were not ready for a disaster. Their phones are being forwarded to an employee’s cell phone. They cannot get at the files on the in-house servers. The have not figured our how to meet with clients, except by phone.

We are fully open for business. Many years ago we abandoned premises base phones in favor of Voice Over IP (VOIP) phones. This enables us to have 100% access to all features of our phone system from anywhere. That’s anywhere in the world. We took our office paperless so all files have been scanned. While we still have on premises servers, they are mirrored in the cloud and were scheduled for retirement April 30.

More importantly we have fully implemented Microsoft Teams® as a primary communication and collaboration tool. We are able to communicate with clients in a secure manner, even when they have Gmail accounts (where Google reads every email and sells the data). All of our Teams® messages are fully encrypted end to end. Teams® allows us to have video conferences and to share what we are seeing on our computers or theirs.

Our related title insurance agency is conducting closing using a combination of technology and social distancing. As an insurance agency it is exempt from the governor’s order to close.

Its a whole new world, but I thank our staff for adopting new technology.